Mark Lennihan/Associated Press - Fiber-optic cables at Intergate, Manhattan, a data center. People who know the Google and Yahoo infrastructure say the government may have accessed their data through cable at Level 3, a so-called Internet backbone provider.
The New York Times
By Nicole Perlroth
and John Markoff
25 November 2013
SAN FRANCISCO — The recent revelation that the National Security Agency was able to eavesdrop on the communications of Google and Yahoo users without breaking into either company’s data centers sounded like something pulled from a Robert Ludlum spy thriller.
How on earth, the companies asked, did the N.S.A. get their data without their knowing about it?
The most likely answer is a modern spin on a century-old eavesdropping tradition.
People knowledgeable about Google and Yahoo’s infrastructure say they believe that government spies bypassed the big Internet companies and hit them at a weak spot — the fiber-optic cables that connect data centers around the world and are owned by companies like Verizon Communications, the BT Group, the Vodafone Group and Level 3 Communications. In particular, fingers have been pointed at Level 3, the world’s largest so-called Internet backbone provider, whose cables are used by Google and Yahoo.
The Internet companies’ data centers are locked down with full-time security and state-of-the-art surveillance, including heat sensors and iris scanners. But between the data centers — on Level 3’s fiber-optic cables that connected those massive computer farms — information was unencrypted and an easier target for government intercept efforts, according to three people with knowledge of Google’s and Yahoo’s systems who spoke on the condition of anonymity.
It is impossible to say for certain how the N.S.A. managed to get Google and Yahoo’s data without the companies’ knowledge. But both companies, in response to concerns over those vulnerabilities, recently said they were now encrypting data that runs on the cables between their data centers. Microsoft is considering a similar move.
“Everyone was so focused on the N.S.A. secretly getting access to the front door that there was an assumption they weren’t going behind the companies’ backs and tapping data through the back door, too,” said Kevin Werbach, an associate professor at the Wharton School.
Data transmission lines have a long history of being tapped.
continue reading at: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/26/technology/a-peephole-for-the-nsa.html?hpw&rref=technology&_r=2&
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