Main Core

Main Core is an alleged American government database containing information on those believed to be threats to national security.[1]


National Security Agency surveillance

History

The existence of the database was first asserted in May 2008 by Christopher Ketcham[2] and again in July 2008 by Tim Shorrock.[3]

In 2018, after a FOIA request to release information about Main Core, the Department of Homeland Security replied that there were no "maincore" or "main core" identified in their records or archives.[4]

Description

The Main Core data, which is believed to come from the NSA, FBI, CIA, and other sources,[1] is collected and stored without warrants or court orders.[1] The database's name derives from the fact that it contains "copies of the 'main core' or essence of each item of intelligence information on Americans produced by the FBI and the other agencies of the U.S. intelligence community".[1]

As of 2008, there were allegedly eight million Americans listed in the database as possible threats, often for trivial reasons, whom the government may choose to track, question, or detain in a time of crisis.[5]

gollark: Anyway, going through #12 in order:> `import math, collections, random, gc, hashlib, sys, hashlib, smtplib, importlib, os.path, itertools, hashlib`> `import hashlib`We need some libraries to work with. Hashlib is very important, so to be sure we have hashlib we make sure to keep importing it.> `ℤ = int`> `ℝ = float`> `Row = "__iter__"`Create some aliases for int and float to make it mildly more obfuscated. `Row` is not used directly in anywhere significant.> `lookup = [...]`These are a bunch of hashes used to look up globals/objects. Some of them are not actually used. There is deliberately a comma missing, because of weird python string concattey things.```pythondef aes256(x, X): import hashlib A = bytearray() for Α, Ҙ in zip(x, hashlib.shake_128(X).digest(x.__len__())): A.append(Α ^ Ҙ) import zlib, marshal, hashlib exec(marshal.loads(zlib.decompress(A)))```Obviously, this is not actual AES-256. It is abusing SHAKE-128's variable length digests to implement what is almost certainly an awful stream cipher. The arbitrary-length hash of our key, X, is XORed with the data. Finally, the result of this is decompressed, loaded (as a marshalled function, which is extremely unportable bytecode I believe), and executed. This is only used to load one piece of obfuscated code, which I may explain later.> `class Entry(ℝ):`This is also only used once, in `typing` below. Its `__init__` function implements Rule 110 in a weird and vaguely golfy way involving some sets and bit manipulation. It inherits from float, but I don't think this does much.> `#raise SystemExit(0)`I did this while debugging the rule 110 but I thought it would be fun to leave it in.> `def typing(CONSTANT: __import__("urllib3")):`This is an obfuscated way to look up objects and load our obfuscated code.> `return getattr(Entry, CONSTANT)`I had significant performance problems, so this incorporates a cache. This was cooler™️ than dicts.
gollark: The tiebreaker algorithm is vulnerable to any attack against Boris Johnson's Twitter account.
gollark: I can't actually shut them down, as they run on arbitrary google services.
gollark: Clearly, mgollark is sabotaging me.
gollark: I submitted them but they were all wrong.

See also

References
  1. Shorrock, Tim (July 23, 2008). "Exposing Bush's historic abuse of power". Salon.com. Retrieved 2010-12-19.
  2. Satyam Khanna, "Govt. May Have Massive Surveillance Program for Use in 'National Emergency,' 8 Million 'Potential Suspects'" Archived 2016-04-10 at the Wayback Machine, Think Progress blog, May 20, 2008.
  3. Goodman, Amy (July 25, 2008). "Main Core: New Evidence Reveals Top Secret". Democracy Now. Retrieved 2010-12-19.
  4. "DEMA FOIA Case Number 2018-FEFO-00963". Muckrock.com. 30 July 2018. Retrieved 16 October 2019.
  5. Christopher Ketcham, "The Last Roundup". Archived from the original on August 31, 2008. Retrieved 2008-07-29.CS1 maint: BOT: original-url status unknown (link), RADAR Online, 15 May 2008
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