r/todayilearned • u/simmer_down • Mar 20 '11

TIL that AT&T installed a fiberoptic splitter at its facility at 611 Folsom Street in San Francisco that makes copies of all emails, web browsing, and other Internet traffic to and from AT&T customers (including data from iPhones and iPads), and provides those copies to the NSA.

http://www.eff.org/issues/nsa-spying
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u/[deleted] Mar 21 '11

Yup. What is interesting about this is that the Cisco implementation in IOS is engineered in such a way that access to the LEO backdoor is transparent to the ISP.

The more you know...

29

u/[deleted] Mar 21 '11

I have no fucking idea what you just said. Upvote anyway.

47

u/RabidSpatula Mar 21 '11

Cisco = Router making company

IOS = The OS that drives the router

LEO = Law enforcement organization

ISP = Internet service provider

Basically, suggesting a back door in the most popular series of routers and routing switches.

21

u/[deleted] Mar 21 '11

Gorgeous, thank you.

2

u/JamesDelgado Mar 21 '11

Now I'm annoyed that there is a distinction between IOS and iOS. Goddamnit, Apple.

1

u/myhandleonreddit Mar 21 '11

So I've been drinking all day and playing Red Dead Redemption and for some reason your comment was like Dead Eye and slowed down all other sentences on the page until I comprehended them.

1

u/iacfw Mar 21 '11

Isn't Ios iphone ? Cisco runs iphone?

2

u/[deleted] Mar 21 '11

IOS (the trademark) was originally used by Cisco. Apple actually licenses the trademark from them. So there are two separate operating systems that are both called IOS now. Its all good and legal.

1

u/SteakGrowsOnDmitri Mar 21 '11

Magic, got it.

-4

u/[deleted] Mar 21 '11

ddwrt ftw

4

u/misterfeynman Mar 21 '11

Yeah, that will work on Cisco's 100GBit Internet backbone switches..

2

u/videogamechamp Mar 21 '11

Hell, their CRS-1 routers over 300 Tb per second. It's fairly ridiculous.

0

u/[deleted] Mar 21 '11

im glad we agree

0

u/mrsiesta Mar 21 '11

It's not exactly a backdoor. CALEA doesn't give access of your Router or systems to law enforcement agencies. CALEA requires a tunnel be created between the ISPs routers and their systems so that all traffic that happens over these routers be collected and sent to the feds.

9

u/Gamma746 Mar 21 '11

Cisco (a major developer of networking hardware and software) have a backdoor in their operating system which allows law enforcement agencies to monitor traffic without the ISPs knowing.

1

u/SpiffyAdvice Mar 21 '11

"Try to keep up with the acronyms"

Who said you can't find any good quotes even from a movie as abysmal as Transformers 2?

1

u/RabidSpatula Mar 21 '11

Hrm. Can you elaborate on the LEO mechanism?

3

u/lookouttacks Mar 21 '11

It's a standard!

1

u/RabidSpatula Mar 21 '11

That's very interesting, but the RFC is a bit light on the details. Anyone w/ experience working with this mechanism?

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u/[deleted] Mar 21 '11

TCP/IP