[dba-Tech] nsa

Hi Peter:

Yes my thoughts exactly...is this true protection or just a public relation campaign? Hard to say.

TOR is supposed to apply AES-256 encryption to all out going messages and then de-encrypt the messages as they arrive. Unfortunately, the NSA been able to squeeze their "data gathering" in between the user receipt and the de-encryption process. Now TOR has to upgrade so these messages are decrypted, on the receipt station using a much larger range of random keys...this task may have already been accomplished.

The next big security frontier seems to be the upgrading routers/firewalls as the current batch of home and small business systems have terribly flaky and porous software. Much of this can be resolved by first checking to see whether your router brand is compatible and if it is, install some of the excellent OSS software packages. The list is of course substantial which makes it a lengthy process but the addition features can make the operation well worth while: 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_router_and_firewall_distributions

Jim     

----- Original Message -----
From: "Peter Brawley" <peter.brawley at earthlink.net>
To: "Discussion of Hardware and Software issues" <dba-tech at databaseadvisors.com>
Sent: Monday, March 24, 2014 11:13:18 PM
Subject: [dba-Tech] nsa

Does Google's switch to https 
(http://rt.com/news/google-gmail-encryption-nsa-297/) actually protect 
against NSA snooping?

Does TOR?

PB


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