December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

NYT on GSM Hack
by John Young 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

The New York Times, April 14, 1998, pp. D1, D5. Researchers Crack Code In Cell Phones Weakened Encryption Raises Security Concern By John Markoff San Francisco, April 13 -- In successfully cracking a widely used encryption method designed to prevent the cloning of digital cellular phones, a group of University of California computer researchers believe they have stumbled across evidence that the system was deliberately weakened to permit Government surveillance. The method that was cracked is known as G.S.M., for the Groupe Speciale Mobile standard. The world's most widely used encryption system for cellular phones, G.S.M. is employed in about 80 million of the devices worldwide and by as many as two million phones in the United States. Most of the 58 million American analog and digital cell phones are based on a variety of other methods, but 20 American cellular phone companies, including Pacific Bell, a unit of SBC Communications Inc., and the Omnipoint Corporation, use the G.S.M. standard. Two researchers at the University of California at Berkeley announced today that they had successfully broken the G.S.M. method by using a computer to determine a secret identity number stored in the Subscriber Identity Module, or S.I.M., a credit card-like device inside the phone. If criminals were to crack the method, they could "clone" phones protected by G.S.M. encryption -- that is, detect a phone's number and use it in another phone to fraudulently bill calls. However, both the researchers and cellular telephone company officials said today that the cloning threat was extremely remote compared with the vulnerability of analog cellular phones. For one thing, they said, cracking G.S.M. had required almost 10 hours of electronic probing and high-powered computing. What was even more intriguing than the security threat, however, was that cracking the code yielded a tantalizing hint that a digital key used by G.S.M. may have been intentionally weakened during the design process to permit Government agencies to eavesdrop on cellular telephone conversations. Although the key, known as A5, is a 64-bit encryption system -- generally an extremely difficult code to crack -- the researchers determined that the last 10 digits were actually zeros. That means that with the powerful computers available to national intelligence agencies, it would be possible to decode a voice conversation relatively quickly, said Marc Briceno, director of the Smartcard Developers Association, a small programmers organization. "It appears the key was intentionally weakened," he said. "I can't think of any other reason for what they did." For years, the computer industry has been rife with rumors about encryption designers having been persuaded or forced by Government spy agencies to mathematically weaken communications security systems or to install secret backdoors. Some of the rumors even have the National Security Agency or the Central Intelligence Agency posing as cryptographers, designing the encryption programs themselves and then releasing them -- all to insure that they could decode data or phone conversations. Such rumors are fed, in part, by the hazy origins of the G.S.M. system. Industry cryptographic experts said that the underlying mathematical formulas, or algorithms, in G.S.M.'s encryption design were thought to have originated in either Germany or France as part of the creation of the standard in 1986 and 1987. But other than today's hint of an intentionally weakened system, little evidence has ever emerged to support speculation, and the researchers' suspicions were not universally endorsed. "It's possible there are other reasons for doing this," Stewart Baker, a Washington lawyer who was formerly a lawyer for the National Security Agency, said. The N.S.A. is one of the agencies most often suspected of such schemes because a major part of its mission is to intercept telephone calls. "Speculation is easy, and it never dies," Mr. Baker said. Even so, most industry experts could think of no good reason why an encryption algorithm key would be intentionally shortened, other than to facilitate surveillance. "This was deliberately weakened," said Phil Karn, an engineer at Qualcomm Inc., a cellular telephone manufacturer that has developed an alternative standard to G.S.M. "Who do you think would be interested in doing something like this?" The weakened key was discovered by two researchers, Ian Goldberg and David Wagner, both members of the University of California at Berkeley's Internet Security Applications, Authentication and Cryptography Group, with the aid of Mr. Briceno. They stressed that they had easily detected the security flaw that could make digital cellular phones vulnerable to cloning. Cloning has been a costly fraud problem for.many years. But digital phones are widely believed to be immune from cloning. In San Francisco, Pacific Bell's billboard advertisements depict a sheep and a cell phone and boast that of the two only the cell phone cannot be cloned. Cellular telephone industry executives acknowledged the flaw in G.S.M. but said it actually reinforced their claims about the security of digital telephones. "My hat goes off to these guys they did some great work," said George Schmitt, president of Omnipoint. "I'll give them credit, but we're not at any risk of fraud." The researchers and the Smartcard Developers Association said that the successful attack was new evidence of the shortcomings of a widespread industry practice of keeping security techniques hidden from public review. Real security, they argue, requires publication of the algorithms so that independent experts can verify the strength of the systems. "This shows yet again a failure of a closed design process," Mr. Briceno said. "These companies pride themselves on their security, but now the chickens are coming home to roost." [End]

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by maildirect＠mailcity.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

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17 Dec '03

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Trans World Specials Fare Sales
by Trans World Specials 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

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Re: GSM cellphones cloned
by Dianne Evans 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Why don't you guys write up the technical details of your hack and post them to the list? Pac Bell, et all can't give you much legal trouble for practicing your constitutional right to free speech. Congrats and keep up the good work!

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NSA GAK Report Up
by John Young 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Federal Computer Week has put the NSA critique of key recovery on its Web site: http://www.fcw.com/pubs/fcw/1998/0413/web-nsareport-4-14-1998.html See a related FCW article today about it at: http://www.fcw.com/pubs/fcw/1998/0413/web-nsacdt-4-14-1998.html The blacked out portions of the diagrams await decoding.

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Fortify for Nestcape Communicator v4.05
by Jan 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Greetings, Does anyone know where I could find Fortify for Netscape Communicator v4.05? I've been to www.fortify.net and that didn't work. Jan

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More on Global SIGINT
by John Young 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Date: Wed, 15 Apr 1998 00:31:58 +0100 To: ukcrypto(a)maillist.ox.ac.uk From: Duncan Campbell <duncan(a)mcmail.com> Subject: The discovery of global sigint networks : the early years, part 2 Ramparts in 1972 was indeed the starting point. Sadly, many subsequent reporters later confused what "Winslow Peck" [= Perry (not Peter) Fellwock, which *is* his true name] wrote about "keyword" interception of international telephony traffic. The story from then on .. Early in 1976, Winslow came to London. I interviewed him at length and then carried out my own research on GCHQ. I then published an article in Time Out, June 1976, called the Eavesdroppers which did for GCHQ and the UK what Winslow did for NSA and the US. My co-author was another American journalist, a Time Out staffer called Mark Hosenball. The Eavesdroppers was the first (and full) description of what GCHQ was and did. There had been no previous article, although World In Action had attempted a programme in 1972. GCHQ's directors were apoplectic. The more so because the combined efforts of the GPO (who tapped my phone from May 76 onwards), the Special Branch and MI5 (who followed MH and me around) revealed that we had actually got the article out *without* breaking the Official Secrets Act. I had done my research from open technical sources, and (!) telephone directories; Peck, as an American wasn't covered by the British law. But they got even. Hosenball, an American, was declared a threat to national security and deported. Philip Agee, the famous whistleblower from the CIA, was added in to the deportation list. Seven months later, I *was* arrested in the furore over their deportations together with another Time Out reporter, Crispin Aubrey. We had talked to a former British sigint operator, John Berry. The case became known as "ABC" after our initials. Over the coming two years, I was accused of having too much information and faced two counts of espionage as well as one of breaching section 2 of the Official Secrets Act (a law which was repealed almost ten years ago now). These counts totalled a potential sentence of 30 years imprisonment. At Court 1 in the Old Bailey in October 1978, this disgaceful prosecution - which marked the high water point of MI5's manic campaigns against "internal subversion" - fell apart. The story has just recently been told in the delightful autobiography of Geoff Robertson QC, who was then my no 2 lawyer. His book is called "The Justice Game". Maybe its time for me own autobio ... Mrs Thatcher put GCHQ firmly on the world map with the union ban, 5 years later. And now ... Philip Agree is married to a ballerina and lives in Germany. Mark Hosenball is a reporter in Washington. Perry Fellwock is a lobbyist in Washington. Crispin Aubrey is an organic farmer in Somerset John Berry is a social worker in Somerset. NSA and GCHQ are still listening. And I'm signing off for now. At 13/04/98, John Young wrote: >Peter Sommer noted recently that one of the earliest accounts >of NSA global electronic interception was published in a >1972 Ramparts magazine article, which we offer for a bit >of history: > > http://jya.com/nsa-elint.htm (84K) > >James Bamford, Duncan Campbell, Nicky Hager and others >have confirmed and extended what was at the time viewed as >the fanciful antiwar exaggeration of a young former NSA >analyst, named Peter Fellwock, first known by the pseudonym >Winslow Peck. > >Bamford says in The Puzzle Palace that NSA elected to not >prosecute Fellwock in the hope that no one would believe his >astonishing claims of NSA ELINT-ing friends and foes alike. > >Would anyone know where Peter Fellwock is now? Assuming >that the marvelous "Fellwock" is not a NSA-pseudo for "Peck." >

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Re: Apple crypto engineer position available
by Robert Hettinga 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Please note, this is *not* a flame. I'm not getting even *slightly* warm, here... :-). At 6:20 PM -0400 on 4/14/98, Somebody, Waay Up There at Apple, wrote to me, offline: > I don't get it. Yup. The old irony meter is pegged, alright... :-). > >At 12:00 PM -0400 on 4/14/98, Mike Barnick wrote: > > > > > >> Apple is looking for a senior engineer to work on providing cryptographic > >>APIs on the operating system. > > > >:-). > > > >I see the law of conservation of irony still holds... > > > >Cheers, > >Bob Hettinga Tell ya what, Somebody, I'll give you three hints: Hint 1: Whatsisname Sidhu, who negotiated the world's first RSA license, and who probably could have invented digital commerce on the internet all by himself if he only knew what he had, already bought and paid for, wasted in a mail and LAN protocol, buried in the bowels of the MacOS. We still haven't seen what's in that RSA license to Apple, but, given RSA's financial straits at the time the license was issued, I bet it reads more of a pornographic act than a legal agreement. :-). I for one would be interested how transferrable it *still* is. Like, if Apple builds a Mac crypto toolbox, does that mean that anyone writing code using the crypto toolbox has a license to use the algorithms therein? I bet so, but the world will never know. The technology, (RSA, anyway) has a countdown clock on it now, so it's almost moot. Don't even get me started on ECC, which is, of course, marvellous, but equally squandered. Anyway, a more clueful Sidhu, (who, to be fair, couldn't have understood what was coming) could have, with just a little of the right prompting :-), taken some of the money you guys gave to, say, Steve, for instance :-), and bought the blind signature patent at firesale prices from DigiCash ($10 million is chump change, even to Apple, even then, :-)) at last year's greater-fools exchange of ownership at "the world's greatest financial cryptography company" (my name, not theirs). Heck, if Apple had bought DigiCash outright, and just *fired* everybody, and only used the *technology* (kind of dumb to fire David Chaum, but, hey, it's my limb, and I'm not coming off of it), Apple could have put blind signatures into that Macintosh crypto tool box, and the world really *would* think differently. :-). That's because, someday sooner than most people think, all these cryptographic functions, particularly the financial crypto functions like blind signatures, and probably even something like MicroMint, will be buried deep in every operating system. Apple could have had crypto for the rest of us, same as it ever was, way ahead of schedule, same as they always do. But, no, they fired Sidhu, instead. Causing his whole staff, and every crypto-clueful person at Apple, to quit in disgust. :-). What's funny is, Apple *still* has this enormous competitive advantage if they still want it. Because, even though they're goliath, Microsoft can't do crypto very well right now. They've got this homunculus called the Justice Department's antitrust division sitting on their sholder, and they don't want to do anything to upset Dammit Janet. (I immediately have this ludicrous picture my head of Ms. Reno in wet underware, with Riff Raff [Carville, right?] leering at her.) Not to mention the Wrath of the Whole Rest of the Computer Business, voted through their pocketbooks on capital hill. ;-). Actually, Microsoft's trying to do strong crypto anyway, bless their hearts, but they're not going to do it for long, given all the flying monkeys headed in their general direction. Fortunately, compared to the antitrust division and their minions, the FBI is a mere gnat's fart, believe it or not. That's because, to torture dear Mr. Wolfe, "no Buck Rogers, no bucks": Digital Commerce *is* Financial Cryptography, and all that. So, all it really takes from Apple to have this huge advantage, crypto-wise, is for it to have more cajones than grey matter, which, unfortunately, is exactly the inverse problem at 1 Infinite Loop, the last I looked. Apple being a founding signatory to the Key Recovery Alliance Program is a marvellous example of that. Look, it's a complement, okay? You're *smart*, right? You just have no --, well, anyway, on to the next hint... Hint 2: Jon Callas, who was not only CTO for PGP, but, through being both clueful and at the right place the right time, ended up CTO for all of Network Associates. NA is now (or will be soon, after the TIS merger's done) the 900-lb cryptogorilla nobody's supposed to think about, but can't get out of their minds. Of course, this is the same Jon Callas who used to work for the aforementioned Sidhu, and who, for fun one day, thought up a really *really* spiffy, rock-solid way to extract real live entropy from the normal operation of any Macintosh. And I don't mean memory conflicts either. :-) What? What's entropy? Hmmm... Well, there's this book you can read, it's called "Applied Cryptography". It's by a former Mac maven named Bruce Schneier. You might want to look it up there. Entropy, of course, brings me to the the final hint, Hint 3: Vinnie Moscaritolo, the guy whose name is written all over Apple's new job discription for a crypto engineer. The guy who now works for Jon over at PGP-now-NA. Vinnie, who, while he was at Apple Developer Technical Support last year, asked you guys to set up a crypto engineering department, not to mention a crypto toolbox, not to mention a crypto API. Who left in disgust shortly after the aforementioned Sidhu, but not because you fired Sidhu, because, in typical Vinnie fashion, he practically venerated Sidhu's clueness about commerce, because Vinnie saw it as an opportunity (Marines are wierd that way). :-). Who is probably making waay too much money to come back now, and who would have probably taken a pay *cut*, even at *DTS* salaries, to do the job had you offered it to him even a year ago. Ironic, isn't it? In the final bit of irony, Somebody Else, in Apple Evangelism at the time, who was not even especially crypto-clueful back then, and who will also remain nameless :-), once bandied about the idea of an actual crypto *evangelist* at Apple. Maybe even a digital commerce evangelist, who, of course, would be one and the same (digital commerce being financial cryptography and all). The irony there is that said evangelist, if hired, would end up spending all his time evangelizing *Apple*, and not the developer community, who of course, are clueful and don't need evangelizing about such things. Such are things at the new Apple, I guess. Of course, Somebody Else also doesn't work at Apple anymore either. He works in, you guessed it, another financial cryptography company. I even yelled at him about his antics at Apple, even though he's not there anymore, while we were at the Hansa Bank party at Serenity during FC98 on Anguilla this year. :-). Now, what I said *then* was a flame, you better believe it, because back *then*, when Somebody Else was at Apple, it cost me actual money. This time, with you, Somebody, it's free of charge, and so I'm not nearly so worked up. Cheers, Bob Hettinga PS. To save you the cost of a white paper, Somebody, or maybe you can just pay us for it, already :-), go look at "Digital Commerce for the Rest of Us", a longish rant Vinnie and I wrote almost two years ago. For some strange reason, it's still pretty current. ;-). It's at <http://www.shipwright.com/rants/rant_15.html> Raines Cohen actually moshed it a bit and stuck it into the inaugural issue of NetProfessional magazine, god rest it's soul, so you might have seen some of it there as well. ----------------- Robert Hettinga (rah(a)shipwright.com) Philodox e$, 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA "... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity, [predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire' The e$ Home Page: http://www.shipwright.com/

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Receipt of submission
by Internet mail info 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

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