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Hmmm?? NSA helped Microsoft make Vista secure ???

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posted on Feb, 8 2007 @ 04:01 PM
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This doesn't surprise me as they seem to have form for this sort of thing. Since about 90% of PCs in the world run a Microsoft operating system I can see how this would be too much of a tempting target for them to pass up.

I'm sure it'll come out eventually if there is a backdoor built in. The way things are at the moment I wouldn't trust any government agency to 'assist' in developing an operating system.



posted on Feb, 28 2007 @ 09:42 PM
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Evidently, big brother is real, and information privacy has become an outright utopia. Makes you look at the US vs. Windows court case in a different light (government blackmail for OS control).

What I wonder is... what is the psychology behind the need to spy on the world.

Maybe it's stuff for another thread, but what makes the US intel community so scared of loosing control? Is it a lack of confidence in humanity? No self-confidence? Limitless selfhisness? Scared-#ness? Xenophobism? What?



posted on Mar, 1 2007 @ 04:58 AM
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Originally posted by Thodeph
Evidently, big brother is real, and information privacy has become an outright utopia. Makes you look at the US vs. Windows court case in a different light (government blackmail for OS control).

What I wonder is... what is the psychology behind the need to spy on the world.

Maybe it's stuff for another thread, but what makes the US intel community so scared of loosing control? Is it a lack of confidence in humanity? No self-confidence? Limitless selfhisness? Scared-#ness? Xenophobism? What?
If you're that paranoid, there's nothing to stop you from using something else.



posted on Mar, 1 2007 @ 07:48 AM
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Also I remember correctly if you don't want Vista you can get your money back from Microsoft as long as you don't activate the software. I would contact either Dell or Microsoft and ask them. I remember seeing somewhere where somebody had did this.

If you guys are so worried about Microsoft and the NSA install Linux.
There are so many distributions out their to try. Their is an alternative to Photoshop it is called Gimp and is usually preloaded on Linux. If you still have to use your precious Windows Apps. than try using Wine which is free and available for Linux. Granted not all the Window's Apps. will work but its not perfect.

[edit on 1-3-2007 by malakia]



posted on Mar, 1 2007 @ 08:04 AM
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Whether your running Mac OSX, Vista or Linux the NSA will get into your pc if they want to.

I'm running Vista and Linux at the moment, problem is most apps I use will only run on windows
even with wine installed they don't run.

As far as linux security goes you need to go the whole 9 yards to be 99% secure like hard drive encryption (written yourself), Intrusion Detection, Firewalls, etc.
Even with all that done it still doesn't take care of the elite hackers who write their own operating systems from scratch and understand proper securing techniques like nobody's business.

Anyone remember McKinnon "the Pentagon" hacker.
www.theregister.co.uk...
He's someone who actually got caught, how about all the hackers that haven't been caught.

Theres one thing you need to remember putting any computer on the internet already makes your computer vulnerable.


[edit on 1-3-2007 by leafer]



posted on Mar, 1 2007 @ 12:08 PM
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leafer,

True - but no reason to give away the farm, eh?

Plus there are many good techniques for bobytrapping your HD's in case of an intrusion attempt.

(in such a way as to thouroughly destroy the data without harming anyone or anything else)

Do you konw of any good tutorials on how to write your own HD encryption scheme?

Any reason you couldn't just modify an existing open source encryption product?

I'm afraid I am somewhat ignorant about this security aspect.



posted on Mar, 2 2007 @ 12:46 PM
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Originally posted by TruthMagnet
leafer,

True - but no reason to give away the farm, eh?

Plus there are many good techniques for bobytrapping your HD's in case of an intrusion attempt.

(in such a way as to thouroughly destroy the data without harming anyone or anything else)

Do you konw of any good tutorials on how to write your own HD encryption scheme?

Any reason you couldn't just modify an existing open source encryption product?

I'm afraid I am somewhat ignorant about this security aspect.


Hey nothing to be embarrassed about with the lack of PC security skills. Everyone has their strengths and weaknesses.

Here's a full tutorial on how to install various disk encryptions:

tldp.org...

Here's a general overview of all the linux security things to look for:

tldp.org...

These are for linux BTW and overall Unix is a much more secure system even out of the box. Also Unix hands down beats linux in all areas relating to security but the learning curve is easier with linux.

[edit on 2-3-2007 by leafer]



posted on Mar, 7 2007 @ 04:28 PM
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Excellent!

Thank you very much - your help is much appreciated!

The more informed average joes like myself get - the more liberty we will retain.




posted on Mar, 10 2007 @ 07:33 PM
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I am no expert on communications but lets think of what they need to do to preject this information:

1) Send data from local secondary storage (HD) to server/database.

2) Identify dns data locally (history) or real time?

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

This would require transmission thus a protocol must be used. It could be ip spoofed, a ip compatible protocol that cannot be identified, or even a legitimate ip protocol that is moving data from a microsoft process (But I think this is unlikely).

I just messaged my friend Shiva who is an IT specialist (N. engineer) and is currently consulting with a security/remote access firm. He confirmed my thoughts and told me that this would be a very hard task to pull off especially locally. He said whatever data is relayed has to be accounted for electronically (bit signals) and this cannot change. He said there a lot of devices and ways of identifying this locally.

He told me if microsoft software was transmitting data locally from storage then it would most likely be through a process. And if that was the case the process' true function would not be or has not been stated by microsoft, and could lead to a dangerous legal precedent.

He said the best way would be real time through connectivity and still very hard to pull off concerning encapsulation of data because there must be data signals present.

Hope this helps



edit: spellin

[edit on 10-3-2007 by Selmer2]



posted on Mar, 13 2007 @ 03:45 PM
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"DoD requirements", most likely meaning that they have their own access key built right into the registry, as they have done in previous windows operating systems. It's not really anything new or surprising, just a good reason to switch to linux or OSX.



posted on Mar, 13 2007 @ 04:01 PM
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What is the problem of having a key inside of the registry, if there really is such a key?

A key does nothing.



posted on Mar, 13 2007 @ 07:47 PM
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Originally posted by Shoktek
"DoD requirements", most likely meaning that they have their own access key built right into the registry, as they have done in previous windows operating systems. It's not really anything new or surprising, just a good reason to switch to linux or OSX.


Surely it can be identified. Alhtough likely it would be a considerably key.



posted on Mar, 13 2007 @ 08:50 PM
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You can do a search, but this has come up before that the NSA has built in registry keys...not that that means anything specific in itself, but shows that Microsoft and the NSA willingly cooperate, therefore it could easily be assumed that they have a built-in back door, or something they could use to get into the files, trace a computer online back to the person who registered, or any number of things.



posted on Mar, 13 2007 @ 10:03 PM
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Originally posted by Shoktek
You can do a search, but this has come up before that the NSA has built in registry keys...not that that means anything specific in itself, but shows that Microsoft and the NSA willingly cooperate, therefore it could easily be assumed that they have a built-in back door, or something they could use to get into the files, trace a computer online back to the person who registered, or any number of things.


yeah I understand, although the question is what is the purpose of these keys. i.e. Is it for mass colaboration of demographic data or on an individual bases. So far every form of security / IT cryptography I know of has been compromised easily by civilians, and in my opinion always will be.

The problem is to transfer data they will have to confom to ip encapsulation. And they could get away with it on an individual bases although through connection loggers, data tracers and also human monitors certain individuals will easily discover this if they already haven't.

To pull of a demographic type operation imo they will get busted through and through.

There lower you go on the networking scale the easier it is to find any suspicious activity.

That is the problem for the NSA they have to conform to a compatible encapsulation which leaves them in a traceable state no matter what.

I will post relevant links for anyone's reference concerning a linux gateway package that will secure any pc in your house.




[edit on 13-3-2007 by Selmer2]



posted on Mar, 13 2007 @ 10:21 PM
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Is this why I'm having trouble ripping DVDs with Vista?




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