From the clear text, NONSTOP appears to refer to
One of the Tempest FOIA docs NSA released recently concerns NONSTOP, a term whose definition is classified as SECRET. About half of the document, NACSEM 5112, "NONSTOP Evaluation Techniques," has been redacted, and we'll publish it soon. protection against compromising emanations of cryptographic systems, and maybe in particular radio crypto systems. Another document refers to NONSTOP testing and protection being especially needed on vehicles, planes and ships. We've been unable to retrieve more than a few words from the redacted portions (by use of xerography to reveal text below the overwrites), and would appreciate any leads on what NONSTOP means. Joel McNamara has been searching for NONSTOP info for some time: http://eskimo.com/~joelm/tempest.html We would also like to learn more about covert surveillance by "resonance" technology. Peter Wright, in Spycatcher, provides most interesting anecdotes about this. He writes of remotely "radiating" specially-designed objects in a space to pick up signals, and tells of several covert operations in which MI5 used this method. Wright also describes the use of supersensitive microphones to pick up the daily setting of rotors on cryptomachines of the time, in particular the Hagelins made by CryptoAG. This loops back to NONSTOP and the question of what may be the signatures and compromising emanations of today's cryptosystems which reveal information in ways that go beyond known sniffers -- indeed, that known sniffers may divertingly camouflage. Along this line I mention for the nth time that the National Academy of Science 1996 CRYPTO report, which advocated loosening crypto controls, also recommended increased funding for other surveillance technologies that have never been identified, although Carnivore may be one such, along with keyboard sniffers and who knows what else that has been passed to domestic law enforcement by the intelligence agencies to crack crypto protection.
At 11:54 AM -0500 1/12/01, John Young wrote:
One of the Tempest FOIA docs NSA released recently concerns NONSTOP, a term whose definition is classified as SECRET. About half of the document, NACSEM 5112, "NONSTOP Evaluation Techniques," has been redacted, and we'll publish it soon.
From the clear text, NONSTOP appears to refer to protection against compromising emanations of cryptographic systems, and maybe in particular radio crypto systems.
Another document refers to NONSTOP testing and protection being especially needed on vehicles, planes and ships.
We've been unable to retrieve more than a few words from the redacted portions (by use of xerography to reveal text below the overwrites), and would appreciate any leads on what NONSTOP means.
The Tandem Computers "NONSTOP" was a product line in use by various government agencies for secure (fault-tolerant) computing for a long time. I'd look there for starters. --Tim May -- Timothy C. May tcmay@got.net Corralitos, California Political: Co-founder Cypherpunks/crypto anarchy/Cyphernomicon Technical: physics/soft errors/Smalltalk/Squeak/agents/games/Go Personal: b.1951/UCSB/Intel '74-'86/retired/investor/motorcycles/guns
At 12:32 PM 1/12/01 -0500, Tim May wrote:
The Tandem Computers "NONSTOP" was a product line in use by various government agencies for secure (fault-tolerant) computing for a long time. I'd look there for starters.
(I thought this was too speculative, but given Tim's guess..) I have also thought that NONSTOP refers to fault-tolerant under high-RF conditions. Also useful when flying (etc.) near your own antennas, dishes, etc. A sort of military version of the FCC standard for consumer electronics: doesn't emit bad (informative) radiation, accepts bad radiation without interference. Note that shielding that worked for tempest would also help nonstop; and that some of the gear at a testing site (antennas) serves both purposes. (After reading Harmon Seaver's piece) Since this is the NSA, maybe they were testing that high-RF environments didn't cause info leakage -someone else tests that the stuff simply works under field conditions. Maybe the thing they wanted not stopped was tempest protection.
David's suggestion makes sense to me. But if NONSTOP is a codeword, it would be classified at least secret, and manufacturers of such products would be discouraged by their customers at NSA from labeling their products with such a name. -Declan On Fri, Jan 12, 2001 at 07:47:00PM -0500, David Honig wrote:
At 12:32 PM 1/12/01 -0500, Tim May wrote:
The Tandem Computers "NONSTOP" was a product line in use by various government agencies for secure (fault-tolerant) computing for a long time. I'd look there for starters.
(I thought this was too speculative, but given Tim's guess..)
I have also thought that NONSTOP refers to fault-tolerant under high-RF conditions. Also useful when flying (etc.) near your own antennas, dishes, etc.
A sort of military version of the FCC standard for consumer electronics: doesn't emit bad (informative) radiation, accepts bad radiation without interference.
Note that shielding that worked for tempest would also help nonstop; and that some of the gear at a testing site (antennas) serves both purposes.
(After reading Harmon Seaver's piece) Since this is the NSA, maybe they were testing that high-RF environments didn't cause info leakage -someone else tests that the stuff simply works under field conditions. Maybe the thing they wanted not stopped was tempest protection.
At 10:56 PM 1/12/01 -0500, Declan McCullagh wrote:
David's suggestion makes sense to me. But if NONSTOP is a codeword, it would be classified at least secret, and manufacturers of such products would be discouraged by their customers at NSA from labeling their products with such a name.
-Declan
I agree... this remains a problem with my thesis. Perhaps it is from an earlier time, before they randomly chose short words or word-pairs from lists as opaque labels? I just finished Rowlett's _Magic_ and in there, someone had to point out to the SIS cryptanalysts that you shouldn't refer to what the ca. WWII Japanese called "Cipher Machine, type A" in English as the "type A machine". Thus their arbitrary designators ("red", "purple") were chosen. ------ The great thing about humans is they can come up with a theory for anything.
-=|[ duuh... ]|=- "NONSTOP" is moreso a protocol and general criteria for operations. It is not soley restricted to physical, TEMPEST, hij/abduct, intel, crypto, or any other specific protection mechanism. NONSTOP is more a general idea and concept, with implications and implementations across all interrelated elements which probibly 'shouldn't stop'... JYA has an email from me directly with more basic info/'theory'. (he will review and use whatever content desired thereof) You note NONSTOP"" with hijack type associated logic... Although these phrases refer to some unknown ic/dod/etc protocols, it is also quite well founded in reality... NONSTOP protections prevent hijack. End of point. How? Research this. A previous cp CDR message about a year ago referenced HIJACK/NONSTOP training at the afb in san-antonio TX... It had TEMPEST shielding protocol as a parallel course to NONSTOP... Any logical speculation as to why? -- With 'baaah' in mind, -Wilfred Wilfred@Cryogen.com -=|[.]|=- At 10:54 PM 1/12/2001 -0500, you wrote:
At 10:56 PM 1/12/01 -0500, Declan McCullagh wrote:
David's suggestion makes sense to me. But if NONSTOP is a codeword, it would be classified at least secret, and manufacturers of such products would be discouraged by their customers at NSA from labeling their products with such a name.
-Declan
John Young wrote:
We've been unable to retrieve more than a few words from the redacted portions (by use of xerography to reveal text below the overwrites), and would appreciate any leads on what NONSTOP means. Joel McNamara has been searching for NONSTOP info for some time:
I happen to admin a Tandem "NonStop" K-200. Not sure how truly secure they are, but from my experience I'd say it's more security thru obscurity than anything else, i.e., almost nobody has any knowledge or experience with the OS, unlike unix and windoze, so info doesn't get shared around, etc. The OS is Guardian and is extremely primitive. They don't run C or anything else known to mankind. Well, there is know a "unix shell" that runs on top of Guardian, with an extremely limited command set and functionality, which does allow C code to run, but it's not accessing low-level stuff, no hardware calls, etc. Tandem was/is used mostly in banks and the like. The "nonstop" is a bit of a joke, really -- yes, the hardware is robust, everything is hot-swapable, but the software (at least ours) crashes a lot. You could have a much better and more robust system with a unix cluster. And of course, Tandem was a dead horse on the verge of bankruptcy when it was bought by Compaq, about the same time Compaq bought DEC. So now they've got Tandem "NonStop" servers which run the DEC Alpha processors and unix. I'm sure Compaq will kill off the old Tandem line as soon as they can, just like they are with the DEC Vaxes. Support, yes, but no further development. So the bottom line here is this -- I'd really rather doubt that the NONSTOP referred to above has anything to do with Tandems. Certainly they aren't running Tandem stuff on planes and vehicles -- this is heavy iron -- and if the fedz are depending upon anything as primitive as the Tandem OS to protect secrets, I pity them. -- Harmon Seaver, MLIS Systems Librarian Arrowhead Library System Virginia, MN (218) 741-3840 hseaver@arrowhead.lib.mn.us http://harmon.arrowhead.lib.mn.us
Joel McNamara first told me about NONSTOP and its commonly associated classified codeword, HIJACK, both somehow related to Tempest. When you do a search on either of them you get hundreds (or 1000s) of hits for the generic terms "non-stop" and "hi-jack" but few entries for the codewords, and then as standards in military security documents. It's as if the codewords were picked to be camouflaged by the generics. And, because codewords are usually set to have no relation to the protected material, they probably are not descriptive -- but could be, just to outfox off the smarties. The NONSTOP doc released to us was first issued in 1975 and has gone through 4 reprintings, the latest in 1987. And it continues to be cited as still in effect, though usually such standards are updated at least every 5 years. So there may be a later one which would account for the partial release after first denial. It's intriguing to read Spycatcher (1987) while reading the Tempest docs. I had not read Wright's most informative book, and regret not having done so. For those who have not read it, Peter Wright was MI5's first scientist, and entered the service after WW2. He specialized in the technology of counterintelligence and with a few others cooked up a host of ingenious means to spy on spies and suspects. A specialty was the extraordinary use of electromagnetic devices -- radio, telephone, acoustic, resonance, and more -- applying scientific abilities well in advance of technicians and engineers. Some of his ideas were so advanced his bosses said impossible, until he proved effectiveness. Then Wright quickly became the savior of bureaucrats who could not understand why Britain's enemies kept outsmarting them -- usually with advanced technological means. Wright changed that, but often got at odds with non-scientifically trained personnel. Among others, he worked closely with GCHQ on occasion to provide technical attacks on cryptosystems which could not be broken by cryptanalysis. Thus his research on the cryptosecrets revealed by compromising emanations from devices, cabling, furniture, construction materials, and a host of ordinary physical objects -- all of which emitted signals that could be acquired and interpreted by careful tuning for comprehension. He writes of amazing methods of acquiring signals, and it is no wonder HMG fought to prevent publication of Spycatcher. What he did not write about must be even more wondrous, and it makes you think he could pick up your brain waves if you were part of particular triangulated antenna. Maybe NONSTOP and HIJACK have nothing to do with the stuff Wright excelled at. Still, reading Spycatcher along with the Tempest docs -- and now Stephen Budiansky's "Battle of Wits: The Complete Story of Codebreaking in World War II," (2000) -- certainly demonstrates how much of codebreaking has been done by covert technical and physical means, even as we are told misleading cover stories. Are the crypto-revelations also disinformation? Historically all have been. Ha, ha, ha.
Harmon Seaver wrote:
John Young wrote:
We've been unable to retrieve more than a few words from the redacted portions (by use of xerography to reveal text below the overwrites), and would appreciate any leads on what NONSTOP means. Joel McNamara has been searching for NONSTOP info for some time:
I happen to admin a Tandem "NonStop" K-200
[...snip...]
So the bottom line here is this -- I'd really rather doubt that the NONSTOP referred to above has anything to do with Tandems.
Agreed that John's "non-stop" doesn't sound anything like Tandem boxes (which surely wouldn't be a secret code-wood anyway?)
Certainly they aren't running Tandem stuff on planes and vehicles -- this is heavy iron --
They certainly used to run IBM 370 (a lot heavier than Tandems both in mass & power consumption!) in the air, probably to manage AWACS tape filestore (I vaguely think they may even have used UCC1). That is unless the US & German airforce people I sometimes met on operating system training courses back in the early 1980s were *very* good at pulling the wool over fellow-student's eyes. Ken Brown
Ken Brown wrote:
Certainly they aren't running Tandem stuff on planes and vehicles -- this is heavy iron --
They certainly used to run IBM 370 (a lot heavier than Tandems both in mass & power consumption!) in the air, probably to manage AWACS tape filestore (I vaguely think they may even have used UCC1). That is unless the US & German airforce people I sometimes met on operating system training courses back in the early 1980s were *very* good at pulling the wool over fellow-student's eyes.
Bizarre -- but then I suppose 20 years ago the 370 was fairly small compared to other computers. At any rate, I was thinking in today's terms, and one would hope our glorious leaders would have a bit more on the technical ball than to think they needed to drag mainframes around in planes, eh? But then, probably they don't. So maybe John's "nonstop" is referring to some weird intel op use of Tandems. Who knows? Come to think, my computer operator for the Tandem spent 20 years in the AirForce, and he seems to think the Tandem is hot stuff. Of course, he can't even set up his own PC, but what would you expect? 8-).
At 6:48 PM -0500 1/19/01, Harmon Seaver wrote:
Ken Brown wrote:
Certainly they aren't running Tandem stuff on planes and vehicles -- this is heavy iron --
They certainly used to run IBM 370 (a lot heavier than Tandems both in mass & power consumption!) in the air, probably to manage AWACS tape filestore (I vaguely think they may even have used UCC1). That is unless the US & German airforce people I sometimes met on operating system training courses back in the early 1980s were *very* good at pulling the wool over fellow-student's eyes.
Bizarre -- but then I suppose 20 years ago the 370 was fairly small compared to other computers.
Twenty years ago was when the "3081"/Sierra version of the 370 architecture was out. Not a small machine compared to others. The 3081 had those fancy thermoconduction modules with plungers contacting the ceramics and all. Not small at all. I have no idea which 370 was put on a plane, but I expect more than one generation rode on planes.
At any rate, I was thinking in today's terms, and one would hope our glorious leaders would have a bit more on the technical ball than to think they needed to drag mainframes around in planes,
It's fairly "tired" to deprecate "glorious leaders" by claiming that dragging mainframes around in planes is ipso fact a dumb idea. Reasons are left for you to figure out.
eh? But then, probably they don't. So maybe John's "nonstop" is referring to some weird intel op use of Tandems. Who knows? Come to think, my computer operator for the Tandem spent 20 years in the AirForce, and he seems to think the Tandem is hot stuff. Of course, he can't even set up his own PC, but what would you expect? 8-).
More of the same deprecation. I was the one here who tossed out the idea, in response to John Young's request, that maybe a classified TEMPEST document on "NONSTOP" had something to do with the Tandem NonStop line. Clearly not, based on his later transcribings of the partially-elided FOIAed document. --Tim May -- Timothy C. May tcmay@got.net Corralitos, California Political: Co-founder Cypherpunks/crypto anarchy/Cyphernomicon Technical: physics/soft errors/Smalltalk/Squeak/agents/games/Go Personal: b.1951/UCSB/Intel '74-'86/retired/investor/motorcycles/guns
I have no idea which 370 was put on a plane, but I expect more than one generation rode on planes.
At any rate, I was thinking in today's terms, and one would hope our glorious leaders would have a bit more on the technical ball than to think they needed to drag mainframes around in
At 12:19 AM 1/20/01 -0500, Tim May wrote: planes,
It's fairly "tired" to deprecate "glorious leaders" by claiming that dragging mainframes around in planes is ipso fact a dumb idea. Reasons are left for you to figure out.
I don't know about mainframes, but it wouldn't surprise me, though the cooling and power systems are a bit large. I do know that there was a PBX on Looking Glass back in the 60s - a friend of mine did telecom for SAC Offutt, and says that one of the people on the plane once noticed that there were two lines busy on the PBX, but nobody on the phone. They tracked it down, and found that some guy in the barracks had a 16-button Autovon phone, and had dialed the magic number on the ground-based PBX to get forwarded up to the bird, dialed across the PBX and back down, then dialed out on AUTOVON. Needless to say, unlike barracks phones which couldn't call much of anybody off-base without asking the operator to set up the call, the PBX on Looking Glass was allowed to call anybody in the world that it wants to, at any priority it needs, so the guy was doing a reasonably high-priority call to his buddies in Guam. (AUTOVON was the old DoD AUTOmatic VOice Network, which had a 5-level priority system to make sure that important calls get through. To some extent, the priority system was also used to allocate expensive resources, e.g. voice calls across the Pacific were more likely to succeed at Priority level than Routine, and probably wouldn't get knocked down before you finished. The extra four Touch-Tone buttons were used to signal the priority level, and specific phones and locations were limited in the level of priority they could dial. Alternatively, if you only had a regular phone, such as most phones on base PBXs, you could place a priority call by asking the operator to connect you. As a friend of mine said "We were authorized to make Flash-level calls, but only if we actually *saw* a nuclear explosion..." That's level 4 out of 5.) Thanks! Bill Bill Stewart, bill.stewart@pobox.com PGP Fingerprint D454 E202 CBC8 40BF 3C85 B884 0ABE 4639
This, from David Wagner on Cryptography, is most informative: In a paper on side channel cryptanalysis by John Kelsey, Bruce Schneier, Chris Hall, and I, we speculated on possible meanings of NONSTOP and HIJACK: [...] It is our belief that most operational cryptanalysis makes use of side-channel information. [...] And Peter Wright discussed data leaking onto a transmission line as a side channel used to break a French cryptographic device [Wri87]. The (unclassified) military literature provides many examples of real-world side channels. [...] Peter Wright's crosstalk anecdote is probably what the HIJACK codeword refers to [USAF98]. Along similar lines, [USAF98] alludes to the possibility that crosstalk from sensitive hardware near a tape player might modulate the signal on the tape; [USAF98] recommends that tapes played in a classified facility be degaussed before they are removed, presumably to prevent side channels from leaking. Finally, one last example from the military literature is the NONSTOP attack [USAF98, Chapters 3-4]: after a careful reading of unclassified sources, we believe this refers to the side channel that results when cryptographic hardware is illuminated by a nearby radio transmitter (e.g. a cellphone), thereby modulating the return signal with information about what the crypto gear is doing [AK98]. [...] [AK98] R. Anderson and M. Kuhn, "Soft Tempest: Hidden Data Transmission Using Electromagnetic Emanations," Proc. 2nd Workshop on Information Hiding, Springer, 1998. [USAF98] US Air Force, Air Force Systems Security Memorandum 7011-- Emission Security Countermeasures Review, 1 May 1998. [Wri87] P. Wright, Spycatcher, Viking Penguin Inc., 1987. The above is excerpted from the conclusions of J. Kelsey, B. Schneier, D. Wagner, C. Hall, "Side channel cryptanalysis of product ciphers", Journal of Computer Security, vol. 8, pp. 141--158, 2000. http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~daw/papers/sidechan-final.ps Do remember, please, that these are just guesses. Also, credit is due to Ross Anderson and Markus Kuhn for informative discussions on this topic. [End Wagner post] --- Both the Anderson/Kuhn and USAF papers are online: http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~mgk25/ih98-tempest.pdf http://www.jya.com/afssm-7011.htm
participants (8)
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Bill Stewart -
David Honig -
Declan McCullagh -
Harmon Seaver -
John Young -
Ken Brown -
Tim May -
Wilfred L. Guerin