NSA releases Linux-based open source infosec tool

[Recursion]

Source: IT News

The US National Security Agency has offered up one of its cyber security tools for government departments and the private sector to use freely to help beef up their security and counter threats.

The systems integrity management platform - SIMP - was released to the code repository GitHub over the weekend.

SIMP helps to keep networked systems compliant with security standards, the NSA said, and should form part of a layered, "defence-in-depth" approach to information security.

NSA said it released the tool to avoid duplication after US government departments and other groups tried to replicate the product in order to meet compliance requirements set by US Defence and intelligence bodies.



Read more: http://www.itnews.com.au/News/406509,nsa-releases-linux-based-open-source-infosec-tool.aspx

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[Spitfire of ATJ]

1. No doubt it peals onions...

[Recursion]

2. No need; they just ran enough nodes to flood the network

Pretty clever, that...

[Spitfire of ATJ]

3. Now watch it turn up in the repos.

[JDPriestly]

4. At least all the money spent on the NSA program is reaping some benefits

for Americans.

[Recursion]

5. SELinux is already a really good suite

NSA wrote that back in the early 2000's. Ironically, if they had used it, it might have prevented Snowden from taking the data (SELinux prevents a single administrator from ever being all-powerful on the computer).

[JDPriestly]

6. Hey! It's all for the best. But what I cannot understand that even

knowing that the NSA could be watching them, people continue to be obnoxious, crude, rude and horrible on the internet. It is astounding.

Oh, well. Human nature.

[Recursion]

7. I like to think I somewhat offend whoever's reading my stuff every day

Makes it a little more fun to post stuff...

[joshcryer]

14. NSA lost security culture the moment it outsourced to private companies.

Booz-Allen was probably using Windows systems or something else stupid.

And I still maintain that if they didn't detect privilege escalation then there was a much larger problem with the systems.

[Helen Borg]

8. So, the NSA would offer a tool that...

May make it harder for them to spy on us? Something doesn't square.

[Recursion]

9. The NSA has dual missions: surveillance and securing national communications

They want it to be easy for them to read our email, and hard for other people to read our email. Those missions sometimes conflict.

[Helen Borg]

10. They want that, but...

They cannot have it both ways. If they weaken the system so they can look at stuff, then any adversary with sufficient expertise can too, theoretically.

[elias49]

11. Seriously? How do you spell 'back door'?

A fool and his info are soon parted...

[Recursion]

12. The source code is public

[elias49]

15. Use it, by all means! nt

[joshcryer]

13. NSA failed to find Heartbleed (or knew and didn't report).

Their efforts are a joke. They don't care about US security by any means.

[Elmer S. E. Dump]

16. Now the NSA bots will be on everyone's computer.