New revelations continue to come to light by Edward Snowden. Two years after his first revelations that shook the world, Snowden today unveiled the NSA surveillance actions through XKeyscore on servers running Red Hat Linux.
The fact that the NSA runs XKeyscore on a Linux distribution should come as no surprise, and that the NSA has chosen a Linux distribution used by hundreds of servers worldwide.
For those who don't remember what the NSA's XKeyscore can do, let's mention that it is a spying system found in Movies.
Snowden says it can be used to read anyone's e-mails, anywhere in the world, and to trace any material online. In addition, it can track people, associations, and can also create a kind of unique footprint for each user in the online space. If you are connected to Internet, the NSA's XKeyscore has the ability to find you.
Red Hat Linux is one commercial operating system, which uses open source software packages. It's an operating system used by many servers, and it's no surprise that the NSA chose it.
The Intercept who published the revelations of Snowden reports about XKeyscore:
“Το XKeyscore είναι ένα κομμάτι του λογισμικού Linux, που συνήθως αναπτύσσεται στους Red Hat servers. Χρησιμοποιεί τον Apache web server και συλλέγει δεδομένα σε βάσεις δεδομένων MySQL. Τα συστήματα αρχείων υπάρχουν σε ένα σύμπλεγμα NFS και autofs, και οι προγραμματισμένες εργασίες γίνονται μέσω της services cron”.
The worrying about this is the fact that there are hundreds of Linux servers around the world and it's impossible to understand their reach. Companies and organizations use Linux to serve millions of people. Used by NASA or ISS, but also NSA's own spying servers.
