October 2013 - cypherpunks - lists.cpunks.org

Love and Math Reviewed by NY Times
by John Young 29 Oct '13

29 Oct '13

Love and Math, by Edward Frenkel, is reviewed in tomorrow's NY Times. http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/27/books/review/love-and-math-by-edward-fren… Excerpt: "Frenkel believes math deserves to be an integral part of our culture. Why is everyone talking about planets, atoms and DNA and not symmetry groups? For one thing, you cant get cancer from a mutation of a symmetry group. But Frenkel writes that math 'directs the flow of the universe.' Its as elegant as music and as much a part of our intellectual heritage as literature. He strives to awaken our wonder by taking us on an equation-packed tour of his research, in which he reveals a hidden world few of us encountered in school." Returning to Whit Diffie musing on what led to his discovery or invention of public key cryptography -- found in what might be termed a hidden world of mathematics -- there may be still hidden mathematical forms of communication that does not rely upon technology's inevitable comsec failure. The NSA global invasion appears almost wholly based on the failure of technology rather than mathematics, as our esteemed cryptographers remind. Much of the current tweaking and further invention appear driven by technology, code, engineering, politics, law and polemics, again not mathematics. No wonder, that, for math is beyond grasp of those who believe the non-mathematical is too hard to see, hear, smell, touch, write, understand, market and melodramatically induce media delirium by way of officially-hostile and unauthorized disclosures. Whither the NSA bountiful mathematicians in protecting its family jewels of invasive technology? Stuck in crypto labs musing like Diffies in manifold hideways? Frenkel's linking of love and mathematics is worth pondering in the face of the megalomania, demogoguery, popularity and profitability of faultly technology, ever breeding abuse, counter abuse, blame and exculpation, feeding the market for official joined to unofficial invasion and combat, collateral damage inevitable.

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Excessive Politeness (was: Another Snowden News Story)
by Steve Furlong 29 Oct '13

29 Oct '13

On Mon, Oct 28, 2013 at 7:28 PM, coderman <coderman(a)gmail.com> wrote: > (who is a jerk for speaking ill of Jacob, i do admit!) > Without getting to the personalities or facts of this case, concerning which I know nothing, I object to this statement at bottom of coderman's message. If people are dumbasses or liars and you don't call them on it, they'll not only continue to be dumbasses or liars (which is their own business) but they'll continue to inflict themselves on other people. These innocent bystanders might not have any warning about the nature of the dumbass or liar and might thereby be harmed by them. As a fine, upstanding member of civil society, it is your *duty* to publicly call dumbasses dumbasses and liars liars. It's for the benefit of us all. Thank you in advance. Or, you know, just kill them all. As per my tagline. -- Neca eos omnes. Deus suos agnoscet. -- Arnaud-Amaury, 1209

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Re: [cryptome] After Der Spiegel " revealed that the roof of the embassy in Berlin
by John Young 29 Oct '13

29 Oct '13

Yes, there is finally coverage of the physical architecture of spying not just the "digital-architecture" of slides, texts and hyperbole. Duncan Campbell has reported on this physical architecture of hardware and facilities for decades and has advised several of the journalists covering the NSA releases who lack his experience and technical knowledge. Jacob Appelbaum confirms, others have not yet done so, and may be incapable of admitting limited knowledge after building careers of knowledgeability, yes, this is about cryptology and anonymity. PKC and anonymizers have become a celebrity drugs. Moreover, the valorization of comsec coding over the physical architecture has misled both the coders and their public about the weaknesses of comsec, a gaping hole through which national spies have driven large trucks to gather and transport mountains of data while the cyber-guards gaze at online security programs, engoring large fees for 24x7 protection, search and destroy, Stuxnet, virii, hacks, 0-days, terrifying kaboodle. Keep in mind this which has received almost no attention now or in the past: What is online and on the roof of embassies is not the source of most spying, that is a ruse. Every building has a unique identification (UID) based on its comprehensive materiality of building materials, mechanical and electrical systems, shape, spaces, usage, population, devices used by inhabitants (coming and going and resting), rate of deterioration, repairs, renovations. This in addition to official records in a slew of regulating agencies, contracts for services, networks, bugs, taps, implants, human spies, automation, fautly security systems. In effect, every building is a transceiver of its metadata and its contents without need for the ruse of local penetration. Just an ocean-going vessel, aircraft or satellite. Virtually nothing is being done to prevent this self-disclosing transceiving. Tempest protection is insignificant, and SCIFs are ridiculous. It is not clear if Snowden knows this or has been deluded by the blinding conceit of cyber war and as a consequence does not know what comsec delusion he is sincerely promulgating to the great pleasure of those who know exactly how to help him succeed by protesting vigorously. Back to why Merkel, Obama and other leaders are dancing in a global delusion of what they do not know, pretending outrage so superficial it suggests they really can't believe they are stooges. As do we. At 09:05 AM 10/29/2013, you wrote: >After Der Spiegel " revealed that the roof of >the embassy in Berlin placed blocks suspicious , >it turns out that these additions are also >installed in other cities . Evaluation of >equipment is listening to the American National Security Agency >Amir Rappaport | 29/10/2013 8:38 >What's behind the " boxes " uniformity mirror >placed on the roofs of the U.S. embassies in >major cities around the world and building >additions seem " natural ." It seems to be >hiding the most sophisticated listening facilities . > >Researcher Ronen Solomon discovered the testing >facilities identical pictures of the roofs of >the U.S. embassies in Beijing , Dubai, Berlin , >Moscow , Madrid and Tel Aviv. , After >comprehensive research published in the German >weekly " Der Spiegel " , following revelations >about the eavesdropping carried out by the >Americans to the top German leadership . >according to " citrus Spiegel " , on the roof of >the embassy in Berlin built blocks that appear >as part of the structure , but in fact it is >made ââof the facilities 'soft' gray or >white. material that does not block the >absorption from the listening facilities are behind him. > >U.S. listening devices '' on the roofs of embassies in the world > >After the discovery Der Spiegel " revealed for >the first time , based on the findings of >Solomon , that identical facilities on the roofs >of embassies are many other cities , including >Tel Aviv. In all cases it seemed as if it were >part of the building , but we notice that >H"kobiot " are , in fact, building additions . >If the findings of the " Citrus Spiegel " right >, the savers of listening to the American >intelligence agency scattered throughout the world. > >Tel Aviv is no exception : in addition L"kobiot >" is also found on the roof of the U.S. embassy >in Tel Aviv , like other major cities , Tel Aviv >there are other antennas that are hidden , >probably because it's not an intelligence listening equipment . > >Israeli security officials say they are not >surprised by exposing eavesdropping in Germany >and that they are aware of the American >listening mechanism being not only from the >roofs of embassies , but also through satellite >listening equipment and other means . The >assumption in Israel is the U.S. listening to >all the conversations that take place in the >Middle East as well as Europe , especially if they are not encrypted . > >U.S. wiretapping saga continues world countries >, and today the U.S. ambassador was invited to >Spain to talk with accusations that the U.S. had >listened to more than 60 million phone calls to >Spain during the month. Ambassador called to >talk to the Spanish Minister for European >Affairs , Inigo Mendez de Vigo , and the meeting >between the two lasted 40 minutes . Madrid at >the end of the conversation released a message >saying : " Spain to the United States emphasized >the importance of maintaining a climate of >confidence in bilateral relations , and the >importance of awareness extent of the actions , >if it turns out that they actually took place , >are unacceptable between countries that partnership and friendship ." > >As in the case of Germany and France , published >information originally one of the local >newspapers , " El Mundo " , and its origin is a >document provided to the leak , a U.S. National >Security Agency , former Edward Snowden . ><http://rotter.net/forum/scoops1/57437.shtml>http://rotter.net/forum/scoops1/57437.shtml > >Source: ><http://www.nrg.co.il/online/1/ART2/517/655.html?hp=1&cat=666&loc=1>http://www.nrg.co.il/online/1/ART2/517/655.html?hp=1&cat=666&loc=1 > >-- >Â >Haim Barak >To Serve and Protect Our Community >In God We Trust >Israel#: 5353... >Email: <mailto:haim357@gmail.com>haim357(a)gmail.com >http://haim357.wordpress.com/ >Â ><http://haim357.files.wordpress.com/2009/11/banner.jpg> >This e-mail is intended only for the named recipient(s) and may contain >information that is privileged, confidential and/or exempt from >disclosure under applicable law. No waiver of privilege, confidence or >otherwise is intended by virtue of communication via the Internet. Any >unauthorized use, dissemination or copying is strictly prohibited. >Thank you.

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Cameron doesn't understand everybody's been playing nice so far
by Eugen Leitl 29 Oct '13

29 Oct '13

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/oct/28/david-cameron-nsa-threat-newsp… David Cameron makes veiled threat to media over NSA and GCHQ leaks Prime minister alludes to courts and D notices and singles out the Guardian over coverage of Edward Snowden saga Nicholas Watt, chief political correspondent The Guardian, Monday 28 October 2013 18.10 GMT Cameron tours the Mini car plant in Oxford. The prime minister claims he doesn't want to have to take legal action against the Guardian and other newspapers over intelligence leaks but would rather talk to them. Photograph: Ben Birchall/PA David Cameron has called on the Guardian and other newspapers to show "social responsibility" in the reporting of the leaked NSA files to avoid high court injunctions or the use of D notices to prevent the publication of information that could damage national security. In a statement to MPs on Monday about last week's European summit in Brussels, where he warned of the dangers of a "lah-di-dah, airy-fairy view" about the dangers of leaks, the prime minister said his preference was to talk to newspapers rather than resort to the courts. But he said it would be difficult to avoid acting if newspapers declined to heed government advice. The prime minister issued the warning after the Tory MP Julian Smith quoted a report in Monday's edition of the Sun that said Britain's intelligence agencies believed details from the NSA files leaked by the US whistleblower Edward Snowden had hampered their work. The Sun quoted a "top surveillance source" as saying that terrorists had "gone quiet" after the publication of details about NSA and GCHQ operations. Cameron told MPs: "We have a free press, it's very important the press feels it is not pre-censored from what it writes and all the rest of it. "The approach we have taken is to try to talk to the press and explain how damaging some of these things can be and that is why the Guardian did actually destroy some of the information and disks that they have. But they've now gone on and printed further material which is damaging. "I don't want to have to use injunctions or D notices or the other tougher measures. I think it's much better to appeal to newspapers' sense of social responsibility. But if they don't demonstrate some social responsibility it would be very difficult for government to stand back and not to act." The Guardian agreed to allow officials from GCHQ to oversee the destruction of hard drives in July, after the government threatened to use an injunction to block publication of information from the NSA files. Alan Rusbridger, the editor-in-chief of the Guardian, said the destruction of the hard drives allowed the Guardian to continue reporting on the NSA files from its New York office. The D-notice system is a voluntary code between government departments with responsibility for national security and the media. A notice can be issued to the media to prevent "inadvertent public disclosure of information that would compromise UK military and intelligence operations and methods". Cameron had earlier indicated that the oversight of Britain's intelligence agencies may have to evolve in light of the revelations about the reach of new technology. He told MPs: "We have parliamentary scrutiny of our intelligence agencies through the intelligence and security committee and we have strengthened that oversight. "Our agencies operate under the law and their work is overseen by intelligence commissioners. Of course as technology develops and as the threats we face evolve so we need to make sure that the scrutiny and the frameworks in place remain strong and effective." Parliament's intelligence and security committee announced earlier this month that it is to scutinise the extent of mass surveillance in response to the concerns raised by the Snowden leaks. The prime minister issued his warning to newspapers after Ed Miliband raised concerns about the reports last week that the US has monitored the mobile phone of the German chancellor Angela Merkel. Miliband said: "I join the prime minister in his support for the work of our intelligence services. It is vital, it keeps us safe and, by its very nature, it goes unrecognised. I join the prime minister in applauding the men and women who work for our intelligence agencies. "We can all understand the deep concerns that recent reports have caused in some European countries, especially Germany. As well as providing that support for intelligence services it is right that every country ensures proper oversight of those activities." Julian Smith, who recently wrote to the Metropolitan police to assess whether the Guardian has broken the law in publishing details from the NSA files, asked the PM in the Commons: "Following the Sun's revelations this morning about the impact of the Snowden leaks, is it not time that any newspaper that may have crossed the line on national security comes forward and voluntarily works with the government to mitigate further risks to our citizens?"

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ScareMail
by Yush Bhardwaj 29 Oct '13

29 Oct '13

Finally we have something http://bengrosser.com/projects/scaremail/ * * * * * * * * * * * * *Yush Bhardwaj*

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Another Snowden News Story. Another Lesson in Proper Whistleblowing.
by Tarzie X 28 Oct '13

28 Oct '13

Nice to see folks discussing this blog post: http://ohtarzie.wordpress.com/2013/10/25/another-snowden-news-story-another… Would be grateful, though, if they read it, instead of decontextualizing pieces of it -- specifically my paraphrasing of the Good Whistleblower/Bad Whistleblower meme -- and then ranting as if my paraphrase was an endorsement. It is a great mystery to me why Jacob did this -- surely it was honest mistake! -- but I would be most appreciative if it ended with him. Thanks.

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Re: [cryptome] how embassy eavesdropping works
by John Young 28 Oct '13

28 Oct '13

Duncan Cambell is one of the few journalists superbly gifted in science, technology and informed analysis. He has a degree in nuclear physics, his mom reportedly a long-time employee of a UK spy agency, which must have led to great dinner convos when he and two other youngsters were prosecuted in 1978 for violating the OSA, and found innocent (she was an enthusiastic supporter): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ABC_trial Duncan introduced Cryptome in 1996 to 5-Eyes Echelon, Nicky Hager, Mike Frost, Perry Fellwock (outed NSA in 1974), and their bountiful reports on global surveillance in the 1980s and 1990s. Summary of their digging into secrets without benefit of leak and fixed slot machines, their voluminous and generous hard work done back then that led to today's dribbling parsimonious and niggardly news: http://cryptome.org/nsa-cryptome.htm Duncan had a long email exchange with Microsoft in 2000 about the so-called NSA_key which allegedly allowed covert access to MS products: http://cryptome.org/nsakey-ms-dc.htm And, Germany knew about 5-eyes spying in 2000: http://cryptome.org/jya/echelon-de-spy.htm What Duncan and these master researchers could do with the Snowden pile can only be dreamed about, unless, we pray, the pile has been shared with them (rumors they have helped WL). Certainly they could outdo the The Guardian (Campbell reports there occasionally), New York Times, Der Spiegel, WaPo, WSJ, et al lightweight poseurs. At 09:52 AM 10/28/2013, you wrote: >Some more gory details, several images. > >http://www.duncancampbell.org/embassy-bugging > >How embassy eavesdropping works

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Re: [Cryptography] [RNG] /dev/random initialisation
by Theodore Ts'o 28 Oct '13

28 Oct '13

On Thu, Oct 24, 2013 at 05:42:55PM -0400, Sandy Harris wrote: > ... > ifconfig > /dev/random > ... > > In general, building such operations into the device initialisation > code in the kernel is preferable to leaving it to an external script.... And this is *already* in Linux's /dev/random code since July 2012. (There is another problem caused by proprietary binary drivers from !@#@! proprietary chips from a company whose name shall remain starting with the letter Q, forcing some home routers to still be using ancient, years-old 2.6 kernels, but that's not a problem under my control. Said 2.6 kernels probably have huge numbers of zero-day flaws, some of which might allow a remote adversary to be able to execute a buffer overflow attack in kernel space, making flaws in the random number generator somewhat irrelevant...) > It looks as though getting 64 bits or more is possible. One of the > FreeBSD guys wrote on the other crypto list: > http://lists.randombit.net/pipermail/cryptography/2013-October/005689.html > > " We also added entropy based on device attach times. Measurements show this > gives at least 4 bits of entropy per device (usually a lot more), and in > the worst case we saw, 32 devices were measured. > > Ted is aware of this and says looking at something similar for Linux > is on his ToDo list. If something along those lines can be built and > the claim of four bits per device (or even two) is correct for Linux, > it appears that it would solve the problem. There is no "solve". In all of these cases, it's going to be very dependent on the hardware involved. Many home routers might only have two or three devices, so even if you get four bits per device, that's only going to be 12 bits of extra entropy. In combination with the entropy that we get from sampling interrupts, and if the device holds off on generation of public/private keypairs until they are actually needed, hopefully it will be enough. In other cases, if there are almost no init scripts configured, and SSH keys generated as the very thing after a cold power up, even adding device attach times might not be sufficient to defeat an adversary who is doing deep analysis about your particular home router's hardware and software setup. > If not, there may be other options. Any volatile kernel table -- > processes, open files, devices ... -- might provide some entropy and > it would be possible to instrument some system processes (init?) or > system calls so they did as well. We are already adding the CPU time elapsed (userspace plus kernel time) for each process when it exits. The theory behind this is that we have this information anyway, and process exits are a place where adding a call to add_device_randomness() isn't going to hurt system performance. We don't credit the entropy counter with any additional randomness, but the theory is that it can't hurt, and it might help. It's hopeful that for a system that is running shell scripts as part of boot, there will be at least some entropy added by sampling these values, even if it is not a huge amount. In theory this could be done for other system timings, but we need to chose things that minimize overhead imposed on the system. - Ted _______________________________________________ The cryptography mailing list cryptography(a)metzdowd.com http://www.metzdowd.com/mailman/listinfo/cryptography

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[liberationtech] Defeating massive wiretapping with opportunistic, unauthenticated encryption in HTTP ?
by Fabio Pietrosanti (naif) 28 Oct '13

28 Oct '13

Greetings, thinking on how to practically challenge the massive wiretapper (interceping on telecommunication lines/fibers/internet exchanges), there is a general acceptance that "opportunistic encryption" systems could be a good approach. To protect against massive wiretapping of SMTP email that's the approach already discussed here: https://mailman.stanford.edu/pipermail/liberationtech/2013-August/011130.ht… To protect against massive wiretapping of HTTP traffic, the general understanding is to use HTTPS. However HTTPS have several serious drawbacks: - The owner of a website have to pay "more" for the security of it's web-clients (buy a digital certificate) - The owner of a website have to pay "more" for the hosting of an HTTPS site vs. HTTP site - If the owner of a web don't pay more the end-user browser receive a BIG SECURITY WARNING (self-signed certificate) For the reason previously identified the "HTTPS" approach is still very valuable but it does not scale up to protect against massive wiretapper intercepting HTTP. The idea to fix this problem by creating a technology that enable opportunistic encryption of all data exchanged (via AJAX) by modern javascript applications by leveraging unathenticated TLS with DHE ciphers (providing Perfect Forward Secrecy). This could be realized by providing a "thin" layer of integration into any existing Javascript application to wrap the XHR/Ajax requests, proxying them trough a Javascript TLS Client, with some server-side code acting as a gateway/minimal TLS implementation working within an HTTP in HTTP tunnelling model. If a techology like that would exists, it would be possible to integrate it as part of Wordpress or Django or other commonly used web framework/technology. This would provide by default unauthenticated TLS encryption for most of it's web traffic, with perfect forward secrecy, without HTTPS. I tried to summarize the idea on the Forge (Javascript TLS stack) github issue at https://github.com/digitalbazaar/forge/issues/84 . I know that this kind of argument attract crypto-trolling ("Javascript encryption" and "Unauthenticated encryption" and "Opportunistic encryption") but i think that it's worth discussing because it could be a revolutionary approach to challenge massive wiretapping. What does various people think about this approach? -- Fabio Pietrosanti (naif) HERMES - Center for Transparency and Digital Human Rights http://logioshermes.org - http://globaleaks.org - http://tor2web.org -- Liberationtech is public & archives are searchable on Google. Violations of list guidelines will get you moderated: https://mailman.stanford.edu/mailman/listinfo/liberationtech. Unsubscribe, change to digest, or change password by emailing moderator at companys(a)stanford.edu.

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Developing an embedded, cryptographic daughter board
by Joshua Datko 28 Oct '13

28 Oct '13

I'm developing a cryptographic daughter board for the BeagleBone Black [1][2]. The design goals are to provide a "hardware-api" when an embedded systems engineer has available to him a TPM, HWRNG, EEPROM, and some additional hardware implemented algorithms (with embedded key storage) all on one board. My vision for this board is to see it used on a BeagleBone and see someone make a cool crypto device like a USB powered wallet or an embedded network server. There is a small GoogleGroup [3] where we are discussing the requirements, secure boot options, and other details and I'd like to invite the community here to join the conversation or lurk and following along. If there are any Electronics Engineers, I'd especially appreciate your participation. I'm an embedded software guy, so while designing the PCB from scratch is a fun challenge and I could use some backup :) It's very much in the design phase at the moment, but I do have some components that I'm breadboarding. While some details are BeagleBone centric, I think any embedded device that supplied 3.3V and supports an I2C bus could use this board. Josh [1] http://datko.net/cryptocape/ [2] http://beagleboard.org/Products/BeagleBone+Black/ [3] https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/cryptocape

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