Ask HN: NSA SSL Private Keys?

5 points by iSloth 13y ago ↗ HN

So we know that the NSA are capturing the majority of internet traffic passing through the USA, currently it's a bit more vage on how much access they have to the data/servers of Facebook, Google, Twitter etc...

And a high percentage of the internet traffic these days it SSL encrypted, especially the more interesting traffic.

So what's the chance that the NSA have Google's, Facebook's Private SSL keys? and their actually decrypting the mirrored internet traffic that we know their capturing?

4 comments

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viraptor 13y ago ↗

More likely they have access to a trusted CA, or wildcard certificates that they can use to apply MitM to specific traffic. Almost the same effect, but no key stealing is necessary. (although that would require redirecting your traffic rather than passive capture)

lifeguard 13y ago ↗

The biggest risk is one of the X.509v3 certificates for various Certification Authorities (CAs) is compromised.

http://www.cyberciti.biz/faq/firefox-adding-trusted-ca/

Discussion of SSL on cryptome: http://cryptome.org/0005/ssl-broken.htm

tptacek 13y ago ↗

No, it's not; you can only use a compromised CA cert to MITM traffic, and if you do that, the Chrome users who have Google's actual key identity pinned in their browser will detect you doing that.

JoachimSchipper 13y ago ↗

Pretty much nil. The NSA isn't stupid; even in the (exceptionally unlikely) case that they can just MITM any SSL connection without arousing suspicion in even a well-monitored network, why would they reveal that? Much easier to just hack your computer/telephone/...