Security quotes of the week

Why spy? Because it’s cheaper than playing fair. Our networks have given the edge to the elites, and unless we seize the means of information, we are headed for a long age of IT-powered feudalism, where property is the exclusive domain of the super-rich, where your surveillance-supercharged Internet of Things treats you as a tenant-farmer of your life, subject to a licence agreement instead of a constitution.

In a recent article by Scahill and Begley, we learned that the CIA is interested in targeting Apple products. I largely agree with the quote from Steve Bellovin, that “spies gonna spy”, so of course they’re interested in targeting the platform that rides in the pockets of many of their intelligence collection targets. What could be a tastier platform for intelligence collection than a device with a microphone, cellular network connection, GPS, and a battery, which your targets willingly carry around in their pockets? Even better, your targets will spare you the trouble of recharging your spying device for you. Of course you target their iPhones! (And Androids. And Blackberries.)

To my mind, the real eyebrow raising moment was that the CIA is also allegedly targeting app developers through “whacking” Apple’s Xcode tool, presumably allowing all subsequent software shipped from the developer to the app store to contain some sort of malicious implant, which will then be distributed within that developer’s app. Nothing has been disclosed about how widespread these attacks are (if ever used at all), what developers might have been targeted, or how the implants might function.