this post was submitted on 06 Dec 2024
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[–] [email protected] 60 points 5 days ago (1 children)

Make them spend more resources doing deanonymizations. First they have to get the IP from instance admins, then trace the tor routing, then the VPN that I use, then ask for my ISP. Make them do all that work.

(Or maybe they already have access by simply activating their backdoors within Intel ME, AMD PSP, and whatever baseband backdoor on the phones they have, and have just gotten everyone's real identities in an instant, we can't know for sure.)

[–] pennomi 12 points 5 days ago (3 children)

They also have backdoors in most implementations of TLS, according to a person I know who worked government security.

[–] AtHeartEngineer 12 points 4 days ago (1 children)

I work in cryptography, and I guarantee if that's true "some person you know who worked in government security" would not tell you if they did know, or they are pulling shit out of their ass. There have been so many people that have looked at or worked on SSL/TLS implementations (including some of my coworkers), any vulnerabilities would have to be pretty subtle or clever, and that would be kept highly classified. Quit making shit up or repeating bullshit you heard.

[–] pennomi -2 points 4 days ago (1 children)

Sure, if we’re talking about code vulnerabilities only. It’s most likely a compromised root cert though.

[–] AtHeartEngineer 4 points 4 days ago (1 children)

That just would allow a malicious attacker to fake being the server, it doesn't actually compromise the TLS session. So you are talking about a much more sophisticated multi stage attack that needs to be actively executed. This wouldn't at all allow them to record traffic and decrypt later.

The certs authenticate that you are talking to the real server, the symmetric session keys that are usually derived from a diffie helman key exchange have nothing to do with certs. That's two separate (but connected) parts of the transaction to build a TLS session.

[–] pennomi -1 points 3 days ago

Right, this would be a MitM vulnerability, which could be reasonably viable for targeted attacks.

[–] [email protected] 35 points 5 days ago

It wouldn't be impossible. There are like so many different certificate issuers, any one of them collaborating with a government would allow them to create a certificate that would be accepted by your browser.

[–] Hawke 17 points 5 days ago

Still takes more work than just giving them that information.