Details of “Einstein” Cyber Shield Disclosed by White House

[Dave]

By Siobhan Gorman

The Obama administration lifted the veil Tuesday on a highly-secretive set of policies to defend the U.S. from cyber attacks.

It was an open secret that the National Security Agency was bolstering a Homeland Security program to detect and respond to cyber attacks on government systems, but a summary of that program declassified Tuesday provides more details of NSA’s role in a Homeland program known as Einstein.

The current version of the program is widely seen as providing meager protection against attack, but a new version being built will be more robust–largely because it’s rooted in NSA technology. The program is designed to look for indicators of cyber attacks by digging into all Internet communications, including the contents of emails, according to the declassified summary. (emphasis mine)

Homeland Security will then strip out identifying information and pass along data on new threats to NSA. It will also use threat information from NSA to better identify emerging cyber attacks.

NSA’s role is a careful balance because of the political battles that ensued over the agency’s role in domestic surveillance in the George W. Bush administration. Declassifying details of the NSA’s role, in a program initially developed during the Bush administration and continued in the Obama administration, will likely ignite new debates over privacy.

The White House’s new cyber-security chief, Howard Schmidt, announced the move to declassify the program in a speech at the RSA conference in San Francisco–his first major public address since assuming the post in January. He said addressing potential privacy concerns was one of the ten initial steps he planned to take. “We’re really paying attention, and we get it,” he said.

[Dave]

Tad, ( or anyone else ) what encryption program do you think is the best out there for people to keep their emails private?

[blues]

Tad, ( or anyone else ) what encryption program do you think is the best out there for people to keep their emails private?

PGP has been the standard for quite a while, only problem with email encryption is everyone you send email to has to be running it too. Personally I just don't put anything in email I don't want others to read. Worked at too many places where they monitored it.

[fook]

to protect against the nsa? probably none, given a long enough period of time there is no unbreakable encryption.

i use gnupg/dsa to encrypt important items that i dont want to fall into the wrong hands(id theft etc) but trying to defend against the NSA and their 8 acre's of computing power is probably a lost cause.

so stop trying to plot domestic terrorist attacks, dave.

[Dave]

so stop trying to plot domestic terrorist attacks, dave.

Hell, My friends and I are planning the hostel takeover of another solar system. This solar system is about 500 light-years from Earth in the direction of the constellation Ophiuchus. Right now there are two flat and dusty disks rotating around the equatorial plane of the central star in opposite directions, so it's running backwards. As soon as that's fixed and it's fully formed were gonna be all over it.

[Alternator]

to protect against the nsa? probably none, given a long enough period of time there is no unbreakable encryption.

i use gnupg/dsa to encrypt important items that i dont want to fall into the wrong hands(id theft etc) but trying to defend against the NSA and their 8 acre's of computing power is probably a lost cause.

so stop trying to plot domestic terrorist attacks, dave.

The NSA is not going to be trying to break your encryption unless you are providing a clear target vector.

[Tad]

The government can not even keep illegal immigrants out of politics, and you think they can intercept email?

That is another 20 years down the road for them...

But seriously, if there is anything you think should not be read by anyone on the internet, do not use email
for secure messaging transport.

Channel 19 on the CB is more secure than email, really.

Today AES 256 bit encryption is your best bet, but if you need it that tight, you are going to get caught anyways...

- Tad

Tad, ( or anyone else ) what encryption program do you think is the best out there for people to keep their emails private?

[blues]

Well in 1997 I worked for a company in No CA that provided data encryption to most of the major banks, the FBI and NSA. at that time we were using triple DES with automatic key changes every hour.

If it was good enough for the NSA it was good enough for anyone. NSA used to buy out latest hardware and software yearly and send it to several places to see if anyone could break it. at that time no one had ever broke it.