July 2018 - cypherpunks-legacy

[liberationtech] Conference: Internet and democratic change
by Marcin de Kaminski 05 Jul '18

05 Jul '18

Hi everyone! Enclosed is info about the upcoming conference "Internet and democratic change - net activism, empowerment, emancipation". Please spread this info widely. Attendance is by invite only, but the whole event will be webcasted for all from www.sida.se Please feel free to publish or forward the shorter or longer version of the text. If you want some linklove, please notify me (preferably off-list) about where the information has been published. Best, Marcin de Kaminski, the Julia Group -- Short version: Internet and Democratic Change - A conference about Net Activism, Empowerment and Emancipation in the Middle East and North Africa Don't miss the live broadcast of this topical conference, where bloggers and net activists discuss experiences, challenges and opportunities, with a special focus on the developments in the Middle East and North Africa! The conference will be webcasted and anyone can attend. A chat link will be available if you wish to pose questions to the speakers. Activists with first hand experiences will give their views on the events of the Arab Spring. The Internet and net activism can promote democratic change in repressive environment and has informed and mobilized people during the recent uprisings. What can international cooperation do to support access to the Internet and the use of technology for democratic development in the region? Meet Scott Lucas, Professor Birmingham University, Stephan Urbach, hacktivist of Telecomix, Anita Hunt, social media curator in human rights issues, Jacob Appelbaum, researcher and hacker from The TOR Project and MC%ns Adler, founder of Bambuser. Mahnaz Afkhami founder and President of the Women's Learning Partnership (WLP) will initiate the afternoon. Then meet and listen to activists like Maryam Al-Khawaja from Bahrain, Slim Amamou from Tunisia, Salma Said from Egypt and Hamza Fakher from Syria. State secretary Hanna Hellquist will close the conference. During an evening session you will also meet the initiated and prestigious journalists Dima Khatib, Sultan Al Qassemi and Neal Mann in a panel discussion about social media and the new forms of journalism that we have met during the last years turmoil in the MENA region. The conference is arranged by Sida in cooperation with the Julia Group, and all seminars will be webcasted and free to attend online. Make sure you can attend on October 26th! Also please follow our Twitter hashtag, #net4change and help us spread this day of seminars! Join the Facebook event at http://on.fb.me/net4change-fb Read the whole programme in detail at http://bit.ly/net4change-programme Follow the webcast on Oct 26th at http://www.sida.se -- Long version: Internet and Democratic Change - A conference about Net Activism, Empowerment and Emancipation in the Middle East and North Africa Sida b the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency b in cooperation with the Julia Group is proud to present a whole day of seminars on October 26th 2011. The topic is net activism, empowerment and emancipation focusing on the current events in the Middle East and North Africa. The event, which will be webcasted for all, gathers net activists, democracy activists and human rights activists from both the MENA region and the rest of the world to discuss how the Internet and net activism can promote democratic change and the strive towards human rights for all. The featured speakers at the event are well known activists from different areas. The magnificent lineup for the day can be said to share ideals, but has never shared a stage until now. Among the speakers, we will meet; Scott Lucas (Professor Birmingham University), Stephan Urbach (hacktivist of Telecomix), Anita Hunt (social media curator in human rights issues), Jacob Appelbaum (researcher and hacker from The Tor Project) and MC%ns Adler (founder of Bambuser). We will also meet; Mahnaz Afkhami (founder and President of the Womenbs Learning Partnership), Maryam Al-Khawaja (Bahrain), Slim Amamou (Tunisia), Salma Said (Egypt) and Hamza Fakher (Syria). In an interesting evening session we will also meet the initiated and prestigious journalists Dima Khatib, Sultan Al Qassemi and Neal Mann in a panel discussion about social media and the new forms of journalism that we have met during the last yearsb turmoil in the MENA region. The Director General of Sida, Charlotte Petri Gomitzka will open the day, while State secretary Hanna Hellquist will close it and also relate it to the current and future initiatives of the Swedish Government on issues related to Internet freedom, human rights and digital democratization. Moderators of the day are Yasmine El Rafie, journalist and Arab Spring curator in various social media, and Marcin de Kaminski of the Julia Group. All seminars will be webcasted and free to attend online. Make sure you can attend on October 26th! Also please follow our Twitter hashtag, #net4change and help us spread this day of seminars! Join the Facebook event at http://on.fb.me/net4change-fb Read the whole programme in detail at http://bit.ly/net4change-programme Follow the webcast on Oct 26th at http://www.sida.se _______________________________________________ liberationtech mailing list liberationtech(a)lists.stanford.edu Should you need to change your subscription options, please go to: https://mailman.stanford.edu/mailman/listinfo/liberationtech If you would like to receive a daily digest, click "yes" (once you click above) next to "would you like to receive list mail batched in a daily digest?" You will need the user name and password you receive from the list moderator in monthly reminders. Should you need immediate assistance, please contact the list moderator. Please don't forget to follow us on http://twitter.com/#!/Liberationtech ----- 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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<nettime> Homeland Security Request to Take Down MafiaaFire Add-on
by nettime's avid reader 05 Jul '18

05 Jul '18

http://lockshot.wordpress.com/2011/05/05/homeland-security-request-to-take- down-mafiaafire-add-on/ >From time to time, we [the mozilla foundation] receive government requests for information, usually market information and occasionally subpoenas. Recently the US Department of Homeland Security contacted Mozilla and requested that we remove the MafiaaFire add-on. The ICE Homeland Security Investigations unit alleged that the add-on circumvented a seizure order DHS had obtained against a number of domain names. Mafiaafire, like several other similar add-ons already available through AMO, redirects the user from one domain name to another similar to a mail forwarding service. In this case, Mafiaafire redirects traffic from seized domains to other domains. Here the seized domain names allegedly were used to stream content protected by copyrights of professional sports franchises and other media concerns. Our approach is to comply with valid court orders, warrants, and legal mandates, but in this case there was no such court order. Thus, to evaluate Homeland Securitybs request, we asked them several questions similar to those below to understand the legal justification: - Have any courts determined that the Mafiaafire add-on is unlawful or illegal in any way? If so, on what basis? (Please provide any relevant rulings) - Is Mozilla legally obligated to disable the add-on or is this request based on other reasons? If other reasons, can you please specify. - Can you please provide a copy of the relevant seizure order upon which your request to Mozilla to take down the Mafiaafire add-on is based? To date webve received no response from Homeland Security nor any court order. One of the fundamental issues here is under what conditions do intermediaries accede to government requests that have a censorship effect and which may threaten the open Internet. Others have commented on these practices already. In this case, the underlying justification arises from content holders legitimate desire to combat piracy. The problem stems from the use of these government powers in service of private content holders when it can have unintended and harmful consequences. Longterm, the challenge is to find better mechanisms that provide both real due process and transparency without infringing upon developer and user freedoms traditionally associated with the Internet. More to come. # distributed via <nettime>: no commercial use without permission # <nettime> is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nettime(a)kein.org ----- 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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[liberationtech] Some observations on the Great Firewall of China
by Rebecca MacKinnon 05 Jul '18

05 Jul '18

http://www.nsc.liu.se/~nixon/sshprobes.html Some observations on the Great Firewall of China Suddenly, without any warning: Aug 8 02:04:32 neolith1 sshd[12862]: Bad protocol version identification 'jN\321\203\267\237\317a-\310VS9\305\343\242\230\370\232W\255\224c\223\021\251\001\230 \335\256\315\037\374\367\347`\312\tI\037\024__~\363i\031\b8P\262\247\002s\322\324\177\022\27430v\020\313\030\253\346\312\001\301c\002&-r*\350\037i\241\335\274\316\364S]\035%\242\332\262\037\270xiO\243P\230' from 58.144.66.30 Say what? Aug 20 05:57:34 neolith1 sshd[14803]: Bad protocol version identification 'E\253l\233\242\243R\246\356#5\314\347K\327;\025\305?\224\367\212$\221q\276&\337>\037\366G\363B<\340"O\327f\233\037\371G\a\222e$\220\002E\203\300<\251\0050g\235\200`4\204\365\226d\305\027\030\003%Q\364\001\032\350\257P\250\363\352\344\002g\327\304\370\251\21149RLdeaG*x\335' from 123.184.190.106 Again?! I work as a security officer at the National Supercomputer Centre at Linkvping University. It is my job to be paranoid. I pay a lot of attention to our ssh logs. We have something like fifty thousand ssh logins per day, and anywhere up to half a million failed login attempts. I don't like seeing things in my logs that I don't understand. It makes me twitch. I certainly didn't understand those log entries that suddenly started appearing. From out of the blue, Chinese IP addresses would connect to the ssh port on one of our systems and throw what looked like random bytes at it. Each address would connect just once. We had never seen those IP addresses before, and they would go away again, never to return. The plot thickens: Moreover, it seemed that nobody had seen these addresses in any relevant context. I checked all of my usual sources for information on botnets, on ssh brute-force scanners, on machines exhibiting a generalized anti-social behaviour. Nothing. These addresses were clean. Nobody had seen so much as an insulting blog post comment from them. I started discreetly contacting colleagues at other sites, to check if they saw anything similar. Again, nothing. Oh, sometimes people would see some "Bad protocol version identification" messages, but on closer look there was always some simple explanation. Perhaps somebody had ran an nmap or Nessus scan against them - these scans are easily recognizable. Sometimes, somebody was scanning for open http proxies. But this stuff? Nope. Except, a few select colleagues did see the same thing. Chinese addresses, making one-shot connections to port 22 on a small number of target systems, sending pseudo-random binary data. To this date, I am aware of four sites around the world that have received these probes. In all reason, there must be more targetted sites, but I haven't found them. This really made my admin senses tingle. Were we compromised? Were these weird payloads triggers for some kind of backdoor on our system? I will spare you the details, but the level of scrutiny I subjected the system to was, well, scrutinous. I found nothing. Unfortunately, this didn't necessarily mean that we weren't compromised. It might just mean that I hadn't looked hard enough. So I looked some more. Once again, nothing. We captured some of the probe payloads in full. I could see no pattern in the data, no kind of protocol that I could recognize. Was this some kind of 0day sshd exploit? I threw the data at a carefully monitored sshd process, to see if it would trigger some unexpected code path. Nothing. Eureka: Then, almost a year after I saw that first probe, I was looking at the log data from yet another angle to try to figure this out, and I finally saw the pattern. Epiphany. I felt like a genius, and at the same time like the world's greatest idiot. The blindingly obvious thing I had been missing for a year was that each and every one of these probes was followed after 5-20 seconds by an ssh login attempt from China, and the attempts were mostly successful and apparently legitimate. The legitimate logins came from somewhere completely else, but still in China. What can I say? We have lots of Chinese users. We have lots of logins from China, nothing strange about that. In our systems, 5-20 seconds means several pages of log data to scroll through. Still, I should have caught this much faster. My colleagues at the other targetted sites confirmed my observations. Once they knew what to look for, they saw the same thing. My only consolation is that those very clever people also hadn't found this correlation. So, to more precisely describe what we have found: a small subset of the ssh logins from Chinese IPs to two of our systems are preceded by one or two connections from unrelated Chinese IP addresses, in which opaque binary data is thrown at sshd. These addresses come from all over China, from all sorts of networks. I see no particular pattern in which users are targetted, or what IP addresses they log in from and I see no pattern or structure in the opaque data, except for the following: For a few weeks around May/June 2011, the probe payloads actually looked like SSL handshakes, We see lots and lots of ssh brute-force attacks from Chinese IP addresses. However, these ssh login attempts do not appear to trigger any probes. So, what is this all about? Well, I have a theory. Conjecture: This is the Great Firewall of China, working to protect its citizens from unlawful foreign influences. My hypothesis is that just over a year ago, a new function in the firewall went into limited beta test, where a sample of outgoing ssh connections from China is carefully selected for secondary screening. I don't know what the selection criteria are, but apparently the probing only involves certain Chinese source networks (hence the lack of probes in connection to brute-force attacks) and certain target hosts. For the selected ssh connections, the target system is probed from one or two IP addresses under the control of the Chinese government. These may be otherwise innocent addresses that are spoofed at the level of the great firewall, or they may be actual computers under remote control by the government - I have no way to tell. I don't know what the probes are supposed to accomplish. My only guess is that the government is looking for certain services it doesn't approve of, like open proxies or Tor relays, and that precise fingerprinting may be too expensive. Instead, they resort to an inspection method similar to fuzzing, where pseudo-random data is thrown at the server, just to see what happens. In some cases, the legitimate ssh connections are unsuccessful; they appear to be interrupted. This may be a result of the firewall deciding the target system to be unsuitable and injecting RST packets into the TCP stream to kill it. The last few weeks, the frequency of the probing has increased. This might mean the beta test period is nearing its end, and that this function is about to become more widely deployed. . Conclusion: I do believe my theory above is more or less correct. I have no way to prove it, but it does fit all observed facts (including some which I am unable to disclose), and I have no tenable alternative explanations. It also matches the known repulsive censorship the Chinese government subjects its citizens to. I strongly dislike this probing of our systems that the Chinese government appears to be performing. Of course, I may be mistaken. Any feedback or alternative explanations are welcome. You can reach me at nixon(a)nsc.liu.se. - Leif Nixon, 2011-11-07 -- Rebecca MacKinnon Schwartz Senior Fellow, New America Foundation Cofounder: GlobalVoicesOnline.org Author: ConsentoftheNetworked.com Cell: +1-617-939-3493 Twitter: @rmack _______________________________________________ liberationtech mailing list liberationtech(a)lists.stanford.edu Should you need to change your subscription options, please go to: https://mailman.stanford.edu/mailman/listinfo/liberationtech If you would like to receive a daily digest, click "yes" (once you click above) next to "would you like to receive list mail batched in a daily digest?" You will need the user name and password you receive from the list moderator in monthly reminders. Should you need immediate assistance, please contact the list moderator. Please don't forget to follow us on http://twitter.com/#!/Liberationtech ----- 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

1 0

[liberationtech] Conference: Internet and democratic change
by Marcin de Kaminski 05 Jul '18

05 Jul '18

Hi everyone! Enclosed is info about the upcoming conference "Internet and democratic change - net activism, empowerment, emancipation". Please spread this info widely. Attendance is by invite only, but the whole event will be webcasted for all from www.sida.se Please feel free to publish or forward the shorter or longer version of the text. If you want some linklove, please notify me (preferably off-list) about where the information has been published. Best, Marcin de Kaminski, the Julia Group -- Short version: Internet and Democratic Change - A conference about Net Activism, Empowerment and Emancipation in the Middle East and North Africa Don't miss the live broadcast of this topical conference, where bloggers and net activists discuss experiences, challenges and opportunities, with a special focus on the developments in the Middle East and North Africa! The conference will be webcasted and anyone can attend. A chat link will be available if you wish to pose questions to the speakers. Activists with first hand experiences will give their views on the events of the Arab Spring. The Internet and net activism can promote democratic change in repressive environment and has informed and mobilized people during the recent uprisings. What can international cooperation do to support access to the Internet and the use of technology for democratic development in the region? Meet Scott Lucas, Professor Birmingham University, Stephan Urbach, hacktivist of Telecomix, Anita Hunt, social media curator in human rights issues, Jacob Appelbaum, researcher and hacker from The TOR Project and MC%ns Adler, founder of Bambuser. Mahnaz Afkhami founder and President of the Women's Learning Partnership (WLP) will initiate the afternoon. Then meet and listen to activists like Maryam Al-Khawaja from Bahrain, Slim Amamou from Tunisia, Salma Said from Egypt and Hamza Fakher from Syria. State secretary Hanna Hellquist will close the conference. During an evening session you will also meet the initiated and prestigious journalists Dima Khatib, Sultan Al Qassemi and Neal Mann in a panel discussion about social media and the new forms of journalism that we have met during the last years turmoil in the MENA region. The conference is arranged by Sida in cooperation with the Julia Group, and all seminars will be webcasted and free to attend online. Make sure you can attend on October 26th! Also please follow our Twitter hashtag, #net4change and help us spread this day of seminars! Join the Facebook event at http://on.fb.me/net4change-fb Read the whole programme in detail at http://bit.ly/net4change-programme Follow the webcast on Oct 26th at http://www.sida.se -- Long version: Internet and Democratic Change - A conference about Net Activism, Empowerment and Emancipation in the Middle East and North Africa Sida b the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency b in cooperation with the Julia Group is proud to present a whole day of seminars on October 26th 2011. The topic is net activism, empowerment and emancipation focusing on the current events in the Middle East and North Africa. The event, which will be webcasted for all, gathers net activists, democracy activists and human rights activists from both the MENA region and the rest of the world to discuss how the Internet and net activism can promote democratic change and the strive towards human rights for all. The featured speakers at the event are well known activists from different areas. The magnificent lineup for the day can be said to share ideals, but has never shared a stage until now. Among the speakers, we will meet; Scott Lucas (Professor Birmingham University), Stephan Urbach (hacktivist of Telecomix), Anita Hunt (social media curator in human rights issues), Jacob Appelbaum (researcher and hacker from The Tor Project) and MC%ns Adler (founder of Bambuser). We will also meet; Mahnaz Afkhami (founder and President of the Womenbs Learning Partnership), Maryam Al-Khawaja (Bahrain), Slim Amamou (Tunisia), Salma Said (Egypt) and Hamza Fakher (Syria). In an interesting evening session we will also meet the initiated and prestigious journalists Dima Khatib, Sultan Al Qassemi and Neal Mann in a panel discussion about social media and the new forms of journalism that we have met during the last yearsb turmoil in the MENA region. The Director General of Sida, Charlotte Petri Gomitzka will open the day, while State secretary Hanna Hellquist will close it and also relate it to the current and future initiatives of the Swedish Government on issues related to Internet freedom, human rights and digital democratization. Moderators of the day are Yasmine El Rafie, journalist and Arab Spring curator in various social media, and Marcin de Kaminski of the Julia Group. All seminars will be webcasted and free to attend online. Make sure you can attend on October 26th! Also please follow our Twitter hashtag, #net4change and help us spread this day of seminars! Join the Facebook event at http://on.fb.me/net4change-fb Read the whole programme in detail at http://bit.ly/net4change-programme Follow the webcast on Oct 26th at http://www.sida.se _______________________________________________ liberationtech mailing list liberationtech(a)lists.stanford.edu Should you need to change your subscription options, please go to: https://mailman.stanford.edu/mailman/listinfo/liberationtech If you would like to receive a daily digest, click "yes" (once you click above) next to "would you like to receive list mail batched in a daily digest?" You will need the user name and password you receive from the list moderator in monthly reminders. Should you need immediate assistance, please contact the list moderator. Please don't forget to follow us on http://twitter.com/#!/Liberationtech ----- 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

1 0

[liberationtech] Some observations on the Great Firewall of China
by Rebecca MacKinnon 05 Jul '18

05 Jul '18

http://www.nsc.liu.se/~nixon/sshprobes.html Some observations on the Great Firewall of China Suddenly, without any warning: Aug 8 02:04:32 neolith1 sshd[12862]: Bad protocol version identification 'jN\321\203\267\237\317a-\310VS9\305\343\242\230\370\232W\255\224c\223\021\251\001\230 \335\256\315\037\374\367\347`\312\tI\037\024__~\363i\031\b8P\262\247\002s\322\324\177\022\27430v\020\313\030\253\346\312\001\301c\002&-r*\350\037i\241\335\274\316\364S]\035%\242\332\262\037\270xiO\243P\230' from 58.144.66.30 Say what? Aug 20 05:57:34 neolith1 sshd[14803]: Bad protocol version identification 'E\253l\233\242\243R\246\356#5\314\347K\327;\025\305?\224\367\212$\221q\276&\337>\037\366G\363B<\340"O\327f\233\037\371G\a\222e$\220\002E\203\300<\251\0050g\235\200`4\204\365\226d\305\027\030\003%Q\364\001\032\350\257P\250\363\352\344\002g\327\304\370\251\21149RLdeaG*x\335' from 123.184.190.106 Again?! I work as a security officer at the National Supercomputer Centre at Linkvping University. It is my job to be paranoid. I pay a lot of attention to our ssh logs. We have something like fifty thousand ssh logins per day, and anywhere up to half a million failed login attempts. I don't like seeing things in my logs that I don't understand. It makes me twitch. I certainly didn't understand those log entries that suddenly started appearing. From out of the blue, Chinese IP addresses would connect to the ssh port on one of our systems and throw what looked like random bytes at it. Each address would connect just once. We had never seen those IP addresses before, and they would go away again, never to return. The plot thickens: Moreover, it seemed that nobody had seen these addresses in any relevant context. I checked all of my usual sources for information on botnets, on ssh brute-force scanners, on machines exhibiting a generalized anti-social behaviour. Nothing. These addresses were clean. Nobody had seen so much as an insulting blog post comment from them. I started discreetly contacting colleagues at other sites, to check if they saw anything similar. Again, nothing. Oh, sometimes people would see some "Bad protocol version identification" messages, but on closer look there was always some simple explanation. Perhaps somebody had ran an nmap or Nessus scan against them - these scans are easily recognizable. Sometimes, somebody was scanning for open http proxies. But this stuff? Nope. Except, a few select colleagues did see the same thing. Chinese addresses, making one-shot connections to port 22 on a small number of target systems, sending pseudo-random binary data. To this date, I am aware of four sites around the world that have received these probes. In all reason, there must be more targetted sites, but I haven't found them. This really made my admin senses tingle. Were we compromised? Were these weird payloads triggers for some kind of backdoor on our system? I will spare you the details, but the level of scrutiny I subjected the system to was, well, scrutinous. I found nothing. Unfortunately, this didn't necessarily mean that we weren't compromised. It might just mean that I hadn't looked hard enough. So I looked some more. Once again, nothing. We captured some of the probe payloads in full. I could see no pattern in the data, no kind of protocol that I could recognize. Was this some kind of 0day sshd exploit? I threw the data at a carefully monitored sshd process, to see if it would trigger some unexpected code path. Nothing. Eureka: Then, almost a year after I saw that first probe, I was looking at the log data from yet another angle to try to figure this out, and I finally saw the pattern. Epiphany. I felt like a genius, and at the same time like the world's greatest idiot. The blindingly obvious thing I had been missing for a year was that each and every one of these probes was followed after 5-20 seconds by an ssh login attempt from China, and the attempts were mostly successful and apparently legitimate. The legitimate logins came from somewhere completely else, but still in China. What can I say? We have lots of Chinese users. We have lots of logins from China, nothing strange about that. In our systems, 5-20 seconds means several pages of log data to scroll through. Still, I should have caught this much faster. My colleagues at the other targetted sites confirmed my observations. Once they knew what to look for, they saw the same thing. My only consolation is that those very clever people also hadn't found this correlation. So, to more precisely describe what we have found: a small subset of the ssh logins from Chinese IPs to two of our systems are preceded by one or two connections from unrelated Chinese IP addresses, in which opaque binary data is thrown at sshd. These addresses come from all over China, from all sorts of networks. I see no particular pattern in which users are targetted, or what IP addresses they log in from and I see no pattern or structure in the opaque data, except for the following: For a few weeks around May/June 2011, the probe payloads actually looked like SSL handshakes, We see lots and lots of ssh brute-force attacks from Chinese IP addresses. However, these ssh login attempts do not appear to trigger any probes. So, what is this all about? Well, I have a theory. Conjecture: This is the Great Firewall of China, working to protect its citizens from unlawful foreign influences. My hypothesis is that just over a year ago, a new function in the firewall went into limited beta test, where a sample of outgoing ssh connections from China is carefully selected for secondary screening. I don't know what the selection criteria are, but apparently the probing only involves certain Chinese source networks (hence the lack of probes in connection to brute-force attacks) and certain target hosts. For the selected ssh connections, the target system is probed from one or two IP addresses under the control of the Chinese government. These may be otherwise innocent addresses that are spoofed at the level of the great firewall, or they may be actual computers under remote control by the government - I have no way to tell. I don't know what the probes are supposed to accomplish. My only guess is that the government is looking for certain services it doesn't approve of, like open proxies or Tor relays, and that precise fingerprinting may be too expensive. Instead, they resort to an inspection method similar to fuzzing, where pseudo-random data is thrown at the server, just to see what happens. In some cases, the legitimate ssh connections are unsuccessful; they appear to be interrupted. This may be a result of the firewall deciding the target system to be unsuitable and injecting RST packets into the TCP stream to kill it. The last few weeks, the frequency of the probing has increased. This might mean the beta test period is nearing its end, and that this function is about to become more widely deployed. . Conclusion: I do believe my theory above is more or less correct. I have no way to prove it, but it does fit all observed facts (including some which I am unable to disclose), and I have no tenable alternative explanations. It also matches the known repulsive censorship the Chinese government subjects its citizens to. I strongly dislike this probing of our systems that the Chinese government appears to be performing. Of course, I may be mistaken. Any feedback or alternative explanations are welcome. You can reach me at nixon(a)nsc.liu.se. - Leif Nixon, 2011-11-07 -- Rebecca MacKinnon Schwartz Senior Fellow, New America Foundation Cofounder: GlobalVoicesOnline.org Author: ConsentoftheNetworked.com Cell: +1-617-939-3493 Twitter: @rmack _______________________________________________ liberationtech mailing list liberationtech(a)lists.stanford.edu Should you need to change your subscription options, please go to: https://mailman.stanford.edu/mailman/listinfo/liberationtech If you would like to receive a daily digest, click "yes" (once you click above) next to "would you like to receive list mail batched in a daily digest?" You will need the user name and password you receive from the list moderator in monthly reminders. Should you need immediate assistance, please contact the list moderator. Please don't forget to follow us on http://twitter.com/#!/Liberationtech ----- 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

1 0

Gmail and SSL
by Randy 05 Jul '18

05 Jul '18

I'm hoping to reach out to google's gmail engineers with this message, Today I noticed that for the past 3 days, email messages from my personal website's pop3 were not being received into my gmail inbox. Naturally, I figured that my pop3 service was down, but after some checking, every thing was working OK. I then checked gmail settings, and noticed some error. It explained that google is no longer accepting self signed ssl certificates. It claims that this change will "offer[s] a higher level of security to better protect your information". I don't believe that this change offers better security. In fact it is now unsecured - I am unable to use ssl with gmail, I have had to select the plain-text pop3 option. I don't have hundreds of dollars to get my ssl certificates signed, and to top it off, gmail never notified me of an error with fetching my mail. How many of email accounts trying to grab mail are failing now? I bet thousands, as a self signed certificate is a valid way of encrypting the traffic. Please google, remove this requirement. Source: http://support.google.com/mail/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=21291&ctx=gmail#s… ----- 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: Popular explanation of fully homomorphic encryption wanted
by hal＠finney.org 05 Jul '18

05 Jul '18

Udhay Shankar N quotes wikipedia: > The question was finally resolved in 2009 with the development of the > first true fully homomorphic cryptosystem. The scheme, constructed by > Craig Gentry, employs lattice based encryption and allows evaluation > of both addition and multiplication operations without restriction.[2] > > 2. ^ Craig Gentry. On homomorphic encryption over circuits of > arbitrary depth. In the 41st ACM Symposium on Theory of Computing > (STOC), 2009. A URL for this paper is http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1536414.1536440 but you will have to be an ACM member to download it. I was able to get a copy this morning and quickly skimmed it. This is IMO one of the most remarkable crypto papers ever. Not only does it solve one of the oldest open problems in cryptography, the construction of a fully homomorphic encryption system, it does so by means of a self-embedding technique reminiscent of Godel's theorem. Craig Gentry starts off by inventing a limited homomorphic encryption system based on lattice encryption. For full homomorphism you want to do both add and multiply - or expressed on bits, XOR and AND. Think of your operation as a circuit made up of XOR and AND gates, then the limiting factor in previous work has been the number of ANDs. While many schemes have been found that do just XORs, and at least one that could do a very limited number of ANDs, the new scheme allows you to go deeper. In lattice encryption, there is a multi-dimensional lattice of points that have a hidden structure. Encryption puts you "near" a point on the lattice, and decryption involves finding that point. But without knowing the hidden structure, attackers can't tell which one is closest. In the new homomorphic lattice encryption, AND operations cause the error term to increase. After too many of them, too deep a circuit, the error term grows up to roughly half the distance between lattice points, and decryption is no longer possible. So you have a limited depth homomorphic encryption system. By itself this is a substantial advance. But now for the amazing Godelian trick. The error term has grown and any more operations will make decryption impossible. So Craig Gentry proposes to allow the server (which is working on data encrypted under a key controlled by the client) to decrypt the data - *homomorphically*. If the data is encrypted by client key pk1, the client has also supplied the server a second key pk2, and also a version of the pk1 *secret key* encrypted under pk2. Since pk2 is homomorphic, the server can compute a circuit using the encrypted secret pk1 key just like it can compute any other circuit on encrypted data. The result is that the server ends up with an encryption of the original ciphertext under pk2 instead of under pk1, and because lattice decryption in effect performs error correction, the error term is reduced and we are ready for more. The key idea here is that the homomorphic encryption system has to allow enough homomorphic depth that *its own decryption algorithm* can be expressed as a circuit that "fits" within what can be handled homomorphically. This is quite difficult and most of the paper is taken up with constructing such a cryptosystem and proving its properties. The resulting scheme is apparently not practical (at one point he mentions that the secret key bits have to be expressed in *unary*) but it is still amazing that it is even possible. Again I have to go back to Godel's and Turing's work to think of a comparable example exploiting the power of self-embedding. In its most basic form, then, the client must supply a set of public keys pk1, pk2, ... with each key's private part encrypted under the next key; the number of such keys would be proportional to the depth of the circuit to be evaluated. However the paper then points out that given reasonable assumptions, you can dispense with the whole set and make it a loop, even a loop of one: that is, you encrypt pk1's private key under pk1, and stick with pk1 through the whole encryption, including the magical homomorphic decryption circuit evaluation. In this form it is the pure, fully homomorphic encryption system which has been so long sought. Hal Finney --------------------------------------------------------------------- The Cryptography Mailing List Unsubscribe by sending "unsubscribe cryptography" to majordomo(a)metzdowd.com

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Re: cleversafe says: 3 Reasons Why Encryption is Overrated
by Zooko Wilcox-O'Hearn 05 Jul '18

05 Jul '18

[cross-posted to tahoe-dev(a)allmydata.org and cryptography(a)metzdowd.com] Folks: It doesn't look like I'm going to get time to write a long post about this bundle of issues, comparing Cleversafe with Tahoe-LAFS (both use erasure coding and encryption, and the encryption and key-management part differs), and arguing against the ill-advised Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt that the Cleversafe folks have posted. So, I'm going to try to throw out a few short pieces which hopefully each make sense. First, the most important issue in all of this is the one that my programming partner Brian Warner already thoroughly addressed in [1] (see also the reply by Jason Resch [2]). That is the issue of access control, which is intertwined with the issues of key management. The other issues are cryptographic details which are important to get right, but the access control and key management issues are the ones that directly impact every user and that make or break the security and usefulness of the system. Second, the Cleversafe documents seem to indicate that the security of their system does not rely on encryption, but it does. The data in Cleversafe is encrypted with AES-256 before being erasure-coded and each share stored on a different server (exactly the same as in Tahoe-LAFS). If AES-256 is crackable, then a storage server can learn information about the file (exactly as in Tahoe-LAFS). The difference is that Cleversafe also stores the decryption key on the storage servers, encoded in such a way that any K of the storage servers must cooperate to recover it. In contrast, Tahoe-LAFS manages the decryption key separately. This added step of including a secret-shared copy of the decryption key on the storage servers does not make the data less vulnerable to weaknesses in AES-256, as their documents claim. (If anything, it makes it more vulnerable, but probably it has no effect and it is just as vulnerable to weaknesses in AES-256 as Tahoe-LAFS is.) Third, I don't understand why Cleversafe documents claim that public key cryptosystems whose security is based on "math" are more likely to fall to future advances in cryptanalysis. I think most cryptographers have the opposite belief -- that encryption based on bit-twiddling such as block ciphers or stream ciphers is much more likely to fall to future cryptanalysis. Certainly the history of modern cryptography seems to fit with this -- of the original crop of public key cryptosystems founded on a math problem, some are still regarded as secure today (RSA, DH, McEliece), but there has been a long succession of symmetric crypto primitives based on bit twiddling which have then turned out to be insecure. (Including, ominously enough, AES-256, which was regarded as a gold standard until a few months ago.) Fourth, it seems like the same access control/key management model that Cleversafe currently offers could be achieved by encrypting the data with a random AES key and then using secret sharing to split the key and store on share of the key with each server. I *think* that this would have the same cryptographic properties as the current Cleversafe approach of using an All-Or-Nothing-Transform followed by erasure coding. Both would qualify as "computation secret sharing" schemes as opposed to "information-theoretic secret sharing" schemes. I would be curious if there are any significant differences between these two constructions. I don't think there is any basis to the claims that Cleversafe makes that their erasure-coding ("Information Dispersal")-based system is fundamentally safer, e.g. these claims from [3]: "a malicious party cannot recreate data from a slice, or two, or three, no matter what the advances in processing power." ... "Maybe encryption alone is 'good enough' in some cases now - but Dispersal is 'good always' and represents the future." Fifth, as I've already mentioned, the emphasis on cryptography being defeated due to advances in processing power e.g. reference to Moore's Law is confused. Advances in processing power would not be sufficient to crack modern cryptosystems and in many cases would not be necessary either. Okay I think that's it. I hope these notes are not so terse as to be confusing or inflammatory. Regards, Zooko Wilcox-O'Hearn [1] http://allmydata.org/pipermail/tahoe-dev/2009-July/002482.html [2] http://allmydata.org/pipermail/tahoe-dev/2009-August/002514.html [3] http://dev.cleversafe.org/weblog/?p=63 --------------------------------------------------------------------- The Cryptography Mailing List Unsubscribe by sending "unsubscribe cryptography" to majordomo(a)metzdowd.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 http://postbiota.org 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE

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Source for Skype Trojan released
by Jerry Leichter 05 Jul '18

05 Jul '18

It can b ...intercept all audio data coming and going to the Skype process.b Proof of concept, but polished versions will surely follow. http://www.scmagazineus.com/Skype-snooping-trojan-detected/article/147537/ -- Jerry --------------------------------------------------------------------- The Cryptography Mailing List Unsubscribe by sending "unsubscribe cryptography" to majordomo(a)metzdowd.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 http://postbiota.org 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE

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Re: Popular explanation of fully homomorphic encryption wanted
by hal＠finney.org 05 Jul '18

05 Jul '18

Udhay Shankar N quotes wikipedia: > The question was finally resolved in 2009 with the development of the > first true fully homomorphic cryptosystem. The scheme, constructed by > Craig Gentry, employs lattice based encryption and allows evaluation > of both addition and multiplication operations without restriction.[2] > > 2. ^ Craig Gentry. On homomorphic encryption over circuits of > arbitrary depth. In the 41st ACM Symposium on Theory of Computing > (STOC), 2009. A URL for this paper is http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1536414.1536440 but you will have to be an ACM member to download it. I was able to get a copy this morning and quickly skimmed it. This is IMO one of the most remarkable crypto papers ever. Not only does it solve one of the oldest open problems in cryptography, the construction of a fully homomorphic encryption system, it does so by means of a self-embedding technique reminiscent of Godel's theorem. Craig Gentry starts off by inventing a limited homomorphic encryption system based on lattice encryption. For full homomorphism you want to do both add and multiply - or expressed on bits, XOR and AND. Think of your operation as a circuit made up of XOR and AND gates, then the limiting factor in previous work has been the number of ANDs. While many schemes have been found that do just XORs, and at least one that could do a very limited number of ANDs, the new scheme allows you to go deeper. In lattice encryption, there is a multi-dimensional lattice of points that have a hidden structure. Encryption puts you "near" a point on the lattice, and decryption involves finding that point. But without knowing the hidden structure, attackers can't tell which one is closest. In the new homomorphic lattice encryption, AND operations cause the error term to increase. After too many of them, too deep a circuit, the error term grows up to roughly half the distance between lattice points, and decryption is no longer possible. So you have a limited depth homomorphic encryption system. By itself this is a substantial advance. But now for the amazing Godelian trick. The error term has grown and any more operations will make decryption impossible. So Craig Gentry proposes to allow the server (which is working on data encrypted under a key controlled by the client) to decrypt the data - *homomorphically*. If the data is encrypted by client key pk1, the client has also supplied the server a second key pk2, and also a version of the pk1 *secret key* encrypted under pk2. Since pk2 is homomorphic, the server can compute a circuit using the encrypted secret pk1 key just like it can compute any other circuit on encrypted data. The result is that the server ends up with an encryption of the original ciphertext under pk2 instead of under pk1, and because lattice decryption in effect performs error correction, the error term is reduced and we are ready for more. The key idea here is that the homomorphic encryption system has to allow enough homomorphic depth that *its own decryption algorithm* can be expressed as a circuit that "fits" within what can be handled homomorphically. This is quite difficult and most of the paper is taken up with constructing such a cryptosystem and proving its properties. The resulting scheme is apparently not practical (at one point he mentions that the secret key bits have to be expressed in *unary*) but it is still amazing that it is even possible. Again I have to go back to Godel's and Turing's work to think of a comparable example exploiting the power of self-embedding. In its most basic form, then, the client must supply a set of public keys pk1, pk2, ... with each key's private part encrypted under the next key; the number of such keys would be proportional to the depth of the circuit to be evaluated. However the paper then points out that given reasonable assumptions, you can dispense with the whole set and make it a loop, even a loop of one: that is, you encrypt pk1's private key under pk1, and stick with pk1 through the whole encryption, including the magical homomorphic decryption circuit evaluation. In this form it is the pure, fully homomorphic encryption system which has been so long sought. Hal Finney --------------------------------------------------------------------- The Cryptography Mailing List Unsubscribe by sending "unsubscribe cryptography" to majordomo(a)metzdowd.com

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