Leaked documents from the NSA have repeatedly shown just how skilled the agency is at intercepting communications and gathering intelligence. Yet even the NSA can face serious headaches. According to these documents, a combination of services made up of Tor and VPN access represents a true nightmare for the agency.
We've grown used to the idea that governments do everything they can to regulate and monitor Internet traffic. When questioned, they resort to cards like 'national security', and we must add the activities of certain groups that, beyond their original intentions, only serve to justify the draconian vision of authorities. The user feels unprotected even when knowing they aren't doing anything wrong, which drives them to develop a greater interest in encryption technologies and services that guarantee (or at least try to) the maximum level of privacy. The documents leaked by Edward Snowden once again present us with the adventures of everyone's favorite secret agency: the NSA. So far, the documents have leaned toward the agency's successes, but this time the text speaks of combinations that can be virtually impossible to intercept.
The five levels of interception difficulty
Essentially, the NSA divides its interception missions into five levels. Following the path of a document on the web is 'trivial,' recording a Facebook chat conversation is 'minor,' and deciphering emails sent through the Russian provider mail.ru is 'moderate.' Monitoring users on the Tor network or decrypting Zoho emails are classified as 'major.' Two other examples in this category are the old TrueCrypt (if you're going to use it, at least download the verified build from Open Crypto) and the Off-the-Record instant messaging protocol.
Even so, an interception operation enters a 'catastrophic' phase when the user relies on a combination of Tor, VPN, the CSpace messaging system, and ZRTP encryption that includes support for voice over IP. In that case, the loss of information about the user's presence and communications is 'almost total' for the NSA.
The key is in the combination
While we already know where to find Tor and which VPN services are safest, ZRTP is present in applications like RedPhone (Android) and Signal (iOS). One of ZRTP's developers is none other than Phil Zimmermann, the creator of PGP, who after more than twenty years continues to cause trouble at the NSA's offices. The key here is 'combination.' Used separately, the NSA has much stronger chances of intercepting data, especially if the user only uses a VPN. Some of the virtual tunnels that have fallen under NSA control are the services used by Greece, Afghanistan, Turkey, and Syria, plus Royal Jordanian Airlines, Transaero Airlines, Russia's Mir Telematiki, and the service SecurityKiss.
The problem is obvious: the NSA isn't sleeping. Day by day it increases its resources to break additional encryption methods, and no one knows for sure what they can do today. Source:
