I also watched the program. Not very exciting. The Puzzle Palace by James Bamford, though dated, is probably the best insight I've read. I've had a few direct experiences with the NSA over the past years because of my crypto/tech background. Strangest experiences: getting yelled at by an NSA mathematician during several odd negotiations at Ft. Meade in '98; as chief technologist for a large US online company's endeavors to export a 128-bit browser to its intl. users in '98 (worked with both FBI and NSA on this -- came close to getting the license too); met with former heads of two nsa groups who hinted interesting observations on Skipjack, intl crypto products and relative strength of 128 bit crypto; finally, I was actually trained in NSA's infosec methodology in 2000 (I even have a certificate from them for passing the classes...the legal disclaimers on the thing are priceless -- you can check out some of their classes at www.nsa.gov if you want details). ...blah blah some other stuff too which is not nearly as interesting. No, though I've been to ft. meade several times i've never seen the "11 acres of super computers" and i've never seen operations rooms, etc. though i have seen some pretty boring cinderblocked conf. rooms in the middle of upper floors where computers aren't networked at all, the doors are made of steel and the walls emit a strange low hum; one door had a label which said: "not much of anything, really". there's lots of humer like that all around the place...probably to help break the tension of not being able to talk about what you do all day every day i imagine. IMHO the NSA staff are overworked and still in search of a clear, cool and patriotic uber-mission. fighting drugs and hackers just isn't as sexy as manipulating russian satellite image transmissions. Plus funding cuts means they've scaled back on activities which have normally been the role of the nsa...must be weird to work there where for years you had all the funding you needed, and now you're losing funding and staff. Recently, for example, they stopped performing infosec assessments for large US companies (like Disney in 1997, clearly because mickey mouse is a national critical icon) because they don't have enough people to perform the work and while NIST is now responsible for such things, only the NSA has staff trained to do these assessments (which is one reason I was trained, and no, i don't work for nist). Now NSA only performs infosec assessments for US critical infrastructure (mostly military and r&d sites). In fact the whole PDD-63/us critical infrastructure thing is very big and right now no one other than NIST/NSA is assumed to have the knowledge to carry out that mission. Yet there are seriously something like only 13 NSA staffers performing the duties/leading red teams, etc. I got the strong feeling that Red Team and IW efforts are hot topics of interest at the NSA (and Army, Navy and AF too). Thanks in part to successes in manipulating Milosevic-and-friends banking records during the Yugoslavia conflict, these areas are receiving a lot of attention. Watch for huge growth in activities here (in fact you can see some congressional funding justifications for IW program using China's, Israel's and Russia's own official IW ops activities). BTW, has anyone heard of recent moves to push SS7 phone messaging traffic over the internet in a bid to boost scalability and LNP resolution speeds? Three effects: it'll work better than the current SS7 network alone; improved eavesdropping on conversations which touch land lines (fyi only phone-to-phone cell phone comms like nextel's two-way-radio feature don't use land lines I believe); decreased need to try to decipher the message while it's in the air (it's harder to intercept over the air transmissions). sorry for the long posting, but thought i could share my small glimpse of their vast activities. phillip -----Original Message----- From: owner-cypherpunks@Algebra.COM [mailto:owner-cypherpunks@Algebra.COM]On Behalf Of Declan McCullagh Sent: Monday, January 08, 2001 10:57 PM To: Jim Choate Cc: cypherpunks@einstein.ssz.com; The Club Inferno; austin-cpunks@einstein.ssz.com; sci-tech@einstein.ssz.com Subject: Re: History Channel television show on NSA (fwd) Watched it, ET giving me a 3 hr advantage over you golden staters. A definite passover except for last 10 minutes, Echelon-dodging making the spooks limber enough to Macarena with Clipper Chip-endorsing Al with dispatch. "Trust us," DIRNSA proudly proclaims, with Church bells ringing in the near distance. Of note is latest permutation of horsemen riding in on backs of Defcon-going hackers as justification for existence of The Agency That Shall Not Be Named. -Declan, channeling JYA On Mon, Jan 08, 2001 at 05:18:24PM -0600, Jim Choate wrote:

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The Armadillo Group ,::////;::-. James Choate Austin, Tx /:'///// ``::>/|/ ravage@ssz.com www.ssz.com .', |||| `/( e\ 512-451-7087 -====~~mm-'`-```-mm --'- --------------------------------------------------------------------

---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Sun, 7 Jan 2001 16:38:19 -0500 (EST) From: "P.J. Ponder" To: cryptography@c2.net Subject: History Channel television show on NSA

The 'History Channel' cable TV network will air a show about the NSA tomorrow night January 8, at 8 pm Eastern. Their website says this about it:

America's Most Secret Agency

The National Security Agency, America's most secret and controversial agency, is charged with safeguarding the nation's strategic intelligence information and decoding the secret communications of our enemies. For only the second time in its nearly 50 year history, the N.S.A. allowed cameras inside its Ft. Meade, Maryland, headquarters, and the director, Lt. General Michael V. Hayden, sits for a rare interview and addresses issues such as privacy. Tune in and find out if Big Brother is watching you!

Using SS7 one can redefine routes, gather number translation info via Signalling Control Points (SCPs), etc. Rather than repeat boring details, check out: http://support.dialogic.com/ss7/SS7tutorial/tutorial.html The link is a brief tutorial on SS7; it'll make possibilities more obvious. What's the danger of SS7 over IP? Lack of security features at gateways and at the protocol level. pz

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How does this improve eavesdropping? SS7 is only signaling. There is no voice payload on the SS7 network. SS7 simply passes signaling information around. Perhaps the knowledge of calling and called party since those digits are passed via SS7 but the converstation is entirely distinct.

-jr -----Original Message----- From: owner-cypherpunks@Algebra.COM [mailto:owner-cypherpunks@Algebra.COM]On Behalf Of Josh Richards Sent: Tuesday, January 09, 2001 9:35 PM To: cypherpunks@einstein.ssz.com Subject: SS7 over the Net (was Re: History Channel television show on NSA) * Phillip Zakas [20010108 21:51]: [..]

BTW, has anyone heard of recent moves to push SS7 phone messaging traffic over the internet in a bid to boost scalability and LNP resolution speeds?

Three effects: it'll work better than the current SS7 network alone; improved eavesdropping on conversations which touch land lines (fyi only phone-to-phone cell phone comms like nextel's two-way-radio feature don't use land lines I believe); decreased need to try to decipher the message while it's in the air (it's harder to intercept over the air

There are already carriers doing SS7 over IP via gateways. Over the public Internet is not a stretch from a technical standpoint but, in practice, I'd find it hard to believe too many LECs or IXCs going this route. Private IP networks, yes already in production even. The public IP network, nobody serious is doing it. Wait, well, if you just mean VoIP there are VoIP companies that are attempting things like this by partnering with regional and local ISPs to place voice gateways. If you're talking governmental moves, there are easier ways. The SS7 network isn't exactly encrypted.. transmissions). How does this improve eavesdropping? SS7 is only signaling. There is no voice payload on the SS7 network. SS7 simply passes signaling information around. Perhaps the knowledge of calling and called party since those digits are passed via SS7 but the converstation is entirely distinct. -jr ---- Josh Richards [JTR38/JR539-ARIN] Geek Research LLC - URL:http://www.geekresearch.com/ IP Network Engineering and Consulting