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Thursday, May 5, 2016

Download Infocus M680 Stock Firmware File / Package

GCHQ - The benchmarks and battery hold it back, but they're not unreasonable given the price. You'll find better specs in Chinese phones, but if you don't need a dual-SIM phone and you want the peace of mind of a proper UK warranty, it's a solid choice. Graphics, tested at the default, well we have collected a lot of data from the field directly and from many other blogs so very complete his discussion here about GCHQ, on this blog we also have to provide the latest automotive information from all the brands associated with the automobile. ok please continue reading:

(Updated: February 6, 2015)

Today it's exactly one year ago the Snowden-leaks started. Among the many highly classified documents which were disclosed during the past year are various charts that provide us with actual numbers about the amount of data the National Security Agency (NSA) is collecting.

Here we will take a look at those numbers and see what we can learn from them by comparing various sources and from breaking them down into NSA-divisions, countries and collection programs. As still only fragmented parts have been published, this overview cannot provide completeness or full accuracy (estimates are shown as round numbers).

Numbers related to:
- BOUNDLESSINFORMANT
- NSA volumes and limits
- GCHQ metadata collection
- NSA collection by country
- NSA collection by division
- SSO Collection programs
- Shared by 2nd party partner agencies
- Shared by 3rd party partner agencies

BOUNDLESSINFORMANT

The most detailed numbers about NSA's data collection are from the BOUNDLESSINFORMANT tool, which is used by NSA officials to view the metadata volumes collected from specific countries or by specific programs.

A worldwide overview is provided by a heat map which was published by The Guardian on June 11, 2013. It displays the figures over a 30-day period ending in March 2013:

NSA worldwide total:

Internet records (DNI):
Telephony records (DNR):

221.919.881.317

97.111.188.358
124.808.692.959

This total of 221 billion telephony and internet records a month equals 2,6 trillion a year and 7,3 billion a day. However, the actual number of what NSA collects worldwide might be higher - see the update below.

The BOUNDLESSINFORMANT worldwide overview for March 2013
(click to enlarge)

NSA volumes and limits

The BOUNDLESSINFORMANT tool seems to be very accurate, but there's another chart that gives different numbers. It's from a 2012 presentation for the SIGINT Development conference of the Five Eyes community and shows the volumes and limits of NSA metadata collection. The chart was published by The Washington Post on December 4, 2013 and again in Greenwald's book 'No Place To Hide' on May 13, 2014.

Chart showing the volumes and limits of NSA metadata collection
between January and June 2012
Redactions by Greenwald or the press, explanations added by the author
(click to enlarge)

This chart shows the numbers of:
- telephony metadata which are received by FASCIA, which is NSA's main ingest processor for telephony metadata;
- internet metadata that are transferred to MARINA, which is a huge NSA database that can store internet metadata for up to a year;
- internet metadata that had to be deleted because there was apparently not enough storage space.

Except for the deleted metadata, the charts shows ca. 10,4 billion internet metadata (DNI) a day, which makes 312 billion a month or 3,7 trillion a year. There are ca. 4,5 billion telephony metadata (DNR) a day, which makes 135 billion a month or 1,6 trillion a year. If we compare these numbers with those from BOUNDLESSINFORMANT, we see a big difference:

Internet metadata (DNI):
Telephony metadata (DNR):

Volumes and Limits
(a month, 1st half 2012)

312.000.000.000
135.000.000.000

BOUNDLESSINFORMANT
(a month, 1st half 2013)

97.111.188.358
124.808.692.959

There's a difference of 11 billion telephony metadata between both charts, but an even bigger gap exists between the internet metadata: the Volumes and Limits chart shows 215 billion more than BOUNDLESSINFORMANT. This discrepancy wasn't noticed in the press reportings, nor in Greenwald's book, so at the moment there's no clear explanation for this.

Update:
A possible explanation for the discrepancies between these numbers can be found in a FAQ document for the BOUNDLESSINFORMANT tool, which says the numbers shown in the "map view" are lower than in the so-called "org view" of the tool because for the latter, also records are counted that doesn't contain the country identifiers which are needed to be counted in the "map view".
This would also explain the far bigger difference between the numbers of internet metadata, because for internet communications it is often much more difficult to attribute them to a particular country than for telephone conversations (which always contain country and region codes). This means the Volumes and Limits slide provides the more realistic numbers.

Telephony metadata

After being processed by FASCIA, the telephony metadata go to MAINWAY, which is another huge NSA database that keeps these kind of data for at least five years. In 2006 it was estimated that MAINWAY contained 1,9 trillion (1.900.000.000.000) call detail records.

For comparison: in 2007, AT&T's Daytona system, which is used to manage its call detail records (CDR's) supported 2,8 trillion records. In 2012, T-Mobile USA Inc. upgraded to an IBM Netezza 1000 platform with a capacity of 2 petabytes. This is used for loading 17 billion records a day, making 510 billion a month and more than 6 trillion a year.

If we assume the telecom providers and NSA use "records" in the same sense, than this shows that the telecommunication companies produce far more phone call metadata than NSA collects. As T-Mobile USA alone apparently creates 4 times more records as presented in NSA's BOUNDLESSINFORMANT tool, the domestic telephone metadata collection under section 215 Patriot Act cannot be included in the numbers we've seen so far.

Update #1:
Also interesting is that according to slides about the Hemisphere project, some 4 billion telephone metadata records are collected every day from any carrier that uses AT&T switches in response to grand jury subpoenas in counter-narcotics investigations.

Update #2:
During a parliamentary hearing in Germany, an official of BND explained that one cell phone creates between 100 and 200 pieces of metadata a day. For 4.5 billion cell phone users worldwide that would equal some 450 to 900 billion pieces of metadata. It's not yet clear whether NSA counts metadata in the same way, like the NSA's "records" are comprised of multiple pieces, for example.

GCHQ metadata collection

Even more metadata seem to be collected by NSA's British partner agency GCHQ, which according to this slide from 2011 collects 50 billion metadata per day. This makes 1,5 trillion a month and an astonishing 18 trillion (18.000.000.000.000) a year!

This (partial) slide was published in Greenwald's book No Place To Hide, but without any further explanation, so we don't know whether GCHQ is able to actually store everything or has to delete large amounts, like NSA. From the slide itself it seems that the number of 50 billion refers to internet metadata alone, which would make this number even more remarkable.

According to a report by The Guardian, GCHQ also collects 600 million telephony metadata a day, which makes 18 billion a month - a small number compared to the internet metadata this agency receives:

Internet metadata per month:
Telephony metadata per month:

BOUNDLESS
INFORMANT

97 bln.
124 bln.

Volumes
and Limits

312 bln.
135 bln.

GCHQ

1500 bln.
18 bln.

For indexing and searching the content of internet communications, GCHQ uses the TEMPORA system, which is capable of processing the traffic from 46 fiber-optic cables of 10 gigabits per second. This makes that 21 petabytes of data flow past these systems every day.

NSA collection by country

The main BOUNDLESSINFORMANT interface with the heat map also lists the names of the countries which provide the highest numbers of data. These can be sorted in three different ways: Aggregate, DNI (internet) and DNR (telephony), each resulting in a slightly different top-5. The following aggregated totals (so both DNI and DNR) are known:

NSA worldwide total:

Pakistan:
Afghanistan:
Iran:
Jordan:
India:
Saudi Arabia:
Iraq:
Egypt:
...
United States:
...
Brazil:

221.919.881.317 (100%)

27.275.944.618 (12%)
24.293.973.693 (11%)
15.834.475.801   (7%)
14.374.155.469   (6%)
12.616.915.557   (5%)
11.367.867.117   (5%)
10.487.011.026   (4%)
9.064.623.040   (4%)
...
3.095.553.478
...
2.300.000.000

These numbers indicate from which countries NSA gathers most data, but the exact meaning of the numbers has still not been clarified. We do know that BOUNDLESSINFORMANT counts metadata records, but what these records exactly are (for example: how many records are created by one phone call?), and how they are attributed to a specific country is not clear.

Communications by definition have two ends: the originating and the receiving end. When both ends are in the same country, it's easy to attribute it to that particular country. But when the originating and the receiving ends are in a different country, how is such a communication registered? Maybe for both countries, although that would make many of them appear in these numbers twice.

United States

Edward Snowden saw the heat map with the 3 billion attributed to the United States as a proof that NSA was conducting domestic surveillance, although the heat map itself cannot provide sufficient evidence for that. The 3 billion could very well relate to foreign communications which are just transiting the US or to the American end of for example phone calls where the other end is a foreign suspect. Somewhat more information could have been provided by the bar charts for the US, but these haven't been published.

The number of 3.095.553.478 for the United States is the aggregated total. The number of internet records (DNI) for the US is 2.892.343.446, which leaves just 203.210.032 telephony records (DNR) or 0,065% of the aggregated total. In a table this looks like this:

United States total:

Internet records (DNI):
Telephony records (DNR):

3.095.553.478 per month

2.892.343.446 per month
203.190.032 per month

This tiny share for telephone metadata is rather strange given the fact that NSA is collecting all American phone records, but does not so with internet metadata. This seems to indicate that these domestic phone records are not counted by BOUNDLESSINFORMANT and that the internet records are from communications with at least one end foreign.

NSA collection by division

With a BOUNDLESSINFORMANT chart about the NSA's Special Source Operations (SSO) division published in Greenwald's book, we can also compare the number of data collected by this division with the total number of NSA data collection. We see that SSO, which is responsible for tapping the world's main fiber optic cables, accounts for 72% of all data:

NSA worldwide total:

Special Source Operations (SSO):
Other NSA divisions:

221.919.881.317 (100%)

160.168.000.000 (72%)
61.751.000.000 (28%)

This leaves the remaining 28% of the data to be collected by NSA's other main divisions: Global Access Operations (GAO), which operates mobile collection platforms like satellites, planes, drones and ships, and Tailored Access Operations (TAO), which collects data by hacking into foreign computer networks. The remaining 28% could also encompass data collected by the joint NSA/CIA Special Collection Service (SCS) units and by 3rd Party partner agencies.

BOUNDLESSINFORMANT chart about the SSO division
(click to enlarge)

SSO Collection programs

From the BOUNDLESSINFORMANT chart about Special Source Operations we can see how the total number of data collected by this division breaks down into the 5 biggest collection programs. From other charts we also know the numbers collected by some other programs, and these are added here too:

SSO worldwide total:

http://graphicstestedatthedefault.blogspot.com /2014/05/nsas-largest-cable-tapping-program.html">DANCINGSOASIS (US-3171):
SPINNERET (US-3180, part of RAMPART-A):
MOONLIGHTPATH (US-3145, part of RAMPART-A):
http://graphicstestedatthedefault.blogspot.com /2014/11/incenser-or-how-nsa-and-gchq-are.html">INCENSER (DS-300, part of WINDSTOP):
AZUREPHOENIX (US-3127, part of RAMPART-A):
...
http://graphicstestedatthedefault.blogspot.com /2015/08/fairview-collecting-foreign.html">FAIRVIEW (US-990):
...
SOMALGET (US-3310, part of MYSTIC):
...
ACIDWASH (part of MYSTIC):
...
MUSCULAR (DS-200B, part of WINDSTOP):

Other programs in total:

160.168.000.000 (100%)

57.788.148.908 (36%)
23.003.996.216 (14%)
15.237.950.124   (9%)
14.100.359.119   (9%)
13.255.960.192   (8%)
...
6.142.932.557
...
3.000.000.000
...
1.050.000.000
...
181.280.466

26.412.000.000

This listing shows that roughly one third of the data from telecommunication cables are collected by just on single program: DANCINGOASIS. Another third part is intercepted by the programs ranking second, third and fourth, ~~but despite their weight, we still don't know more about them than just their names~~. Finally, the last third part of this type of collection is divided into numerous smaller and very small programs, a number of which have been disclosed through the Snowden-documents.

Update:
On June 18, 2014 the Danish newspaper Information and Greenwald's website The Intercept broke a story saying that SPINNERET, MOONLIGHTPATH and AZUREPHOENIX are all part of the RAMPART-A program, which encompasses access to fiber-optic cables abroad, in cooperation with 3rd Party partner agencies from at least five different countries.

According to a FAQ document, the BOUNDLESSINFORMANT tool doesn't count data which are collected under FISA authority, so numbers about the famous http://graphicstestedatthedefault.blogspot.com /2014/04/what-is-known-about-nsas-prism-program.html">PRISM program are excluded. However, another source (pdf) says that under PRISM, more than 227 million "internet communications" are collected annually, which is ca. 19 million a month, but it is not known whether these "internet communications" are the same kind of records as presented by BOUNDLESSINFORMANT.

Processing and storing

Metadata from a number of big and important SSO collection programs are processed by a system codenamed SHELLTRUMPET. As can be read in the document below, this system processed almost 500 billion metadata records in 2012, which gives an average of 41,6 billion a month, but by the end of 2012 SHELLTRUMPET was already processing 2 billion call detail records a day, which would make 60 billion a month:

MUSCULAR contributes 60 gigabyte of data to the PINWALE database for internet content every day, which is 1,8 terabyte a month. As BOUNDLESSINFORMANT counts 181 million records for MUSCULAR, this would mean that 1 million internet metadata records represent almost 10 gigabyte of (content) data.

This correlation can be used to make a very rough estimate of the total amount of internet data collected by NSA. The worldwide total of 97 billion internet records a month would then equal some 961 terabyte of data each month or 11,5 petabyte a year (some numbers to compare are here; the new NSA data center in Bluffdale, Utah can store an estimated 12 exabytes, which is 12.000 petabytes).

Shared by 2nd party partner agencies

The very close working relationship between NSA and the 2party partner agencies from the Five Eyes community leads to a regular exchange of data, of which the most productive facilities can be seen in a BOUNDLESSINFORMANT chart that was published by Der Spiegel:

DS-300 ( http://graphicstestedatthedefault.blogspot.com /2014/11/incenser-or-how-nsa-and-gchq-are.html">INCENSER):
...
DS-800:
DS-204A:
UKC-302A:
UKC-215:
...
DS-200B (MUSCULAR):

14.100.359.119
...
4.412.803.504
1.691.419.171
1.245.109.650
937.317.036
...
181.280.466

The SIGAD codes starting with DS denote some kind of joint collection program, those starting with UKC stand for civilian operated facilities of the British signals intelligence agency GCHQ.

Shared by 3rd party partner agencies

NSA also gets data provided by 3rd Party partner agencies. These are counted by the BOUNDLESSINFORMANT tool too, as we know from charts about a number of European countries:

Germany (US-987LA):
? (US-985HA)
Germany (US-987LB):
Poland (US-916A):
France (US-985D):
Spain (US-987S):
Italy (US-987A3005):
Norway (US-987F):
Denmark (?):
The Netherlands (US-985Y):

471.258.864
181.115.922
81.786.967
71.819.443
70.271.990
60.506.610
45.893.570
33.186.042
23.000.000
1.831.506

The total number of data received from these nine countries is slightly more than 1 billion a month, which is just a tiny 0,0045% of NSA's overall collection as counted by the BOUNDLESSINFORMANT tool.

Initially, Glenn Greenwald reported in various European newspapers that these numbers represented the phone calls of European citizens intercepted by NSA. But gradually it came out that his interpretation was wrong.

The charts actually show numbers of metadata that were collected from foreign communications by European military intelligence agencies in support of military operations abroad. These data were subsequently shared with partner agencies, most likely through the SIGDASYS system of the http://graphicstestedatthedefault.blogspot.com /2013/12/14-eyes-are-3rd-party-partners-forming.html">SIGINT Seniors Europe (SSEUR) group, which is led by NSA.

> See also: http://graphicstestedatthedefault.blogspot.com /2014/09/nsas-foreign-partnerships.html">NSA's foreign partnerships

Links and Sources
- Syncsort.com: How Hadoop is Transforming Telecom
- Secret-bases.co.uk: Secret Data Centres, including GCHQ's Tempora and NSA's PRISM projects
- Cryptome.org: Numbers of reports generated by various NSA programs (pdf)
- Forbes.com: Blueprints Of NSA's Ridiculously Expensive Data Center In Utah Suggest It Holds Less Info Than Thought

Friday, January 8, 2016

ASUS ZENFUNE 2 UI FOR TECNO Y6 CUSTOM ROM

(Updated: December 7, 2014)

Three days ago, on July 5, 2014, The Washington Post published some of the most important ASUS ZENFUNE 2 UI FOR TECNO Y6 CUSTOM ROM stories from the Snowden-leaks so far. It revealed that Snowden did had access to the content of data collected under FISA and FAA authority - a fact that had been kept secret until now. I'll come back on that main story later.

Here we will take a look at a remarkable detail from two slides that were also disclosed in the Post's article. The classification marking of these slides contains the codeword UMBRA, which was generally considered to be abolished in 1999, but now seems to be still in use. After going through several options, my conclusion is that UMBRA is most likely the codename of a so-called unpublished SCI control system.

"Target Package" prepared by the National Security Agency
prior to the capture of Abu Hamza in January 2011
(click to enlarge)

These slides are from a 2011 powerpoint presentation which details the plan to capture al-Qaeda facilitator Muhammad Tahir Shahzad and which pinpoints his location and his activities based upon intercepts from his various e-mail accounts. He was captured in Abbottabad the day after this presentation was finalized.

In the 2012 NRO Review and Redaction Guide (pdf) the existance of the UMBRA codeword is approved for public release, just like its paragraph portion marking TSC (for Top Secret Codeword). But as this manual also lists many revoked codewords, it is not conclusive about wether UMBRA is still used. One thing that is interesting though, is that the TSC portion marking would fit some of the redacted spaces in the newly disclosed slide:

Some possible options for the portion markings

Top Secret Codeword

UMBRA was one of three codewords that were used to protect sensitive intercepts of Communication Intelligence (COMINT). These codewords represented three levels of sensitivity:

- UMBRA for the most sensitive material (Category III)
- SPOKE for less sensitive material (Category II)
- MORAY for the least sensitive material (Category I)

These kind of codewords were used since the end of ~~the 1950s~~ World War II and together they were commonly called "Top Secret Codeword" (TSC), which was often seen as a level "above Top Secret", although it was actually more like a "vertical" division of the Top Secret-level. The codewords UMBRA, SPOKE and MORAY can be seen on many highly secret documents, a number of which have been declassified, like for example this statement from 1980 for a court case about NSA's information about UFOs:

(click for the full document as pdf-file)

According to instructions like these, the use of the codewords UMBRA, SPOKE and MORAY was terminated as of May 1999. From then on, the kind of information they were used for, had now to be protected by the general COMINT control system, or by specific compartments thereof for more sensitive information.

Update:
Since World War II, the NSA and her predecessors used codewords for protecting highly sensitive COMINT information and they were generally replaced by a new one every one or more years. The Top Secret codeword TRINE was compromised when the North Koreans captured the NSA spy ship USS Pueblo in 1968. TRINE was then replaced by UMBRA.

SPOKE

Very interesting is that not only UMBRA, but also the codeword SPOKE seems to be still in use. One document from the Snowden-leaks, which was published by Der Spiegel on December 20, 2013, is marked SECRET STRAP1 SPOKE. http://graphicstestedatthedefault.blogspot.com /2013/12/the-british-classification-marking-strap.html">STRAP is the codeword that GCHQ uses to protect sensitive information, with STRAP1 denoting the least sensitive category:

Given the rather old-fashioned logo-type of the letters SD, it's not quite clear whether the document, or at least the header might predate 1999, although the content is clearly from more recent years. Der Spiegel said that it's an "analysis of the communication paths between Belgium and Africa prepared in January 2009".

Possible options

NSA using codewords that were generally considered abolished, reminds of a similar case in which the http://graphicstestedatthedefault.blogspot.com /2013/10/from-bullrun-to-nocon-and-laconic.html">NOCON marking appeared in a document from the Snowden-trove. The general use of that marking was terminated in 1995, but NSA kept using it as an internal marking. As such it isn't listed in the official Classification Manuals, which are declassified regularly.

Now it seems that the same could have happened to the codewords UMBRA, SPOKE and maybe also to MORAY, but there's a difference: NOCON is a http://graphicstestedatthedefault.blogspot.com /2013/09/the-us-classification-system.html#dissemination">dissemination marking, a category which is less strictly controlled than a compartment, like UMBRA.

As the classification line of the newly disclosed slides seems not fully correct (there has to be a single, instead of a double slash between ORCON and REL USA, FVEY), which makes that there are a few options for what UMBRA could actually represent.

One option is that the double slash between COMINT and UMBRA is correct. In that case UMBRA wouldn't be a http://graphicstestedatthedefault.blogspot.com /2013/09/the-us-classification-system.html#sci">Sensitive Compartmented Information (SCI) label for intelligence information - which it actually looks like most - but a codeword from another category, like for example a Special Access Program (SAP) or Foreign Government Information (FGI) (Marc Ambinder favors this option).

Another option is that there should have been just a single slash between both terms. That would mean UMBRA is a normal SCI control system, in this case one that is apparently kept secret, as it was never mentioned anywhere since 1999.

The latter option seems very well possible, because the most recent Intelligence Community Classification Manual (pdf) acknowledges the existance of "registered but unpublished SCI control systems" which "must remain unpublished due to sensitivity and restrictive access controls".

It seems less likely that UMBRA is the undisclosed compartment of the COMINT (SI) control system, which is listed in the most recent Intelligence Community Classification Manuals, because in that case the marking would have read TOP SECRET//COMINT-UMBRA//etc.

Questions

Given this sensitivity, one wonders why in the orange classification bars of the slides UMBRA hasn't been blacked out. The overall classification line in the first slide and also most of the portion markings were fully redacted, although the latter can hardly contain something that is more sensitive than the UMBRA abbreviation.

Another question is whether Edward Snowden had authorized access to the UMBRA compartment, or that he was able to just grab these slides otherwise. The Washington Post suggests that he did had access to the Exceptionally Controlled Information (ECI) compartment RAGTIME, which is similar to UMBRA, but for content collected under FISA authority (UMBRA is probably for content collected under EO 12333).

Conclusion

For those who are somehow familiar with the http://graphicstestedatthedefault.blogspot.com /2013/09/the-us-classification-system.html">US classification system, it must be quite surprising to see a codeword that has been considered dead for 15 years popping up from the Snowden-leaks. The most likely explanation is that after UMBRA (and SPOKE too) was publicly abolished in 1999, NSA kept using it in secret as a compartment for very sensitive communication intercepts, but now as an unpublished SCI control system - letting outsiders think that UMBRA was something from the past!

Update:
On December 4, 2014, the website The Intercept came with a story about NSA mapping access options for mobile phone networks under the AURORAGOLD program. One of the NSA presentations about this program contains a slide which shows an example of an NSA serialized product report. The classification line of this report reads: TOP SECRET UMBRA US/UK/CAN/AUS/NZ EYES ONLY:

Links and Sources
- Lux ex Umbra: UMBRA history
- TheWeek.com: The return of an intelligence code word with a storied history
- A work of art from the series "Secret Codewords of the NSA": UMBRA
- William M. Arkin, Code Names, Deciphering U.S. Military Plans, Programs, and Operations in the 9/11 World, Steerforth Press, 2005.