June 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

Re: SIGINT planes vs. radioisotope mapping
by Tyler Durden 06 Jun '03

06 Jun '03

Good post. Dave Emery wrote... >So communications intercepts are >necessarily targeted very narrowly, even drag net fishing is likely done >only in places where there is a real likelihood that something important >will turn up with finite effort. I'm wondering if some of those lod satellite links or other technologies might not actually be used precisely for dumping a "dragnet" over to HQ for sifting. In face, didn't the government buy the old Iridium network? What probably happens is that the government sends some commands into the PSTN (via that "emergency" channel) that drop-and-continue a TINY, carefully-selected fraction of a cities' traffic (probably pre-sifted using super-duper SAS analysis and whotnot), and then wirelessly transmits those calls to a series of sifters, the first several of which are probably computer-based, the last batch of which are human (probably a lot like a credit card operation). However, it IS interesting to think about just what might fit into an AWAC or whatever these days, given 0.13 micron (or better...who knows?) ASICs. A single shelf of Cisco 15454 gear can pretty much do whatever you want to an OC-48, though you need more shelves in order to provide the COAX terminals for the DS1s encased therein. Then again, in an AWAC they would have to send that OC-48 directly to some dedicated hardware to begin the winnowing process: looking for un provisioned lines, determining which lines have data, which voice, determinig which data is to/from ISPs,...etc...and then some SAS analysis to whittle it down to a small huntable set. Possibly an AWAC could handle several OC-48s provided there was some useful "hunting" criteria. Hum. I think I'm convincing myself that an AWAC might actually be able to perform some interesting telecom reconaissance, depending on the application, but I'm fairly certain one of the functions is NOT to try to surreptitiously scan for radiation. Interesting traffic is almost certainly sent over to an uplink from somewhere in the ground. -TD >From: Dave Emery <die(a)die.com> >To: Randy <randy(a)gte.net> >CC: cypherpunks(a)minder.net >Subject: Re: SIGINT planes vs. radioisotope mapping >Date: Fri, 6 Jun 2003 01:41:29 -0400 > >On Thu, Jun 05, 2003 at 11:52:14PM -0400, Randy wrote: > > I recall a few years back, a single satellite lost stability, and it >pretty > > much wiped out everyone's pagers, for > > a few days. Just my way of saying that I don't have any clue as to how >much > > point-to-point traffic may get > > relayed by a bird at some point. > > Within the continental US, very very little point to point >telephone traffic flows via satellite (hardly any in fact except a few >remaining private systems for companies and government - carriers >completely gave up satcom links about 15-20 years ago in the PSTN). The >economics don't work and people hated the delay in calls due to the >distance to the satellite. The only real exception is parts of >back country Alaska... which is still served by satellite. > > There is still some international traffic on satellites, though >mostly to remote and underdeveloped places. The great bulk of traffic >between the US and Europe and Asia is on fiber now. Satellite does >provide backup to cables if they are cut, but more and more places >have enough redundant fiber to never need to use this capability. > > Until recently, most domestic PAGER traffic did flow via >satellites because it was cheaper to get it to the towers on remote >hilltops that way than by leasing fiber or copper circuits. And indeed >when G4 died, a lot of pager transmitters had no input from the central >computers and went off the air. Nobody had really thought about what >might happen if the bird died - they had been focusing on up link and >downlink reliability instead. And in a very typical communication >screwup, some of the backups were on the same satellite. > > There has been some use of satellites for Internet IP traffic, >but again only a tiny bit compared to the flood that travels over fiber. >This is much more used for international Internet links, some of which >are on satellites. > > The major use of satellite capacity over the US is for video, >both broadcast and cable and direct to home, and for some innately >broadcast services like distributing weather data to airports and >weather forecast offices and the like. There are also some remaining >point of sale credit card verification networks on satellite because >of the reduced cost of a satellite link compared to thousands of circuits >to local gas stations or convenience stores. > > And a lot of satellite capacity gets used for mobile terminals >for video uplinks for satellite news gathering and sports back hauls and >the like. It is obviously not usually possible to provide fiber to the >scene of a major news event and only sometimes to the venues of sports >events. And the military and government uses satellite capacity to >talk to things like Navy ships and mobile command posts which aren't >in one place very long. > > Very little travels by microwave anymore in the CONUS either >(maybe a couple of percent or less of wireline telephone calls do at any >point, perhaps even less by now - mostly to backward places where >stringing fiber is hard or uneconomical). Most of the old AT&T microwave >towers that once dotted hilltops across the country have been shut down >and sold to cell operators or even private citizens seeking a remote >location for a cabin - and most of this shutdown happened by the late >80s in fact. Very very few of the towers still in existence transmit >any traffic any more or ever could again. > > > > I seem to recall that, years ago, the > > Transatlantic copper traffic entering and > > leaving the US was shot via microwave link to/from the US terminus, over >a > > bay, and allegedly there was a NSA > > farmhouse on the line-of-site path of the link. The implication being >that, > > yes, they "could" have just wired > > around the bay, but instead there was an intentional opportunity for > > interception. > > There is an interesting microwave shot from Greenhill Rhode >Island (the landing site for around a third of the transatlantic cables) >and a point in Connecticut. One may draw whatever conclusions one >likes about why this was done this way in the early 70s or so. > > I have seen an unnamed Telco insider comment on a public mailing >list that certain fiber Sonet rings linking a NJ cable landing site >(with another third or so of the cables) to a switching facility that >actually handles most of the traffic further inland have three nodes >on them instead of two. No idea why... just one of those weird things >that got built that way in construction I guess. > > > > > And I'll point out that long-haul comms to submarines are done with RF > > basically at audio frequencies, via > > buried antennas....yeah, they DO use very high power, but aircraft are > > close and don't have salt-water and > > thick earth to penetrate. > > Submarine communications use very very low (80 hz) frequencies >from buried wires for a kind of paging function that says come up and >get the nuclear war order. Actual messages are sent on VLF frequencies >(16-90 khz) which penetrate seawater better than other frequency ranges >and can be received while submerged to up to a couple hundred feet. >Antennas for this function are not buried, but gigantic towers or mile >long wires trailed from command and relay aircraft. > > Aircraft (notably the Guardrail and Rivet Joint aircraft) can >and do collect most any available radio signals they can see from flight >altitude. This allows cellphones, cordless phones, pagers, pdas, >wireless email devices, and miscellaneous two way radio signals to be >vacuumed up and some microwave links to be intercepted as well, but >none of these aircraft has ever been reported to routinely do TEMPEST >type interception of wireline traffic from incidental radiation. > > > > And if any of the copper is carrying digital data, square waves are >hugely > > rich in harmonics well up into the > > MHz bands, and would therefore tend to radiate better from any >above-ground > > wires between poles, possibly > > even roadside pedestals. > > > Actually FCC rules require things be built NOT to radiate all >that much because of interference to licensed services using precious >spectrum, so most wire communications devices fiber and copper radiate >very very little energy. Part of this is due to the cancellation effect >of energy flowing in balanced transmission lines, and part due to >filtering and shielding. > > And there are myriads and myriads of information streams flowing >in typical aerial cables - even if the energy could be detected at a >distance (which it can't due to the impact of the inverse square law) it >would be nearly impossible to sort out the impulses from one circuit >from those of all the others in the same cable. > > > > And I've seen alot of RF off of traditional CATV coax; don't know if > > fiber-optic cable systems might ultimately > > have any tie-in to the coaxial feed to/from the headend. > > > Cable TV systems have rather high level VHF and UHF rf flowing >in them. There is constant problem for cable companies with corrosion >and damage to the wires causing some of this energy to leak out and be >radiated and cause interference to licensed services on the same >frequencies. Cable companies spend lots of dollars going around looking >for and fixing these problems in order to avoid fines and other legal >action by the FCC and FAA. > > Modern cable companies use fiber optics to transmit the signals >from the headend where the satellite dishes and antennas are to a >neighborhood where they are converted from optical to rf on copper and >distributed locally. > > And optical fiber does not radiate at all at radio frequencies. >The only source of rf radiation in fiber optic systems is the >electronics at either end which convert the light into electrical >signals for local use. > > One problem that most naive paranoid types completely fail to >grasp is the titanic volume of modern communications. The flow is so >overwhelming that only a powerful God could possibly process it all to >find interesting material. The entire federal budget could not pay >enough humans to screen and analyze ALL the electonic communications of >even a medium size city in 2003. So communications intercepts are >necessarily targeted very narrowly, even drag net fishing is likely done >only in places where there is a real likelihood that something important >will turn up with finite effort. > > The notion that an all powerful big brother is listening to >everything and capturing everything just is not realistic, and a very >very high percentage of what does get captured is never looked at or >listened to or even stored for very long. > > Which of course is why traffic analysis and transaction analysis >and social network discovery is far more important than flying airplanes >around trying to collect incidental radiation from local copper T1 >lines. Knowing who calls or emails who makes it possible to find the >needles which you want to monitor in the vast haystacks. Thus there is >a much greater probability that records of your calls and IP traffic >addresses are looked at for patterns and association with known bad guys >than that someone is actually listening to or reading your traffic >looking for the word bomb. > > >-- > Dave Emery N1PRE, die(a)die.com DIE Consulting, Weston, Mass 02493 >PGP fingerprint 1024D/8074C7AB 094B E58B 4F74 00C2 D8A6 B987 FB7D F8BA 8074 >C7AB _________________________________________________________________ MSN 8 helps eliminate e-mail viruses. Get 2 months FREE*. http://join.msn.com/?page=features/virus

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RE: SIGINT planes vs. radioisotope mapping
by Thomas Shaddack 06 Jun '03

06 Jun '03

On Wed, 4 Jun 2003, Trei, Peter wrote: > It appears that they can't tell the medical isotopes from others.... They have no chance to distinguish isotope type with just a plain Geiger. For an identification, they would need a gamma spectrometer, which is a toy that AFAIK is not yet portable and cheap enough for mass deployment.

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Re: SIGINT planes vs. radioisotope mapping
by Tyler Durden 06 Jun '03

06 Jun '03

Tim May wrote... "Landline signals are vastly harder to pick up, and I doubt strongly that every minorly-radiating landline signal is being picked up." Of course, optical signals could never be remotely detected by air or even without an optical tap. I doubt even aerial optical cable readiates enough or in such a way as to be remotely detectable. However, the vast majority of "last mile" installations are still copper, and copper does radiate. But I can't see how that could be detected by air either. Even if there's enough radiation, it's going to get scattered and diffracted to hell and gone as it passes through the sheath, concrete, and then air. ANd of course, there's the bandwidth issue. In even a medium sized metro area the sheer number of landlines will be huge, and any businesses will be shipping out their traffic via T1 or fractional T1. Hence, one of those airplanes would practically need a small CO to demultiplex all that traffic (although even off-the-shelf silicon has come a LONG way from the 5ESS days, so the size factor will not be something to sneeze at). Nah. Any such AWAC-type recon 'surveys' must be seeking out targeted information somehow. Perhaps there's some kind of electronic 'red dye' that allow a specific set of users' calls to stand out? Is it possible that 'interesting' landlines are dropped-and-continued on to some narrowcasting point for air? This might be their way of getting around the TIRKS and provisioning issues related to moving those lines a long distance, and possibly through multiple carriers (but then again, that just might be what DISAs' recently announced GIG-BE network is supposed to solve!) -TD >From: Tim May <timcmay(a)got.net> >To: daw(a)mozart.cs.berkeley.edu (David Wagner) >CC: cypherpunks(a)lne.com >Subject: SIGINT planes vs. radioisotope mapping >Date: Tue, 3 Jun 2003 17:28:09 -0700 > >On Tuesday, June 3, 2003, at 09:10 PM, David Wagner wrote: > >>Sampo Syreeni wrote: >>>Rather it's the fact that the Big >>>Brother doesn't have the necessary total funds, and so doesn't listen >>>into >>>a considerable proportion of calls as a whole. >> >>Yet. >> >>As far as we know. >> >>:-) >> >>I agree it's an economic issue, and law enforcement doesn't seem to >>listen in on a considerable proportion of calls as a whole at the moment. >>But what happens to costs in the future? Remember, it takes 10 years >>to get any change to the cellphone/telecommunications infrastructure >>deployed, so it pays to think ahead. >> >>By the way, what's the story with those SIGINT planes supposedly >>advertised as being able to fly over a city and capture communications >>from the whole metropolitan area? John Young had a pointer on his web >>site at one point. Do you suppose they might snarf up all the cellphone >>traffic they can find, en masse? What proportion of calls would that be, >>as a fraction of the whole? One wonders whether your confidence in the >>security of cellphone traffic is well-founded. > >AWACS-type planes have long had the ability to act as "cell towers," so >cell traffic is easily picked-up, if in fact they are doing this. Landline >signals are vastly harder to pick up, and I doubt strongly that every >minorly-radiating landline signal is being picked up. > >Perhaps for very, very targetted signals, but not cruising over general >cities, it seems likely to me. > >I'm not sure of the context here, but in the past year there were some >reports of planes circling over university campuses, and many were >hypothesizing that SIGINT was being done on telephone and computer >messages. This seemed unlikely to me. > >I concluded--and posted on Usenet about my thinking--that some campuses may >have been targeted for low-level gamma ray surveys. Kind of a gamma ray >version of Shipley's "war driving" maps. Possibly for construction of >baseline maps of existing radioisotopes in university labs, hospitals, and >private facilities. Then deviations from baseline maps could be identified >and inspected in more detail with ground-based vans and black bag ops. > >> >--Tim May >"That the said Constitution shall never be construed to authorize Congress >to infringe the just liberty of the press or the rights of conscience; or >to prevent the people of the United States who are peaceable citizens from >keeping their own arms." --Samuel Adams _________________________________________________________________ The new MSN 8: advanced junk mail protection and 2 months FREE* http://join.msn.com/?page=features/junkmail

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Can you read this?
by Nomen Nescio 06 Jun '03

06 Jun '03

It may not be what you think! It may not be what you think! 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1st amend applies to video games
by Major Variola (ret.) 05 Jun '03

05 Jun '03

A federal appeals court panel has struck down a law that restricted children's access to violent video games, giving the software the same free-speech protection as that for works of art. A panel of the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled Tuesday that a St. Louis County, Mo., ordinance that bans the rentals or sales of graphically violent video games to minors violates free-speech rights. In doing so, the panel reversed a ruling by the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Missouri and ordered the lower court to craft an injunction that would prohibit the ordinance from taking effect. In Tuesday's ruling, the panel decided that if the paintings of Jackson Pollock, the music of Arnold Schoenberg and the Jabberwocky verse of Lewis Carroll are protected by the First Amendment, then video games should be, too. http://news.com.com/2100-1043_3-1012882.html?tag=lh

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ASSALAMALEKU
by ET2 Uber, D 04 Jun '03

04 Jun '03

notice that it was defaced, thus as lilith pointed out, a large amount of cleaning fluid will need to be bought from a Dutch company somewhere... -Dan -----Original Message----- From: MRS M ABACHA [mailto:muni_jos@yahoo.com.au] Sent: Thursday, January 03, 1980 4:37 PM To: cypherpunks(a)einstein.ssz.com Subject: CONFIDENTIAL ASSALAMALEKU MY DEAR FRIEND I NEED YOUR HELP PLEASE, I am Mrs. Mariam Abacha, the widow of the Late Gen. Sanni Abacha former Nigerian Military Head of State who died mysteriously as a result of Cardiac Arrest. Since after my husband's death my family is under restriction of movement and that not withstanding, we are being molested, policed and our Bank Account both here and abroad are being frozen by the Nigerian Civilian Government. Furthermore, my elder son was arrested and detained though he was released on probation late last year and was arrested again this year as a result of some amount of money which have not been recoverd by the nigerian current government as am writting you now his been haild by the nigerian government in jail. Following the recent discovery of my husband's Bank Account by the Nigerian Government with Swiss Bank in which the huge sum of US$700 MILLION and DM 450 Million was logged. I therefore decided to contact you in confidence that I was able to move out and deposit to a diplomatic freighting company the sum of US$45 Million Dollars, which was secretly defaced and is sealed in two Metal Boxes for security reasons. I therefore personally, appeal to you seriously and religiously for your urgent assistance to move this money into your country where I believe it will be safe since I cannot leave the country due to the restriction of movement imposed on the members of my family by the Nigerian Government. I have agreed to offer you 10% of the total sum while 90% is to be held on trust by you until we can decide on a suitable business investment in your country subsequent to our free movement by the Nigerian Government. Please reply urgently and treat with absolute confidentiality and sincerety. Best Regards. Mrs. M Abacha

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Re: Maybe It's Snake Oil All the Way Down
by Bill Frantz 04 Jun '03

04 Jun '03

At 8:07 AM -0700 6/4/03, Sunder wrote: >Depends on how it gets passed from the web servers to that computer. If >it's encrypted with a public key on the web server that only the database >has the private half, you're safe from someone sniffing that "proprietary >one-way interface." > >However, if somone's already broken into the web server, they can collect >the cc:'s before they get sent to the secure db. > >So if you're an old Amazon customer and don't change your CC >BEFORE< >someone hacks into their web server, you're safe. > >It's certainly better than storing all CC's on the web server. > >Now if those CC's are in raw text on the DB end, Amazon is up shit's creek >if someone walks away with a db dump, backup tape, or whatever. > >.... > >However, this is in a lot of ways MORE secure than handing that waiter or >store clerk your CC. Remember that nice yellow slip has your signature, >CC number and expiration date on it. Very useful for an attacker. >Infact, they likely had physical access to the CC and have that extra 3 >digit # on the back too. > >... > >I feel safer with Amazon's use of my CC than the above, don't you? Well, I've only ordered from Amazon 2 or 3 times since they've been in business. Having my CC on file gives a much longer exposure time than the brief periods of time it would be "in transit". So, no I don't feel much safer. The $50 limit on unauthorized charges is what makes me feel safer. Cheers - Bill ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Bill Frantz | Due process for all | Periwinkle -- Consulting (408)356-8506 | used to be the | 16345 Englewood Ave. frantz(a)pwpconsult.com | American way. | Los Gatos, CA 95032, USA

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web home for waste
by R. A. Hettinga 04 Jun '03

04 Jun '03

--- begin forwarded text

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Re: Maybe It's Snake Oil All the Way Down
by pgut001＠cs.auckland.ac.nz 04 Jun '03

04 Jun '03

Eric Murray <ericm(a)lne.com> writes: >Too often people see something like Peter's statement above and say "oh, it's >that nasty ASN.1 in X.509 that is the problem, so we'll just do it in XML >instead and then it'll work fine" which is simply not true. The formatting of >the certificates is such a minor issue that it is lost in the noise of the >real problems. And Peter publishes a fine tool for printing ASN.1, so the >"human readable" argument is moot. > >Note that there isn't a real running global PKI using SPKI or PGP either. A debate topic I've thought of occasionally in the last year or two: If digital signatures had never been invented, would we now be happily using passwords, SecurIDs, challenge-response tokens, etc etc to do whatever we need rather than having spent the last 20-odd years fruitlessly chasing the PKI dream? There was some interesting work being done on non-PKI solutions to problems in the 1970s before it all got drowned out by PKI, but most of it seems to have stagnated since then outside a few niche areas like wholesale banking, where it seems to work reasonably well. (Hmm, now *that* would make an interesting panel session for the next RSA conference). Peter.

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Re: Maybe It's Snake Oil All the Way Down
by pgut001＠cs.auckland.ac.nz 04 Jun '03

04 Jun '03

Ian Grigg <iang(a)systemics.com> writes: >Also, a lot of cryptosystems are put together by committees. SSH was >originally put together by one guy. He did the lot. Allegedly, a fairly >grotty protocol with a number of weakneses, but it was there and up and >running. And SSH-2 is apparantly nice, elegant and easy to understand, now >that it has been fixed up. Actually SSHv2 is just SSL with a different packet format (when I did my SSHv2 implementation I recycled the code from the SSL engine, it was that close [0]). That's probably a good indication that SSL/SSHv2 is a fairly optimal (security/functionality/implementability/etc) design for an application-level security protocol if two groups independently came up with the same design, which brings us back the original question of why on earth Nullsoft tried to roll their own. Peter. [0] Note that my SSL implementation follows the standard SSL ladder diagram rather than the state-machine that SSL implementations are usually described as, which made it trivial to switch over for SSHv2 use. I've never understood why every explanation of the SSL protocol I've ever seen uses ladder diagrams but once they talk about implementation details they assume you're doing it as a state machine, which makes it vastly harder to implement. For example all the stuff about pending cipher suites and whatnot follows automatically (and transparently) from the ladder diagram, but is a real pain to sort out in a state machine.

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