Heartbleed Suspicion And NSA Denial Show Why NSA's Dual Offense/Defensive Role Must End

from the it's-a-problem dept

Mon, Apr 14th 2014 10:03am — Mike Masnick

We've talked for a while how dangerous and ridiculous it is that the NSA has a dual role as both handling "offensive" attacks and (supposedly) stopping incoming attacks in a "defensive" role. While technically, the NSA is supposed to be handling the "defensive" side while the US Cyber Command handles the offensive, there is no real separation between the two. The US Cyber Command is headquartered within the NSA and is run by the same person. Despite multiple recommendations to split the roles, the White House refuses to do so. Meanwhile, the NSA itself has been doing more and more offensive work anyway.

However, the claim late last week that the NSA knew about and exploited Heartbleed, followed by the quick denial by the NSA, really puts an exclamation point on how untenable this dual role is for the NSA. It's difficult to take the NSA seriously given the competing interests within it. Add to this, President Obama basically giving his broad approval for the NSA to exploit security flaws it finds, and you have a very dangerous setup for your average internet user. The NSA, despite its job, will have little interest in actually protecting internet users.

Julian Sanchez summarizes the issue nicely by pointing out that the two roles are simply incompatible:

But the denial itself serves as a reminder that NSA's two fundamental missions – one defensive, one offensive – are fundamentally incompatible, and that they can't both be handled credibly by the same government agency.

The NSA's history of being less than forthright in the past, as well as many of the Snowden revelations, combined with its dual role, simply means that most people won't believe the NSA's denial about Heartbleed, even if it was much more strongly worded than earlier denials. If the NSA's role, however, were made much clearer, such that it was only focused on protecting systems, without the offensive elements, then it would be both a lot more believable, and a lot more trustworthy. However, the very fact that the administration (and the NSA) appear to have little interest in moving in this direction says a lot about how much they really prioritize protecting our computer systems.

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Filed Under: cybersecurity, defensive, nsa, offensive, surveillance, us cyber command

17 Comments

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Anonymous Coward, 14 Apr 2014 @ 10:17am

Obama: Nope.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/white-house-to-preserve-controversial-pol icy-on-nsa-cyber-command-leadership/2013/12/13/4bb56a48-6403-11e3-a373-0f9f2d1c2b61_story.html

But I agree. This would be the single greatest "reform" of NSA they could practically do right now. Merging US Cyber Command and NSA was a grave mistake, and a major source of corruption of NSA's mission to protect US infrastructure.
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wto605 (profile), 14 Apr 2014 @ 10:19am

they can't both be handled credibly by the same government agency.

Honestly... I don't think they could credibly be handled by the government period. Even if the current administration were at all receptive to congressional oversight the ability of our representatives to understand these issues is so limited it would render such oversight useless.
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Anonymous Coward, 14 Apr 2014 @ 10:34am

They're either lying or incompetent
If the NSA knew about Heartbleed and didn't speak up: they're lying.

If the NSA didn't know about Heartbleed, they're incompetent.

(OpenSSL is one of the most widely used pieces of security-related software. Of course the NSA should have people who do nothing but scrutinize every change to it and target the modified code for attacks. Given their enormous financial, personnel and computing resources, they should have found this bug in a week.)
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Anonymous Coward, 14 Apr 2014 @ 10:54am

The "security" portion of NSA should be run by civilians, not army generals who only think of war (and mainly offensive capabilities). A civilian would be much more interested in the actual security of American infrastructure. It's actually what the NSA review panel proposed, too.
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Kenpachi (profile), 14 Apr 2014 @ 11:11am

Re: They're either lying or incompetent
I couldn't agree more.

On the same token, when pondering about the National Spying Agency, it's almost impossible for me to see an either-or statement on those adjectives.

U feel me bro? :}
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Ninja (profile), 14 Apr 2014 @ 11:47am

That time when conspiracy nuts don't seem so crazy after all.

Are we there yet?
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Internet Zen Master (profile), 14 Apr 2014 @ 11:53am

Isn't Offense supposed to be the CIA's job?
I mean, the NSA's self-declared mission is to monitor data in order to stop potential terrorist threats (more or less). That's a defensive role.

The CIA is... well, the CIA. That whole "carrying out/overseeing covert ops" part of their job description kinda makes them seem the default offensive role [but only in international matters of course], which means Cyber Command should be part of the CIA instead.

Although the thought of having the CIA control Cyber Command instead of the NSA is not very comforting...
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Anonymous Coward, 14 Apr 2014 @ 12:21pm

Re:
We got there a long time ago...
In a galaxy far far away
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Anonymous Coward, 14 Apr 2014 @ 12:33pm

National Insecurity Agency is dangerous and insecure.
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Anonymous Coward, 14 Apr 2014 @ 1:05pm

Re:
National Insecurity Agency is dangerous and insecure.

Was going to call it National Anti-Security Administration but apparently the acronym is already in use.
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Anonymous Coward, 14 Apr 2014 @ 1:36pm

Re:
Network security research should be carried out by a private company, funded by those who (should) have a strong interest in the Internet being secure; Amazon, Google, Ebay etc.
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Anonymous Coward, 14 Apr 2014 @ 1:38pm

Re: Re:
I would suggest that agency could be useful in exiling the problem people, but they rely on private companies and the Russians these days for their transport.
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Anonymous Coward, 14 Apr 2014 @ 7:10pm

One of the most brillant strategies of Hitler was to have multiple spy agencies compete. Worked pretty well for him. Hitler aside, perhaps strategy can work for us?
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Coyne Tibbets (profile), 14 Apr 2014 @ 7:14pm

I call winner
"The NSA's history of being less than forthright in the past..."

Trying to win the understatement of the century award, are we?
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Anonymous Coward, 14 Apr 2014 @ 9:11pm

Re: They're either lying or incompetent
Really the NSA have a through record of being both liars and incompetents.
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Pragmatic, 15 Apr 2014 @ 5:03am

Re: Re:
Uh, much of the "But terrorists!!11eleventy-one!" scare-mongering is being done by private contractors that have a strong interest in turning a healthy profit. Our representatives are bought and paid for by private contrators with a strong interest in protecting their business models, which means scare-mongering in Congress to get those sweet, sweet, $$$s.

They create (or pretend there is) a problem, then promise to solve it for a small consideration. Haven't you noticed this?
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Pragmatic, 15 Apr 2014 @ 5:14am

Re:
It worked pretty well to keep him in charge but he lost the war because he wasn't brilliant after all.

FIFY
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