Cryptography Reference
In-Depth Information
A firm called AST offers SONET OC-48 computers; it has a module which
can record and analyze a data stream of about 2.5 gigabits per second. A
memory of 48 Gbytes of RAM ensures the required buffering as the load
changes. This hardware feeds a so-called trail mapper , which automati-
cally recognizes and processes all common US and EU standards (including
ATM).
The FDF ( Fast Data Finder ) chip by TRW supports topic analysis and can
filter several gigabytes of data daily based on ten thousands of interest patterns
in online operation.
The Model 132 by AST is a voice-channel demultiplexer that can scan 56 700
phone channels in parallel, and pick out 3000 arbitrary ones for further
evaluation.
The firm IDEAS offers systems the size of credit cards that fit in a laptop
and can evaluate eight cell phone channels in parallel (probably including
decryption). Meanwhile that's outdated, too. Special laptops are believed to
be able to scan all active cell phones in the environment automatically for
'interesting' numbers.
Figure 8.2: Examples of hardware that can be used for wiretapping data
channels.
That's not all, of course. It is known that radio-relay paths, satellites, and
submarine cables are also wiretapped. We shouldn't assume that the data traffic
of the entire Internet would be too big a mouthful for the NSA: a large part of
the international communication runs over eight nodes where the interception
capacity is sufficient, at least in theory.
We already know a little about the second interception level: topic and traffic
analyses are extensively used in any event. The data traffic is certainly filtered
at several levels to master the data flood. Former NSA Director Studeman
confirmed this and commented on the monitoring of fast data traffic: 'A cer-
tain system outputs one million messages for further processing within half an
hour, for example. Filters leave 6500, and then maybe 1000 really interesting
ones. Ten of these messages are selected, and one single report is written at the
end.' This is roughly how one can think of the monitoring of the Internet. In
Great Britain, a 1-terabyte database stores the entire Usenet postings of the past
90 days for further evaluation. Important Web sites are continually checked for
changes. For example, the popular site www.jya.com has been visited by the
NSA every morning.
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