Re: Another Pseudo Secure Encryption Bites The Dust - Thank Goodness

On 02 Mar 2023, Grant Taylor <[email protected]> posted some 
news:[email protected]:

> On 3/2/23 1:24 PM, The Stuff of Legend wrote:
>> Gentlemen, this is fairly old news. The EncroChat servers were breached 
>> by the French authorities as early as 2019, using a technique similar 
>> to that used to gain access to the BlackBerry network a couple of 
>> years earlier.
> 
> Nothing about what you shared indicated that authorities /broke/ or 
> /cracked/ the encryption used.
> 
> Getting inside the network another way is completely independent of the 
> encryption used.
> 
> xkcd 538 -- Security -- comes to mind
>   - https://xkcd.com/538/

All it takes is a tech inside a DC cage with a USB drive.  Plug it in, the 
OS does the rest when it reads the drive file system.  Takes less than a 
minute to compromise a system.  Pull the drive on the way out and nobody 
is the wiser.

A COLO looks impressive on the outside and even more internally.  But 
techs are badged to work in them to save time getting in and out.  There 
are blind spots and it is not uncommon for equipment grid / cage locations 
to be misidentified on access requests.  

Familiarity breeds contempt and opens doors.