An anonymous reader cites a Computer Weekly report: A doctoral thesis by American investigative journalist and postdoctoral researcher Jacob Appelbaum. revealed previously unseen information from the Snowden archives. These revelations date back a decade, but remain of undeniable public interest:
– The NSA listed Cavium, an American semiconductor company marketing central processing units (CPUs) – the main processor of a computer that runs the operating system and applications – as an example of a successful CPU supplier. SIGINT compatible”. Cavium, now owned by Marvell, said it was not implementing backdoors for any government.
– The NSA compromised Russia’s legal interception infrastructure, SORM. The NSA archives contain slides showing two Russian officers wearing jackets with a slogan written in Cyrillic: “You speak, we listen.” The NSA and/or GCHQ have also compromised Europe’s main lawful interception systems.
– Among the examples of targets of its mass surveillance program, PRISM, the NSA cited the Tibetan government in exile.
These revelations first surfaced through a doctoral thesis Appelbaum wrote toward a degree in applied cryptography from Eindhoven University of Technology in the Netherlands. Communication in a world of omnipresent surveillance East a public document and has been downloaded more than 18,000 times since March 2022, when it was first published. (…) We asked Jacob Appelbaum, currently a postdoctoral researcher at Eindhoven University of Technology, why he chose to publish these revelations in a technically written thesis rather than in a mass-circulation journal. He responded: “As an academic, I consider the details included to be in the public interest and highly relevant to the subject matter covered in my thesis, as it covers the subject of large-scale adversaries engaging in a targeted and mass surveillance. ” According to The register“Marvell (the owner of Cavium since 2018) denies allegations that he or Cavium placed backdoors in products at the behest of the U.S. government.
Appelbaum’s thesis did not receive much attention until it was mentioned in The Electrospaces.net security blog last week.
