NSA Patents a Way To Spot Network Snoops 161
narramissic writes "The National Security Agency has patented a technique for figuring out whether someone is messing with your network by measuring the amount of time it takes to send different types of data and sounding an alert if something takes too long. 'The neat thing about this particular patent is that they look at the differences between the network layers,' said Tadayoshi Kohno, an assistant professor of computer science at the University of Washington. But IOActive security researcher Dan Kaminsky wasn't so impressed: 'Think of it as — if your network gets a little slower, maybe a bad guy has physically inserted a device that is intercepting and retransmitting packets. Sure, that's possible. Or perhaps you're routing through a slower path for one of a billion reasons.'"
Uh... (Score:3, Funny)
Or perhaps you're routing through a slower path for one of a billion reasons.
I knew taking that left turn at Albuquerque was a bad idea...
Tape Dispenser Plans Missing on NSA Website (Score:5, Funny)
A Billion here a Billion there, pretty soon... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Averages (Score:5, Funny)
Nah. What makes it newsworthy is that the snoops are patenting tools which can detect their own snoopage.
Counter-snooping this way is now a patent infringement as well as anything else, and the laws seem much tougher for that crime. Pursue 'em for one thing, nail 'em to the wall with another.
So... what? (Score:3, Funny)
"NSAapp: Latency change detected in segment AA23. No idea what it might mean. Send the intern."
Re:NSA patenting it because... (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Gov't patents (Score:3, Funny)
What if it was funded by loans from China?
Re:NSA patenting it because... (Score:3, Funny)
Fixed that for ya'.
Re:Gov't patents (Score:2, Funny)
Try a more recent tax form - proving you paid taxes more recently than 909 years ago is unlikely to impress them.
Re:I saw this on tv years ago (fiction) (Score:3, Funny)
siphoning off date...
What? They could hack a government agency but they couldn't figure out NTP? I call shenanigans.
Re:NSA patenting it because... (Score:1, Funny)