If the operative word is "sent" and "all" the likelihood is zero, as I can assert I've never sent a private key to NSA, and I've made quite a few over the past few years.
That said, carlosdp makes a great point as to how one should behave. Even though not all private keys get shipped to NSA (can't make claims about other teams), the government is very public about other data sharing programs (see https://www.dhs.gov/sites/default/files/publications/privacy... for example).
Even though all government agencies must disclose these types of programs, they are so numerous and often so difficult to decipher, the only rational response is to assume everyone has everything or could have access in the future.
The only way to avoid this is to build zero-knowledge systems on the server side, something I hope you'll see more of in 2017.
That said, DHS runs an intrusion prevention system called EINSTEIN, whose mission is to protect all federal civilian computer networks:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Einstein_(US-CERT_program)
Using EINSTEIN _is_ mandated by OMB, so if you're worried about the U.S. federal government snooping on your communications with the U.S. federal government, I don't know what to tell you.
I can vouch personally that at least one civilian department doesn't do this.
It's pretty hard to setup a system that would survive an powerful adversary who simply didn't know your passwords, have access to your safes, etc. But to then make that system hardened against a malicious insider with get-of-of-jail card?!
Multiply this by the number of groups that operate a .gov website (it's a lot) compounded by turnover (even more.) And account for the cat-herders needed to organize it and do it every time the private key rotates (no less than yearly for our internet-facing sites.)
There are a lot of ways you could do this on a small scale, but you really can't scale up this particular mechanism and keep it secret.
Or anyone who'd ever gotten access to the computer, or installed a camera near it, etc.
The critical part of that answer though, is "one of the". The system fails if any of the individuals is be malicious. A more-robust system would require multiple malicious agents in various organizational silos (security, compliance, management) to fail.
> every time the private key rotates
Well, if I got in once it probably phones that home for me.
> you really can't scale up this particular mechanism and keep it secret
Well, it isn't secret. We know the NSA intercepts hardware to muck with it, when needed. Much easier even than planting something in your server room explicitly. Also, they wield NSLs compelling silence and cooperation. It's not like being discovered here or there would stop scare or stop them.
It would probably scale pretty well given that this is the extreme; most people just generate keys on the old debian box in the corner.
Yes, and at that point the name for it is "policy". These are our own keys after all- nobody would blink an eye if they were supposed to be collected.
They're not.
Right. I think you're absolutely correct, now. And I fully expect (hope!) that the NSA will one-day come to you with some more-secure hardware and that you will gladly cooperate because as you say - we are all on the same team.
My point is that you can't say what you're saying now. You aren't secure, and you don't have the type of procedures that would ever let you get to more than a 4/10 or so. You don't even see having four independent points of failure as an issue, rather than a benefit.
By promising people that the NSA does not have your organization's keys you're providing the less technical with a false picture.
And maybe, one day, that might matter. You might trick the next leaker into trusting your org as a way to whistle-blow and cause them to be caught by the NSA before they reach the news.
> Yes, and at that point the name for it is "policy". [security procedures]
Yeah, and software is just automated policy. If this is a zero, and that's a zero, etc...
If the guard in the vault runs a non-exploitable policy (ie no "I'm the boss" backdoors) then you can greatly reduce evil-sysadmin attacks.
I was hoping to use a very advanced force as an example to show that things that may sound secure aren't if your attacker has a certain level of resources.
Fwiw, most pen-testers would aso be able to bypass any such casually enacted system too, but that's less obvious so I had hoped to avoid that argument by going with an extreme example.
You're confusing being uninteresting with being safe. (Safety is numbers is irrelevant once you've been selected.)
> Sorry, I'm not going to continue arguing with you.
Stop clicking Reply.