Mediaboss Marketing

"I would say that it has had a material impact in our ability to generate insights as to what counterterrorism, what terrorist groups around the world are doing," Adm. Michael Rogers told a group gathered in Washington for a cybersecurity summit hosted by the New America think tank.

READ: Jeb Bush defends NSA dragnet

"Do you have new blind spots that you didn't have prior to the revelation," moderator and CNN National Security correspondent Jim Sciutto asked.

"Have I lost capability that we had prior to the revelations? Yes," Rogers responded. "Anyone who thinks this has not had an impact I would say doesn't know what they're talking about."

Snowden himself remains free in Russia. A film about him won an Academy Award on Sunday evening.

Rogers says he knew U.S. infrastructure would likely come under cyber-attack on his watch, but the target of Sony Pictures was a surprise.

"I fully expected, sadly in some ways, that in my time as the commander of United States Cyber Command the Department of Defense would be tasked with attempting to defend the nation against those kind of attacks," he said. "I didn't realize that it would be against a motion picture company, to be honest."

North Korea is widely believed to be behind the hack in response to Sony's production of the film "The Interview," which depicts a comedic plot to kill leader Kim Jong-un

Rogers declined to respond to a question if the United States was behind a retaliatory online attack that took down North Korea's Internet access.

When asked which nations had the ability to strike U.S. cyber interests Rogers declined to provide assessments of most countries.

The rest is here:
NSA: Snowden leaks hurt ability to track terrorists - CNN.com

"I would say that it has had a material impact in our ability to generate insights as to what counterterrorism, what terrorist groups around the world are doing," Adm. Michael Rogers told a group gathered in Washington for a cybersecurity summit hosted by the New America think tank.

READ: Jeb Bush defends NSA dragnet

"Do you have new blind spots that you didn't have prior to the revelation," moderator and CNN National Security correspondent Jim Sciutto asked.

"Have I lost capability that we had prior to the revelations? Yes," Rogers responded. "Anyone who thinks this has not had an impact I would say doesn't know what they're talking about."

Snowden himself remains free in Russia. A film about him won an Academy Award on Sunday evening.

Rogers says he knew U.S. infrastructure would likely come under cyber-attack on his watch, but the target of Sony Pictures was a surprise.

"I fully expected, sadly in some ways, that in my time as the commander of United States Cyber Command the Department of Defense would be tasked with attempting to defend the nation against those kind of attacks," he said. "I didn't realize that it would be against a motion picture company, to be honest."

North Korea is widely believed to be behind the hack in response to Sony's production of the film "The Interview," which depicts a comedic plot to kill leader Kim Jong-un

Rogers declined to respond to a question if the United States was behind a retaliatory online attack that took down North Korea's Internet access.

When asked which nations had the ability to strike U.S. cyber interests Rogers declined to provide assessments of most countries.

See the article here:
NSA: Snowden leaks hurt us

The U.S. should be able to craft a legal framework to let government agencies read encrypted data, Rogers says

It probably comes as no surprise that the director of the U.S. National Security Agency wants access to encrypted data on computers and other devices.

The U.S. should be able to craft a policy that allows the NSA and law enforcement agencies to read encrypted data when they need to, NSA director Michael Rogers said during an appearance at a cybersecurity policy event Monday.

Asked if the U.S. government should have backdoors to encrypted devices, Rogers said the U.S. government needs to develop a "framework."

"You don't want the FBI and you don't want the NSA unilaterally deciding, 'So, what are we going to access and what are we not going to access?'" Rogers said during his appearance at the New America Foundation. "That shouldn't be for us. I just believe that this is achievable. We'll have to work our way through it."

Justsecurity.org has a transcript of an exchange between Rogers and Yahoo CISO Alex Stamos at Monday's event.

Rogers isn't the first member of President Barack Obama's administration to call for encryption workarounds in recent months. In September, after Apple and Google announced encryption features on their smartphone OSes, both FBI Director James Comey and Attorney General Eric Holder raised concerns that additional encryption tools would hinder law enforcement investigations.

Stamos questioned whether it is a good idea to build backdoors in encryption. "If we're going to build defects/backdoors or golden master keys for the U.S. government, do you believe we should do so .... for the Chinese government, the Russian government, the Saudi Arabian government, the Israeli government, the French government?" he said, according to the Justsecurity transcript.

Rogers objected to using the word "backdoor". "When I hear the phrase 'backdoor', I think, 'Well, this is kind of shady. Why would you want to go in the backdoor? It would be very public,'" he said. "Again, my view is: We can create a legal framework for how we do this. It isn't something we have to hide, per se."

An NSA spokeswoman wasn't immediately available for further comment.

View original post here:
NSA director wants gov't access to encrypted communications

In one of the most public confrontations of a top U.S. intelligence official by Silicon Valley in recent years, a senior Yahoo Inc. official peppered the National Security Agency director, Adm. Mike Rogers, at a conference on Monday over digital spying.

The exchange came during a question and answer session at a daylong summit on cybersecurity hosted by the think tank New America. Mr. Rogers spent an hour at the conference answering a range of questions about his agencys practices and the global cyber threat.

The tense exchange began when Alex Stamos, Yahoos chief information-security officer, asked Mr. Rogers if Yahoo should acquiesce to requests from Saudi Arabia, China, Russia, France and other countries to build a backdoor in some of their systems that would allow the countries to spy on certain users.

It sounds like you agree with [Federal Bureau of Investigation Director James] Comey that we should be building defects into the encryption in our products so that the US government can decrypt, Mr. Stamos said, according to a transcript of the exchange compiled by the Just Security blog.

That would be your characterization, Mr. Rogers said, cutting the Yahoo executive off.

Mr. Stamos was trying to argue that if Yahoo gave the NSA access to this information, other countries could try and compel the company to provide the same access to data.

Mr. Rogers said he believed that it is achievable to create a legal framework that allows the NSA to access encrypted information without upending corporate security programs.He declined to provide more details.

Well, do you believe we should build backdoors for other countries? Mr. Stamos continued?

My position is hey, look, I think that were lying that this isnt technically feasible, Mr. Rogers replied.

He said the framework would have to be worked out ahead of time by policy makers not the NSA.

See original here:
Yahoo Executive Confronts NSA Director Over Backdoors

NSA hides Spying Software deep within Hard Drives
Feb. 17 -- Bloomberg #39;s Cory Johnson reports on Kaspersky Lab finding concealed software on drives made by Western Digital, Seagate, Toshiba and others. Johns...

By: Matthew Hardy

Follow this link:
NSA hides Spying Software deep within Hard Drives - Video