July 2018 - cypherpunks-legacy

[cryptography] Trusted CA compromised, used to issue fraudulent certificates
by Peter Gutmann 06 Jul '18

06 Jul '18

Interesting post by Jacob Appelbaum on the compromise of a trusted CA that was used to issue fraudulent certificates: https://blog.torproject.org/blog/detecting-certificate-authority-compromise… The discussion shows up (yet again) one of the (several) killer problems of CRL/OCSP-style blacklisting, since you can only blacklist certs that you know that a certificate vending machine has issued, there could be arbitrary numbers of further certs out there that can't be revoked because the vending machine doesn't know that it issued them. Peter. _______________________________________________ cryptography mailing list cryptography(a)randombit.net http://lists.randombit.net/mailman/listinfo/cryptography ----- End forwarded message ----- -- Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> http://leitl.org ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820 http://www.ativel.com http://postbiota.org 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE

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[cryptography] Trusted CA compromised, used to issue fraudulent certificates
by Peter Gutmann 06 Jul '18

06 Jul '18

Interesting post by Jacob Appelbaum on the compromise of a trusted CA that was used to issue fraudulent certificates: https://blog.torproject.org/blog/detecting-certificate-authority-compromise… The discussion shows up (yet again) one of the (several) killer problems of CRL/OCSP-style blacklisting, since you can only blacklist certs that you know that a certificate vending machine has issued, there could be arbitrary numbers of further certs out there that can't be revoked because the vending machine doesn't know that it issued them. Peter. _______________________________________________ cryptography mailing list cryptography(a)randombit.net http://lists.randombit.net/mailman/listinfo/cryptography ----- End forwarded message ----- -- Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> http://leitl.org ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820 http://www.ativel.com http://postbiota.org 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE

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FC: Majority of Americans want anti-encryption laws, poll says
by Declan McCullagh 06 Jul '18

06 Jul '18

The following excerpts come from Monday's Hotline, a daily political newsletter read by just about everyone in DC. This message should be read in a non-proportional typeface like Courier. If your mail reader can't do that, go to the politechbot.com archives and read it there. Unfortunately for the clarity of debate here, the ban-crypto-without-backdoors question is poorly worded ("Should Encryption Laws Be Reduced To Aid CIA/FBI Surveillance?"), but then again I suspect most people figured it out. This poll is noteworthy not only for what it found, but that the pollsters included the crypto question in the first place. It shows that, all of a sudden, this has become a serious debate in Washington. Also note that 72 percent of those surveyed said anti-encryption laws would be "somewhat" or "very" helpful in preventing similar terrorist attacks. -Declan ********* Conducted 9/13-14/01 by Princeton Survey Research Associates; surveyed 1,001 adults aged 18 and over; margin of error +/- 3% (release, 9/15). Favor Or Oppose The Following? Favor Oppose Attack suspected terrorists like bin Laden even if we're not sure they're responsible for last week's attack 54% 40% Attack terrorist bases and countries that support them even if there is a high likelihood for civilian casualties 71 21 Fav/Unfav Ratings ----Fav---- ---Unfav--- Very Mostly Mostly Very Military 58% 36% 2% 2% FBI 37 48 9 3 CIA 28 44 9 6 How Confident That National And Local Law Enforcement Can Stop Terrorist Plots In The U.S. Very Somewhat Not Too Confident Not At All 32% 42% 17% 7% How Much Would The Following Prevent Similar Terrorist Attacks? Very Somewhat Not Too Much Not At All Reduce encryption to aid CIA/FBI 35 37 12 9 Should Encryption Laws Be Reduced To Aid CIA/FBI Surveillance? Yes No 54% 39% U.S. Put Arabs and Arab-Americans Under Special Surveillance? Agree Disagree 32% 62% ********* http://www0.mercurycenter.com/premium/business/docs/bizletters16.htm Headline inflammatory 2001-09-17 05:45:23 I hope, in light of this terrible tragedy, that Dan Gillmor will cease his whining about personal privacy and recognize that our national security and the safety of our citizens override his concern about privacy, ``We have been tested before and survived: Don't let criminals shut down our freedoms'' (Aug. 12). The government absolutely must have the ability to monitor all encrypted messages, and anyone sending or receiving encrypted messages on our soil that cannot be decoded by the appropriate federal agency must be subject to arrest and seizure of the encryption equipment. We are at war, and we all, including Gillmor, need to recognize that. Al Colby Corralitos ********* ------------------------------------------------------------------------- POLITECH -- Declan McCullagh's politics and technology mailing list You may redistribute this message freely if you include this notice. Declan McCullagh's photographs are at http://www.mccullagh.org/ To subscribe to Politech: http://www.politechbot.com/info/subscribe.html This message is archived at http://www.politechbot.com/ ------------------------------------------------------------------------- ----- End forwarded message -----

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Re: SHA1 broken?
by Werner Koch 06 Jul '18

06 Jul '18

On Wed, 16 Feb 2005 11:57:36 -0500, David Shaw said: > Yes it is. Assuming this is true, we must start migrating away from > SHA-1. Actually, we should start this anyway - even the NIST > recommends moving away from SHA-1 for long-term security. The real problem with the breakthrough is, that it seems that they have developed a new cryptoanalytical method and that might pave the way for further improvements. Over the last 2 decades the art of cryptoanalysis has changed dramatically in the area of symmetric ciphers. This will probably also happen to hash algorithms now. There is however a huge problem replace SHA-1 by something else from now to tomorrow: Other algorithms are not as well anaylyzed and compared against SHA-1 as for example AES to DES are; so there is no immediate successor of SHA-1 of whom we can be sure to withstand the possible new techniques. Second, SHA-1 is tightly integrated in many protocols without a fallback algorithms (OpenPGP: fingerprints, MDC, default signature algorithm and more). Salam-Shalom, Werner _______________________________________________ Gnupg-users mailing list Gnupg-users(a)gnupg.org http://lists.gnupg.org/mailman/listinfo/gnupg-users --- 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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None
by Randall 06 Jul '18

06 Jul '18

<dewayne(a)warpspeed.com>, JMG <johnmacsgroup(a)yahoogroups.com> Subject: Sorry About That <http://htdaw.blogsource.com/post.mhtml?post_id=301259> Thursday, April 06, 2006 at 2:15 AM EDT Pentagon says improper data in security database Wed Apr 5, 2006 4:37 PM ET By Will Dunham WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Pentagon said on Wednesday a review launched after revelations that it had collected data on U.S. peace activists found that roughly 260 entries in a classified database of possible terrorist threats should not have been kept there. But the review reaffirmed the value of the so-called Talon reporting system on potential threats to Pentagon personnel or facilities by international terrorists, said Bryan Whitman, a senior Pentagon spokesman. He said the Pentagon was putting in place new safeguards and oversight intended to prevent improper information from going in the database. Whitman said "less than 2 percent" of the more than 13,000 database entries provided through the Talon system "should not have been there or should have been removed at a certain point in time." Whitman disputed critics' assertions that the program amounted to Pentagon domestic spying, although he declined to state the nature of these entries or the people they involved, saying the database's contents are classified. Whitman stressed that to be properly placed in the database, a threat must have a suspected link to international terrorism. Under the Talon system, Defense Department civilian and military personnel are asked to report on activities they deem suspicious. These reports go in the Cornerstone database, handled by a Pentagon agency called the Counterintelligence Field Activity, or CIFA. The review was ordered in December by Stephen Cambone, under secretary of defense for intelligence, after revelations that the database included information on U.S. citizens including peace activists and others who did not represent a genuine security threat. 'SUSPICIOUS' NBC News and defense analyst William Arkin disclosed at the time a sample of the database containing reports of 1,519 "suspicious incidents" between July 2004 and May 2005, including activities by antiwar and anti-military protesters. This included a military intelligence unit monitoring a Quaker meeting in Lake Worth, Florida, on plans to protest military recruiting in high schools. The Pentagon is legally restricted in the types of information it can gather about activities and individuals inside the United States. A memo from Deputy Defense Secretary Gordon England said the Talon system "has detected international terrorist interest in specific military bases and has led to and supported counterterrorism investigations." It called the data "unfiltered and non-validated potential threat information." Whitman said data reported through Talon could be turned over the FBI or local law enforcement. The Pentagon said it will conduct annual oversight reviews of the Talon program, designate supervisors to review each Talon report before submission to the database, and direct CIFA to review submissions to ensure they are proper. Whitman said he did not know if the Pentagon had disciplined anyone for putting improper information in the database, but was "not aware of any malicious or deliberate attempts" to use the Talon system against a specific person or group. Some critics have noted similarities in the Pentagon's activities during the Iraq War and those of the Vietnam War period, when it spied on antiwar activists. "If the Pentagon has been collecting information improperly on Americans, it should provide a full accounting of what kind of information it collected, on whom and why, subject only perhaps to protecting the privacy of individuals," said Kate Martin, director of the Center for National Security Studies, a civil liberties group interested in government surveillance. <http://tinyurl.com/lcf2q> Weblog at: <http://weblog.warpspeed.com> ----- End forwarded message ----- -- Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> http://leitl.org ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820 http://www.ativel.com 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE [demime 1.01d removed an attachment of type application/pgp-signature which had a name of signature.asc]

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[Dewayne-Net] Pentagon says improper data in security database
by Dewayne Hendricks 06 Jul '18

06 Jul '18

[Note: This item comes from reader Randall. DLH]

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Re: [Fwd: High-traffic Colluding Tor Routers in Washington, D.C. Confirmed]
by Roger Dingledine 06 Jul '18

06 Jul '18

On Fri, Apr 13, 2007 at 03:24:40PM +0700, Vlad SATtva Miller wrote: > ...However none of the mentioned below router nicknames or fingerprints > was found in the current local cache file. > ...snip... > A group of 9 Tor routers also functioning overtly or indirectly as Tor > exit nodes have been observed colluding on the public Tor network. Yeah. This happened in mid 2006. I don't know why some random person just picked it up now. We (mainly Steven Murdoch and Richard Clayton) tracked down the fellow running them. It turned out to be an innocent mistake. He's still running quite a few, on the same network, but now he sets the MyFamily torrc option on them. This issue also prompted us to speed up the fix/feature in 0.1.2.1-alpha: "Automatically avoid picking more than one node from the same /16 network when constructing a circuit." http://archives.seul.org/or/talk/Aug-2006/msg00300.html > Collusion was definitively established by the following method: For a more interesting (and more conclusive imo) method of deciding they're the same, check out slide 28 in Steven's slides from his CCS paper and 23C3 talk, where he investigated these servers: http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~sjm217/talks/ccc06hotornot.pdf --Roger ----- End forwarded message ----- ----- End forwarded message ----- -- Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> http://leitl.org ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820 http://www.ativel.com http://postbiota.org 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE

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re: High-traffic Colluding Tor Routers in Washington, D.C. Confirmed
by Nostra2004＠Safe-mail.net 06 Jul '18

06 Jul '18

Roger, Thanks for the quick reply and links. Although this happened over six months ago I had not seen any discussion about it. A few questions... - How did Steven Murdoch and Richard Clayton tracked down the operator? How did they determine it was an innocent mistake? Even if the operator is benevolent, that capability with so few nodes is disturbing. - How were 9 nodes apparently able to touch 11% of all Tor traffic? Have changes to the code since then reduced this vulnerability? - Do you think there needs to be activity (perhaps "collusion" between a group of good guys), similar to what's on Bit Torrent, to identify and blacklist nodes (discussions about the risks and legality of such things can be left till later)? - Is there a transcript of the talk those slides were given with, or at least a video?

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[cryptography] an untraceability extension to Bitcoin using a combination of digital commitments, one-way accumulators and zero-knowledge proofs,
by ianG 06 Jul '18

06 Jul '18

Steve Bellovin posted this on another list, hattip to him. http://www.forbes.com/sites/andygreenberg/2013/04/12/zerocoin-add-on-for-bi… For those following Bitcoin this is news. Matthew Green writes: For those who just want the TL;DR, here it is: Zerocoin is a new cryptographic extension to Bitcoin that (if adopted) would bring true cryptographic anonymity to Bitcoin. It works at the protocol level and doesn't require new trusted parties or services. With some engineering, it might (someday) turn Bitcoin into a completely untraceable, anonymous electronic currency. http://blog.cryptographyengineering.com/2013/04/zerocoin-making-bitcoin-ano… (iang adds:) Bitcoin is psuedonymous but traceable, which is to say that all transactions are traceable from identity to identity, but those identities are psuedonyms, being (hashes of) public keys. This is pretty weak. In contrast, Chaumian blinding was untraceable but typically identified according to an issuer's regime. Because Chaumian mathematics required a mint, this devolved to trusted/identified, so again not as strong as some hoped. Bitcoin fixed this 'flaw' by decorporating the mint into an algorithm. This suggests a new axis of distributed. But Bitcoin lost the untraceability in the process, thus rendering it a rather ridiculous attempt at privacy, as the entire graph was on display. Bitcoin is more or less worse at privacy than Chaumian cash ever was. The holy grail in Chaumian times was untraceable & unidentifiable, to which Bitcoin added distributed. This paper by Miers, Garman, Green & Rubin suggests untraceable & psuedonymous & distributed is possible: http://spar.isi.jhu.edu/~mgreen/ZerocoinOakland.pdf (I haven't as yet read the paper so there may be killer details in there.) iang _______________________________________________ cryptography mailing list cryptography(a)randombit.net http://lists.randombit.net/mailman/listinfo/cryptography ----- End forwarded message ----- -- Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> http://leitl.org ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820 http://www.ativel.com http://postbiota.org 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE

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Re: [cryptography] US Appeals Court upholds right not to decrypt a drive
by Benjamin Kreuter 06 Jul '18

06 Jul '18

On Sat, 25 Feb 2012 05:30:57 +1000 "James A. Donald" <jamesd(a)echeque.com> wrote: > So: Don't talk to police about the contents of your drive, or indeed > anything of which they might potentially disapprove. I believe that you meant to say, "Don't talk to the police at all," which should be standard policy for anyone who finds themselves under arrest. There is no advantage in talking to the police once you have been arrested, nothing you say will help in your defense and you are not going to talk your way out of an arrest. The odds are stacked against you during a police interview -- you are talking to people who have been trained to extract confessions, who are being paid to sit there interrogating you, and who will pick through what you say to find incriminating statements. Stay quiet, speak only to your attorney, and let your attorney speak on your behalf; you cannot be penalized for exercising your rights, nor can the fact that you refused to speak be introduced as evidence against you (at least in the United States). -- Ben -- Benjamin R Kreuter UVA Computer Science brk7bx(a)virginia.edu KK4FJZ -- "If large numbers of people are interested in freedom of speech, there will be freedom of speech, even if the law forbids it; if public opinion is sluggish, inconvenient minorities will be persecuted, even if laws exist to protect them." - George Orwell _______________________________________________ cryptography mailing list cryptography(a)randombit.net http://lists.randombit.net/mailman/listinfo/cryptography ----- End forwarded message ----- -- Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> http://leitl.org ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820 http://www.ativel.com http://postbiota.org 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE

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