August 2013 - cypherpunks - lists.cpunks.org

Re: [Doctrinezero] HTTPS
by Eugen Leitl 23 Aug '13

23 Aug '13

----- Forwarded message from Bryce Lynch <bryce(a)zerostate.is> ----- Date: Thu, 22 Aug 2013 12:00:52 -0400 From: Bryce Lynch <bryce(a)zerostate.is> To: doctrinezero(a)zerostate.is Subject: Re: [Doctrinezero] HTTPS Organization: Zero State User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64; rv:17.0) Gecko/20130514 Thunderbird/17.0.6 Reply-To: doctrinezero(a)zerostate.is -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 On 08/21/2013 10:37 AM, Dirk Bruere wrote: > Do the certification authorities hold a key that can break the > encryption of sites that use it? It's more complicated than that. Most of the time, whenever someone buys an SSL certificate pair signed by a CA, they have the CA generate the certificate pair for them (because OpenSSL's command line is pants, usually), sign it for them, and then send them the whole mess. The CA archives copies of the public and private certs after signing. We've seen several times in the past where CAs have given untrusted third parties copies of those signed certs. Ouch. There is a subtle flaw in the CA ecosystem: So long as a cert is signed by a CA that the client trusts, it doesn't matter /who/ the signer was. So, example.com could buy an SSL certificate from Thawte, and Eve could buy an SSL cert from Comodo for example.com. Eve could then use her cert for example.com to run a man-in-the-middle attack against users of example.com, and their browsers would never notice because both Thawte and Comodo are trusted. The SSL protocol has no provision for noticing if and when the trust chain changes in mid-flight. Double ouch. We've seen this one happen in the field several times. This is how ComodoHacker wrecked so much havoc a few years ago. There is another flaw in SSL: Wildcards. It is not uncommon for companies to buy SSL certs valid for *.example.com, so that they have only one cert covering all of their SSL enabled resources. What isn't obvious is that it's possible to generate a valid cert for *.com. Or *.org. Or *. Those certs are valid for *.com, or *.org, or * (any SSL enabled resource on the global Net) until they expire. A few of the big CAs sell these for whoever can pony up for them (they're very expensive) because they can be loaded into DPI/DCI hardware which basically carries out MITM attacks for detecting data exfiltration. That they are also used for surveillance comes with the territory. At least one CA that was pwned in the past five years had a number of wildcard certs generated by the attacker for * which are good until 1 January 2038. Uh-oh. Third parties have been trying to find ways to fix this - certificate pinning, TOFU/POP, Webs of Trust for SSL, Convergence, manually untrusting every CA in your browser - but none of them have caught on. - -- The Doctor [412/724/301/703] [ZS] PGP: 0xF1F922F2 / CABE 73FB 2D68 D1EF 3956 A468 7B1F DFE8 F1F9 22F2 WWW: https://drwho.virtadpt.net/ The future belongs to the brave. -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v2.0.20 (GNU/Linux) Comment: Using GnuPG with Thunderbird - http://www.enigmail.net/ iQEcBAEBAgAGBQJSFjWzAAoJEHsf3+jx+SLyYGUH/3ekahHofFHoxwcIAXikcxY6 SEgYQdN2MQyyX4JHfC+T56d0spWyBykd87NV53+qqxLkRpK90OHAgcciKTctyFw7 Vw4VUGIJlie+IXItZTD203mWLjfHlNubJFCTCFeujVs/Sl9WBCXOi3I2mN9RP20j G3EPYvR7NWUk8Y0O66ZUwh5Wnblj1PtbpCqU6vbByK1DWTIOopI1UC++aU7wYw4F 9IyfoXRe7JJIjexxq03XRsOc2GeaYkuy6LpwG+LDO3HrTv7Us7Y5plF/ybUnuQWL pccOHBcUgnvaCcD+8S8/6x0do8qVQNNVu74C88SCDR0R6vrNT0k2Ws1wfG8ix8s= =oa/z -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- _______________________________________________ Doctrinezero mailing list Doctrinezero(a)zerostate.is Unsubscribe: https://lists.zerostate.is/mailman/listinfo/doctrinezero ----- 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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Re: NSLs, gag-orders, code-changes, coerced backdoors - any tech response? (Re: Lavabit and End-point Security)
by John Young 22 Aug '13

22 Aug '13

One of the many salutory if unsavory aspects of cypherpunks is that a fresh proposal is more likely to be disagreed with than supported, rabid-dog disagreement cloaking theft and plagiarism. Rotters will then go off to get something done with stolen material, most will remain to shrewly pretend to demolish whatever "cluelessness" shows up, to asymmetrically burgle and secretize openness loot like official spies. Lacking cluelessness to taunt into full disclosure the bandits will brag of prowess, refer auto-didactly to misunderstood, unread sources (some fictional hidden by errant URLs), throw out poisoned baited code, cackle at the writhing suckers who bite the freebie and foolishly insert as covert backdoor, but never admit having been hooked repeatedly, instead pay ahead the pain of gullibility, lesson learned from distinguished computer professors and OS-backdoored Middle East negotiators. Does this remind of Assange among several ignotables who went off-list to reshape the world as "life-changing" endeavor? And who may or may not be among current hyenas here lying in wait for fresh carrion like Bell, CJ, Manning, Swartz, BBrown, Anonymous, Lulzsec, Sabu, Appelbaum, Gonggrijp, Jonsdottir, Snowden, Poitras, Greenwald, the list of vanity-incomsec-diseased ever lengthens. The dozen or so best and brightest will fail at their incomsec ventures, hoodwinked by better and brighter vultures preying on red meat wizards incompetent at asymmetrical financial math with dreams of lucrative public interest benefits fronted by sterling reputations. RSA, PGP, NSA venture-backdooring susceptible.

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David and Glenn in Berlin
by Sylvia Ganush 22 Aug '13

22 Aug '13

After all, the UK were right to suspect David Miranda, Glenn Greenwald's honey, of terrorism. While in Berlin the pair infiltrated the President's innermost security perimiter. Look at this photo: http://www.flickr.com/photos/whitehouse/9314671291/lightbox/ David is checking out the Inspire magazine on his laptop, as Glenn is fixing wires to a pressure cooker. If this is not a terror plot, I don't know what is. Sylvia

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Is the Wikileaks Party a cypherpunk party?
by CryptoFreak 21 Aug '13

21 Aug '13

While I'm American, I've been paying close attention to the Wikileaks Party in Australia. Could it be the political embodiment of the cypherpunk movement? Regardless of what some think of Julian Assange, he certainly holds true to the cp ethic and the parties belief in accountability, privacy, and justice, seem well aligned with the movement. So what do you think? Is their finally a political party more closely aligned with the cypherpunk ideal than the Libertarians? Regards, CryptoFreak

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do we know who developed this website ?
by Cari Machet 21 Aug '13

21 Aug '13

https://www.wefightcensorship.org/online-survival-kithtml.html -- Cari Machet NYC 646-436-7795 carimachet(a)gmail.com AIM carismachet Skype carimachet - 646-652-6434 Syria +963-099 277 3243 Amman +962 077 636 9407 Berlin +49 152 11779219 Twitter: @carimachet <https://twitter.com/carimachet> Ruh-roh, this is now necessary: This email is intended only for the addressee(s) and may contain confidential information. If you are not the intended recipient, you are hereby notified that any use of this information, dissemination, distribution, or copying of this email without permission is strictly prohibited.

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Freedom Hosting Owner Arrested, Tormail Compromised, Malicious JS Discovered
by Rich Jones 21 Aug '13

21 Aug '13

https://openwatch.net/i/200/anonymous-web-host-freedom-hosting-owner-arrest… Owner arrested in Ireland, FBI makes extradition request, malicious JavaScript discovered on a number of important hidden services. What happened?Eric Eoin Marques, the 28 year old owner and operator of the Tor-based internet host 'Freedom Hosting' has been arrested in Ireland and charged with distributing and promoting child pornography on the internet, reports<http://www.independent.ie/irish-news/courts/fbi-bids-to-extradite-largest-c…> the Independent. Since the arrest, internet users have reported<http://www.reddit.com/r/onions/comments/1jmrta/founder_of_the_freedom_hosti…> noticing malicious JavaScript <http://pastebin.com/pmGEj9bV> designed to compromise their identities inserted into pages hosted by Freedom Hosting, including the 'Tormail' service, as well as a number of pedophile messageboards. Why?'Freedom Hosting' provides hosting for anonymous 'hidden services' on the Tor network. These services can range from everything from anonymous email and library services, to online marketplaces for drug distribution and the production and exchange of child pornography. As this is part of an ongoing FBI investigation, there is no conclusive evidence that the injection of this JavaScript is the result of a government operation, however, this does fall under a known pattern of FBI behavior<http://gizmodo.com/why-the-fbi-ran-a-child-porn-site-for-two-whole-weeks-51…> related to child porn sting operations. It is possible that the attack, which delivers a weaponized exploit to Firefox users running Windows systems, is the work of non-government cyber criminals, although the timing of the arrest and the appearance of this code on a number of hidden services hosted by Freedom Hosting does seem to imply a government operation. The execution of malicious JavaScript inside the Tor Browser Bundle, perhaps the most commonly used Tor client, comes as a surprise to many users. Previously, the browser disabled JavaScript execution by default for security purposes, however this change was recently reverted by developers in order to make the product more useful for average internet users. As a result, however, the applications has become vastly more vulnerable to attacks such as this*. * What's going to happen next?Although it is difficult to gauge the size of the anonymous internet, Freedom Hosting did seem to be perhaps the largest anonymous web host, and its compromise will have serious implications for the future of Tor hidden services. We expect there will be a deeper technical analysis of the malware in the coming days as security researchers examine it in greater detail. Since the attack was designed at Firefox for Windows, which the Tor Browser Bundle is based upon, it seems likely that this is not a random occurance, and that the malware is designed specifically designed to compromise the identities of anonymous internet users. Although this would be a victory for the FBI against child pornographers who use the Tor network, it could also mean a serious security breach for international activists and internet users living in repressive states who use the services to practice online free speech. OpenWatch has been in the early stages of designing a new alternative to Freedom Hosting, calledOnionCloud <https://github.com/Miserlou/OnionCloud>, to allow anonymous Heroku-like application hosting. Developers interested in this idea and other OpenWatch technologies are invited to join the discussion by joining the openwatch-dev mailing list by sending an email to openwatch-dev+subscribe(a)googlegroups.com

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Bradley Manning's sentence: 35 years for exposing us to the truth
by Shelley 21 Aug '13

21 Aug '13

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/aug/21/bradley-manning-senten… Bradley Manning's sentence: 35 years for exposing us to the truth This was never a fair trial – Obama declared Manning's guilt in advance. But Manning's punishment is an affront to democracy Birgitta Jónsdóttir theguardian.com, Wednesday 21 August 2013 10.29 EDT Jump to comments (…) Link to video: Bradley Manning: 35 years in jail for an outsider who had trouble fitting in – video As of today, Wednesday 21 August 2013, Bradley Manning has served 1,182 days in prison. He should be released with a sentence of time served. Instead, the judge in his court martial at Fort Meade, Maryland has handed down a sentence of 35 years. Of course, a humane, reasonable sentence of time served was never going to happen. This trial has, since day one, been held in a kangaroo court. That is not angry rhetoric; the reason I am forced to frame it in that way is because President Obama made the following statements on record, before the trial even started: President Obama: We're a nation of laws. We don't individually make our own decisions about how the laws operate … He broke the law. Logan Price: Well, you can make the law harder to break, but what he did was tell us the truth. President Obama: Well, what he did was he dumped … Logan Price: But Nixon tried to prosecute Daniel Ellsberg for the same thing and he is a … [hero] President Obama: No, it isn't the same thing … What Ellsberg released wasn't classified in the same way. When the president says that the Ellsberg's material was classified in a different way, he seems to be unaware that there was a higher classification on the documents Ellsberg leaked. A fair trial, then, has never been part of the picture. Despite being a professor in constitutional law, the president as commander-in-chief of the US military – and Manning has been tried in a court martial – declared Manning's guilt pre-emptively. Here is what the Pentagon Papers leaker Daniel Ellsberg had to say about this, in an interview with Amy Goodman at DemocracyNow! in 2011: Well, nearly everything the president has said represents a confusion about the state of the law and his own responsibilities. Everyone is focused, I think, on the fact that his commander-in-chief has virtually given a directed verdict to his subsequent jurors, who will all be his subordinates in deciding the guilt in the trial of Bradley Manning. He's told them already that their commander, on whom their whole career depends, regards him [Manning] as guilty and that they can disagree with that only at their peril. In career terms, it's clearly enough grounds for a dismissal of the charges, just as my trial was dismissed eventually for governmental misconduct. But what people haven't really focused on, I think, is another problematic aspect of what he said. He not only was identifying Bradley Manning as the source of the crime, but he was assuming, without any question, that a crime has been committed. This alone should have been cause for the judge in the case to rethink prosecutors' demand for 60 years in prison. Manning himself has shown throughout the trial both that he is a humanitarian and that he is willing to serve time for his actions. We have to look at his acts in light of his moral compass, not any political agenda. Manning intentions were never to hurt anyone; in fact, his motivation – as was the case for Ellsberg – was to inform the American public about what their government was doing in their name. A defense forensic psychiatrist testified to Manning's motives: Well, Pfc Manning was under the impression that his leaked information was going to really change how the world views the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and future wars, actually. This was an attempt to crowdsource an analysis of the war, and it was his opinion that if … through crowdsourcing, enough analysis was done on these documents, which he felt to be very important, that it would lead to a greater good … that society as a whole would come to the conclusion that the war wasn't worth it … that really no wars are worth it. I admit that I share the same hopes that drove Manning to share with the rest of the world the crimes of war he witnessed. I am deeply disappointed that no one has been held accountable for the criminality exposed in the documents for which Manning is standing trial – except him. It shows so clearly that our justice systems are not working as intended to protect the general public and to hold accountable those responsible for unspeakable crimes. I want to thank Bradley Manning for the service he has done for humanity with his courage and compassionate action to inform us, so that we have the means to transform and change our societies for the better. I want to thank him for shining light into the shadows. It is up to each and everyone of us to use the information he provided for the greater good. I want to thank him for making our world a little better. This is why I nominated him for the Nobel Peace Prize, for there are very few individuals who have ever brought about the kind of social change Manning has put in motion. The wave of demands for greater transparency, more accountability, and democratic reform originate with Manning's lonely act in the barracks in Iraq. He has given others – such as Edward Snowden – the courage to do the right thing for the rest of us. The heavy hand dealt Bradley Manning today is a massive blow against everything many of us hold sacred – at a time when we have been shown how fragile and weak our democracies are by the revelations of, first, Manning, and now, Snowden. There is no such thing as privacy anymore; nor is there such a thing as accountability among our public servants. Our governments do not function for the benefit of the 99%. If Manning had received a fair sentence that was in proportion to his supposed crime – which was to expose us to the truth – then there would have been hope. Instead, we are seeing the state acting like a wounded tiger, cornered and lashing out in rage – attacking the person who speaks the truth in order to frighten the rest of us into silence. But to that, I have only one answer: it won't work.

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Re: [tor-talk] encrypted mailing lists
by Eugen Leitl 21 Aug '13

21 Aug '13

----- Forwarded message from Lunar <lunar(a)torproject.org> ----- Date: Wed, 21 Aug 2013 10:43:59 +0200 From: Lunar <lunar(a)torproject.org> To: tor-talk(a)lists.torproject.org Subject: Re: [tor-talk] encrypted mailing lists User-Agent: Mutt/1.5.21 (2010-09-15) Reply-To: tor-talk(a)lists.torproject.org Matej Kovacic: > I believe we should ask Mailman developers to include that functionality > in the future releases. > > What do you think? Please look at the SSLS patch if you want to stick to Mailman: <http://non-gnu.uvt.nl/mailman-ssls/> Schleuder has a small but growing userbase: <https://schleuder2.nadir.org/> It is available in Debian and counts Tails as one of its users. (This is getting off-topic for tor-talk.) -- Lunar <lunar(a)torproject.org> -- tor-talk mailing list - tor-talk(a)lists.torproject.org To unsusbscribe or change other settings go to https://lists.torproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/tor-talk ----- 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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[tor-talk] Tor Weekly News — August, 21st 2013
by Eugen Leitl 21 Aug '13

21 Aug '13

----- Forwarded message from Lunar <lunar(a)torproject.org> ----- Date: Wed, 21 Aug 2013 14:29:40 +0200 From: Lunar <lunar(a)torproject.org> To: tor-talk(a)lists.torproject.org, tor-news(a)lists.torproject.org Subject: [tor-talk] Tor Weekly News — August, 21st 2013 User-Agent: Mutt/1.5.21 (2010-09-15) Reply-To: tor-talk(a)lists.torproject.org ======================================================================== Tor Weekly News August 21st, 2013 ======================================================================== Welcome to the eighth issue of Tor Weekly News, the weekly newsletter that covers what is happening in the great Tor community. Future of pluggable transports integration ------------------------------------------ While David Fifield was busy updating the Pluggable Transports Bundle to match the “classic” bundle version 0.2.4.16-beta-1 [1], several discussions took place on how to better integrate pluggable transports in the future. bastik opened #9444 [2], pointing out that “currently TBB with Pluggable Transports are build separately, thus lagging behind”. Having two separate bundles is also a long standing usability issue, as often users have tried to add “obfs” bridges to their normal TBB [3]. Mike Perry is fully aware of the issue and stated in the discussion that his “long term goal is to try to cram all of the pluggable transports into The One True Bundle.” This will require modifications to the new “Tor Launcher” component of the TBB 3.x series in order to allow users to select the bridges and pluggable transports they wish to use. Compromises might be needed on how users should input bridges. BridgeDB recently stopped having the “bridge” keyword in front of the addresses it replies [4] with as Vidalia would not understand it. Mike Perry was thinking in exactly the opposite direction: “take bridge lines directly from bridgedb […] verifying only that they start with ‘bridge’”. Maybe the transition could be easier if Florian Stinglmayr’s patch to Vidalia [5] was merged so that current bundles would ignore the “bridge” keyword when entering bridges [6]. In any case, Mike wants to solve these issues “before we release as beta/stable, to minimize user confusion.” Another tricky part of the “One True Bundle” solution is the bundle size, making it harder to circumvent download restrictions through email [7]. But, as Mike said, “even if they don’t, we’ll probably have to find some other solution anyway for gettor, because the intersection of gettor users and PT users is probably high.” [1] https://www.torproject.org/docs/pluggable-transports.html.en [2] https://bugs.torproject.org/9444 [3] https://bugs.torproject.org/9156 [4] https://gitweb.torproject.org/user/isis/bridgedb.git/commit/792cfd9 [5] https://github.com/n0la/vidalia/tree/master-bug/6724 [6] https://bugs.torproject.org/6724 [7] https://www.torproject.org/projects/gettor.html Extended ORPort land in tor 0.2.5 --------------------------------- After more than a year and a half in the making, the Extended ORPort mechanism [8] has been merged by Nick Mathewson into the tor master branch [9]. This will allow pluggable transport proxies to exchange arbitrary operational information and metadata with tor clients and bridges. Such plumbing was needed in order to make some pluggable transports easier to use or to allow Tor to gather more data about the state of the transports used. obfsproxy has supported this new communication channel [10] for a little while and was only waiting for tor to catch up. George Kadianakis thus asked obfsbridge operators to upgrade their tor to git master to enable client statistics [11]. Once they do, their bridges will send statistics on users per transport to the bridge authority, and they will be published on metrics.torproject.org [12]. This helps track deployment of pluggable transports in the future. [8] https://gitweb.torproject.org/torspec.git/blob/HEAD:/proposals/196-transpor… [9] https://gitweb.torproject.org/tor.git/commit/74262f15 [10] https://gitweb.torproject.org/pluggable-transports/obfsproxy.git/blob/HEAD:… [11] https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-relays/2013-August/002477.html [12] https://metrics.torproject.org/users.html?graph=userstats-bridge-transport&… A new implementation for the web side of check.torproject.org ------------------------------------------------------------- Arlo Breault wrote a new implementation for the web component of check.torproject.org in the Go programming language [13], in response to Roger Dingledine’s appeal: “Check could really use some love. Any volunteers please?”. [14,15] There is already a ticket to replace the check.torproject.org servers with Arlo’s Go version [16]. Andrew Lewman stated again that “As for check.tpo website, it shouldn’t exist at all”, as it is an architectural issue to “have the entire tor browser userbase hit a single website to learn ’Tor or not’”. Until all clients are changed to stop using check, deploying a new code base would only make sense if it was at least able to handle “500 requests per second on really busy times”. More benchmarks are probably needed with Arlo’s implementation. On another front, tup, the initial author of TorDNSEL [17], has resurfaced to offer [18] to update the code to work with newer Haskell environments after many years of silence! [13] https://github.com/arlolra/check/ [14] https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-talk/2013-August/029306.html [15] https://bugs.torproject.org/9529 [16] https://gitweb.torproject.org/tordnsel.git/commit/99d490 [17] https://bugs.torproject.org/9204#comment:14 Tor exit crowdfunding --------------------- Moritz Bartl from torservers.net [18] posted an update [19] on their ongoing crowdfunding campaign to support Tor exit bandwidth. The fund just went over €3000, and there are still a few days left! For more information, and ways to contribute, please visit the Indiegogo page [20]. [18] https://www.torservers.net/ [19] https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-talk/2013-August/029431.html [20] http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/tor-anti-censorship-and-anonymity-infrast… A Flattr-like incentive for Tor relays? --------------------------------------- While torservers.net is presently collecting euros, George Kadianakis asked for comments from the Tor community about “a practical crowdfunded Flattr-like incentive scheme for Tor relays”, dubbed Flattor [21]. George’s proposal is meant to solve “one of the problems of scaling Tor to tens of millions of users”, that “Tor’s bandwidth capacity is finite”. He observes that “lately the bandwidth coming out of Tor-friendly organizations (like torservers.net, universities, etc.) seems to increase” and is worried that “Tor might end up looking like the Bitcoin network — where a number of organizations (mining pools) drive the network.” What George would like to see is incentives for contributing to the network. After studying schemes proposed in the past, all deemed “hard to implement and deploy”, George proposes a simple approach: users can opt to spend a fixed amount of bitcoins to support the Tor network, and their donation will be divided according to the bandwidth of each relay. Obviously, relay operators who wish to receive such contributions would need to publish a bitcoin address, probably in the “contact” field. There might be some concerns with such scheme, or any monetary incentives scheme, as George summarized: “If relay operators start getting money for their bandwidth, we might end up with relay operators that are just in for the money. It might then be easier for a three-letter org to persuade those relay operators to snoop on their users (by giving them double the money they are currently getting).” Moritz Bartl commented [22] that the idea was already quite close to torservers.net current plan, to the extent that donations were distributed “across all participating organizations based on […] advertised bandwidth and a country-specific factor.” Moritz also pointed out that similar discussions had already happened in the past when a sponsor wished to fund faster exit relays [23]. George concluded his mail by saying that he is “not even sure if such an incentive scheme is a good idea, but posting bad ideas to mailing lists is what the Internet is for, right?” Feel free to join the discussion, or hack wildly. [21] https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-talk/2013-August/029419.html [22] https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-talk/2013-August/029421.html [23] https://blog.torproject.org/blog/turning-funding-more-exit-relays Miscellaneous news ------------------ The new release of Orbot 12.0.3 comes with a shiny new icon and graphics, bugfixes, and Tor 0.2.4.16-rc. You can download the update via Google Play [24] or straight from Guardian Project’s website [25]. [24] https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.torproject.android [25] https://guardianproject.info/releases/orbot-latest.apk Andrew Lewman has published the financial reports of the Tor Project for the year 2012 [26]. [26] https://blog.torproject.org/blog/transparency-openness-and-our-2012-financi… Arturo has sent his report for July 2013 [27]. [27] https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-reports/2013-August/000313.html Runa Sandvik reported on her trip to Black Hat & DEF CON [28]. She managed to fill “the Penn & Teller theater (~1500 people)” for a talk [29] about “the safety of the Tor network which focused on network diversity, relay operators, and misbehaving relays.” The former Tor GSoC student Brandon Wiley also gave an update [30] on Dust — “an Internet protocol designed to resist a number of attacks currently in active use to censor Internet communication.” [31] [28] https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-reports/2013-August/000312.html [29] https://www.defcon.org/html/defcon-21/dc-21-speakers.html#Sandvik [30] https://www.defcon.org/html/defcon-21/dc-21-speakers.html#Wiley [31] https://github.com/blanu/Dust/ Karsten Loesing has made progress on “experimenting with a client and private bridge connected over uTP” [32]. The connection can be established, but strange timing issues remain to be solved. [32] https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/9166#comment:23 George Kadianakis has sent two new proposals to improve hidden service identity key security [33] and prevent address enumeration [34]. TWN will cover these proposals in detail once the draft deployment strategy is published. Feel free to help refine the proposals in the meantime! [33] https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-dev/2013-August/005279.html [34] https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-dev/2013-August/005280.html Help Desk Roundup ----------------- Users experience confusion when trying to update the Tor Browser Bundle. Users are not always aware that the Tor Browser Bundle does not have an autoupdate function. Some users will download the latest release from the Tor Project website, then ask “Ok, what do I do now?”. We recommend closing the browser, then deleting one’s current Tor Browser folder before unpacking the new download. One person asked for help while using the Pirate Browser. Torrent-sharing website The Pirate Bay released the Pirate Browser this week as a fork of the Tor Browser Bundle. The Pirate Browser is not endorsed or recommended by the Tor Project. It is unclear what the advantages are compared to using the Tor Browser Bundle and no source code is available. This issue of Tor Weekly News has been assembled by Lunar, dope457, malaparte, mttp, Karsten Loesing, and harmony. 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 [35], write down your name and subscribe to the team mailing-list [36] if you want to get involved! [35] https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/wiki/TorWeeklyNews [36] https://lists.torproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/news-team -- tor-talk mailing list - tor-talk(a)lists.torproject.org To unsusbscribe or change other settings go to https://lists.torproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/tor-talk ----- 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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Re: [cryptography] Preventing Time Correlation Attacks on Leaks: Help! :-)
by Eugen Leitl 21 Aug '13

21 Aug '13

----- Forwarded message from Ben Laurie <ben(a)links.org> ----- Date: Wed, 21 Aug 2013 05:51:38 -0400 From: Ben Laurie <ben(a)links.org> To: "Fabio Pietrosanti (naif)" <lists(a)infosecurity.ch> Cc: Crypto discussion list <cryptography(a)randombit.net> Subject: Re: [cryptography] Preventing Time Correlation Attacks on Leaks: Help! :-) On 21 August 2013 03:35, Fabio Pietrosanti (naif) <lists(a)infosecurity.ch>wrote: > Hey Peter, > > thanks for your analysis! > > I think we need to provide some additional input! > > In the context of GlobaLeaks where, stating from our Threat Model at > https://docs.google.com/document/d/1niYFyEar1FUmStC03OidYAIfVJf18ErUFwSWCmW…, the Whistleblower can also be NON anonymous but approach a submission > with "Confidential" level (over HTTPS over the internet) . > > No anonymity, but forced disclaimer ( > https://github.com/globaleaks/GlobaLeaks/issues/260) and acceptance to > take the risk. > > So, let's say that whistleblower is already in a bad position, but he > accepted this condition. > > We are not considering in any way to add actions/protection on > Whistleblower-Side but only on Receiver-Side that is where the "bad guy" > would be able to read Notification information sent and apply Time > Correlation on the Whistleblower-Action. > > Today if a Whistleblower make a submission, the system immediatelly send a > notification to the Receiver. > > That's bad, because it leave a trace that allow time correlation. > > Who can read Receiver's email and traffic, can make a correlation on other > data source where the whistleblower may leave traffic-traces (like a proxy, > but also internet traffic dump, phisical badge/access logs, surveillance > camera, etc) . > > Which kind of logic / algorithm to apply on the Receiver's notification > timing in order to prevent / reduce the likelihood that a time correlation > pattern is possible? > > A random delay between a lower bounday and an upper boundary seems like > the most simple and effective approach to defeat this kind of correlation. > > However this does not work on very low-traffic globaleaks node. > > What do you think? > I think that if you want to send messages that are hard to trace, there's an existing technology: mixmaster, with an existing server network. Or, better yet, finish off mixminion, Even better: implement Minx (the fixed version). > > > -- > Fabio Pietrosanti (naif) > HERMES - Center for Transparency and Digital Human Rightshttp://logioshermes.org - http://globaleaks.org - http://tor2web.org > > > > Il 8/21/13 4:17 AM, Peter Maxwell ha scritto: > > > Hi Fabio, > > While I don't mean to be dismissive, I suspect your threat model is > flawed for the following reasons: > > i. Most mid to large companies would not permit the use of Tor within > their infrastructure and even if the hypothetical company did, it doesn't > take a whole lot of effort to track down the handful of users within a > company using Tor/stunnel/ssh/VPN. For that matter, I understand some > companies even install private CA certificates into the browsers on company > computers and decrypt outgoing SSL/TLS traffic at their > web-proxy/firewall... in that situation, you're WB is going to stand out > like a sore thumb as they'll be the only TLS connection that isn't being > decrypted (because it's Tor). So unless you want your whistle-blowers to > literally advertise their presence as worthy of attention, they aren't > going to do the leak from an company system directly. > > ii. So, presuming i. is valid - and I suspect anyone who has worked > within a competent security operations team will tell you the same - then > you must assume the whistle-blower will do the leak from either their > personal systems, a burn computer or a public system. If we make the > assumption that the WB has taken the data out of the company/organisation > on removable media or otherwise made it available to themselves outside the > company infrastructure in a secure manner (while sometimes difficult, that > is still far easier than i.) then your attacker can only see the WB's > traffic if they are actively monitoring the WB's use of computers outside > the company, in which case said WB has far bigger problems to worry about. > If the attacker cannot monitor the timing of the leak, your problem is not > framed in the manner you've presented. > > iii. Even if your model was realistic, you cannot adequately defend > against traffic analysis for such a low-traffic network: you need other > traffic to hide in, lots of it, from other users within the same company - > it's not realistic for this type of service. > > iv. There are more subtle problems you are going to come across, not > least of which are issues such as document tagging/water-marking/document > versioning and the ability for the attacker - your hypothetical manager - > to correlate leaked documents against the access rights and access patterns > of potential whistle-blowers. For that matter, simple forensic analysis of > staff computers is usually more than sufficient (and yes, organisations do > this). > > > It's also Isle of Man that people like hiding their ill-gotten-gains in, > not "Island of Mann" ;-) Interestingly, I think anyone who has used Isle > of Man accounts for tax avoidance are scuppered as the HMRC has signed an > agreement with the authorities there for automatic disclosure. > > > Anyway, as far as I can see it, you have two different scenarios to > consider with one being significantly more difficult to solve than the > other: > > > A. The scenario where the whistle-blower is able to take the data out > the company on removable media or paper-copy. This is the easy one to > solve. Personally I would favour a combination of asymmetric encryption > with single-use keypairs and USB sticks in the post, but I'm old fashioned > that way. > > B. The scenario where the whistle-blower has to leak from the > company/organisation's network. This is extremely difficult indeed. If I > were approaching this problem myself, my first considerations would be: how > to make the traffic look like normal web-traffic; how to ensure no forensic > traces are left; and how to do that without installation of third-party > software as that is a dead give-away. If the quantity of data is larger > than a few hundred Mb, the problem is probably not solvable. > > > That's my tuppence-worth, hope that helps, > > Peter > > > > > _______________________________________________ > cryptography mailing list > cryptography(a)randombit.net > http://lists.randombit.net/mailman/listinfo/cryptography > > _______________________________________________ cryptography mailing list cryptography(a)randombit.net http://lists.randombit.net/mailman/listinfo/cryptography ----- 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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