August 2013 - cypherpunks - lists.cpunks.org

Re: [Freedombox-discuss] [James Vasile] tinc rollout and fbox
by Eugen Leitl 12 Aug '13

12 Aug '13

----- Forwarded message from Sandy Harris <sandyinchina(a)gmail.com> ----- Date: Sat, 10 Aug 2013 15:37:06 -0400 From: Sandy Harris <sandyinchina(a)gmail.com> To: freedombox list <freedombox-discuss(a)lists.alioth.debian.org> Subject: Re: [Freedombox-discuss] [James Vasile] tinc rollout and fbox Nick Daly <nick.m.daly(a)gmail.com> wrote: > There's been some recent work on Tinc that I'm really excited about. > ... > Poke at it, let me know what you think. Their docs include this paragraph: " On the 15th of September 2003, Peter Gutmann posted a security analysis of tinc 1.0.1. He argues that the 32 bit sequence number used by tinc is not a good IV, that tinc’s default length of 4 bytes for the MAC is too short, and he doesn’t like tinc’s use of RSA during authentication. We do not know of a security hole in this version of tinc, but tinc’s security is not as strong as TLS or IPsec. We will address these issues in tinc 2.0. Gutmann is a well-known and respected expert. His best-known paper was one back in the 90s on reading "erased" disk drives and what bit patterns it took to block that. Most "secure erase" utilities around use those suggestions (even though current drives are quite different, so those may be inappropriate now). He has done /a lot/ of other stuff as well. The current Tinc release is 1.0.21 My reading of that is that Tinc has known problems and they probably will not be fixed soon. To me, that means it is not ready for serious consideration as a component for FreedomBox. _______________________________________________ Freedombox-discuss mailing list Freedombox-discuss(a)lists.alioth.debian.org http://lists.alioth.debian.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/freedombox-discuss ----- End forwarded message ----- -- Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> http://leitl.org ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820 http://ativel.com http://postbiota.org AC894EC5: 38A5 5F46 A4FF 59B8 336B 47EE F46E 3489 AC89 4EC5

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DIY Spy Germicide
by John Young 11 Aug '13

11 Aug '13

DIY Germicide: http://prism-break.org http://lockerproject.org/ https://securityinabox.org/ http://eyebeam.org/research/calls/request-for-proposals-prism-break-up

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Re: [tor-talk] Secure email with limited usable metadata
by coderman 11 Aug '13

11 Aug '13

On Sat, Aug 10, 2013 at 4:34 AM, Mike Hearn <hearn(a)google.com> wrote: >... > You may be interested in checking out Pond... > https://pond.imperialviolet.org/ > > It is an email-like messaging system that runs over Tor, has forward > security, tries to beat traffic analysis, ... this is the kind of messaging i would use - leaving all the complexities and drawbacks of traditional email behind. and StealthMonger: while the theory and design of latest generation anonymous remailers are suitable for secure mail, the practical realities render them unusable. effort on real-time protocols that can defend against traffic analysis, or other non-email systems like pond would be better spent.

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Obama On NSA 9 August 2013
by John Young 11 Aug '13

11 Aug '13

http://cryptome.org/2013/08/obama-nsa-13-0809.htm

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NSA Today on Missions, Authorities, Oversight, Partnershps
by John Young 10 Aug '13

10 Aug '13

NSA statement today on Missions, Authorties, Oversight, Partnerships: http://cryptome.org/2013/08/nsa-13-0809.pdf

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Re: [cryptopolitics] Silent Circle and Secure Email
by Adam Back 10 Aug '13

10 Aug '13

(Thanks for the link.) It says hushmail had a simplified web-only version (no java applet) and that the disclosure of client emails did not involve pressured code changes (at least code shipped to clients), rather that as a natural consequence of the way passwords would be processed on the server side and decryption happened on the server side so hushmail had the passwords, private keys, and decrypted plaintexts at leas in memory to hand over on request. Adam On Fri, Aug 09, 2013 at 08:59:53PM -0400, Jeffrey Walton wrote: >On Fri, Aug 9, 2013 at 8:56 PM, Adam Back <adam(a)cypherspace.org> wrote: >> ... >> >> Its less clear what lavabit were talking about. Perhaps something similar >> in terms of an SMTP interoperability encryption gap, or alternatively about >> being pressured to modify code (which people seem to assume, but I didnt see >> explicitly stated). >> >> There were some hushmail rumors about code modification some years back - >> does anyone know what actually at hushmail? >Encrypted E-Mail Company Hushmail Spills to Feds, >http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2007/11/encrypted-e-mai/.

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Re: [cryptopolitics] Silent Circle and Secure Email
by Adam Back 10 Aug '13

10 Aug '13

Reading what Jon Callas wrote he said silent circle interoperated with unencrypted SMTP email (unencrypted other than SSL over the transport), and they used some bump in the wire PGP thingy that encrypts incoming email with the silent circle users public key, and presumably sends out cleartext possibly SSL SMTP where available, for non silent-circle recipients. Clearly therefore anyone tampering with the SSL (and often those mail transport systems are not that smart about SSL as there is no security UI) or just getting the NSA camel's nose inside the silent circle SSL termination point prior to encrytion. As they didnt think that would end well they decided to close it down. Alternatively they might have considered disabling the mail-in and mail-out features. Its less clear what lavabit were talking about. Perhaps something similar in terms of an SMTP interoperability encryption gap, or alternatively about being pressured to modify code (which people seem to assume, but I didnt see explicitly stated). There were some hushmail rumors about code modification some years back - does anyone know what actually at hushmail? Adam On Fri, Aug 09, 2013 at 08:46:57PM -0400, Jeffrey Walton wrote: >On Fri, Aug 9, 2013 at 2:43 PM, Jeffrey Goldberg <Jeffrey(a)goldmark.org> wrote: >> On Aug 9, 2013, at 11:45 AM, Jeffrey Walton <noloader(a)gmail.com> wrote: >> >>> I'd be interested in hearing more with respect to Silent Circle >>> complicity in crimes against the American people if they supplied >>> secure email. >> >> I think you may have missed the point in the Lavabit wording of this announcement. >> >> It looks like they were saying that complying with law enforcement requests (handing >> over data or putting a back door in their systems) would be "complicity in crimes >> against the American people.” >> >Thanks Jeffrey. I thought it might have been that, but the word >"crime" removed the possibility in my mind's eye. I guess I would have >worded it differently.

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Nuclear Weapons Control Systems and NATO Super-Radar shut down by occupy group NOMOUS at NISCEMI, SICILY Re: [cryptome] NSA Today on Missions, Authorities, Oversight, Partnershps
by Wilfred Guerin 10 Aug '13

10 Aug '13

Nuclear Weapons Control Systems and NATO Super-Radar shut down by occupy group NOMOUS at NISCEMI, SICILY On Fri, Aug 9, 2013 at 10:14 AM, John Young <jya(a)pipeline.com> wrote: > NSA statement today on Missions, Authorties, Oversight, Partnerships: > > http://cryptome.org/2013/08/**nsa-13-0809.pdf<http://cryptome.org/2013/08/nsa-13-0809.pdf> > > > >

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Breaking PRISM and friends
by Nick Thomas 10 Aug '13

10 Aug '13

Hi all, Only a decade or two late to the party... anyway, in the past few days since the PRISM / XKeyscore / etc leaks came to my attention, I've been considering schemes that breaks the kind of passive, drag-net collection of communications data from listening points on submarine cables and the like. I think I've found one, so I thought I'd share. Code is in very, very early stages at the moment; https://github.com/lupine/hide-eid has half of a first pass, and a bit of documentation on why it might work. I'm hoping to have it in a state where you could run a pair of VPN providers servicing a few customers each within a few days. As-is, scalability is suspect, though. The short how-it-works is that it stops the IP header (which typically reveals who is talking to whom, even if the IP payload is encrypted) from being personally-identifying information. If your access ISP runs it, and your hosting ISP runs it too, you benefit from an anonymity set equal to all the source's customers. As long as there's no sniffing going on in the first and last mile, anyway. Combined with IPsec on those miles, or a vetted path if it's short enough, you can reduce the amount of cable that personally-identifying IP headers are sniffable on, from a few thousand miles, to perhaps a couple of feet - on which you can focus CCTV, if you're *really* paranoid; or even nothing at all, if you have the same box terminating the IPsec tunnel and the hide-eid wrapper/unwrapper. The theoretical background is from the location/identity separation protocol stuff. Intermediaries don't actually need to know which person (well, EID) the packet is from, or for; they just need to know where to send it (which RLOC) so that a person can pick it up. This scheme is basically that, imagined as a least-effort overlay on the existing IP network. And it doesn't break as many protocols as cgNAT, since source and destination both know the EID of destination and source. Feedback of any sort is extremely welcome. Particular areas of concern are scaling it (especially given how the crypto works), how the crypto works and if there's a more sensible way (key exchange with M:N different ISPs to take advantage of symmetric ciphers is worrisome), and whether there's a better way to get L/ISP with hidden EIDs deployed to a subset of the internet than a hack of this magnitude. I'm still fairly skeptical that it can make a noticeable difference, but it seems promising enough for me to keep it up in the short term, at least. If it ends up being useless, there's still tor. There's always tor. /Nick

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Re: The Guardian: Fears over NSA surveillance revelations endanger US cloud computing industry
by John Young 09 Aug '13

09 Aug '13

This fear of US cloud service was deployed against US crypto back then. Exemplified in the CryptoAG revelation. Then it was "revealed," as now, the competitors were even more devious. Meanwhile all of the spies and contractors got more funding to spy on each other and PR the mil-grade security, backslapping at how easy it was to spook the public, you know, spook as in spy on to assure freaking was effective. In 2000 it was "revealed" that CIA and NSA with the joint Special Collection Service, were running eavesdropping and burgling ops out of US embassies and at home from suburban Maryland and now, holy shit, it is "revealed" that PRISM and XKeyscore does that cyberwarly with browsers. You know, too, revealed as in leaked most industriously by a Special Distribution Service, another codeword for smoking the cloud, why even the CIA uses vaporware. Guardian is a fine mouthpiece for Official Secrets freaking. At 10:11 AM 8/9/2013, you wrote: ><http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/aug/08/nsa-revelations-fears-cloud-co…>http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/aug/08/nsa-revelations-fears-cloud-co… > >-- >Neil Johnson

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