November 2013 - cypherpunks - lists.cpunks.org

[IP] Why The Deep Web Has Washington Worried | TIME.com
by Eugen Leitl 06 Nov '13

06 Nov '13

----- Forwarded message from David Farber <farber(a)gmail.com> ----- Date: Wed, 6 Nov 2013 11:28:54 -0500 From: David Farber <farber(a)gmail.com> To: ip <ip(a)listbox.com> Subject: [IP] Why The Deep Web Has Washington Worried | TIME.com Message-Id: <20C7D1B2-B0E0-4D39-9854-CDF2AA1EC3EA(a)gmail.com> X-Mailer: Apple Mail (2.1816) Reply-To: dave(a)farber.net http://swampland.time.com/2013/10/31/the-deep-web-has-washington-worried/ Why The Deep Web Has Washington Worried >From online drug bazaars to virtual currency tax shelters, the growing anonymous web has many corners of Washington concerned Washington has no idea what to make of the Dread Pirate Roberts. As Lev Grossman and I write in this week’s cover story, the Dread Pirate Roberts allegedly ran the Silk Road, the world’s most successful online drug bazaar, until the feds caught him earlier this month. His real name, according to a 39-page federal complaint against him, is Ross Ulbricht, 29. He supposedly took the pseudonym from a character in the movie and book, The Princess Bride. In the Silk Road, DPR, as his followers called him, created a business model for anyone wanting to sell illicit items online using free encryption software called Tor and the virtually anonymous crypto-currency Bitcoin. Though the feds have taken Silk Road offline, there are plenty of folks lining up to be the next Dread Pirate Roberts. Lev and I examine the greater implications of the Deep Web, the massive and growing anonymous area of the Internet. But from the perspective of lawmakers and law enforcement in Washington, Silk Road presents a double conundrum. It’s a blueprint for criminals the world over at a time when FBI resources are stretched thin and political will to empower government snooping has cratered. And it has created a regulatory headache in figuring how to deal with whole new currencies, tax havens and virtual online markets. While Tor is used by everyone from law enforcement to Syrian dissidents to protect valuable information, it is a double-edged sword. Many experts warn that groups ranging from the Russian mafia to international drug cartels are looking closely at the lessons learned from the Silk Road. It took the FBI more than two years of investigative work to find Ulbricht. They don’t have the resources to compete with Silicon Valley in hiring, or the tools—a long-hoped for modernization of the law governing online wiretapping is on ice in Congress thanks to Edward Snowden. ( Developing technology to fight the Deep Web, or the anonymous non-searchable web, “is not adequately funded—it’s nowhere near adequately funded,” says Marcus Thomas, former assistant director of the FBI’s technology division and now on the advisory board Subsentio, which helps companies comply with online warranted wiretaps. “Historically it was well funded, but recently especially with sequestration, it’s been hard hit. It’s always been a difficult thing to build cost benefit analysis for. How much money should you spend building a technology you may not use for a year, if ever?” Chester Wisnieski, a senior information technology security adviser at Sophos, adds that the FBI doesn’t have enough trained staff. “If you look at the FBI—how many agents do they have in cyber? Less than 200,” he said. “There’s been a very fast shift of traditional crimes moving online and don’t have skilled agents to deal with it.” The policy problem is compounded by Bitcoin, which represents another set of jurisdictional tangles for Washington. The Senate Homeland Security Committee, officials tell TIME, plans on holding hearings on Bitcoin within the month. The committee sent letters to nine federal agencies in July asking for their thoughts on Bitcoins and other virtual currencies in the hopes of developing a holistic approach to the so-called cryptocurrency that neither stifles the currency’s potential nor enables criminals to abuse it. “As with all emerging technologies, the federal government must make sure that potential threats and risks are dealt with swiftly,” Committee Chairman Tom Carper, a Delaware Democrat, and the committee’s top Republican, Tom Coburn, wrote in the letters. “However, we must also ensure that rash or uninformed actions don’t stifle a potentially valuable technology.” Bitcoin can be a force for good. “We’ve grown used to the idea that virtual transactions should be tracked because they can be; whereas Bitcoin brings anonymity back into online commerce,” says Sasha Meinrath, director of the New America Foundation’s Open Technology Institute. “It’s amazing how scary this notion is to law enforcement. But I see it as akin to trade in gold, cash transactions, and barter: not something to be feared, but simply another useful tool for commerce.” And yet, virtual currencies have a complex past. In recent years, Liberty Reserve and e-Gold both ran afoul of the law, mostly for money laundering. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement seized funds from the world’s largest Bitcoin exchange, Mt. Gox, in May charging that the company was operating an unlicensed money transmitting service. Mt. Gox has since moved to put names to Bitcoin transfers and register with federal and state governments. There is about $2 billion Bitcoin in existence today. Authorities say Silk Road transactions amounted to $1.2 billion in Bitcoin. Indeed, regulators have already taken an active interest in Bitcoin. The Senate Finance Committee is looking at language to regulate virtual currencies its tax code overhaul. They’re also considering giving the IRS more money to track virtual tax havens, Senate sources tell TIME. A Government Accountability Office report in June warned that virtual currencies like Bitcoin could be abused as tax havens. New York Financial Services Superintendent Benjamin Lawsky sent subpoenas to 22 Bitcoin businesses this summer saying it was considering new regulatory guidance on virtual currencies. “If virtual currencies remain a virtual Wild west for narcotraffickers and other criminals,” he said announcing the subpoenas, “that would not only threaten our country’s national security, but also the very existence of the virtual currency industry as a legitimate business enterprise.” A Commodities Futures Trading Commissioner said his agency is looking into regulating Bitcoins as a commodity. And Treasury’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network put out guidance in March saying Bitcoin brokers would have to follow wire service regulations—a potentially onerous requirement as each wire service must register state by state. All of this means that no one is quite sure how to handle bitcoin: is it a currency? A bond? A commodity? Should dealers be regulated like wire services or brokers? Should profits be taxed as capital gains? Few in Washington have even begun to consider these questions, and yet given the rapid growth of Bitcoin, the Deep Web and websites like the Silk Road they will surely be forced to soon. Internet users are increasingly looking for anonymity as their preferences and personal information are tracked and traded like pork belly futures. For many, the Deep Web represents a haven from those prying eyes. But, as in real life, when there’s anonymity, there are dark alleys where people will abuse it. In the physical world, should we choose it, we can live a cash-based anonymous existence. Should we be able to do so online, even if it means anyone can buy drugs, fake IDs or illicit weapons as well? These are the questions Washington must grapple with as it looks at how to regulate cyrpotcurrencies and police the Deep Web. Click here to join TIME for as little as $2.99 to read Lev Grossman and Jay Newton-Small’s full cover story on the Deep Web. ------------------------------------------- Archives: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/247/=now RSS Feed: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/247/25094221-ddf8422b Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com ----- End forwarded message -----

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code & diagrams (urls)
by brian carroll 06 Nov '13

06 Nov '13

w h i t e s p a c e Codebases: Millions of lines of code (via digg.com) http://dailyinfographic.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/1276_lines_of_code2.… Cipher Mysteries (via zero) The latest news, views, research and reviews on uncracked historical ciphers… http://www.ciphermysteries.com/2010/07/18/a-beautiful-infinity Language of Flowers http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Language_of_flowers "The language of flowers, sometimes called floriography, is a means of cryptological communication through the use or arrangement of flowers. Meaning has been attributed to flowers for thousands of years, and some form of floriography has been practiced in traditional cultures throughout Europe, Asia, and the Middle East. Plants and flowers are used as symbols in the Hebrew Bible—particularly of love and lovers in the Song of Songs,[1] as an emblem for the Israelite people[2] and for the coming Messiah[3]—and of Jesus Christ in the New Testament.[4] In Western Culture, William Shakespeare ascribed emblematic meanings to flowers, especially in Hamlet, Prince of Denmark." // has me wondering what could be done with this, perhaps RNG // as if reverse crystal ball, if futuristic sensors added much moreso Little bublcam places life in spherical perspective http://phys.org/news/2013-11-bublcam-life-spherical-perspective.html ASCII Flow Diagram Tool website http://www.asciiflow.com/#Draw Codebases: Millions of lines of code (via digg.com) http://dailyinfographic.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/1276_lines_of_code2.… Cipher Mysteries (via zero) The latest news, views, research and reviews on uncracked historical ciphers… http://www.ciphermysteries.com/2010/07/18/a-beautiful-infinity Language of Flowers http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Language_of_flowers "The language of flowers, sometimes called floriography, is a means of cryptological communication through the use or arrangement of flowers. Meaning has been attributed to flowers for thousands of years, and some form of floriography has been practiced in traditional cultures throughout Europe, Asia, and the Middle East. Plants and flowers are used as symbols in the Hebrew Bible—particularly of love and lovers in the Song of Songs,[1] as an emblem for the Israelite people[2] and for the coming Messiah[3]—and of Jesus Christ in the New Testament.[4] In Western Culture, William Shakespeare ascribed emblematic meanings to flowers, especially in Hamlet, Prince of Denmark." // has me wondering what could be done with this, perhaps RNG // as if reverse crystal ball, if futuristic sensors added much moreso Little bublcam places life in spherical perspective http://phys.org/news/2013-11-bublcam-life-spherical-perspective.html ASCII Flow Diagram Tool website http://www.asciiflow.com/#Draw ☥ ☭ ☪

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[liberationtech] Setting up your own app store with F-Droid
by Nathan of Guardian 06 Nov '13

06 Nov '13

Useful HOWTO and new tools package by Hans for anyone who needs to distribute their own Android software, outside of Google Play, using the excellent F-Droid.org project. Clarification from below: While the US and Google no longer restrict access from Iran, the Google Play service is still unfortunately filtered and blocked there, and is increasingly facing app-specific filtering in other parts of the world (Viber downloads for Saudi Arabia, etc.) Ultimately, this is about a need to decentralize app distribution, while doing everything we can to ensure software security and verification for end-users. More from Hans... "The Google Play Store is not available in all parts of the world, the US restricts its use in certain countries like Iran, and many countries block access to the Play Store, like China. Also, the Google Play Store tracks it users actions, reporting back to Google what apps have been installed and also run on the phone. Because of the NSA leaks, we’re seeing that governments are actively tapping into the raw data streams of Google, Yahoo, and others. So that means that the information that the Google Play Store sends back to Google is also intercepted by the NSA and other country’s agencies like it, and they in turn also share that information with other governments. Lastly, the Google Play Store is not free software, unlike the core of Android itself. It is proprietary software that Google entirely controls. F-Droid is a wonderful, free app store for Android. It is modeled after Debian or other GNU/Linux distros in that it has its own package repositories (repos) and build servers for all the apps that are part of the official OS. Like Debian and Ubuntu, you can also setup your own repos for anyone to use. Any free software can be added to the official F-Droid repos, where they are built and signed by the F-Droid server. This can be annoying because it means that your apps in F-Droid are signed by a different key than your apps in the Google Play Store. If you host your own F-Droid repo, then people can use F-Droid to install your own builds signed by your own signing key. This is a quick HOWTO for how to setup such a repository on a Debian or Ubuntu box." https://guardianproject.info/2013/11/05/setting-up-your-own-app-store-with-… -- 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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[tor-talk] Tor Weekly News — November 6th, 2013
by dope457 06 Nov '13

06 Nov '13

======================================================================== Tor Weekly News November 6th, 2013 ======================================================================== Welcome to the nineteenth issue of Tor Weekly News, the weekly newsletter that covers what is happening in the up-to-date Tor community. Tails 0.21 is out ----------------- The Tails developers anounced the 34th release [1] of the live system based on Debian and Tor that preserves the privacy and anonymity of its users. The new version fixes two holes that gave too much power to the POSIX user running the desktop: Tor control port cannot be directly accessed anymore to disallow configuration changes and IP address retrieval, and the persistence settings now requires privileged access. On top of these specific changes, the release include security fixes [2] from the Firefox 17.0.10esr release and for a few other Debian packages. More visible improvements include the ability to persist printer settings, support for running from more SD card reader types, and a panel launcher for the password manager. For the curious, more details can be found in the full changelog [3]. As with every releases: be sure to upgrade! [1] https://tails.boum.org/news/version_0.21/ [2] https://tails.boum.org/security/Numerous_security_holes_in_0.20.1/ [3] https://git-tails.immerda.ch/tails/plain/debian/changelog New Tor Browser Bundles based on Firefox 17.0.10esr --------------------------------------------------- Erinn Clark released new versions of the Tor Browser Bundle [4] on November 1st. The previously “beta” bundles have moved to the “release candidate” stage and are almost identical to the stable ones, except for the version of the tor daemon. A couple of days later, David Fifield also released updated “pluggable transport“ bundles [5]. The new bundles include all security fixes from Firefox 17.0.10esr [6], and updated versions of libpng, NoScript and HTTPS Everywhere. It also contains a handful of improvements and fixes to the Tor Browser patches. Users of older version of the Tor Browser bundles should already have been reminded to upgrade by the notification system. Don't forget about it! This should be the last bundles based on the 17 branch of Firefox as it is going to be superseded by the 24 branch as the new long-term supported version in 6 weeks. Major progress has already been made by Mike Perry and Pearl Crescent to update the Tor Browser changes and review the new code base [7]. [4] https://blog.torproject.org/blog/new-tor-browser-bundles-firefox-17010esr [5] https://blog.torproject.org/blog/pluggable-transports-bundles-2417-rc-1-pt1… [6] https://www.mozilla.org/security/known-vulnerabilities/firefoxESR.html#fire… [7] https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/query?keywords=~ff24-esr Monthly status reports for October 2013 --------------------------------------- The wave of regular monthly reports from Tor project members for the month of October has begun early this time to reach the tor-reports mailing-list: Damian Johnson [8], Linus Nordberg [9], Karsten Loesing [10], Philipp Winter [11], Ximin Luo [12], Lunar [13], Kelley Misata [14], Matt Pagan [15], Sherief Alaa [16], Nick Mathewson [17], Pearl Crescent [18], George Kadianakis [19], Colin Childs [20], Arlo Breault [21], and Sukhbir Singh [22]. [8] https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-reports/2013-October/000367.html [9] https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-reports/2013-October/000369.html [10] https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-reports/2013-October/000370.html [11] https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-reports/2013-November/000371.html [12] https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-reports/2013-November/000372.html [13] https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-reports/2013-November/000373.html [14] https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-reports/2013-November/000374.html [15] https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-reports/2013-November/000375.html [16] https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-reports/2013-November/000376.html [17] https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-reports/2013-November/000377.html [18] https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-reports/2013-November/000378.html [19] https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-reports/2013-November/000379.html [20] https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-reports/2013-November/000380.html [21] https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-reports/2013-November/000381.html [22] https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-reports/2013-November/000382.html Tor Help Desk Roundup --------------------- One person asked why the lock icon on the Tor Project's website was not outlined in green. Sites that use HTTPS can purchase different types of SSL certificates. Some certificate issuers offer certificates that supply ownership information, such as the physical address of the website operator, for a higher price. Sites that use these certificates get the lock icon by their URL outlined in green. The Tor Project adds protection to the validity of our SSL certificate a different way, by supplying our SSL certificate fingerprint on our FAQ page [23]. You can double check that fingerprint on any of the Tor Project's mirror pages as well [24]. One person wanted to known why a website they were visiting over Firefox was telling them that they were not using Tor, even though Vidalia told them that Tor was running. By default, the Tor Browser Bundle does not anonymize all the traffic on your computer. Only the traffic you send through the Tor Browser Bundle will be anonymized. If you have Firefox and the Tor Browser open at the same time, the traffic you send through Firefox will not be anonymous. Using Firefox and Tor Browser Bundle at the same time is not a great idea because the two interfaces are almost identical, and it is easy to get the two browsers mixed up, even if you know what you are doing. [23] https://www.torproject.org/docs/faq.html.en#SSLcertfingerprint [24] https://torproject.org/getinvolved/mirrors.html.en Miscellaneous news ------------------ The third beta release of TorBirdy has been released [25] as version 0.1.2. Among several other fixes and improvements it restores proper usage of Tor when used with Thunderbird 24. Be sure to upgrade [26]! [25] https://blog.torproject.org/blog/torbirdy-012-our-third-beta-release [26] https://www.torproject.org/dist/torbirdy/torbirdy-0.1.2.xpi starlight reported [27] on running a Tor relays with the daemon compiled with the AddressSanitizer [28] memory error detector available since GCC 4.8 [27] https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-relays/2013-October/003187.html [28] https://code.google.com/p/address-sanitizer/ Isis Lovecruft has sent two proposals [29] for improvements to BridgeDB. One is finished and addresses the switch to a “Distributed Database System and RDBMS”. The second is still in draft stage and “specifies a system for social distribution of the centrally-stored bridges within BridgeDB”. [29] https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-dev/2013-November/005713.html Karsten Loesing announced [30] the availability of a new tech report he wrote with Steven J. Murdoch, and Rob Jansen: “Evaluation of a libutp- based Tor Datagram Implementation” [31]. Be sure to have a look if you are interested in one of the “promising approach to overcome Tor’s performance-related problems”. [30] https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-dev/2013-October/005700.html [31] https://research.torproject.org/techreports/libutp-2013-10-30.pdf SiNA Rabbani has been asking [32] for comments on two documents he wrote about how use cases and design of a “point-and-click” hidden service blogging tool, as part of the Cute Otter project [33]. [32] https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-dev/2013-October/005703.html [33] https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/attachment/wiki/org/sponsors/Otter… David Goulet released third rc of Torsocks 2.0.0 [34] with a lot of fixes and improvements. Available to download from GitHub [35] and also as Debian package from the experimental distribution [36]. [34] https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-dev/2013-November/005728.html [35] https://github.com/dgoulet/torsocks/archive/v2.0.0-rc3.tar.gz [36] http://packages.debian.org/experimental/torsocks Christian is working on a new round of improvements for Globe [37], a web application to learn about relays and bridges of the Tor network. The project seems close to be mature enough to replace Atlas [38] according to some. [37] https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-dev/2013-November/005725.html [38] https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-dev/2013-November/005735.html A discussion on the tor-relays mailing list prompted Roger Dingledine to ask about changing the current default exit policy [39] of the tor daemon. The current “restricted exit node” policy has been in place since 2003. As this has surprised some operators, switching the default policy to “middle node” is under consideration. [39] https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-relays/2013-November/003240.html Upcoming events --------------- Nov 05-07 | 20th ACM Conference on Computer and Communications Security | Berlin, Germany | http://www.sigsac.org/ccs/CCS2013/ | Dec 27-30 | Tor @ 30th Chaos Communication Congress | Hamburg, Germany | https://events.ccc.de/congress/2013/ This issue of Tor Weekly News has been assembled by Lunar, dope457, Matt Pagan, and Philipp Winter. Want to continue reading TWN? Please help us create this newsletter. We still need more volunteers to watch the Tor community and report important news. Please see the project page [40], write down your name and subscribe to the team mailing list [41] if you want to get involved! [40] https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/wiki/TorWeeklyNews [41] https://lists.torproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/news-team -- tor-talk mailing list - tor-talk(a)lists.torproject.org To unsubscribe or change other settings go to https://lists.torproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/tor-talk

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[Bitcoin-development] [ANN] High-speed Bitcoin Relay Network
by Matt Corallo 06 Nov '13

06 Nov '13

Recently, there has been a reasonable amount of discussion about the continued fragility of the public Bitcoin network on IRC and elsewhere (1). To this extent, I'm organizing a system of peering between nodes in the network by creating a system of high-speed relay nodes for miners and merchants/exchanges. This system will a) act as a fallback in the case that the public Bitcoin network encounters issues and b) decrease block propagation times between miners. It is NOT designed to in any way replace or decrease the need for the public Bitcoin P2P network. It is NOT any kind of attempt at centralization, and I still encourage interested parties to establish their own private peering agreements with large miners as needed. Currently the network consists of one specially-designed relay node, but I hope to bring more online in the coming days. This network is open to everyone via a few public relay nodes, but also will have nodes which are made available only to large miners and merchants/exchanges to mitigate the ability of malicious parties to DoS the network. To peer with the public relay nodes, simply select the closest region out of us-west (West Coast US), us-east (East Coast US), eu (Western Europe), au (Australia), or jpy (Japan) and add public.REGION.relay.mattcorallo.com to your addnode list. Note that since all of the relay nodes will relay between each other, you gain no latency advantage by peering with more than the closest node to you (and currently all the regions map to one node, so there they're redundant anyway). For each relay node, you can connect to either port 8334 or 8335. Connecting on port 8334 will relay only blocks, and port 8335 will relay both blocks and transactions. The relay nodes will request any transactions which appear in your invs no matter which port you connect to. Relay node details: * The relay nodes do some data verification to prevent DoS, but in order to keep relay fast, they do not fully verify the data they are relaying, thus YOU SHOULD NEVER mine a block building on top of a relayed block without fully checking it with your own bitcoin validator (as you would any other block relayed from the P2P network). * The relay nodes do not follow the standard inv-getdata-tx/block flow, but instead relay transactions/blocks immediately after they have done their cursory verification. They do keep some track of whether or not your nodes claim to have seen the transactions/blocks before relaying, but you may see transactions/blocks being sent which you already have and have not requested, if this is a problem for you due to bandwith issues, you should reconsider your bandwith constraints and/or are peering with too many nodes. * The relay nodes will all relay among themselves very quickly, so there is no advantage to peering with as many relay nodes as you can find, in fact, the increased incoming bandwidth during block relay spikes may result in higher latency for your nodes. * The relay nodes are NOT designed to ensure that you never miss data, and may fail to relay some transactions. Additionally, because the relay nodes do not respond to standard getdata requests, if you miss a relay and then reconnect, that data will not be sent again by the relay nodes. The relay nodes are NOT a replacement for having peers on the standard P2P network, they are only there to augment the existing P2P network. If you are a merchant/exchange/large miner/other important node operator and wish to gain access to additional domain names which map to relay nodes with fewer peers, please fill out the form at https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1UL82QdcXXEhZwSHJAK04Sk_cWg4zLOu8a216nO7Mt8… You can find the source for the relay nodes at https://github.com/TheBlueMatt/RelayNode If you have any comments/concerns/suggestions, please do not hesitate to email bitcoin-peering(a)mattcorallo.com Thanks, Matt (1) There has been extended discussion on #bitcoin-wizards as well as #bitcoin-dev of the very small number of active, listening nodes. Additionally, because many of those nodes are versions prior to 0.8.4, it seems very likely that maliciously creating network splits or at least drastically reducing the number of peers for most nodes would not be particularly challenging in the current network. Also, http://www.tik.ee.ethz.ch/file/49318d3f56c1d525aabf7fda78b23fc0/P2P2013_041… noted that they were able to single-handledly decrease the network-wide orphan rate by around 50% by improving network peering. Finally, you've all seen the recent discussion on malicious mining algorithms. Though those are not entirely prevented by reducing block propagation times, they can be significantly limited compared to the current, rather disjoint, network. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ November Webinars for C, C++, Fortran Developers Accelerate application performance with scalable programming models. Explore techniques for threading, error checking, porting, and tuning. Get the most from the latest Intel processors and coprocessors. See abstracts and register http://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/clk?id=60136231&iu=/4140/ostg.clktrk _______________________________________________ Bitcoin-development mailing list Bitcoin-development(a)lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/bitcoin-development

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[Bitcoin-development] we can all relax now
by kjj 06 Nov '13

06 Nov '13

One of the things that really gets me going is when someone devises a model, tests it against itself, and then pretends that they've learned something about the real world. Naturally, the Selfish Mining paper is exactly this sort of nonsense. Their model is one with no latency, and one where the attacker has total visibility across the network. An iterated FSM is not a suitable simulation of the bitcoin system. The bitcoin network does not have states, and to the extent that you can pretend that we do, you can't simulate transitions between them with static probabilities. The authors understand this deep down inside, even though they didn't work out the implications. They handwave the issue by assuming a total sybil attack, and in true academic spirit, they don't realize that the condition necessary for the attack is far, far worse than the attack itself. Greg said he'd like to run some simulations, and I'm thinking about it too. Unfortunately, he is busy all week, and I'm lazy (and also busy for most of tomorrow). If neither of us get to it first, I'm willing to pitch in 1 BTC as a bounty for building a general bitcoin network simulator framework. The simulator should be able to account for latency between nodes, and ideally within a node. It needs to be able to simulate an attacker that owns varying fractions of the network, and make decisions based only on what the attacker actually knows. It needs to be able to simulate this "attack" and should be generic enough to be easily modified for other crazy schemes. (Bounty offer is serious, but expires in one year [based on the earliest timestamp that my mail server puts on this email], and /may/ be subject to change if the price on any reputable exchange breaks 1000 USD per BTC in that period.) Basically, the lack of a decent network simulator is what allowed this paper to get press. If the author had been able to see the importance of the stuff he was ignoring, we wouldn't be wasting so much time correcting him (and sadly the reporters that have no way to check his claims). https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=324413.msg3495663#msg3495663 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ November Webinars for C, C++, Fortran Developers Accelerate application performance with scalable programming models. Explore techniques for threading, error checking, porting, and tuning. Get the most from the latest Intel processors and coprocessors. See abstracts and register http://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/clk?id=60136231&iu=/4140/ostg.clktrk _______________________________________________ Bitcoin-development mailing list Bitcoin-development(a)lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/bitcoin-development

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Re: [Cryptography] randomness +- entropy
by Jerry Leichter 05 Nov '13

05 Nov '13

On Nov 4, 2013, at 2:21 PM, John Denker wrote: > Some people have been throwing around the word "entropy" > rather carelessly. > > Entropy means something very special. Well, yes, and in its technical definitions - either in thermodynamics where it arose or information theory where it was imported because of a similarity in formalisms - it plays virtually no role in cryptographic discussion. In cryptography, especially when discussing random number generators, the word has a loosy-goosy meaning that's somehow tied to lack of predictability - but in an unspecified way. When people make it a regular habit to "guess" the entropy of various processes and then go on to build systems based on guesses, you know the word has lost any formal meaning it ever had. While the distinctions you draw are valid and important, I'm afraid "entropy" no longer has the capability to distinguish them. > For a great many cryptological purposes, a high-quality > PSEUDO-random distribution is good enough, even though its > entropy density is very low. Note the contrast: > > TRNG entropy density = 1 - epsilon > PRNG entropy density = epsilon I don't know what this means. > As another way of emphasizing the distinction: a PRNG places > orders-of-magnitude harsher demands on the strength of the > cryptological primitives it uses. I don't know what *this* means either. I drew a distinction in an earlier post - a distinction you can find in many papers on cryptographic primitives - between random values (unpredictable to the attackers being considered) and nonces (never repeated in a given cryptographic context, but there are no assumptions about unpredictability). Where a random n-bit value is specified, I can think of no paper that does not assume what we call "n bits of entropy" - though a better way to say it is "a value chosen uniformly at random from the set of n-bit strings". Sometimes the value is supposed to be chosen uniformly at random from some other set - e.g., from Z/p, i.e., between 0 and p-1. Trying to state this in terms of entropy is a losing game - and in fact it isn't actually trivial, given a random *bit* source, to produce such a distribution. People have gotten it wrong in the past. (The obvious technique of choosing a k with 2^k > p, choosing a "random" k-bit value, and the n reducing it mod p, if described in terms of "entropy", looks fine - I have k bits of entropy, which is more than enough to cover the choice I need to make. But the output is biased.) > This can be quantified > in terms of classical cryptologic ideas such as unicity > distance, but for present purposes I prefer the "entropy > density" language. "Unicity distance" is a nice but different concept - and one with little bearing on cryptography today. (If I draw a cipher E at random from some a collection of functions - e.g., by choosing a key - then the unicity distance is the unicity distance is just the number of pairs (x, E(x)) that specify E uniquely within the set. I suppose you can stretch this to talk about how many samples from the "random" generator are needed to specify *it* uniquely - i.e., be able to determine all past and future states - but I've seen the term used that way.) A broader - hence more useful - classical term (which may have been introduced by Shannon) is "equivocation". I don't recall the formal definition, but it attempts to capture the uncertainty an attacker has about the next plaintext, given all the information he already has. If I know a message was encrypted using a one-time pad, my uncertainty about the first character is not absolute - it's much more likely to be "t" than "z". T o provide information-theoretic security, a one-time-pad must contain "enough randomness" to keep my a priori and a postiori equivocation equal. This *is* something that can be given in terms of the entropies of the message and one-time-pad sources, but the deracinated notion of "entropy" one sees in most discussions is way too weak to say anything useful here.) > The rubber meets the road here: Consider the contrast: > > PRNG: I am quite sure that on startup the machine needs to > have on board a crypographically strong, well-seeded PRNG. > This needs to be up and running very, very early in the > boot-up process. Some things that need the PRNG cannot > wait. > > TRNG: At the moment I have no firm opinions as to how much > actual entropy the machine needs on start-up. I look > forward to having a discussion on this topic, with use-case > scenarios et cetera. A BBS generator is "indistinguishable" from a true random number generator. What's missing from that statement - and from the distinction you're drawing above - is a specification of the attack model. The BBS generator has inherent limitations that are given in its proof of correctness: The attacker has polynomially bounded resources (in fact, "attacker" literally means a polynomially-bounded probabilistic TM), which in turn implies that it only has access to a polynomially-bounded number of outputs. These are generally fine. The proof doesn't bother to state (though it's implicit) the obvious: That the attacker doesn't have access to the internal state of the generator. This isn't an "entropy" assumption - the internal state must, to the attacker, appear to have been chosen uniformly at random from all possible internal states, and is not available to the attacker. If you want to use "entropy-talk", all the entropy in a BBS generator is there, at the start, in the choice of the initial state. And yet there's a profound difference between the output of a BBS generator and the output of, say, a linear congruential PRNG starting with exactly the same state. One is pr edictable given a few successive samples; the other is secure given any polynomially-bounded number of them. "Entropy" simply cannot capture this distinction. And it's in fact exactly the distinction - in the transition from Shannon's classic notions of information-based security to modern computability-based ones - that make it possible to say anything useful at all about encryption algorithms other than one-time-pads. While we have no proofs like those for BBS for PRNG's built on practical cryptographic primitives, we generally assume that they have similar properties. (More correctly, we can prove some properties given assumptions about others. But those are the same assumptions we make about the actual encryption and hashing and signature algorithms we use. If they fail, the whole system falls down regardless of the source of "random" values.) To summarize: The distinction between cryptographic PRNG's and "true" RNG's has to do with the attack model. The attacker considered in the former is polynomially bounded (OK) and doesn't receive as input some special piece that we label "internal state" (this one can be violated). The attacker against a "true" RNG is ... what? Formalizing that is equivalent to formalizing randomness - which no one has managed to do. (In fact, modern developments of probability theory don't even try - random distributions are simply among the axioms. Even more, if you believe John Conway, the "Free Will" Theorem he and he and Simon Kochen proved show that "quantum unpredictability" is *stronger* than randomness!) In practical cryptography, this translates into "whatever I can imagine". In my other thread on plausible attacks, I tried to focus on limiting the attacker to, well, plausible operations in a particular real-world setting. If you *don't* do that, you can make no progress at all. A hardware generator - even Turbid - is vulnerable if I include as plausible an attacker who's infiltrated every supplier of electronic components in the world and has slipped a small transmitter into everything built, including every diode, resistor - hell, maybe every piece of wire! I have no problem with designing strong, practical random number generators. I'd love to see them deployed more widely. But clever designs of low-level primitives, as important as they are, are not a substitute for *system* designs; in fact, they can blind us to the necessary system properties. If a cryptographic primitive needs some unpredictable input, we need to go further and ask (a) how much? (b) unpredictable under what attack model? Only then can we begin to answer the *system* design question of "what's a suitable generator for such inputs?" If we can, for a reasonable cost (measured in any appropriate way), get our hands on a generator whose attack model assumes way more attacker resources than attacks on multiple uses of those values - great, let's make use of it. Too much discussion of "random number generators" is the equivalent of "I'm not sure AES is strong enough, so I'll do a ROT-13 encoding first - it can't hurt". And it can't - until you run into Tony Hoare's comment to the effect that "You can make a system so simple that you can see at a glance that it's correct, or so complex that you can't see at a glance that it's *not* correct." -- Jerry _______________________________________________ The cryptography mailing list cryptography(a)metzdowd.com http://www.metzdowd.com/mailman/listinfo/cryptography

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key challenge results
by coderman 05 Nov '13

05 Nov '13

vast majority of players (63*) were able to encrypt to my key even though the email address did not match. (no address would, nor could you query a key server for it) this is a much better result than i expected, as some "friendly" clients have trouble encrypting without an email match. the onion reference a ruse, misdirection. hidden services not required to encrypt ;) same for invalid creation date, however, i'd love to know if anyone had a client complain on create date. as for the rest, i did enjoy the quotation discussion tangent! best regards, --- *unofficial tally: 63 successful players 3 failed attempts 1 anon recipient (extra credit :) clients (unverified) including: GnuPG, BCPG, OpenPGP.js, Why do you need to know? on platforms spanning Linux, BSD, Windows, OSX.

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[Cryptography] Embedded device key generation problems due to bad PRNGs
by Bill Frantz 05 Nov '13

05 Nov '13

<https://freedom-to-tinker.com/blog/nadiah/new-research-theres-no-need-panic…> describes net scans for bad RSA keys on the web performed by Zakir Durumeric, Eric Wustrow, Alex Halderman, and Nadia Heninger. Among their conclusions: We manually verified that 59,000 duplicate keys were repeated due to entropy problems, representing 1% of all certificates, or 2.6% of self-signed certificates. We also found that 585,000 certificates, or 4.6% of all devices used the default certificates pre-installed on embedded devices. More surprisingly, we discovered that entropy problems can allow a remote attacker with no special access to factor a significant fraction of the RSA keys in use on the Internet. We were able to factor 0.4% of the RSA keys in our SSL scan. We did this by computing the greatest common divisor (GCD) of all pairs of moduli from RSA public keys on the Internet. However, there’s no need to panic as this problem mainly affects various kinds of embedded devices such as routers and VPN devices, not full-blown web servers. The list of vulnerable devices that we have already identified includes more than thirty different manufacturers, including almost all of the biggest names in the computer hardware industry. The kinds of products that we identified include firewalls, routers, VPN devices, remote server administration devices, printers, projectors, and VOIP phones. This is a problem, but it’s not something that average users need to worry about just yet. However, embedded device manufacturers have a lot of work to do, and some system administrators should be concerned. This is a wake-up call to the security community, and a reminder to all of how security vulnerabilities can sometimes be hiding in plain sight. Cheers - Bill ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Bill Frantz | Airline peanut bag: "Produced | Periwinkle (408)356-8506 | in a facility that processes | 16345 Englewood Ave www.pwpconsult.com | peanuts and other nuts." - Duh | Los Gatos, CA 95032 _______________________________________________ The cryptography mailing list cryptography(a)metzdowd.com http://www.metzdowd.com/mailman/listinfo/cryptography

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Re: [Cryptography] randomness +- entropy
by Theodore Ts'o 05 Nov '13

05 Nov '13

On Mon, Nov 04, 2013 at 12:21:00PM -0700, John Denker wrote: > > FWIW note that current Linux distros make no attempt to > provide a reservoir of true-randomly distributed bits for > use at the next startup. There are some efforts toward > storing a seed for the kernel PRNG, but the stored seed is > itself pseudo-randomly generated, and the kernel correctly > attributes zero entropy to it. One of the reasons why we don't attempt to extract "true random bits" and save them across a reboot is that even we had such bits that were secure even if the underlying crypto primitives were compromised to a fare-thee-well, once you write them to the file on the hard drive and the OS gets shut down, there's no guarantee that an adversary might not be able to read the bits while the OS is shut down. Even if you don't do something truly stupid (such as leaving your laptop unattended in a hotel room while visiting China), the risk of having your "true random bits" stolen is probably higher than the cryptographic primitives getting compromised. That's probably one of the reasons why people tend to not necessarily worry about the difference between a CSRNG and a TRNG in practice. For example, these are the people who believe that we should just replace Linux's /dev/random with a Fortuna RNG which doesn't even pretend to try to track entropy estimates, and which fundamentally assumes that the underlying crypto algorithms are secure, or at least, not the weakest link to worry about. (Again, realistically, the chances that your OS kernel has some 0-day vulnerability that the NSA's Tailored Access Operations folks have purchased from some black hat is probably a bigger risk than there being a cryptographic weakness in AES or SHA that is exploitable given the how we are using the encryption or crypto hash in Yarrow, Fortuna or Linux's /dev/random.) I still think it's worth it to have a /dev/random where we attempt to make an estimate of the entropy that we've collected and then later dispensed. But I recognize that from a engineering perspective, the distinction is not going to be that important for many people who are interested in practical security issues. Regards, - Ted _______________________________________________ The cryptography mailing list cryptography(a)metzdowd.com http://www.metzdowd.com/mailman/listinfo/cryptography

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"Reforms" to NSA spying
by Jim Bell 04 Nov '13

04 Nov '13

A few days ago I read of 'reforms' being proposed to NSA spying on phone and internet metadata, along the lines of requiring the government to obtain some sort of warrant to get data from the phone companies, etc. Progress? I doubt it. Looks to me like the government knows it's going to lose control of the data, and probably there are no requirements that such phone co's keep 'all' the data. I predict that any proposed new bill will contain requirements that the phone co's record 'all' of the data the government might want, and keep it for an extended period of time. The government knows that if no such requirement is put into law, phone co's will compete for customers by offering ever-more-complete privacy. Soon enough, no phone company will store metadata, or they will store it in such a way that it will be useless for government purposes. Jim Bell http://news.yahoo.com/big-us-tech-firms-calls-reform-snooping-161145013.htm

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NSA - What for.
by Juan Garofalo 04 Nov '13

04 Nov '13

What's the purpose of all the US spying? It obviously is not directed against 'terrists' since the only real terrorist out there are the american military sacks of shit and their accomplices. There are no 'foreign' terrorists who want to attack the US. If 'terrists' really existed, we'd be seeing real terrorist attacks in US cities every week. But there are none. So, are they spying on ordinary american subjects? What for? I mean, what actual benefit are they getting from that? They are the ones who caught DPR. But are they going to use their 'secret' information to put in jail every 'criminal' in the US? Or are they spying on behalf of american business, stealing industrial secrets and information from the competitors of american industries? Or are they mostly a useless bureaucracy that only steals and stores data, not doing anything else, at least for the time being? Preparing to transform the US from a covert totalitarian shithole into an overt totalitarian shithole? Or? J.

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Re: [liberationtech] Obfuscation / Network Steganography Research
by Griffin Boyce 04 Nov '13

04 Nov '13

Lucas Dixon wrote: > Hi, > > I'm trying to put together a good reading and person list for what is > currently known on network steganography (in particular, network > traffic obfuscation) I'd recommend checking out these selected papers in anonymity: http://freehaven.net/anonbib/ Two papers in particular: Traffic Analysis Attacks on a Continuously-Observable Steganographic File System (Troncoso, et al 2007) http://freehaven.net/anonbib/cache/troncoso-ih2007.pdf StegoTorus: A Camouflage Proxy for the Tor Anonymity System (Weinberg, et al 2012) http://freehaven.net/anonbib/cache/ccs2012-stegotorus.pdf There are several that briefly talk about stego, but right now there haven't been that many devoted to the topic. best, Griffin -- Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle. PGP: 0xD9D4CADEE3B67E7AB2C05717E331FD29AE792C97 OTR: saint(a)jabber.ccc.de -- 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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[Bitcoin-development] Electrum version 1.9
by Thomas Voegtlin 04 Nov '13

04 Nov '13

Electrum version 1.9 is now released. This version connects to multiple servers, and it also checks the SSL certificates of servers it knows. Please note that the BIP32 features are postponed (to version 2.0), due to the discussions about mnemonic seed format. Here is the changelog: # Release 1.9 * The client connects to multiple servers in order to retrieve block headers and find the longest chain * SSL certificate validation (to prevent MITM) * Deterministic signatures (RFC 6979) * Menu to create/restore/open wallets * Create transactions with multiple outputs from CSV (comma separated values) * New user interface for text mode, named "stdio" (does not use curses) * Plugins are no longer tied to the qt GUI, they can reach all GUIs * Proxy bugs have been fixed ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Android is increasing in popularity, but the open development platform that developers love is also attractive to malware creators. Download this white paper to learn more about secure code signing practices that can help keep Android apps secure. http://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/clk?id=65839951&iu=/4140/ostg.clktrk _______________________________________________ Bitcoin-development mailing list Bitcoin-development(a)lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/bitcoin-development

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private fiber security, large IPsec deployments [was: PRISM too much trouble? Get MUSCULAR]
by coderman 04 Nov '13

04 Nov '13

On Wed, Oct 30, 2013 at 11:35 AM, Gregory Foster <gfoster(a)entersection.org> wrote: > ... According to a top secret accounting dated Jan. 9, 2013, > NSA’s acquisitions directorate sends millions of records > every day from Yahoo and Google internal networks ... > The NSA’s principal tool to exploit the data links is a > project called MUSCULAR, operated jointly with the > agency’s British counterpart, GCHQ. From undisclosed > interception points, the NSA and GCHQ are copying > entire data flows across fiber-optic cables that carry > information between the data centers... encryption between sites would eliminate the risk above on private fiber. you can easily accomplish this today via various means. (some businesses already VPN over private dedicated fiber) if you wanted to protect every host in every data center end-to-end would you go with IPsec or OpenVPN or other? what is the largest IPsec deployment on record? (transport, not tunnel mode) how would you handle key management / key exchange for such a system?

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Meet “badBIOS,” the mysterious Mac and PC malware that jumps airgaps
by Eugen Leitl 03 Nov '13

03 Nov '13

http://arstechnica.com/security/2013/10/meet-badbios-the-mysterious-mac-and… Meet “badBIOS,” the mysterious Mac and PC malware that jumps airgaps Like a super strain of bacteria, the rootkit plaguing Dragos Ruiu is omnipotent. by Dan Goodin - Oct 31 2013, 3:07pm CET BLACK HAT HACKING Aurich Lawson / Thinkstock Three years ago, security consultant Dragos Ruiu was in his lab when he noticed something highly unusual: his MacBook Air, on which he had just installed a fresh copy of OS X, spontaneously updated the firmware that helps it boot. Stranger still, when Ruiu then tried to boot the machine off a CD ROM, it refused. He also found that the machine could delete data and undo configuration changes with no prompting. He didn't know it then, but that odd firmware update would become a high-stakes malware mystery that would consume most of his waking hours. In the following months, Ruiu observed more odd phenomena that seemed straight out of a science-fiction thriller. A computer running the Open BSD operating system also began to modify its settings and delete its data without explanation or prompting. His network transmitted data specific to the Internet's next-generation IPv6 networking protocol, even from computers that were supposed to have IPv6 completely disabled. Strangest of all was the ability of infected machines to transmit small amounts of network data with other infected machines even when their power cords and Ethernet cables were unplugged and their Wi-Fi and Bluetooth cards were removed. Further investigation soon showed that the list of affected operating systems also included multiple variants of Windows and Linux. "We were like, 'Okay, we're totally owned,'" Ruiu told Ars. "'We have to erase all our systems and start from scratch,' which we did. It was a very painful exercise. I've been suspicious of stuff around here ever since." In the intervening three years, Ruiu said, the infections have persisted, almost like a strain of bacteria that's able to survive extreme antibiotic therapies. Within hours or weeks of wiping an infected computer clean, the odd behavior would return. The most visible sign of contamination is a machine's inability to boot off a CD, but other, more subtle behaviors can be observed when using tools such as Process Monitor, which is designed for troubleshooting and forensic investigations. Another intriguing characteristic: in addition to jumping "airgaps" designed to isolate infected or sensitive machines from all other networked computers, the malware seems to have self-healing capabilities. "We had an air-gapped computer that just had its [firmware] BIOS reflashed, a fresh disk drive installed, and zero data on it, installed from a Windows system CD," Ruiu said. "At one point, we were editing some of the components and our registry editor got disabled. It was like: wait a minute, how can that happen? How can the machine react and attack the software that we're using to attack it? This is an air-gapped machine and all of the sudden the search function in the registry editor stopped working when we were using it to search for their keys." Over the past two weeks, Ruiu has taken to Twitter, Facebook, and Google Plus to document his investigative odyssey and share a theory that has captured the attention of some of the world's foremost security experts. The malware, Ruiu believes, is transmitted though USB drives to infect the lowest levels of computer hardware. With the ability to target a computer's Basic Input/Output System (BIOS), Unified Extensible Firmware Interface (UEFI), and possibly other firmware standards, the malware can attack a wide variety of platforms, escape common forms of detection, and survive most attempts to eradicate it. But the story gets stranger still. In posts here, here, and here, Ruiu posited another theory that sounds like something from the screenplay of a post-apocalyptic movie: "badBIOS," as Ruiu dubbed the malware, has the ability to use high-frequency transmissions passed between computer speakers and microphones to bridge airgaps. Bigfoot in the age of the advanced persistent threat At times as I've reported this story, its outline has struck me as the stuff of urban legend, the advanced persistent threat equivalent of a Bigfoot sighting. Indeed, Ruiu has conceded that while several fellow security experts have assisted his investigation, none has peer reviewed his process or the tentative findings that he's beginning to draw. (A compilation of Ruiu's observations is here.) Also unexplained is why Ruiu would be on the receiving end of such an advanced and exotic attack. As a security professional, the organizer of the internationally renowned CanSecWest and PacSec conferences, and the founder of the Pwn2Own hacking competition, he is no doubt an attractive target to state-sponsored spies and financially motivated hackers. But he's no more attractive a target than hundreds or thousands of his peers, who have so far not reported the kind of odd phenomena that has afflicted Ruiu's computers and networks. In contrast to the skepticism that's common in the security and hacking cultures, Ruiu's peers have mostly responded with deep-seated concern and even fascination to his dispatches about badBIOS. "Everybody in security needs to follow @dragosr and watch his analysis of #badBIOS," Alex Stamos, one of the more trusted and sober security researchers, wrote in a tweet last week. Jeff Moss—the founder of the Defcon and Blackhat security conferences who in 2009 began advising Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano on matters of computer security—retweeted the statement and added: "No joke it's really serious." Plenty of others agree. "Dragos is definitely one of the good reliable guys, and I have never ever even remotely thought him dishonest," security researcher Arrigo Triulzi told Ars. "Nothing of what he describes is science fiction taken individually, but we have not seen it in the wild ever." Been there, done that Triulzi said he's seen plenty of firmware-targeting malware in the laboratory. A client of his once infected the UEFI-based BIOS of his Mac laptop as part of an experiment. Five years ago, Triulzi himself developed proof-of-concept malware that stealthily infected the network interface controllers that sit on a computer motherboard and provide the Ethernet jack that connects the machine to a network. His research built off of work by John Heasman that demonstrated how to plant hard-to-detect malware known as a rootkit in a computer's peripheral component interconnect, the Intel-developed connection that attaches hardware devices to a CPU. It's also possible to use high-frequency sounds broadcast over speakers to send network packets. Early networking standards used the technique, said security expert Rob Graham. Ultrasonic-based networking is also the subject of a great deal of research, including this project by scientists at MIT. Of course, it's one thing for researchers in the lab to demonstrate viable firmware-infecting rootkits and ultra high-frequency networking techniques. But as Triulzi suggested, it's another thing entirely to seamlessly fuse the two together and use the weapon in the real world against a seasoned security consultant. What's more, use of a USB stick to infect an array of computer platforms at the BIOS level rivals the payload delivery system found in the state-sponsored Stuxnet worm unleashed to disrupt Iran's nuclear program. And the reported ability of badBIOS to bridge airgaps also has parallels to Flame, another state-sponsored piece of malware that used Bluetooth radio signals to communicate with devices not connected to the Internet. "Really, everything Dragos reports is something that's easily within the capabilities of a lot of people," said Graham, who is CEO of penetration testing firm Errata Security. "I could, if I spent a year, write a BIOS that does everything Dragos said badBIOS is doing. To communicate over ultrahigh frequency sound waves between computers is really, really easy." Coincidentally, Italian newspapers this week reported that Russian spies attempted to monitor attendees of last month's G20 economic summit by giving them memory sticks and recharging cables programmed to intercept their communications. Eureka For most of the three years that Ruiu has been wrestling with badBIOS, its infection mechanism remained a mystery. A month or two ago, after buying a new computer, he noticed that it was almost immediately infected as soon as he plugged one of his USB drives into it. He soon theorized that infected computers have the ability to contaminate USB devices and vice versa. "The suspicion right now is there's some kind of buffer overflow in the way the BIOS is reading the drive itself, and they're reprogramming the flash controller to overflow the BIOS and then adding a section to the BIOS table," he explained. He still doesn't know if a USB stick was the initial infection trigger for his MacBook Air three years ago, or if the USB devices were infected only after they came into contact with his compromised machines, which he said now number between one and two dozen. He said he has been able to identify a variety of USB sticks that infect any computer they are plugged into. At next month's PacSec conference, Ruiu said he plans to get access to expensive USB analysis hardware that he hopes will provide new clues behind the infection mechanism. He said he suspects badBIOS is only the initial module of a multi-staged payload that has the ability to infect the Windows, Mac OS X, BSD, and Linux operating systems. Dragos Ruiu Julia Wolf "It's going out over the network to get something or it's going out to the USB key that it was infected from," he theorized. "That's also the conjecture of why it's not booting CDs. It's trying to keep its claws, as it were, on the machine. It doesn't want you to boot another OS it might not have code for." To put it another way, he said, badBIOS "is the tip of the warhead, as it were." “Things kept getting fixed” Ruiu said he arrived at the theory about badBIOS's high-frequency networking capability after observing encrypted data packets being sent to and from an infected laptop that had no obvious network connection with—but was in close proximity to—another badBIOS-infected computer. The packets were transmitted even when the laptop had its Wi-Fi and Bluetooth cards removed. Ruiu also disconnected the machine's power cord so it ran only on battery to rule out the possibility it was receiving signals over the electrical connection. Even then, forensic tools showed the packets continued to flow over the airgapped machine. Then, when Ruiu removed the internal speaker and microphone connected to the airgapped machine, the packets suddenly stopped. With the speakers and mic intact, Ruiu said, the isolated computer seemed to be using the high-frequency connection to maintain the integrity of the badBIOS infection as he worked to dismantle software components the malware relied on. "The airgapped machine is acting like it's connected to the Internet," he said. "Most of the problems we were having is we were slightly disabling bits of the components of the system. It would not let us disable some things. Things kept getting fixed automatically as soon as we tried to break them. It was weird." It's too early to say with confidence that what Ruiu has been observing is a USB-transmitted rootkit that can burrow into a computer's lowest levels and use it as a jumping off point to infect a variety of operating systems with malware that can't be detected. It's even harder to know for sure that infected systems are using high-frequency sounds to communicate with isolated machines. But after almost two weeks of online discussion, no one has been able to rule out these troubling scenarios, either. "It looks like the state of the art in intrusion stuff is a lot more advanced than we assumed it was," Ruiu concluded in an interview. "The take-away from this is a lot of our forensic procedures are weak when faced with challenges like this. A lot of companies have to take a lot more care when they use forensic data if they're faced with sophisticated attackers."

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Re: Meet “badBIOS,” the mysterious Mac and PC malware that jumps airgaps
by brian carroll 03 Nov '13

03 Nov '13

naive perhaps, though would it be possible to transmit such 'radio code' via a small transmitter, say at short range in another building, that could send a stream of infecting code into a building (and thus the infection could begin outside the USB framework), such as via a small programmed microcontroller with radio antenna, either networked or running autonomously (or would this be a pirate radio issue, closed-in on quickly by HAMs monitoring misuse of spectrum). further, if this radio broadcast of code were possible, one-way or bidirectional, what would prevent this from scaling city or region wide if a transmitter were overtaken and sending out signals to computers en masse, to reprogram firmware, targeting via equipment statistics or OS/hardware demographics. just wondering if software-defined radio may be a context for hacking computers beyond the peripherals directly attached to the computers, such that a different security situation, boundary, or perimeter may exist yet not be accounted for or protected against.

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Re: [Cryptography] [RNG] on RNGs, VM state, rollback, etc.
by Theodore Ts'o 02 Nov '13

02 Nov '13

On Fri, Oct 25, 2013 at 08:12:00AM -0400, John Kelsey wrote: > This gets back to the threat model discussion. If your attacker is > watching you from the outside as you generate your key, then > interacting with stuff over the local net won't help you much. (You > may get a bit or two of entropy from the attacker not being able to > know exactly which clock-tick you were on when the interrupt was > serviced, but not much.). If he's not watching you then, you can > rule out a whole category of attackers. Yes, absolutely. For example, if you assume that the attacker has network taps at Fort Meade and in a phone closets of companies like AT&T, they are very likely not going to be able to watch your LAN traffic. OTOH, if they have physical access to your LAN such that they can drop an agent close to your computer that can monitor all of the packets hitting your computer, we have to ask how are they doing this? If they can someone break into your local ethernet switch remotely, then you might be in a world of hurt (although usually switches generally don't have enough of general purpose CPU that this is likely). If you posit a "black bag" job where they physically break into your house, and replace your ethernet switch, then they could presumably place a keyboard bug on your keyboard, or otherwise physically tamper with your computer, install audio/video surveillance equipment in an HVAC duct, etc. --- and then you're either doing something really black hatish, or I have a tin foil hat to sell to you, or possibly both. :-) My challenge as someone who is designing things like a general purpose /dev/random is that it's challenging to determine which assumptions about the threat environment might make sense in a large set of hypothetical scenarios, and which do not. I can imagine scenarios where the adversary is on a public network --- say, at a University dorm network --- who might be able to watch interpacket network arrival times, but who probably can't make a lot of assumptions about HDD completion drive times --- and the user might want to generate a securely long-term public key for their ssh host key or for GPG. I'm less willing to accept as a valid threat model one where the adversary has near-total control over _all_ entropy sources, *and* can divine the state of the prng, but has no other access to the system so they can't break root in other ways, *and* where if you can't prove that you can make the prng secure again, it's somehow horrible and your rng is not robust (and that the authors of said paper should deserve lots of citations so they can get a suitably high impact score on their way to achieving tenure :-). But maybe there are scenarios where such a threat environment is actually realistic. I'm certainly willing to hear someone try to give me an example of such a threat environment; it would probably be quite educational. - Ted _______________________________________________ The cryptography mailing list cryptography(a)metzdowd.com http://www.metzdowd.com/mailman/listinfo/cryptography

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threat-model clarification
by brian carroll 02 Nov '13

02 Nov '13

(was: Re: Meet "badBIOS") additional clarification regarding my last post... https://cpunks.org//pipermail/cypherpunks/2013-November/001957.html i did not thoroughly think through my explanation and a large gap exists in reasoning, and so want to provide additional explanation about how it could be possible to defeat existing security measures via this approach +------+ attacker ---> | SCIF | +------+ basically the idea of a boundary or wall around a SCIF, even if acoustically and electromagnetically shielded, is proposed possible to bypass via resonance and-or also quantum effects if they were to function in a similar way so even though a boundary could exist for EM and sound, that separates what is outside from what is inside, it is proposed that an attacker could potentially move through this boundary and still interact with interior equipment via acoustic and electromagnetic principles what was missing from the explanation was that this attack could occur within a context of 'other dimensions' or additional dimensionality, versus 4D of space-time that is presumably standardized for the basic security evaluation [4D] ---> [otherD] ---> [4D] in other words, what is proposed is that resonance could occur outside of only a 4 dimensional context, as part of the larger nested circuitry of the cosmos, and bypass the bounded "physics" of limited 4D space-time and its rules, to reemerge on the inside of the SCIF security perimeter, in a context accessed by electromagnetism and sound (as these may be connected with, interdimensionally) f l a t l a n d ...................... +------+ attacker ---> | SCIF | +------+ in other words, this is to recontextualize the SCIF in the realm of multiple dimensions beyond space-time, that hierarchically could exist in N-dimensions, which is proposed to correlate with a state of absolute truth like Flatland the novel, higher dimensions may exist unseen due to parameters or limits, and thus beyond imagination, unless somehow accessing keys to the threshold condition, the structure connecting layers (note: relation of electromagnetism, sound; the aether) so while an attack against a SCIF could be defeated by electromagnetic and acoustic shielding that would not allow such emissions to escape in 4D, seemingly, this condition may not exist within higher dimensions that can bypass the secure boundary, threshold, 'wall' f l a t l a n d ...................... (otherD)--------. | | | | | v | +------+ attacker ---> | SCIF | +------+ if an attacker, for instance, had equipment that could access this higher dimensionality, likely using acoustic and electromagnetic technology to do so, it may involve a circuit that exists outside 4 dimensional space-time, and moves through a higher-dimensionality to breach the protective barrier, reemerging on the other side of the wall, inside the SCIF, via acoustic and EM effects, such as resonance or perhaps quantum-correlations due to entanglement of matter, energy, information f l a t l a n d ...................... (otherD) (attacker) | | v +------+ secure ---> | SCIF | +------+ likewise, a true security threat could today exist that in this way appears entirely *invisible* because it is functioning beyond normal perception in a 4D context which is actually nested within higher dimensionality and thus omniscient-like observation, surveillance, if not political meddling and exploitation could occur from beyond the normal realm of perception, via similar means yet remain officially unaccounted for and unacknowledged, though be the actual context for events that are occurring, which tends towards a Matrix red pill or blue pill situation in other words, the attackers could be invisible and have the advantage of different physics, and be siphoning data and information from other dimensionality yet basically remain unseen or removed from immediate interactions, though rely on avatar-like secondary relations as part of a management scheme, in a realm as if "make believe" note: in this context, "binary computation" could relate to dimensionality and in this way: mathematics in 4D could be differently patterned in higher dimensions if not solvable via unseen correlations (math based on patterns, dimensionality effecting their functionality, how the patterns relate, 'compute', via structures) attacker [4D] ==> [otherD] ---> SCIF: ==> [4D] equipment thus, even in the four dimensional context, if this could be circumvented to defeat the security barrier or wall of the SCIF, a principle that is interdimensional such as resonance could appear on both side of this boundary and yet not pass through it in 4D space-time, instead the attack would leave this realm, move into a higher dimensionality and reappear elsewhere in 4D, within acoustic and electromagnetic principles that involve pairing or matching can that be remotely correlated, as with entangled objects and acoustic resonance sound/em [4D] ==> [otherD] ---> SCIF: ==> [4D] sound/em thus to clarify: the 'magic flute' of some unknown technology would access other dimensionality via its acoustic or other principles, and perhaps this is also potentially ~natural or automatic- and could reappear on the other side of the boundary, via this] resonance or entanglement, even while the SCIF is designed to protect against any such outside/inside interactions, because it goes beyond 4D spacetime and involves interdimensional circuits of connection, seemingly fundamentally involving information itself as this connects to matter and energy structurally (perhaps in some ways related to information and its hypothesized ability to escape a blackhole) (such structures are what CERN could be dealing with in the unmentionable Da Vinci Code realm, where the recontextualization of dark matter and dark energy could involve bridging into higher dimensionality) i.e. the hack is literally "out of this world" & back or could start in higher dimensionality from the start or be coordinated across the dimensional boundary by a shared-identity group attacker in multiple dimensions, e.g. agents in 4D coordinated with higher dimensionality where the stealth attacks could be multipronged, ~magical. of ceiling cat voyeurism involving higher dimensionality Š « Ȑ

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Re: Meet ?badBIOS, ? the mysterious Mac and PC malware that jumps airgaps
by Softy 01 Nov '13

01 Nov '13

> > > perhaps i misunderstand it, though must 'resonance' > > be audibly acoustic, and would a SCIF actually defend > > against "vibrations" at all frequencies. > the question highlights how ill-suited the 'spy agencies' are for conducting asymmetric anything. Unless they had a Brain inside think of a mechanism and explain it to an Engineer to propose to a Facilities Security Manager who obtained confirmation from a Director, they would be vulnerable. For instance, TEMPEST security - every SCIF has it because inside it was well documented/implemented. SEISMIC security - no SCIF*** is isolated from seismic vibrations modulated with data. So, to ex-filtrate data, have those passing circus elephants stomp their feet in predetermined patterns. Or make one of those "Dune" style thumpers. The worms in this case being .... ? *** I'm suppose some very few SCIFs are vibration isolated for various reasons, but not as an exfil channel. -daniel

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cypherlinks （網址）
by brian carroll 01 Nov '13

01 Nov '13

// hacking the interstate and road system... (via digg) Meet The Guy Who Drove Across The U.S. In A Record 28 Hours 50 Minutes http://jalopnik.com/meet-the-guy-who-drove-across-the-u-s-in-a-record-28-h-… "After Alex Roy set the transcontinental driving record, he waited a year to come forward – until the statute of limitations expired on every single illegal act he committed. Ed and Dave waited less than three weeks." (a great story involving strategic preparation, musical flow... risky, daring, record-breaking in mass surveillance context) // everything electronic potentially bugged and networked? // wat if this is the unaccounted for norm instead of exception DON'T BREW THAT CUPPA! Your kettle could be a SPAMBOT (via drudge) Russian report says Chinese appliances hide Wifi slurping spam-spreaders http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/10/29/dont_brew_that_cuppa_your_kettle_co… // security from solar flare & solar wind protection, CME EMP-like. // also moves into metaphysics, 'reading the signs' a Rorschach test... 28 solar flares in the last seven days -- video (via drudge) http://www.latimes.com/science/sciencenow/la-sci-sn-solar-flare-20131031,0,… 'A sunspot is an area of the sun where the magnetic fields have gotten all twisted up. "You get a tangled bunch of magnetic fields, and they get too tangled and too stressed, they end up erupting," said Holly Gilbert, a solar physicist at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center.' // excellent site to learn language of sun signs... // varying patterns akin to observing man on moon photographs and videos via solar telescope http://www.flickr.com/photos/alexandra4/ (also, consider Van Gogh's sunflowers in this context) https://www.google.com/search?q=Van+Gogh+sunflowers+original&tbm=isch This is how you blow up a planet, according to Neil deGrasse Tyson http://sploid.gizmodo.com/astrostud-neil-degrasse-tyson-explains-how-to-blo… Left Or Right Tail Wags Elicit Different Emotional Responses From Dogs http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/left-or-right-tail-wags-elicit-diff… (via digg) '"Where this paper is a step forward is to show that those [brain hemisphere] side biases are actually read or interpreted by another member of the species," she said. "We have very little if any other evidence of that."' Designing an acoustic diode // metamaterial http://phys.org/news/2013-11-acoustic-diode.html "How the Acoustic Diode Would Work: Sound waves easily flow in two directions. Yet in nature, total reflection of sound in one direction is known to occur at the air-water interface. This gave investigators the idea that an acoustical diode could be constructed by transmitting acoustic waves using an asymmetric prism to create total unidirectional reflection." ¶ ½ Ü

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INDECT: Intelligent Information System Supporting Observation, Searching and Detection for Security of Citizens in Urban Environment
by Eugen Leitl 01 Nov '13

01 Nov '13

http://www.openaire.eu/en/component/openaire/project_info/default/619?id=21… Project: INDECT Title: Intelligent Information System Supporting Observation, Searching and Detection for Security of Citizens in Urban Environment Call: FP7-SEC-2007-1 Grant agreement number: 218086 Start date: 01/01/2009 End date: 31/12/2013 Special clause 39: no Scientific area: Security Programme: SP1-Cooperation Detailed project information (CORDIS) Publications Use of the bio-inspired algorithms to find global minimum in force directed layout algorithms DoS attacks targeting SIP server and improvements of robustness Impact of network Jitter on effective equipment impairment factor Video files recording and playback with VoiceXML Objective assessment of IP video calls with Asterisk Delay model of RTP flows in accordance with M/D/1 and M/D/2 Kendall's notation Monitoring the quality of speech in the communication system BESIP Remote control of asterisk via web services E-model modification for case of cascade codecs arrangement Methodology of the direct measurement of the switching latency Performance analysis of virtualized real-time applications SIP end to end performance metrics Improvement of network efficiency on the grounds of change communication protocol Software designed 64-QAM demodulator of OFDM signal implemented into FPGA elements Fundamental frequency extraction method using central clipping and its importance for the classification of emotional state The interactions of SOAP-based web services for recording and replaying video files Malicious traffic monitoring and its evaluation in VoIP infrastructure Automated speech quality monitoring tool based on perceptual evaluation Approach to stress tests in SIP environment based on marginal analysis Applied multiprotocol routing in IP telephony Advanced concept of voice communication server on embedded platform SIP registration stress test Delay variation model for RTP flows in network with priority queueing E-model improvement for speech quality evaluation including codecs tandeming Jitter buffer loss estimate for effective equipment impairment factor Overview of the security components of INDECT project VoIP based system for the message distribution Security infrastructures: towards the INDECT system security Mathematical model of subscriber extension line Performance evaluation of INACT - INDECT advanced image cataloguing tool Influence of atmospheric parameters on speech quality in GSM/UMTS Danger alert communication system Development of a speech quality monitoring tool based on ITU-T P.862 IP telephony based danger alert communication system and its implementation Multimedia services in Asterisk based on VoiceXML Impact of emotions on fundamental speech signal frequency Speech quality monitoring in czech national research network Delay variation model with RTP flows behavior in accordance with M/D/1 Kendall's notation SIP threats detection system Interactive VoiceXML module into SIP-based warning distribution system Web-based IP telephony penetration system evaluating level of protection from attacks and threats Non-intrusive speech quality assessment in simplified e-model Replication-Based Information Sharing in Multi-Agent System for Monitoring the Internet Feature selection for acoustic events detection M-JPEG Robust Video Watermarking Based on DPCM and Transform Coding Traffic Danger Ontology for Citizen Safety Web System How to Build an Objective Model for Packet Loss Effect on High Definition Content Based on SSIM and Subjective Experiments Web-Based Knowledge Acquisition and Management System Supporting Collaboration for Improving Safety in Urban Environment A New Method for Automatic Generation of Animated Motion A no reference metric for the quality assessment of videos affected by exposure distortion On Occlusion-Handling for People Detection Fusion in Multi-camera Networks Agent-based Modelling of Social Organisations Content protection in grayscale and color images based on robust digital watermarking Anchor-Free Localization Algorithm with Low-Complexity Method for Node Distance Estimation Enhancement Using ToA Analysis of privacy vulnerabilities in single sign-on mechanisms for multimedia websites Scenario-Driven System for Open Source Intelligence Correction Trees as an Alternative to Turbo Codes and Low Density Parity Check Codes Prototypes of a Web System for Citizen Provided Information, Automatic Knowledge Extraction, Knowledge Management and GIS Integration Recent advances in multimedia networking INDECT Security Architecture LDA for Face Profile Detection Audio-Visual Surveillance System for Application in Bank Operating Room Software Implementation of New Symmetric Block Cipher Malicious traffic monitoring and its evaluation in VoIP infrastructure Approach to stress tests in SIP environment based on marginal analysis Graph-Based Relation Mining Detection and Localization of Selected Acoustic Events in 3D Acoustic Field for Smart Surveillance Applications Distributed Framework for Visual Event Detection in Parking Lot Area Object Detection and Measurement Using Stereo Images Semantic Structure Matching Recommendation Algorithm Acoustic Events Detection Using MFCC and MPEG-7 Descriptors Quality Assessment for a Licence Plate Recognition Task Based on a Video Streamed in Limited Networking Conditions Automatic quality control of digital image content reconstruction schemes Broadcast news audio classification using SVM binary trees Analysis of Particular Iris Recognition Stages Determining image quality requirements for recognition tasks in generalized public safety video applications: Definitions, testing, standardization, and current trends INSTREET - Application for Urban Photograph Localization Quantum cryptography - The analysis of security requirements Implementation of the New Integration Model of Security and QoS for MANET to the OPNET A new approach to high-capacity annotation watermarking based on digital fountain codes A Novel JPEG Steganography Method Based on Modulus Function with Histogram Analysis Hierarchical Multi-Agent System for Heterogeneous Data Integration INCR — INDECT Multimedia Crawler Performance of Basic Spectral Descriptors and MRMR Algorithm to the Detection of Acoustic Events Towards Hardware Implementation of INDECT Block Cipher Multi-camera Vehicle Tracking Using Local Image Features and Neural Networks Video Watermarking Based on DPCM and Transformcoding Using Permutation Spectrum and QIM Camera Angle Invariant Shape Recognition in Surveillance Systems A Statistical Blind Image Steganalysis Based on Image Multi-classification Integrating Applications Developed for Heterogeneous Platforms: Building an Environment for Criminal Analysts A new symmetric block cipher based on key-dependent S-boxes INACT — INDECT Advanced Image Cataloguing Tool QoE as a Function of Frame Rate and Resolution Changes Monitoring the quality of speech in the communication system BESIP Brightness Correction and Stereovision Impression Based Methods of Perceived Quality Improvement of CCTV Video Sequences Performance Measurements of Real Time Video Transmission from Car Patrol Multiple Sound Sources Localization in Real Time Using Acoustic Vector Sensor Vehicle Classification Based on Soft Computing Algorithms Quality Assessment in Video Surveillance Performance Evaluation of the Parallel Codebook Algorithm for Background Subtraction in Video Stream A High-Capacity Annotation Watermarking Scheme Fast Face Localisation Using AdaBoost Algorithm and Identification with Matrix Decomposition Methods Detection of Moving Objects in Images Combined from Video and Thermal Cameras A novel approach to adaptive image authentication Recent Progress in Development of Language Model for Slovak LVCSR Automated qualitative assessment of multi-modal distortions in digital images based on GLZ Assessing Task-Based Video Quality — A Journey from Subjective Psycho-Physical Experiments to Objective Quality Models Extensible Web Crawler – Towards Multimedia Material Analysis Efficient Method for Content Reconstruction With Self-Embedding Face Detection using Color based Skin Localization and Facial Features Extraction Security Infrastructures: Towards the INDECT System Security Verification of the Parameterization Methods in the Context of Automatic Recognition of Sounds Related to Danger Resolving Conflicts in Object Tracking in Video Stream Employing Key Point Matching One Approach of Using Key-Dependent S-BOXes in AES >From Algorithm to Agent Quantum Cryptography Protocol Simulator A novel method of image steganography in DWT domain A scheme for censorship of sensitive image content with high-quality reconstruction ability Detecting Predatory Behaviour from Online Textual Chats Classification of video sequences into specified Generalized Use Classes of target size and lighting level SIP Registration Burst Load Test Comparison of Different Feature Types for Acoustic Event Detection System Multicriteria Metadata Mechanisms for Fast and Reliable Searching of People Using Databases with Unreliable Records Evolutionary Tuning of Compound Image Analysis Systems for Effective License Plate Recognition Redefining ITU-T P.912 Recommendation Requirements for Subjects of Quality Assessments in Recognition Tasks Analysis of Malware Network Activity

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<nettime> public indifference
by allan siegel 01 Nov '13

01 Nov '13

Excuse me but is public indifference considered to be a new phenomenon is that really what it is? Remember Daniel Ellsberg, the Pentagon Papers? Levels of domestic and international surveillance have intensified logarithmically in the post-war period; just imagine what J. Edgar would have done if he could Hoover up data the way the NSA does. The highest echelons of this behemoth of a security apparatus have taken on a life of its own independent of the governmental controls that are supposed to monitor its activities. Quite presciently Norman Mailer wrote about this ages ago in reference to the CIA; he described how the various entities and fronts that it created began to take on their own economic realities far removed from any governmental controls and now, far beyond what Mailer might have imagined, the government officially and openly sub-contracts security and policing to companies effectively working outside the law. All this just increases daily despite shut-downs and economic crises (after all its sucking up tax dollars just like all the data its accumulating). Indifference is an inaccurate description of what the public is feeling right now. What might be more accurate is a profound sense of cynicism, confusion and fear because the world most of us live in is littered with enormous uncertainties and where survival is high on the daily agenda; and because politicians and government leaders are baffling in terms of their levels of incoherence; and because the omnipresent cloud of some kind of terrorist act lingers in the not far distance (and never mind the kind of atrocities that occur daily enabled by the same systems that govern the surveillance apparatus). So, indifference is not quite appropriate when you start thinking about the future and how it appears or manifests itself stitched into people’s daily routines. This is not to belittle or diminish the importance of what Snowden has done; the impact of his act is hard to quantify as its ramifications will be still felt years from now; the Pentagon Papers had a shock value when they came out also and the NY Times eagerly published them (and the Times then still had journalistic stature). But, indeed now the times they are a’changing. The real indifference lies not with the public but rather with the shamble of what we politely call the Fifth Estate and the obscene level of public discourse… bye for now allan # 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

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Re: [Freedombox-discuss] Dumb idea: Alternative to Tor that promotes good behavior
by Melvin Carvalho 01 Nov '13

01 Nov '13

On 27 October 2013 21:07, Bill Cox <waywardgeek(a)gmail.com> wrote: > On 10/27/2013 3:31 PM, Melvin Carvalho wrote: > > > > > On 27 October 2013 18:26, Bill Cox <waywardgeek(a)gmail.com> wrote: > >> I would love feedback on an idea for promoting more internet freedom. >> >> Here's the problem: Tor has little public support, because most Tor >> traffic is wasted on supporting bad behavior. When I ran a Tor node, it >> became clear that most of my bandwidth was being wasted on video >> downloads. People want to promote free speech, not child pornography. >> >> Here's my solution: Build a Tor-like network for routing anonymous data, >> but track behavior of all users' secret identities, and make their >> Internet history public. Allow node operators to choose categories of >> public identities they which to support. >> >> For example, I would choose to promote all forms of non-violent free >> speech. I should be able to contribute my bandwidth to this purpose. >> If a dissident in China goes by the public ID of ChinaCat, and has a >> high reputation for promoting freedom, they are welcome to use my >> bandwidth. If someone just wants access to redtube.com, they can get >> that access from someone else. >> >> There are various technical aspects to this idea. For example, would >> prefer that the social graph between secret identities be public so I >> can use a simple network flow algorithm over trust edges between >> identities to determine how much I trust someone. The entire social >> network should be P2P, like Tor, and it should route a lot of dummy >> traffic to help hide the real traffic. With the considerably lower >> bandwidth that is needed to promote freedom rather than free porn, this >> should be no problem. >> >> What do you guys think? >> > > I like it a lot. But who is going to volunteer to do this work, when > people are already busy (not least in coding up things like freedombox) > > > I am willing to write it myself. P2P algorithms is something I enjoy > coding, and this is one of those applications that may be able to do some > real good for the world. > > > I think you would need an economy to incentivize people to do the > categorization etc. > > Maybe in return for someone helping you route your traffic, you could > keep an encrypted backup of their data or contribute a code patch to their > project etc. > > > We're thinking along the same lines. I would like to add a Ripple based > economy to the public social network, based on trust relationships between > peers as in the original Ripple algorithm. With secret identities in the > social network, it is less important to keep transactions and the trust > network secret, which was a problem in the original Ripple algorithm. I > imagine transactions being done in tiny fractions of a cent, for services > like helping download files faster in a torrent or providing encrypted > storage. > I believe the retroshare project (noted on this list many times) is in the process of implementing a P2P ripple (a la Ryan Fugger's original protocol) system, or have done so already. Dr Bob told me you can plug in other protocols such as GNUNet quite easily. I'm unsure how this would gel with Tor tho. I'm also looking at translating all of the crypto currency work to a web based system. Would be very happy to hear if you make any progress on this. Or perhaps we can discuss off list if some stuff is off topic. My current line of thinking is hacking the economy so that fbx users get their own coins that they can spend with each other, and to give, say, 10% of all new coins to the FSF to help lower hardware costs of plug computers ... > > Bill > > _______________________________________________ > Freedombox-discuss mailing list > Freedombox-discuss(a)lists.alioth.debian.org > http://lists.alioth.debian.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/freedombox-discuss > _______________________________________________ Freedombox-discuss mailing list Freedombox-discuss(a)lists.alioth.debian.org http://lists.alioth.debian.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/freedombox-discuss

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Dark Mail Alliance for end-to-end private and secure email
by coderman 01 Nov '13

01 Nov '13

darkmail.info: "end-to-end encrypted protocol and architecture ... [for] private and secure email", presumably a white paper is forthcoming. initial release anticipated in 2014. ... which returns on port 443: "Error 102 (net::ERR_CONNECTION_REFUSED)" (~_~;) --- requirements for end-to-end secure email: - content of messages always protected; ensure authenticity and privacy of content. (plain-text content is not an option) - keys generated and kept on device / user end-point. (no server side generation or storage of private keys on behalf of users; support hardware secured private key and wrapped storage on devices with HSMs) - mail header scrubbing is performed at delivery, in transit, and on receipt to limit metadata exposure. - server-to-server communication enforces STARTTLS with PFC capable cipher suites. - client-to-server communication enforces TLS with PFC capable cipher suites. - service resistant to kleptography and covert channels. (use open and robust protocols, use robust key lengths, use fail-safe rather than fail-vulnerable configurations, ...) - for extra credit, solve the subject line as part of public header metadata problem. (solving the metadata problem for email is super extra credit ;) - what else? is it possible to build such a system without compromising privacy or usability? i remain skeptical...

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