NSA and GCHQ teamed up to access Juniper equipment

The Intercept publishes a document indicating that the UK’s GCHQ in conjunction with the NSA had access to several models of Juniper equipment in 2011. A direct connection to the recently discovered backdoor would not appear from the document.

The document describes Juniper as an interesting target because the company’s provided routers are “high density all over the world” and Juniper “provides ssl vpn services.” The company is also described as a threat, as it would place a lot of emphasis on security. This would make it necessary to keep a close eye on new developments. Next, the document describes thirteen NetScreen firewalls, which would be accessible. However, some may still require some reverse engineering, depending on the firmware.

Cryptographer Matt Blaze tells The Intercept that he does not consider it likely that the recently identified backdoor in Juniper firewalls and the ability to decrypt VPN traffic are directly related to the capabilities described in the document. If they had such access at all, he said it would require more than a bit of reverse engineering. He argues that the 2011 document is more like the NSA program Feedthrough, which was published by Der Spiegel in 2007.

So while there doesn’t seem to be a direct link to recent events, the documents show that Juniper was high on the NSA’s wish list. According to the 2011 document, the ability to penetrate firewalls “would bear many fruits in the future.”