[fph]

Within the realm of possibility? Let's be honest, if you are a top NSA executive and you couldn't find a way to get your hands on Cloudflare's private keys (bribing or threatening the right person), you are not getting your Christmas bonus.

[nly]

It is of course inconceivable that the NSA do not have the private keys for dozens of browser trusted certificate authorities

That nonetheless doesn't help them unless they are doing active MITM. In order to do that they'd have to have at least some physical presence at Cloudflare or on the path to Cloudflare.

[RealityVoid]

My understanding is that they tapped communication nodes before. I would be surprised if they can't tap the pipes to cloudflare.

[fragmede]

I mean, it is the CIA, but if you encrypt it before it leaves the box, and you're decent good with the key material, how are they going to get at it? Tapping the fiber then gets them encrypted flows, which isn't nothing, but, well, it would be surprising if they had access to the clear text.

[wongarsu]

Room 641A [1] would be an example of just renting a room in the DC, making it look as boring and nondescript as possible, tap the fiber lines and send a copy of all data to that room

That requires cooperation from a couple people at the company. People that could do it for "patriotic duty", be payed off, simply be coerced, or be replaced by NSA agents (I wonder how many cloudflare employees are NSA plants?). If you want to go even more low-profile, tap the fiber lines a block further down outside the cloudflare PoP and use one of the above techniques to get the key material

Even if it takes the NSA a decade to get an NSA agent hired and moved up in the organization until they have a vector to extract private keys that's still an incredible return on investment

1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Room_641A

[fragmede]

The difference is AT&T didn't publicly make statements that they didn't know about Room 641A and that they weren't helping the NSA. Google's response to PRISM was much more aggressive, and in the wake of the MUSCULAR tapping revelations, Google stepped up their encryption. I haven't worked at Cloudflare but I have worked at Google, so I can't speak to Cloudflare's internal company culture but I can say that Google was not happy about the NSA tapping their fibre.

[linkregister]

Is this information derived from Enemy of the State starring Will Smith and Gene Hackman? It was a great movie and the first DVD I ever bought.

[philipallstar]

Do people in government get bonuses linked to performance?

[sph]

Government agencies get budgets linked to performance.

[philipallstar]

Well - do they? In my experience they get budgets for spending their current budget.