[SSL Observatory] so called "lawful intercept" survey

[Phillip Hallam-Baker]

On Mon, Sep 26, 2011 at 5:54 AM, Ralph Holz <holz at net.in.tum.de> wrote:

> Hi,
>
> > Can we expect well-behaving CA to initiate self-destruct
> sequence^W^W^W^Wsend
> > distress signal once it happens? :-)
>
> As things are going, I'd expect a hacker to use the "remote
> self-distruction button" before a CA ever gets to that point. SCNR.
>

Which is one of the many reasons why practical security schemes do not look
like the ideal models produced by academics.

Tehran Bob (the PR flack for the Iranian hackers) has been attempting to do
just that with his claims of having 'owned' other CAs. Surprise, surprise,
it turns out that these claims were less than 100% accurate. Well duh, if
the guy had really compromised another CA he would have kept his mouth shut
about it.


We saw a very similar PR attack against www.whitehouse.gov during the
Yugoslav civil war. I got a call from the net op asking if I knew somewhere
that they could get their hands on a Cisco router in the DC area in a hurry
as theirs had broken. This was before you could get that sort of thing off
the shelf even at Fry's. An hour later I got a call from a journalist who
had been told by a bunch of Serbian hackers that they had just DoS'd the
White House.

Very few journalists ask questions these days. Or rather, they ask a lot of
questions when someone is saying something that challenges the conventional
view and ask none at all when what is being said is consistent. The net
result of this 'one way skepticism' is that only the conventional view gets
reported.

-- 
Website: http://hallambaker.com/
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