On Fri, Jun 20, 2014 at 8:10 AM, Georgi Guninski wrote:

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/06/19/hackers_reverseengineer_nsa_spying_d...

my biased thoughts: 1. attacking like NSA means being in the middle. you can do this over various types of networks and protocols with very modest hardware;. less than off-the-shelf. the key is position, not hardware brute strength. (i don't consider passive surveillance an attack - more like an operational reality ;) 2. scale and effectiveness are the dials that distinguish NSA attacks from other adversaries. scale in the sense they're pwning global networks as mandatory objective; DPI at terabits an interesting technical challenge by any measure. and effectiveness in that tailored access and offensive espionage techniques combine into a platform where many-0day and fully automated attack sequences are shown to achieve objectives with regularity and totality that makes any offensive infosec analyst admire. the hardware bits get exotic when dealing on fringe power levels, miniature scale, or algorithmic complexities outside the norm. these exotic hardware kits are by no means mandatory, nor the most interesting aspect of these systems. (okay, spygear always admittedly cool however impractical :) best regards,