Wikipedia looks to block NSA snooping of site and users
Posted by: Jon Ben-Mayor on 08/03/2013 11:59 AM
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Wikipedia has released a statement announcing the introduction of HTTPS security protocol on its website to attempt to make it 'unsnoopable' to the NSA following allegations in a recent article from the Guardian that some its users were being spied on.
RT notes that the report revealed the NSA was monitoring the users who accessed one of the world’s most popular websites. In response to the revelation the organization’s co-founder, Jimmy Wales announced that Wikipedia would be introducing security measures to protect site visitors, starting from August 21.
“[Wikipedia] believes strongly in protecting the privacy of its readers and editors. Recent leaks of the NSA’s
XKeyscore program have prompted our community members to push for the use of HTTPS by default for the Wikimedia projects,” said the statement published on the organization’s website.
However, he noted that bugs were delaying the upgrade from regular HTTP protocol to HTTPS.
"Our current architecture cannot handle HTTPS by default, but we've been incrementally making changes to make it possible. Since we appear to be specifically targeted by XKeyscore, we'll be speeding up these efforts," Wikimedia said on its website.
Wikipedia goes on to say that that they currently do not have time frames associated with any change other than redirecting logged-in users to HTTPS, any changes that do occur will be posted to the blog.
Will this really make users more secure? Some would say that HTTPS is as good as broken because it relies on certificates being issued by central authorities; which in theory could be stolen or forged and perhaps worse, passed directly to the NSA by the creator.
RT notes that the report revealed the NSA was monitoring the users who accessed one of the world’s most popular websites. In response to the revelation the organization’s co-founder, Jimmy Wales announced that Wikipedia would be introducing security measures to protect site visitors, starting from August 21.“[Wikipedia] believes strongly in protecting the privacy of its readers and editors. Recent leaks of the NSA’s
XKeyscore program have prompted our community members to push for the use of HTTPS by default for the Wikimedia projects,” said the statement published on the organization’s website. However, he noted that bugs were delaying the upgrade from regular HTTP protocol to HTTPS.
"Our current architecture cannot handle HTTPS by default, but we've been incrementally making changes to make it possible. Since we appear to be specifically targeted by XKeyscore, we'll be speeding up these efforts," Wikimedia said on its website.
Wikipedia goes on to say that that they currently do not have time frames associated with any change other than redirecting logged-in users to HTTPS, any changes that do occur will be posted to the blog.
Will this really make users more secure? Some would say that HTTPS is as good as broken because it relies on certificates being issued by central authorities; which in theory could be stolen or forged and perhaps worse, passed directly to the NSA by the creator.
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