August 2004 - cypherpunks-legacy

Re: Cryptome on ABC Evening News?
by Tyler Durden 13 Aug '04

13 Aug '04

>To keep the nation secure the web site is not named. Google >search appears to do it based on hate mail coming in. How 'bout posting those hate email addresses on Cryptome! (You might also recommend that they use an anonymous remailer next time!) -TD _________________________________________________________________ Express yourself instantly with MSN Messenger! Download today - it's FREE! http://messenger.msn.click-url.com/go/onm00200471ave/direct/01/

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Too Much Information?
by R. A. Hettinga 13 Aug '04

13 Aug '04

<http://abcnews.go.com/sections/WNT/US/internet_sensitive_info_040812.html> Too Much Information? Web Site Raises Questions About Public Access to Sensitive Government Info By JakeTapper ABCNEWS.com Aug. 12, 2004- John Young, a 69-year-old architect, was contacted a few weeks ago by Department of Homeland Security officials, who expressed concern about what he was posting on his Web site. Officials questioned Young about information he had posted about the 2004 Democratic National Convention, including satellite photos of the convention site and the location of specific police barricades referred to on the site as "a complete joke." In response to a complaint, two special agents from the FBI's counterterrorism office in New York City interviewed Young in November 2003. "They said, 'Why didn't you call us about this? Why are you telling the public?' And we said, 'Because it's out there and you can see it. You folks weren't doing anything,' " Young told ABC News. The agents, according to Young, stressed they knew that nothing on the site was illegal. Young added: "They said, 'What we'd like you to do, if you're approached by anyone that you think intends to harm the United States, we're asking you to let us know that.' " "I know there are a lot of people in the government who find him troublesome," said former White House terrorism adviser Richard Clarke, now an ABC News consultant. "There is a real tension here between the public's right to know and civil liberties, on the one hand, and security on the other." But Young argues his actions enhance national security, since he points out to the public vulnerabilities the government does not want to acknowledge. Like others who run similar Web sites, Young does so by using information from the public domain, such as: * Photographs of preparations for the upcoming Republican National Convention at New York City's Madison Square Garden * Detailed maps of bridges and tunnels leading in and out of Manhattan * Maps of New York City's single natural gas pipeline * The location of an underground nuclear weapons storage complex in New Mexico Enabling the Enemy? "I think it's very, very bad for the country to have anyone putting together information that makes it easier for anyone that wants to injure Americans to do so," said Rep. Chris Cox, R-Calif., chair of the House Homeland Security Committee. Law enforcement officials were particularly upset that Young posted the satellite photos and addresses for the homes of top Bush administration officials. "We think public officials should be totally transparent. There should be no secrecy," said Young. "We are opposed to government secrecy in all of its forms." Officials call that argument outrageous and argue some secrecy is necessary. "The Department of Homeland Security has taken aggressive measures to protect critical infrastructure across the country," said a Department of Homeland Security spokeswoman. "We discourage Web posting of detailed information about critical infrastructure. This information is not helpful to our ongoing efforts to protect the American people and our nation's infrastructure." When asked how he would respond to those who consider his Web site unpatriotic since it could provide useful information for those who seek to harm the United States, Young said, "If this is not done, more Americans are going to die. More harm is going to come to the United States. It is more patriotic to get information out than to withhold it." Officials acknowledge there is not much they can do; Young has not broken any laws. -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga <mailto: rah(a)ibuc.com> The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/> 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'

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Hydan: Information Hiding in Program Binaries
by R. A. Hettinga 13 Aug '04

13 Aug '04

<http://crazyboy.com/hydan/> Hydan [hI-dn]: Old english, to hide or conceal. Intro: Hydan steganographically conceals a message into an application. It exploits redundancy in the i386 instruction set by defining sets of functionally equivalent instructions. It then encodes information in machine code by using the appropriate instructions from each set. Features: - Application filesize remains unchanged - Message is blowfish encrypted with a user-supplied passphrase before being embedded - Encoding rate: 1/110 Primary uses for Hydan: - Covert Communication: embedding data into binaries creates a covert channel that can be used to exchange secret messages. - Signing: a program's cryptographic signature can be embedded into itself. The recipient of the binary can then verify that it has not been tampered with (virus or trojan), and is really from who it claims to be from. This check can be built into the OS for user transparency. - Watermarking: a watermark can be embedded to uniquely identify binaries for copyright purposes, or as part of a DRM scheme. Note: this usage is not recommended as Hydan implements fragile watermarks. If you think of anything else, do let me know :) Platforms Supported: - {Net, Free}BSD i386 ELF - Linux i386 ELF - Windows XP PE/COFF Download: Version 0.13 News: Update: I've finally updated the hydan code, after a long time off. The encoding rate has been improved to 1/110 (thanks to a tip from sandeep!), and the code is now much cleaner too. In the mean time, hydan has been presented at: CansecWest 04 BlackHat Vegas 04 DefCon 04 A paper is to be published soon as well: Hydan: Hiding Information in Program Binaries Rakan El-Khalil and Angelos D. Keromytis. Which is to appear in the proceedings of the 6th International Conference on Information and Communications Security (ICICS), Malaga, Spain. To be published in Springer Verlag's LNCS. Hydan was initially presented at CodeCon on 02/23/2003. The following is a list of articles online from that presentation: - The Register: Hydan Seek (same article at BusinessWeek, and SecurityFocus) - Slashdot: Program Hides Secret Messages in Executables (could it be? crazyboy survived slashdotting?) - Punto-Informatico: Un tool cela segreti nei programmi (intl coverage! been getting a lot of hits from them) - Bruce Schneier's Crypto-Gram: March 15, 2003 Issue (and not in the snake-oil section either ;) Like my Work? Buy me books! Contact: Rakan El-Khalil <rfe3 at columbia dot edu> -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga <mailto: rah(a)ibuc.com> The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/> 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'

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2+2=5 and mention of cryptome
by Sunder 13 Aug '04

13 Aug '04

Original URL: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/08/11/al_q_geek_us_overthrow_plot/ Al-Qaeda computer geek nearly overthrew US By Thomas C Greene (thomas.greene at theregister.co.uk) Published Wednesday 11th August 2004 16:45 GMT Update A White House with a clear determination to draw paranoid conclusions from ambiguous data has finally gone over the top. It has now implied that the al-Qaeda computer geek arrested last month in Pakistan was involved in a plot to destabilize the USA around election time. Two and two is five As we reported here (http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/08/03/us_terror_alert_political_football) and here (http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/08/02/al_qaeda_cyber_terror_panic) so-called al-Qaeda "computer expert" Muhammad Naeem Noor Khan, a Pakistani, was arrested on 13 July in possession of detailed but rather old surveillance documents related to major financial institutions in New York, Newark, and Washington. Since that time, other intelligence has led the US security apparatus to imagine that a plot to attack the USA might be in the works. (No doubt there are scores of plots in the works, but we digress.) Therefore, last week, the ever-paranoid Bush Administration decided that Khan's building surveillance documents, and the hints of imminent danger, had to be connected. Indeed, if al Qaeda is to strike at all, it is most likely to strike the targets mentioned in Khan's documents, as opposed to thousands of others, the Bushies reasoned. New York, Newark and Washington were immediately put on high alert, at great expense, and to the inconvenience of millions of residents. <SNIP> ----------------------Kaos-Keraunos-Kybernetos--------------------------- + ^ + :"Our enemies are innovative and resourceful, and so are we. /|\ \|/ :They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country /\|/\ <--*-->:and our people, and neither do we." -G. W. Bush, 2004.08.05 \/|\/ /|\ : \|/ + v + : War is Peace, freedom is slavery, Bush is President. -------------------------------------------------------------------------

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Re: A Billion for Bin Laden
by Major Variola (ret) 13 Aug '04

13 Aug '04

>>With the possibility of earning a $1 billion bounty, however, professional Bin Laden hunting firms would form, allowing the U.S. to enlist the efficiency and creativity of the free market in our fight against Osama.<< This is brilliant, worthy of being called channelling Tim M. As it relies entirely on free association and the rational marketplace. Nevermind that the reward is stolen from the sheeple. What the DC future-corpses don't grok is that the Sheik's network is not financially or career motivated, unlike themselves. And xianity (or even amerikan patriotism which sometimes substitutes) is too neutered to counter it. Get your filthy hands off my desert, indeed, or else. See you in Athens.

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ABC News: Internet and Terrorism
by John Young 12 Aug '04

12 Aug '04

ABC News is offering a report this evening on how the Internet may be helping terrorism. For it Cryptome was grilled and taped yesterday for aiding and abetting. We confessed it's due to brain-liberating by the manchurian cypherpunks.

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[ISN] Hack . . . hack back . . . repeat
by R. A. Hettinga 12 Aug '04

12 Aug '04

--- begin forwarded text

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Hackers download College's Patriot database
by R. A. Hettinga 12 Aug '04

12 Aug '04

--- begin forwarded text

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[ISN] Hackers download SIUE data, police say
by InfoSec News 12 Aug '04

12 Aug '04

http://www.stltoday.com/stltoday/news/stories.nsf/News/Metro+East/A3F75AB9C… By Trisha Howard Of the Post-Dispatch 08/11/2004 The names and passport information of more than 500 foreign students at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville was illegally downloaded last week by a fellow student at the school, according to a search warrant filed Wednesday by university police. Greg Conroy, an SIUE spokesman, said Wednesday that three students had been questioned Friday after university officials discovered the security breach. Conroy said he expected the university to seek criminal charges in the case. The search warrant, filed in Madison County Circuit Court, said that the hacker downloaded the information from a special database set up to comply with provisions of the federal Patriot Act. The data included names, dates of birth, Social Security numbers and visa information, Sgt. Marty Tieman of the SIUE Police Department said in his affidavit. Conroy said that employees in the university's Office of Information Technology found out about the breach on Friday while doing their daily check of activity logs. The log showed that someone had downloaded the information early that morning. Computer experts then tracked the computer to one of three students who share an apartment at Cougar Village, Conroy said. On Friday afternoon, police seized three computers from the apartment and questioned the three students, Conroy said. Tieman said in his affidavit that police were greeted at the door by one of the three students, who admitted that he had seen his roommate access the server and download the information. Conroy said that officials had not yet determined a motive. "For all I know, these students could have been doing this as a prank," Conroy said. "At this point, I don't know what they wanted to do with the information." Conroy said investigators from a Metro East law enforcement computer task force were examining all three computers for evidence. He emphasized that the system does not allow hackers to change vital information. But he said that the breach was possible because an employee had failed to disable a feature that gives people access to the system without a password. "The students were scanning the system, they found the flaw, and they started downloading files," Conroy said. "It's an unfortunate mistake, but it happened." _________________________________________ Open Source Vulnerability Database (OSVDB) Everything is Vulnerable - http://www.osvdb.org/ --- end forwarded text -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga <mailto: rah(a)ibuc.com> The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/> 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'

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[ISN] Hackers download SIUE data, police say
by InfoSec News 12 Aug '04

12 Aug '04

http://www.stltoday.com/stltoday/news/stories.nsf/News/Metro+East/A3F75AB9C… By Trisha Howard Of the Post-Dispatch 08/11/2004 The names and passport information of more than 500 foreign students at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville was illegally downloaded last week by a fellow student at the school, according to a search warrant filed Wednesday by university police. Greg Conroy, an SIUE spokesman, said Wednesday that three students had been questioned Friday after university officials discovered the security breach. Conroy said he expected the university to seek criminal charges in the case. The search warrant, filed in Madison County Circuit Court, said that the hacker downloaded the information from a special database set up to comply with provisions of the federal Patriot Act. The data included names, dates of birth, Social Security numbers and visa information, Sgt. Marty Tieman of the SIUE Police Department said in his affidavit. Conroy said that employees in the university's Office of Information Technology found out about the breach on Friday while doing their daily check of activity logs. The log showed that someone had downloaded the information early that morning. Computer experts then tracked the computer to one of three students who share an apartment at Cougar Village, Conroy said. On Friday afternoon, police seized three computers from the apartment and questioned the three students, Conroy said. Tieman said in his affidavit that police were greeted at the door by one of the three students, who admitted that he had seen his roommate access the server and download the information. Conroy said that officials had not yet determined a motive. "For all I know, these students could have been doing this as a prank," Conroy said. "At this point, I don't know what they wanted to do with the information." Conroy said investigators from a Metro East law enforcement computer task force were examining all three computers for evidence. He emphasized that the system does not allow hackers to change vital information. But he said that the breach was possible because an employee had failed to disable a feature that gives people access to the system without a password. "The students were scanning the system, they found the flaw, and they started downloading files," Conroy said. "It's an unfortunate mistake, but it happened." _________________________________________ Open Source Vulnerability Database (OSVDB) Everything is Vulnerable - http://www.osvdb.org/ --- end forwarded text -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga <mailto: rah(a)ibuc.com> The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/> 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'

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