3 August 2014 Akamai Affiliated with NSA Date: Sun, 3 Aug 2014 14:37:46 +0200

Subject: update

From: koot[at]cyberwar.nl

To: cryptome[at]earthlink.net In response to http://cryptome.org/2014/08/akamai-nsa.htm:



Nothing to see, please move along. Akamai is hosting www.nsa.gov, just as

it does www.cia.gov and a lot of others, probably including many of the

following lists:



http://www.akamai.com/html/customers/customer_list.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Akamai_Technologies#Customers



The NSA in its DNS servers configured "www.nsa.gov" to be a CNAME for

"www.nsa.gov.edgekey.net". The DNS for "*.edgekey.net" is controlled by

Akamai, and Akamai configured "www.nsa.gov.edgekey.net" to be a CNAME for

another domain name, which in turn has an A record and resolves to some IP

address associated with Akamai. For example:



$ dig @dsdn-gh1-uea05.nsa.gov www.nsa.gov

[...]

www.nsa.gov. 3600 IN CNAME www.nsa.gov.edgekey.net.



$ dig @ns7-65.akam.net www.nsa.gov.edgekey.net

[...]

www.nsa.gov.edgekey.net. 21600 IN CNAME e6655.dscna.akamaiedge.net.



$ dig @n0dscna.akamaiedge.net e6655.dscna.akamaiedge.net

[...]

e6655.dscna.akamaiedge.net. 20 IN A 23.66.212.226



There's no doubt Akamai is of interest to the NSA: the aforementioned

Wikipedia page states that Akamai is responsible for serving "between 15

and 30 percent of all web traffic", and that "accessing a website hosted

on Akamai servers results in tracking". But the fact that www.nsa.gov

resolves to an Akamai-controlled IP address is not evidence of Akamai and

NSA being in cahoots.

I would like to call your attention to a possible NetRange of Akamai Technologies IP addresses possibly controlled by/affiliated with NSA that does not appear on your lists. As a matter of curiosity (having watched Jacob Appelbaum's 30c3 "To Protect and Infect, Part 2" lecture), I decided to start capturing packets with Wireshark and make a "risky click" on a Yahoo News story news.yahoo.com/3008-selectors-150000255.html --for reference), just to see if any odd endpoints might pop up. Sure enough: a23-67-60-144.deploy.static.akamaitechnologies.com (23.67.60.144) --amidst mostly a bunch of yahoodns.net garbage otherwise.= So I asked my terminal: whois 23.67.60.144 [?] #

# ARIN WHOIS data and services are subject to the Terms of Use

# available at: https://www.arin.net/whois_tou.html

#

# If you see inaccuracies in the results, please report at

# http://www.arin.net/public/whoisinaccuracy/index.xhtml

# #

# The following results may also be obtained via:

#

http://whois.arin.net/rest/nets;q=3D23.67.60.144?showDetails=3Dtrue&showA=

RIN=3Dfalse&ext=3Dnetref2

# NetRange: 23.32.0.0 - 23.67.255.255

CIDR: 23.32.0.0/11, 23.64.0.0/14

OriginAS: =20

NetName: AKAMAI

NetHandle: NET-23-32-0-0-1

Parent: NET-23-0-0-0-0

NetType: Direct Allocation

RegDate: 2011-05-16

Updated: 2012-03-02

Ref: http://whois.arin.net/rest/net/NET-23-32-0-0-1 OrgName: Akamai Technologies, Inc.

OrgId: AKAMAI

Address: 8 Cambridge Center

City: Cambridge

StateProv: MA

PostalCode: 02142

Country: US

RegDate: 1999-01-21

Updated: 2014-03-19

Ref: http://whois.arin.net/rest/org/AKAMAI OrgTechHandle: MHA379-ARIN

OrgTechName: Hannigan, Martin

OrgTechPhone: +1-617-444-2535

OrgTechEmail: ip-admin@akamai.com

OrgTechRef: http://whois.arin.net/rest/poc/MHA379-ARIN OrgTechHandle: ZIPKI-ARIN

OrgTechName: Zipkin, Justin

OrgTechPhone: +1-617-444-9713

OrgTechEmail: ip-admin@akamai.com

OrgTechRef: http://whois.arin.net/rest/poc/ZIPKI-ARIN OrgTechHandle: SJS98-ARIN

OrgTechName: Schecter, Steven Jay

OrgTechPhone: +1-617-274-7134

OrgTechEmail: ip-admin@akamai.com

OrgTechRef: http://whois.arin.net/rest/poc/SJS98-ARIN OrgAbuseHandle: MHA379-ARIN

OrgAbuseName: Hannigan, Martin

OrgAbusePhone: +1-617-444-2535

OrgAbuseEmail: ip-admin@akamai.com

OrgAbuseRef: http://whois.arin.net/rest/poc/MHA379-ARIN #

# ARIN WHOIS data and services are subject to the Terms of Use

# available at: https://www.arin.net/whois_tou.html

#

# If you see inaccuracies in the results, please report at

# http://www.arin.net/public/whoisinaccuracy/index.xhtml

# Nothing to worry about at face value per se, but soon thereafter, I found this: http://www.nsa.gov.ipaddress.com/ --i.e., IP: 23.45.36.226 (Note that this falls within the NetRange [23.32.0.0 - 23.67.255.255] from above....) As I've said, I don't actually know much about all of this (especially as to whether this latter-most bit of information regarding the NSA IP address is at all significant). When I've discussed this issue with others I've been told some strategic partnership between NSA and Akamai is old news (and was, in fact, directed to your nsa-ip-update11 page as proof of this). Hence, I suppose, this email. Again, my apologies if I'm totally wasting your time with this due to some ignorance or another...But if, on the off-chance I'm NOT, I thought you might like to know that there might be a little extra something else that's rotten in the state of Massachusetts.