September 2013 - cypherpunks - lists.cpunks.org

Re: [Cryptography] Bruce Schneier has gotten seriously spooked
by Eugen Leitl 07 Sep '16

07 Sep '16

----- Forwarded message from Brian Gladman <brg(a)gladman.plus.com> ----- Date: Sat, 07 Sep 2013 09:33:28 +0100 From: Brian Gladman <brg(a)gladman.plus.com> To: Cryptography Mailing List <cryptography(a)metzdowd.com> Subject: Re: [Cryptography] Bruce Schneier has gotten seriously spooked User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.2; WOW64; rv:17.0) Gecko/20130801 Thunderbird/17.0.8 On 07/09/2013 01:48, Chris Palmer wrote: >> Q: "Could the NSA be intercepting downloads of open-source encryption software and silently replacing these with their own versions?" > > Why would they perform the attack only for encryption software? They > could compromise people's laptops by spiking any popular app. Because NSA and GCHQ are much more interested in attacking communictions in transit rather than attacking endpoints. Endpoint attacks cost more to undertake, only give access to a limited amount of data and involve much greater risks that their attack will either be discovered or their means of attack will leave evidence of what they have done and how they have done it. The internal bueaucratic costs of gaining approval for (adverarial) endpoint attacks also makes it a more costly process than the use of network based interception. There is significant use of open source encryption software in end to end encryption solutions, in file archivers, in wifi and network routers, and in protecing the communications used to manage and control such components when at remote locations. The open source software is provided in source code form and is compiled from source in a huge number of applications and this means that the ability to covertly substitute broken source code could provide access to a huge amount of traffic without the risks involved in endpoint attacks. I stress that I am NOT suggesting that this has happened (or is happening), simply that it has attractions from an NSA/GCHQ viewpoint. Fortunately, I think it is a difficult attack to mount covertly (that is, without the acqiecience of the author(s) of the software in question). On the more general debate here, in my view, 'security for the masses' through the deployment of encryption is a 'pipe dream' that isn't going to happen. Functionality (and the complexity that comes with it) is the enemy of security and it is very clear that the public places a much higher value on functionality than it does on security (or privacy). Every time a new device comes onto the market, it starts with limited functionality and some hope of decent security but rapidly evolves to be a high functionality product in which the prospect of decent security declines rapidly to zero. Raspberry Pis look interesting _now_ but I would be willing to bet that they won't buck the trend of increasing funtionality and declining security simply because this is what the majority in even this limited user community will want. To buck this trend we need an effort like the Raspberry Pi effort but one driven by our community with a strong commitment to simplicty and deliberately limited functionality in both hardware and software. Brian Gladman _______________________________________________ The cryptography mailing list cryptography(a)metzdowd.com http://www.metzdowd.com/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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Re: [liberationtech] Interesting things in keyservers
by Eugen Leitl 17 Aug '16

17 Aug '16

----- Forwarded message from micah <micah(a)riseup.net> ----- Date: Sat, 20 Jul 2013 10:05:42 -0400 From: micah <micah(a)riseup.net> To: Micah Lee <micahflee(a)riseup.net>, 'liberationtech' <liberationtech(a)lists.stanford.edu> Subject: Re: [liberationtech] Interesting things in keyservers User-Agent: Notmuch/0.15.2 (http://notmuchmail.org) Emacs/24.3.1 (x86_64-pc-linux-gnu) Reply-To: liberationtech <liberationtech(a)lists.stanford.edu> Hi Micah! Micah Lee <micahflee(a)riseup.net> writes: > I'm working on a talk for OHM2013 about PGP. Can anyone send me examples > of interesting keys in key servers that you know of? Since you are preparing a talk about the subject, I'm going to be pedantic and correct your usage of "PGP", because it is important to get your terminology straight when giving a talk. I presume you aren't giving a talk about the commercial software, but instead you are actually giving a talk about OpenPGP which is the standard specified by RFC4880 that different programs like GnuPG, Seahorse, MacGPG, and PGP etc. all implement. If that is true, then you should refer to it as OpenPGP, and not PGP. I dont know what your talk will consist of, besides the funny enigmail XSS and goatse.cx stuff (thanks for that! always good to have some goatse early in the morning), but I would like to point out a few things that might be useful to mention. One is a wiki page that I created with some people: https://we.riseup.net/riseuplabs+paow/openpgp-best-practices - it contains some useful hints about using OpenPGP, maintaining a good key and some general good practices that people often dont know about (such as the importance of keeping your keys updated to get critical revocation and expiration extension certifications!) One thing mentioned on that page that I wanted to highlight, because you used pgp.mit.edu links in your original email, is that the keyserver pgp.mit.edu is not a good one to use/promote. Everyone uses it as their 'goto' keyserver, but it is a really bad idea! As a keyserver, it has been broken for years. For a long time it was just dropping revocations, subkey updates and expirations on the floor. That is *really* bad. Eventually, they upgraded their keyserver software, but it is *still* running an older version of SKS, a version that fails to handle 16-digit subkeyid lookups (among other failings). So, please don't rely on pgp.mit.edu for your security, and please don't include them in your slides! If you are looking for one to use, I highly recommend using the SKS pool address (hkp://pool.sks-keyservers.net or http://hkps.pool.sks-keyservers.net/ - or if you want a more close geographical pool, have a look at http://sks-keyservers.net/overview-of-pools.php) Finally, there seems to be some amazing misconceptions about keyservers, keys and the web of trust. In particular this http://cryptome.org/2013/07/mining-pgp-keyservers.htm circulated recently and it pained me to see because it suggested various wreckless conclusions that were dangerously off the mark[0] (and used pgp.mit.edu, hah). While it is true that we've jokingly called the OpenPGP web of trust "the original social network" because of the exposed social relational graphing that can be done by querying keyservers, and it is for this reason that many activists I know do not want to have signatures uploaded to keyservers (and instead use the bulky local-only signature work-around)... ... but for some reason people seem to think that if it is on a keyserver, is true, or it means something that it doesn't. People don't realize critical things, such as the fact that I can create a key with the UID Nadim Kobeissi and upload it to the keyservers[1]. That doesn't mean that is the real Nadim's key (this is what exchanging key fingerprints and doing certifications is for, so you can know, with a certain degree of certainty, that this person is the person who controls that secret key material). Or people think that because I signed your key and that signature is on the keyserver that indicates: I trust you; we met in person at that date; we know each other; we are involved in a criminal conspiracy with each other; or many other wrong assumptions about what that certification means. I can sign Edward Snowden's key and send that to the keyservers[1]. Hell, I can sign Snowden's key with my fake Nadim Kobeissi key[1] and then send it to the keyservers. Does that mean that Nadim and Snowden have met in person?! No, it does not at all. Anyways, I can keep going... but I dont know what the focus of your OHM talk is about, so going on like this isn't particularly useful to you and your talk... however, I'd be happy to provide more feedback about your talk if you would like![2] After all, we Micahs need to stick together, micah 0. "the cryptome article just sounds like impenetrable bullshit from someone with no interest in actually understandning what's happening" - I'm not saying who said this... 1. no, I didn't do that, nor did I upload the edward snowden or bradly manning keys. -- Too many emails? Unsubscribe, change to digest, or change password by emailing moderator at companys(a)stanford.edu or changing your settings at https://mailman.stanford.edu/mailman/listinfo/liberationtech ----- 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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Stealthy Dopant-Level Hardware Trojans
by Eugen Leitl 23 Jun '14

23 Jun '14

http://people.umass.edu/gbecker/BeckerChes13.pdf Stealthy Dopant-Level Hardware Trojans ? Georg T. Becker1 , Francesco Regazzoni2 , Christof Paar1,3 , and Wayne P. Burleson1 1University of Massachusetts Amherst, USA 2TU Delft, The Netherlands and ALaRI - University of Lugano, Switzerland 3Horst ortz Institut for IT-Security, Ruhr-Universiat Bochum, Germany Abstract. In recent years, hardware Trojans have drawn the attention of governments and industry as well as the scientific community. One of the main concerns is that integrated circuits, e.g., for military or critical infrastructure applications, could be maliciously manipulated during the manufacturing process, which often takes place abroad. However, since there have been no reported hardware Trojans in practice yet, little is known about how such a Trojan would look like, and how dicult it would be in practice to implement one. In this paper we propose an extremely stealthy approach for implementing hardware Trojans below the gate level, and we evaluate their impact on the security of the target device. Instead of adding additional circuitry to the target design, we insert our hardware Trojans by changing the dopant polarity of existing transistors. Since the modified circuit appears legitimate on all wiring layers (including all metal and polysilicon), our family of Trojans is resistant to most detection techniques, including fine-grain optical inspection and checking against "golden chips". We demonstrate the ectiveness of our approach by inserting Trojans into two designs | a digital post-processing derived from Intel's cryptographically secure RNG design used in the Ivy Bridge processors and a side-channel resistant SBox implementation and by exploring their detectability and their ects on security. Keywords: Hardware Trojans, malicious hardware, layout modifications, Trojan side-channel

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Bitmessage?
by d.nix 01 Oct '13

01 Oct '13

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 I've seen little or no discussion of Bitmessage, and was wondering what thoughts - pro or con - people have of it: https://bitmessage.org/wiki/Main_Page I've got it up and running and have exchanged messages with a friend and well as a few other folks testing the waters. One thing I like about it, is that it seems at first glance to not suffer from the same sort of traffic analysis issues that plague regular email; to me, the traffic analysis problems are a bigger issue than message encryption. One could also paste PGP/GPG or other encrypted content into Bitmessage for your super duper secret stuff where you are concerned the recipients machine is compromised. There's apparently a standard email gateway for it also: https://bitmessage.ch/ Tho, that may bring you back to the problems of traffic analysis. I'd also love to see more mix network stuff getting developed so we could help secure against traffic analysis of existing systems. Tom Ritter's talk on analyzing mix network traffic was quite cool: http://ritter.vg/blog-deanonymizing_amm.html http://ritter.vg/blog-deanonymizing_amm_followup1.html But anyhow, Bitmessage; yay or nay? Dave BM-2D9fgf9MeGhq9Fxcwg1k2W1C179KJuUEFg - -- -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v2.0.20 (MingW32) iQEcBAEBAgAGBQJSSRByAAoJEDMbeBxcUNAeevIH/3RFdqhbuKtlB4ZraFH531zE hdXHfQFOPhAvpV2SjIscm3YMLWnDMR2ap5zRrIZ6OSPThVNa7339q87ITU4sRBAs yCXHJaEFiT/kY/IfGr8PeYLrUegSgY41iGjgYekkZUfIrQdXwlA7afMr4XZz4DKP XsrpE3Mjq8tw9JOgB3q8VzMOaDuCOyIceFxyGiDhlwTlM1Imy4NPGkaToAvkhg4C 51MmXjRW/L+hBhjyeCJ0iG4o1YOhaOIVocsHXYy7n3V7mHmwvrS86cF1i0wpxAxM 3Q/7N7FNM57LEHBgU8xLsGkrmY/FLk0hZLPOz3ZClefhjaQIE9jpz8GHKCXziSw= =8xN+ -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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three crypto lists - why and which
by Adam Back 01 Oct '13

01 Oct '13

I am not sure if everyone is aware that there is also an unmoderated crypto list, because I see old familiar names posting on the moderated crypto list that I do not see posting on the unmoderated list. The unmoderated list has been running continuously (new posts in every day with no gaps) since mar 2010, with an interesting relatively low noise, and not firehose volume. http://lists.randombit.net/mailman/listinfo/cryptography The actual reason for the creation of that list was Perry's list went through a hiatus when Perry stopped approving/forward posts eg http://www.mail-archive.com/cryptography@metzdowd.com/ originally Nov 2009 - Mar 2010 (I presume the mar 2010 restart was motivated by the creation of randombit list starting in the same month) but more recently sep 2010 to may 2013 gap (minus traffic in aug 2011). http://www.metzdowd.com/pipermail/cryptography/ I have no desire to pry into Perry's personal circumstances as to why this huge gap happened, and he should be thanked for the significant moderation effort he has put into create this low noise environment, but despite that it is bad for cryptography if people's means of technical interaction spuriously stops. Perry mentioned recently that he has now backup moderators, OK so good. There is now also the cypherpunks list which has picked up, and covers a wider mix of topics, censorship resistant technology ideas, forays into ideology etc. Moderation is even lower than randombit but no spam, noise slightly higher but quite reasonable so far. And there is now a domain name that is not al-quaeda.net (seriously? is that even funny?): cpunks.org. https://cpunks.org/pipermail/cypherpunks/ At least I enjoy it and see some familiar names posting last seen decade+ ago. Anyway my reason for posting was threefold: a) make people aware of randombit crypto list, b) rebooted cypherpunks list (*), but c) about how to use randombit (unmoderated) and metzdowd. For my tastes sometimes Perry will cut off a discussion that I thought was just warming up because I wanted to get into the detail, so I tend more prefer the unmoderated list. But its kind of a weird situaton because there are people I want views and comments from who are on the metzdowd list who as far as I know are not on the crypto list, and there's no convenient way to migrate a conversation other than everyone subscribing to both. Cc to both perhaps works somewhat, I do that sometimes though as a general principle it can be annoying when people Cc to too many lists. Anyway thanks for your attention, back to the unmoderated (or moderated) discussion! Adam

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Fwd: [cryptography] The Compromised Internet
by coderman 30 Sep '13

30 Sep '13

---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: coderman <coderman(a)gmail.com> Date: Wed, Sep 25, 2013 at 11:41 PM Subject: Re: [cryptography] The Compromised Internet To: Eugen Leitl <eugen(a)leitl.org> On Wed, Sep 25, 2013 at 11:33 PM, Eugen Leitl <eugen(a)leitl.org> wrote: >... > There is no weather in LEO but space weather. this reminds of the telcos who all say "redundant fault tolerant paths" are possible through the same right-of-way. you're optimizing against natural / random failures, and completely and totally vulnerable to active interference. do i have to spell it out?

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[tt] NYT: N.S.A. Gathers Data on Social Connections of U.S. Citizens
by Eugen Leitl 30 Sep '13

30 Sep '13

----- Forwarded message from Frank Forman <checker(a)panix.com> ----- Date: Mon, 30 Sep 2013 15:42:01 +0000 (GMT) From: Frank Forman <checker(a)panix.com> To: Transhuman Tech <tt(a)postbiota.org> Subject: [tt] NYT: N.S.A. Gathers Data on Social Connections of U.S. Citizens Laura Poitras was featured on the cover of the NYT Magazine, which article I sent to this list. Now she has an NYT byline, which is as respectable as you can get. N.S.A. Gathers Data on Social Connections of U.S. Citizens http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/29/us/nsa-examines-social-networks-of-us-cit… By JAMES RISEN and LAURA POITRAS WASHINGTON--Since 2010, the National Security Agency has been exploiting its huge collections of data to create sophisticated graphs of some Americans' social connections that can identify their associates, their locations at certain times, their traveling companions and other personal information, according to newly disclosed documents and interviews with officials. The spy agency began allowing the analysis of phone call and e-mail logs in November 2010 to examine Americans' networks of associations for foreign intelligence purposes after N.S.A. officials lifted restrictions on the practice, according to documents provided by Edward J. Snowden, the former N.S.A. contractor. The policy shift was intended to help the agency "discover and track" connections between intelligence targets overseas and people in the United States, according to an N.S.A. memorandum from January 2011. The agency was authorized to conduct "large-scale graph analysis on very large sets of communications metadata without having to check foreignness" of every e-mail address, phone number or other identifier, the document said. Because of concerns about infringing on the privacy of American citizens, the computer analysis of such data had previously been permitted only for foreigners. The agency can augment the communications data with material from public, commercial and other sources, including bank codes, insurance information, Facebook profiles, passenger manifests, voter registration rolls and GPS location information, as well as property records and unspecified tax data, according to the documents. They do not indicate any restrictions on the use of such "enrichment" data, and several former senior Obama administration officials said the agency drew on it for both Americans and foreigners. N.S.A. officials declined to say how many Americans have been caught up in the effort, including people involved in no wrongdoing. The documents do not describe what has resulted from the scrutiny, which links phone numbers and e-mails in a "contact chain" tied directly or indirectly to a person or organization overseas that is of foreign intelligence interest. The new disclosures add to the growing body of knowledge in recent months about the N.S.A.'s access to and use of private information concerning Americans, prompting lawmakers in Washington to call for reining in the agency and President Obama to order an examination of its surveillance policies. Almost everything about the agency's operations is hidden, and the decision to revise the limits concerning Americans was made in secret, without review by the nation's intelligence court or any public debate. As far back as 2006, a Justice Department memo warned of the potential for the "misuse" of such information without adequate safeguards. An agency spokeswoman, asked about the analyses of Americans' data, said, "All data queries must include a foreign intelligence justification, period." "All of N.S.A.'s work has a foreign intelligence purpose," the spokeswoman added. "Our activities are centered on counterterrorism, counterproliferation and cybersecurity." The legal underpinning of the policy change, she said, was a 1979 Supreme Court ruling that Americans could have no expectation of privacy about what numbers they had called. Based on that ruling, the Justice Department and the Pentagon decided that it was permissible to create contact chains using Americans' "metadata," which includes the timing, location and other details of calls and e-mails, but not their content. The agency is not required to seek warrants for the analyses from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. N.S.A. officials declined to identify which phone and e-mail databases are used to create the social network diagrams, and the documents provided by Mr. Snowden do not specify them. The agency did say that the large database of Americans' domestic phone call records, which was revealed by Mr. Snowden in June and caused bipartisan alarm in Washington, was excluded. (N.S.A. officials have previously acknowledged that the agency has done limited analysis in that database, collected under provisions of the Patriot Act, exclusively for people who might be linked to terrorism suspects.) But the agency has multiple collection programs and databases, the former officials said, adding that the social networking analyses relied on both domestic and international metadata. They spoke only on the condition of anonymity because the information was classified. The concerns in the United States since Mr. Snowden's revelations have largely focused on the scope of the agency's collection of the private data of Americans and the potential for abuse. But the new documents provide a rare window into what the N.S.A. actually does with the information it gathers. A series of agency PowerPoint presentations and memos describe how the N.S.A. has been able to develop software and other tools--one document cited a new generation of programs that "revolutionize" data collection and analysis--to unlock as many secrets about individuals as possible. The spy agency, led by Gen. Keith B. Alexander, an unabashed advocate for more weapons in the hunt for information about the nation's adversaries, clearly views its collections of metadata as one of its most powerful resources. N.S.A. analysts can exploit that information to develop a portrait of an individual, one that is perhaps more complete and predictive of behavior than could be obtained by listening to phone conversations or reading e-mails, experts say. Phone and e-mail logs, for example, allow analysts to identify people's friends and associates, detect where they were at a certain time, acquire clues to religious or political affiliations, and pick up sensitive information like regular calls to a psychiatrist's office, late-night messages to an extramarital partner or exchanges with a fellow plotter. "Metadata can be very revealing," said Orin S. Kerr, a law professor at George Washington University. "Knowing things like the number someone just dialed or the location of the person's cellphone is going to allow them to assemble a picture of what someone is up to. It's the digital equivalent of tailing a suspect." The N.S.A. had been pushing for more than a decade to obtain the rule change allowing the analysis of Americans' phone and e-mail data. Intelligence officials had been frustrated that they had to stop when a contact chain hit a telephone number or e-mail address believed to be used by an American, even though it might yield valuable intelligence primarily concerning a foreigner who was overseas, according to documents previously disclosed by Mr. Snowden. N.S.A. officials also wanted to employ the agency's advanced computer analysis tools to sift through its huge databases with much greater efficiency. The agency had asked for the new power as early as 1999, the documents show, but had been initially rebuffed because it was not permitted under rules of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court that were intended to protect the privacy of Americans. A 2009 draft of an N.S.A. inspector general's report suggests that contact chaining and analysis may have been done on Americans' communications data under the Bush administration's program of wiretapping without warrants, which began after the Sept. 11 attacks to detect terrorist activities and skirted the existing laws governing electronic surveillance. In 2006, months after the wiretapping program was disclosed by The New York Times, the N.S.A.'s acting general counsel wrote a letter to a senior Justice Department official, which was also leaked by Mr. Snowden, formally asking for permission to perform the analysis on American phone and e-mail data. A Justice Department memo to the attorney general noted that the "misuse" of such information "could raise serious concerns," and said the N.S.A. promised to impose safeguards, including regular audits, on the metadata program. In 2008, the Bush administration gave its approval. A new policy that year, detailed in "Defense Supplemental Procedures Governing Communications Metadata Analysis," authorized by Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates and Attorney General Michael B. Mukasey, said that since the Supreme Court had ruled that metadata was not constitutionally protected, N.S.A. analysts could use such information "without regard to the nationality or location of the communicants," according to an internal N.S.A. description of the policy. After that decision, which was previously reported by The Guardian, the N.S.A. performed the social network graphing in a pilot project for 1 ½ years "to great benefit," according to the 2011 memo. It was put in place in November 2010 in "Sigint Management Directive 424" (sigint refers to signals intelligence). In the 2011 memo explaining the shift, N.S.A. analysts were told that they could trace the contacts of Americans as long as they cited a foreign intelligence justification. That could include anything from ties to terrorism, weapons proliferation or international drug smuggling to spying on conversations of foreign politicians, business figures or activists. Analysts were warned to follow existing "minimization rules," which prohibit the N.S.A. from sharing with other agencies names and other details of Americans whose communications are collected, unless they are necessary to understand foreign intelligence reports or there is evidence of a crime. The agency is required to obtain a warrant from the intelligence court to target a "U.S. person"--a citizen or legal resident--for actual eavesdropping. The N.S.A. documents show that one of the main tools used for chaining phone numbers and e-mail addresses has the code name Mainway. It is a repository into which vast amounts of data flow daily from the agency's fiber-optic cables, corporate partners and foreign computer networks that have been hacked. The documents show that significant amounts of information from the United States go into Mainway. An internal N.S.A. bulletin, for example, noted that in 2011 Mainway was taking in 700 million phone records per day. In August 2011, it began receiving an additional 1.1 billion cellphone records daily from an unnamed American service provider under Section 702 of the 2008 FISA Amendments Act, which allows for the collection of the data of Americans if at least one end of the communication is believed to be foreign. The overall volume of metadata collected by the N.S.A. is reflected in the agency's secret 2013 budget request to Congress. The budget document, disclosed by Mr. Snowden, shows that the agency is pouring money and manpower into creating a metadata repository capable of taking in 20 billion "record events" daily and making them available to N.S.A. analysts within 60 minutes. The spending includes support for the "Enterprise Knowledge System," which has a $394 million multiyear budget and is designed to "rapidly discover and correlate complex relationships and patterns across diverse data sources on a massive scale," according to a 2008 document. The data is automatically computed to speed queries and discover new targets for surveillance. A top-secret document titled "Better Person Centric Analysis" describes how the agency looks for 94 "entity types," including phone numbers, e-mail addresses and IP addresses. In addition, the N.S.A. correlates 164 "relationship types" to build social networks and what the agency calls "community of interest" profiles, using queries like "travelsWith, hasFather, sentForumMessage, employs." A 2009 PowerPoint presentation provided more examples of data sources available in the "enrichment" process, including location-based services like GPS and TomTom, online social networks, billing records and bank codes for transactions in the United States and overseas. At a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing on Thursday, General Alexander was asked if the agency ever collected or planned to collect bulk records about Americans' locations based on cellphone tower data. He replied that it was not doing so as part of the call log program authorized by the Patriot Act, but said a fuller response would be classified. If the N.S.A. does not immediately use the phone and e-mail logging data of an American, it can be stored for later use, at least under certain circumstances, according to several documents. One 2011 memo, for example, said that after a court ruling narrowed the scope of the agency's collection, the data in question was "being buffered for possible ingest" later. A year earlier, an internal briefing paper from the N.S.A. Office of Legal Counsel showed that the agency was allowed to collect and retain raw traffic, which includes both metadata and content, about "U.S. persons" for up to five years online and for an additional 10 years offline for "historical searches." James Risen reported from Washington and New York. Laura Poitras, a freelance journalist, reported from Berlin. _______________________________________________ tt mailing list tt(a)postbiota.org http://postbiota.org/mailman/listinfo/tt ----- 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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Interesting aspects of the metadata analysis [was Re: NYT: N.S.A. Gathers Data on Social Connections of U.S. Citizens]
by coderman 30 Sep '13

30 Sep '13

there are some interesting tidbits in this release: "The agency had asked for the new power as early as 1999, the documents show, but had been initially rebuffed because it was not permitted under rules of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court that were intended to protect the privacy of Americans.... A 2009 draft of an N.S.A. inspector general’s report suggests that contact chaining and analysis may have been done on Americans’ communications data under the Bush administration’s program of wiretapping without warrants" i find it interesting that this request occurred the same time that core collection on US backbone links at Sprint was under development. Sprint provided the perfect initial test as their ATM infrastructure, and IPoATM data networks, were the most challenging environment for deep packet inspection. (Solve it for Sprint, it can be applied anywhere) "...which began after the Sept. 11 attacks to detect terrorist activities and skirted the existing laws governing electronic surveillance." it began earlier than this! "A new policy that year [2008], detailed in “Defense Supplemental Procedures Governing Communications Metadata Analysis,” authorized by Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates and Attorney General Michael B. Mukasey, said that since the Supreme Court had ruled that metadata was not constitutionally protected, N.S.A. analysts could use such information “without regard to the nationality or location of the communicants,” according to an internal N.S.A. description of the policy... After that decision, which was previously reported by The Guardian, the N.S.A. performed the social network graphing in a pilot project for 1 ½ years “to great benefit,” according to the 2011 memo. It was put in place in November 2010 in “Sigint Management Directive 424” (sigint refers to signals intelligence)." so this is when we see the floodgates really open, and the data deluge turned up to 11... "The N.S.A. documents show that one of the main tools used for chaining phone numbers and e-mail addresses has the code name Mainway. It is a repository into which vast amounts of data flow daily from the agency’s fiber-optic cables, corporate partners and foreign computer networks that have been hacked. The documents show that significant amounts of information from the United States go into Mainway. An internal N.S.A. bulletin, for example, noted that in 2011 Mainway was taking in 700 million phone records per day. In August 2011, it began receiving an additional 1.1 billion cellphone records daily from an unnamed American service provider... ... the agency is pouring money and manpower into creating a metadata repository capable of taking in 20 billion “record events” daily and making them available to N.S.A. analysts within 60 minutes. The spending includes support for the “Enterprise Knowledge System,” which has a $394 million multiyear budget and is designed to “rapidly discover and correlate complex relationships and patterns across diverse data sources on a massive scale,” ... A top-secret document titled “Better Person Centric Analysis” describes how the agency looks for 94 “entity types,” including phone numbers, e-mail addresses and IP addresses. In addition, the N.S.A. correlates 164 “relationship types” to build social networks and what the agency calls “community of interest” profiles, using queries like “travelsWith, hasFather, sentForumMessage, employs.” A 2009 PowerPoint presentation provided more examples of data sources available in the “enrichment” process, including location-based services like GPS and TomTom, online social networks, billing records and bank codes for transactions in the United States and overseas." and this is interesting in both scale and technical detail on the metadata collected and how it is utilized in social network analysis. keep 'em coming!

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[17] hidden links
by brian carroll 30 Sep '13

30 Sep '13

--- overview --- pile-on. the following are a wide range of examples of everyday situations that could have crypto relevance, in one way or another. the purpose is to share a view of how large the fundamental questions are, beyond a software/hardware and computer model to perhaps question the assumptions of where the boundaries are, especially as it is decided upon in a fixed set of [signs] via code and programs, versus what i propose is to deconstruct to the most minimal structures, circuits and models and hypotheses that become the code, in a diagrammatic pattern language versus linear sign-based system. thus more like molecular sculpture, programming, in testing and evaluating ideas from the period table, via logical reasoning, than an issue of rationalization of a private finite bounded binaristically determined view that is detached from actual reality, separated from it, substituting for it. this is a problem of language and meaning and the limits of linearization both in terms of writing/reading though also computationally, in serial processing of, what amounts to a false singular perspective made up of fragments of relativism yet not rigorous enough to achieve grounded empiricism due to error reliance. thus, the gap in questioning and interpretation as it may relate to fields and ideas beyond the ordinary consideration. also: it is to assume cryptographers in their natural state may actually think in these terms (dimensionally) though it may not have a place in code as code or analogous encryption approaches due to a particular technical approach, if over-focussed on subjective mathematics and out of balance with the larger questioning of signs and their relation to reality, this as language based on logical reasoning, both mathematical and 'cultural'. in the way crypto may reference books via hidden patterns, to decipher messages, it is presumed this is more the foundation of the discipline than flawed technology. and thus more a reminder of its depth and range of operation, than finiteness. --- aesthetics --- the false perspective can be tricky, images deceive- who figures the effortless grace of a Cary Grant presidency would front for an illegal crypto dictatorship, another hidden order plotting against citizens behind the iconic, oversaturated stars and stripes of the US flag, emblem of patriotic ideology that all are safe, there is nothing to worry about, while people are actively being ground into dust. the image can lie. it can misrepresent. [signs] that are pattern matched can be subverted, appearing to be one thing while functioning as another. this is why testing hypotheses versus blind faith in theories is a required for vigilance. [sign.A] can transform into [sign.B] yet appear still as if the [sign] itself, unchanging, yet if the context or dynamics shift, its meaning and purpose can also. it is as if there is no awareness of what observation is, a pre-literate condition whereby populations are not educated enough to distinguish their or others ideas in a grounded framework. and critical to this is the concept of perspective, the physical relationships that establish viewpoints and boundaries. for instance, if a neighbor listens at the wall to monitor another person, who is simply typing at a computer and not making any disturbance that could effect them, yet this neighbor knows what they are typing is 'wrong' and disturbing and could in turn retaliate to stop the activity. this also is an issue of perspective and boundaries, where the right of privacy of a tenant is disregarded by a neighbor who instead surveils and exploits this as a means of political harassment. a line or boundary has been crossed, the law disregarded, and this can also happen with government, if it too monitors and disallows legal activity that seeks to shut down activity it deems 'wrong' to its particular limited agenda and viewpoint, and in this way ignoring the constitutional rights of other citizens as the default. meaning of words and concepts and symbols demarcate 'the lines' or trajectories of logical reasoning, they need to be validated and error-corrected and watched over to maintain a proper relationship, yet if this oversight fails, an all-seeing perspective that is actually very limited and based in false and biased views can become 'the public' framework, yet function against this public via corruption of these same frameworks and processes needed to maintain a shared public state. The Republic by Plato describes various forms of government as one type leads to another and in this, democracy is said to lead to dictatorship. of various other forms of governance, say aristocracy or communism, it is proposed in a context of empirical truth, that if 'truth' were the basis for governance of human citizens in a human state, that these various stages of governance could all function on the 'same side' of truth, even while configured differently. and if truth were the basis for relations, and its error correction, then perhaps these various forms of governance could error-correct known failures in these same systems. in this way it is hypothesized that the truth in European nations is not against truth in other areas, and the truth in Russia and truth in China is not inherently against or opposed to the truth in the US or Canada. and thus so too issues of crypto. in that, 'shared awareness' and 'shared truth' may have a different boundary than the nation-state and each state could function with 'shared lies' as a challenge which is common across borders as well, and maps into another framework than the state is organized around in its traditional terms. thus doubling of function, potentially, inside and outside, to deal with these dynamics both near and far. it would seem that human identity is the basis for this assumption that such shared empirical observation could occur in a human framework, to resolve discrepancies occurring internally and externally and provide a means of accurate feedback in regards to shared principles and the ability to evaluate and correct errors in a common framework based in shared truth, tested and retested against the evidence. what is particularly of interest in this is the role of symbolism that spans all states of the world, especially in a realm of flags and other representations of a people or culture, potentially as signaling systems referencing common elements. for instance, colors or stars or birds, as these structural /signs/ may change country to country yet reference or communicate via similar symbolic elements. likewise, each country or region may relate in particular frameworks for cuisine and local customs, including clothing and zeitgeist, as modern and traditional influences may be mediated uniquely in a given context which can also heavily depend upon geography and connectivity, which can lead to routes unchanged over millennia, more closely connected to the ancient past than the unfolding future. and that there is truth everywhere and truth to be learned from these various people and perspectives about existence and the nature of being and perception. that perhaps they know things that are beyond another's limited boundary and thus listening and considering the ideas is an important process in human relations, as it relates to truth and evidence and what exists versus what is believed to exist. and that deep human connections are possible in opening up and allowing for this dialogue and evaluation of hypotheses in a shared framework based on and guided by truth itself. where each perspective counts in the truth it exists within. and that 'higher truth' as a principle must be accounted for likewise, fundamentally. that some truth is hierarchical and its structural capacity must be recognized and respected, versus deferring to lesser truth and less accurate interpretations. in this way, truth establishes actual power. its corruption weakens and dilutes it. it is something to consider then, when a national dish or symbolic [sign] are corrupted or subverted -- say the main ingredient in hotdish of a given culture is being poisoned somehow as part of a hidden agenda. or that an apple is so loaded with chemicals and various drugs as to be sickening, yet remains a symbol of health ('an apple a day keeps insurance and healthcare in perpetual play'). what if the kielbasa is spiked at the factory. or the water is loaded with unfiltered psychiatric run-off and windshield wiper fluid. or mothers breasts transit Zoloft to newborns. at what point of disjuncture may these dynamics be considered corrupt in their pre-existing interpretations and requiring of new evaluations to get at what has changed and what is going on behind the curtain of hidden, secret state and its antihuman agenda. how can an appearance remain unchecked which has been subverted so that it stands against itself as its own [anti-sign]. yet this a=b condition becomes an issue of allegiance and ideological alliance, as if litmus to separate the canaries into the psychiatric system while funneling the rest into the awaiting cattle chutes. silent, passive, easily controlled, compliant, ready to be led to their demise while helping the process along and getting paid for it. what are the security issues involved and secrecy required for such events to occur yet be off the cultural and communications radar. where is the feedback or critical evaluation in a larger human context, versus fragmented relativisms that focus here or there in specificities, yet cannot seem to make tangible a standing conspiracy to overtake the world and turn the earth into a slave prison-planet. in that sense of civilian world war, it is curious what individuals might think about in terms of the stakes involved, life and death scenarios as the situation becomes increasingly clear. what happens when people are set against one another in barbarian-like mindsets and pre-literate and illiterate frameworks. might not issues like tattoos become areas of populist contention, where those of differing natures seek to regain the meaning of their signs, no longer observing boundaries of respect for unlike others, whose tattoos by comparison may be their devaluing, or seek to signify what they really are not- and thus a stand-off could occur in such strange realms. or, those with piercings as a security issue, if say there is a sudden appearance of torturers in the population, against the opposition, where having battery hookups on various body parts is inviting such exploitations. would you walk around in a thunderstorm in a large field with a metal antenna strapped to your head? what about walking around with 'security exploits' in times of war, inviting the oppositional imagination to consider the worst, given the specifics. and so too, the increasing primativisation as a cultural trend, whereby ear plugs and flesh tubes seemingly emulate villagers of particular cultural traditions as if a style or extension of a fashion or aesthetic movement. the issue involved is also of a potential security exploit- what might someone do with that, against a person, as a weakness or if they relate to it as a threat of profanation of the shared values. and there is nothing to stop the stand-off between these people. i cannot help but think of college hazing gone wrong, where a U-Lock could easily capture a person against a pole via their earlobes and there could be no way of escape in a given scenario than ripping your own ears open and having flaps from the stretched condition. and yet- there are vast many people who despise these kinds of transgressions, in cultural terms, for signifying a devolving culture. what if such aesthetic choices are security choices. what if they could lead to other interactions eventually in a changing context, and the 'shared awareness' is simply the result of an absence of error-correction for the group, and that such a group may have limits on some issues, which could align with certain principles. in that, it is highly likely many are in these contexts and require adaptation to cultural dynamics, and so may be self-aware about the deeper divisions this may involve in 'shared awareness' in terms of aesthetics, or as aesthetics divide groups and individuals from one another. as if a stage play and costumes for different characters and their roles. and that this must be acknowledged. and yet so too there could be ideology involved, beliefs that could be fundamentally false or wicked or antihuman even, associated with similar signage and associated or related practices, given the particular individuals and groups so aligned. and in this way, like a freeway sign or marker offering direction, these iconic [signs] and the observational processing of symbols establishes certain relations and is involved in establishing and maintaining specific limits, boundaries, and rites. the rock-opera film Quadrophenia is an interesting contrast between the aesthetics of mods on vespa scooters and leather-clad rockers on motorcycles in the UK 1960s. the contrast between the Beatles and the Rolling Stones likewise, in some way. it involves aesthetic communications and symbolic language of artifacts, actions, and ideas, cultural practices that can eventually run in parallel or even against one another, say if biker gangs go to war over territory. graffiti or [signs] can be part of this infrastructure of hidden communication that may otherwise be missed by those outside the shared boundary or framework of interrelational awareness. so an issue such as hairstyles, such as the mohawk from the punk era, versus in the present day, where it may be a different sign, potentially of conformance if the spirit of rebellion is only shallow, versus visceral challenging of order. and as language, how this may relate historically to earlier eras, peoples, and ideas. that there is depth to signs and symbolism, and thus literacy involves awareness and the ability and capacity to read and interpret these events in their depth, or to the depth available. and thus experience or knowledge can help in observation. in other words, there could be authentic signs and symbols, retaining an integrity and others that are mimicking this, emulating, or simulating the [signage] while potentially even standing against its depth, as an anti-sign, camouflage or label wearing, as status symbols or markers, these relations hollowed out of meaning and made superficial yet still potentially functioning and treated as if originals and not copies of copies which devolve via noise, and dissolve into greater falsity. what is a sign that only references itself? or self-aware self-referencing. what if to some extent it is a form of advertisement, marketing, instead of ideas it is about consumerism, for instance, replacing cultural depth with its commodification as a result of increasing development of illiteracy in a context of mass populism. such that the TV extra or stand-in or "bit part" becomes a kind of vocation, just like a person can decide to become a heroine user and make a living as an addict, because the clinics and programs need them to justify their own existence and thus a lifestyle can be sustained by various choices, say versus another line of work. such as focusing on human problems beyond the self and making huge sacrifices on behalf of the group, and taking beating after beating in doing so. maybe it is an issue of broken people again, yet at some point there is also a choice and again a boundary issue- a critical moment, and making the wrong choices distinguishes one group from another, and it is proposed The Moment of Truth is this demarcation. whose to say that if a government falls and functions in its worst vices against its own citizens, that those on the inside of its internal organization are also not the same group protected in corrupt society - such that surveillers and those going after people, setting them up or gathering evidence to take them down, are not themselves the pedophile networks and child abusers and misogynists who most benefit from this devolved condition, seemingly of a shared political agenda even. and so what if the [signs] are not accurate for what may actually be involved or the network of signs are not allowed to be established or referenced for shared navigation because this territory is already encrypted and under control, via these same hidden and hostile forces, operating beyond the existing boundaries. what if there is a plague or epidemic of moral collapse that is the rotten core of the rogue state and its antihuman agenda and that at its center is a concentrated network that is organized around principles against citizens, education, law, freedom, human development, family, marriage, nature, as part of a conspiracy. and yet this very situation could also have been devised as a trap, with a dual plan that both allows for this maldevelopment in order to annihilate it within society, and thus complex and contradictory cryptography also exists in this same context. --- further note on aesthetics --- regarding issues of individual style, the film Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, released in the past few years, was an interesting evaluation of the dress of those whose business it is to operate in the realm of secrets and national security issues. it is almost that dress is occurs thoroughly at the midpoint range, in an ambiguous realm that is neither completely common nor singularly identifiably unique. and thus blending into a surrounding population, nondescript perhaps, not standing out as a benefit for those moving between realms amongst others of different domains. what is interesting is that there is value to camouflage yet also the potential for small details, that establish identity in a minimal or traditional framework than needing to establish this as extreme individualism or group activity, though that likely has its place equally so, given different context. though it would appear an issue connected with identity and shared or unshared awareness, if the focus is on maintaining costuming or being removed of its additional requirements. perhaps for some the tradeoff is necessary or critical, yet for others it could be that their anonymity is part of their security and safety protocol. as a [sign] they may become ambiguous and unnoticed in a particular context, in that their extreme sport is bloodsport and yet no one may be the wiser of such activity. another film, The Company (2007) with Michael Keaton as the head of a mole-hunting counterintelligence unit, an orchid lover known as "mother", conveys this symbolic dimension likewise in a larger symbolic framework that cultural communication inherently exists within, as the context for shared meaning via language. and thus if [signs] are mediated in this way as a way of conveying stories, why would they be limited in this same depth in a realm of computation involving such [signs], unless of course this is not the case and other approaches exist within crypto. this has been a futile attempt to reference the [signage] of self as signifying a certain algorithm reading by others, in a surrounding culture, as the boundary for shared or unshared awareness. it may be a haircut, a suit, color or style of clothing, shoes, tattoos or body piercings, though at some point these are patterns that are matched against others, such that a 'hacker' is represented by a particular style or school of thought, and defined aesthetically. or programmer, or covert operative, or cryptographer, or technocrat, or artist, or activist. and there seems to be a corrolaly here, potentially, between these same issues of superficial crypto where a BIG SIGN is put up saying: HERE IS THE HIDDEN SECRET!!! and so sometimes a style can develop that begins to represent a hacker, say, with stickers all over their laptop, and the ability to run scripts and vandalize and steal passwords, and yet they may be operating in a different realm from those of the 60s onward, who are part of a different language, and 'hacking' could have become a popular group activity, normalized, not radicalized in the same way, in that it is thoroughly profitable and aligned with policies of development say, and so the 'alternative may have become the mainstream' yet view itself as standing apart in some critical way, which is signified by ritual practices, conferences, clothing or hairstyles or music, etc. an anthropological study probably would be needed of the subculture versus a naive guess at what may be involved. excepting that 'popular signs' of hacking appear to coincide with existing politics, where exploitation of other citizens may be occurring by script kiddies and others who are benefiting from this societal breakdown, versus goals of a higher purpose that may remain in the underground, and those who are not craving to be up on stage. it is just that, a particular shallowness and hollowness to certain disciplines appears to exist - including with other realms such as architecture concerned with increasing heights of skyscrapers versus questioning, changing, or challenging city planning principles to address economic, social, or governance issues within building design - and yet in this superficiality, the [architect] is equated with those who before them did explore these dimensions and served higher principles that today seem absent in the development process, as if culture itself has been subverted, hacked, rooted, taken over and sent in another antihuman direction. and so someone may stand-in as an [architect] and look the iconic part, yet serve other principles and effectively function in masquerade, hiding another agenda. and so in a 'landscape of difference', of wildly diverging styles as if freedoms of people to be who they really are, conglomerate around computer monitors and there is a class of programmers who can manipulate computers and develop software and maintain systems -- and yet the gap is only widening at the same time these same types are playing foosball or raving with friends and eating expensive food, while operating in a realm potentially associated with 'hackers' or those who are standing-in for an idea that tended towards human liberation via technology, and not its confinement, whereby these same technologists in their lifestyles and their stylistic code of hair, jewelry, clothing, and tribal customs appear to actually represent the [anti-sign] of the previous hacking ethos in its larger purpose and calling. such as the potential of the internet, versus monetization. as if the very idea and imagination of this online context has collapsed into a trapdoor beneath center stage, where advertisement and marketing rule everything in a no-exist dungeon scenario, and these of simulated radicalism and emulated individualism are actually ~Garden of Earthly Delights minions, an occupying force that is developing an antihuman agenda via hardware and software as an unchecked business model, with no greater expectation of individuals in their capacity. so a [sign] can look like something or have appearance or claim to be equivalent to some defined meaning, and this may be pattern matched even -against itself-, and yet if it does not correlate or ground to a larger context of truth this same 'naming' could be superficial or subverted, and instead be [anti-sign] instead, whereby pseudo-truth moves to falsity in an unshared perspective, beyond the protected boundary where skew and distortion, bias and warping are unaccounted for and allow belief to function as truth, a bubbled interior realm, potentially that of unchecked egotism and narcissism in place of substance of the claimed signs. in this way, issues of language-- it confuses what the sign references with the sign (its attributes) itself, as if wearing the costume equates with the role, acting versus being. knowing versus pretending or mimicking to some extent or another. it is like comparing a programmer who knows 50 computer languages and has designed their own, versus someone who has done some C++ and can run malware scripts and do bug exploits, where both reference the same [sign], in a context of shared truth. and if this is unaccounted for, then a vast bubble culture may exist, which is then extended into code, as an illusion is sustained about the basic nature of things, technological, ideological, institutional, computational, philosophical, though most especially political. the power dynamics operating in these domains and the active high-voltage structural circuits relied upon for day-to-day operation of this exploitation, versus other parallel plans remaining hidden. the potential for the greater truth, discharging the covert super-capacitors in each discipline as the motherboard of state rewires and reprograms its territory. --- trading the paperclip --- an artifact can function as language. its relation to its context is important, as this establishes or changes meaning. an item can be placed in a museum and the way it is observed can be transformed, such as Duchamp and the Fountain urinal, signed by the artist, thus recontextualizing it, establishing a new context, meaning, way of relating and interpreting the artifact within new dimensionality. (reframing) a particular artifact i find especially interesting is the ACCO Ideal butterfly paper clamp, it is an innovative, functional, highly aesthetic style of paperclip that has always reminded me of electric transmission towers. those giant metal armatures crossing continental landscapes, carrying the AC powerlines that deliver high voltage power from its area of generation to its areas of consumption. in many ways representative of the federal level of the state in its civic quality. thus there is a potential transference of the icon of the transmission tower into the smaller scaled context of a similarity or likeness in a type of paperclip, which may or may not be recognized by an observer who readily uses the artifact. and this is to suggest that, like a business card or a calling card, such an artifact could function as a token in its symbolism, if valued, and also as [signage] that is recontextualized by its surroundings. in other words, it could function as a cryptographic key potentially, or shared key, or cipher system, depending on whether or not these encounters with 'networks of power' are noticed by an observer who can relate to their meaning, or who is bounded in awareness. in other words, the paperclip can have a kind of currency, both as a material object and "informationally" as a form or basis for data exchange, of ideas, as it relates to shared awareness or as a basis for communications. and this could and does occur already with other artifacts in the realm of symbolic communication that as a practice is perhaps best zoned in paracrypto relations, non-verbal, rich with meaning, adept in language, yet likely unnoticed by those outside its limits. so there is a famous instance of a paperclip as money, where a single paperclip is exchanged and the person eventually ends up with a 2-story farmhouse... One Red Paperclip http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One_red_paperclip this is not the same idea, though it gets at the current involved in transactions around a common object in terms of shared value and exchange. yet this can occur informationally, where the paperclip instead is a symbol or sign of language, and can establish communication and transmit ideas, potentially. and thus transfer data or awareness or provide insight. it is like a silver bullet placed at a crime scene as this relates to its perpetrator. or an assassin who puts pennies on the eyes of their victim. yet also not of this same deathly realm necessarily, it could instead belong to a realm of networking or connection between peoples or indicate certain parameters which may or may not be valid, given its source. so such an artifact could be used for communication and carry insight in its use and application, whereas a mimic or subverter may attempt the same yet it could be hollow or shallow or misleading, and in a sense, 'collapse the wave that carries the signal', thus indicating an ungrounded relation or compromised instance. in this way, the paperclip of ordinary design can represent this tradeability as language, by its use as exampled in the url above. and yet in another mundane environment it may be just like another penny on the ground, so infinitesimal that it is beyond notice, as if worthless and subconscious unless needed for use. and yet another style of paperclip, the butterfly paper clamp, has a symbolism that goes beyond itself as an icon and maps into another structure (electric transmissions pylons) and in some sense can represent these as language, and in a sense, symbolic currency even. in that to share the artifact could function both by itself as a symbol, though also in a context of surrounding environment that may function in and reference an embedded context, as a [sign] in relation to other [signs], and this is how sentences or more in-depth meaning can be formed beyond the singular event of 'the symbol' (pylon!) and into statements involving or extending its meaning, to some threshold of what is possible to communicate in an abstract realm, given surrounding structures and frameworks of an observer. in this way an errant paperclip or other symbol strangely located in a context could call attention to itself through its uniqueness or out-of-placeness, and in questioning its existence, strange or covert communication could take place in hidden channels of awareness, beyond the boundary of others. and in this way, who placed the paperclip or how it got there could remain a mystery, it could even involve a hidden hand with root access to establish such scenarios, and this can be a way that crypto-communciations occur in what can be a paranormal realm, as statistically unlikely events stack up one after another and establish an entire universe of non-verbal communication via symbols and signs, in precisely this way. there is magic involved, and this connectivity transcends the limits of computers and hardware and software devices and is primary in establishing human relations, and advancing shared awareness via referencing truth within empirical frameworks, using fundamental principles and concepts of language, via this hidden calculus. this is the same idea involved in transmuting the word 'cipher' into 'cigar', it is of a similar process of the actualization of these concepts in the everyday environment as an artifact functions as a cryptographic key or message yet may remain unnoticed in these dimensions by others. it is proposed that this Strange Read/Reply Function (SRF) could be a way of annotating such extra-dimensionality via reinterpretation, misreading, errors, mistakes, misunderstandings, or other mutations of meaning that recontextualize yet expand or alter the original condition and perhaps provide additional insight or bring into question its meaning, via this dŽtournement. optimized plagiary or [recoding] or [overcoding] or a way of accessing subtext via another method of deconstruction. thus opening up interpretation of the text beyond the limit of its referenced [sign] to its potential or range of [signage], so to evaluate ideas and allow relations beyond the preconceived boundaries, to access hidden dimensions embedded within the deep structure of the code, its intersign armature. in this way at the intersection or juncture of architecture and archaeology, past and future meeting in the present. do observers relate, and in what structures, frameworks, dynamics. what is the potential, the boundary, the limit. how to access the greater truth of N-dimensionality, the nonlinear in linear context. and thus a conceptual tool to potentially reassign the sign to say more about it, as this may relate to sets and multisets as parallel, co-existing computations. perspectives or frames that potentially have a lot to offer traditional views, such that the ephemera and errata could be critical in establishing grounding where the assumptions of normative practices related to sign-based communication (as linear calculation) and correct interpretation may make it off limits, by default of being wrong or breaking rules of grammar and-or syntax, versus to acknowledge and allow the potential for meaning where it exists, unearthed. --- on randomness --- it has not adequately been conveyed that artists and artworks can be expert at this signaling and data exchange via symbolic communication. and this extends into the entire ecosystem of gallerists and museums and auctioning of paintings during critical periods, where for instance The Scream will suddenly dominate the global news cycle -- this becomes a form of widely distributed communication -- not only in terms of 'selling the paperclip' and instead the other parallel aspect of using this artifact as a shared reference, a world line by which other dynamics may be aligned or effected by its force fields. including art heists likewise. or newly discovered painting, such as the recent Van Gogh painting of a pot farm. previously introduced to the ideas of John Cage regarding his use of the I Ching to generate randomness, i was unable to appreciate its value as a way to mediate questions of architecture instead of engaging social issues within design ideas. and i probably am still too limited to understand its actual relevance in that domain. and yet in a context of cryptography this same technique could seemingly allow another RNG approach and thus is mentioned here for those it may interest. composer John Cage - chance operations http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Cage#Chance similarly yet differently, in relation to this, graphic symbols could potentially also be used in a roulette approach for randomness, slot-machine littoral: symbols graphic search http://www.symbols.com --- urls --- some additional content related to previous ideas... animal prints confusing zoo animals (a=b) http://ca.news.yahoo.com/blogs/daily-buzz/uk-zoo-bans-animal-prints-because… The Science of Stress, Orgasm and Creativity: How the Brain and the Vagina Conspire in Consciousness (human code) http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/2013/09/23/naomi-wolf-vagina/ Naomi Wolf and Jim Pfaus talk sex // ^related http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Ttrb-97tFA The Phases of the Moon http://www.pinterest.com/pin/178525572702339653/ Plumage // note: politics and style (ref. symbol dictionary for more info) http://www.mnartists.org/work.do?rid=339423 ☷ ☶ ☱ ☲

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[tor-talk] Why the Web of Trust Sucks
by Eugen Leitl 30 Sep '13

30 Sep '13

----- Forwarded message from Mike Perry <mikeperry(a)torproject.org> ----- Date: Sat, 28 Sep 2013 23:43:27 -0700 From: Mike Perry <mikeperry(a)torproject.org> To: tor-talk(a)lists.torproject.org Subject: [tor-talk] Why the Web of Trust Sucks Reply-To: tor-talk(a)lists.torproject.org Joel R. Voss: > Hi Mike, > > I'm writing a blog post about web of trust. I'm looking for any weaknesses I > can find in it because I'm writing a piece of software that would be designed > to help grow it. I'd appreciate if you could give me a few points that I can > research. I'd be happy to send you my findings so far if you want to read them. > This is a fairly important subject because many people rely upon it for > software signing, encrypted e-mail, and soon we could use it much more widely. The web of trust has three main problems: 1. It leaks information. This includes social graph metadata, time and place of interaction, and in some cases government/slave-name identity. This issue has been discussed at length, of course. 2. It has many single points of failure. Because by default GPG uses shortest-weighted paths to establish trust in a key, and moreover because nothing authenticates the *entire* Web of Trust graph, each and every member of the "Strong Set" essentially functions as a CA, especially for keys only weakly connected to the Strong Set. If you compromise just one of those keys, you get to use that key to certify arbitrary keys for any name you like. To understand how and why this is a problem, let's walk through a typical Web of Trust workflow. Let's say we have a GPG user named Edward who wants to send an encrypted email about the extreme level of corruption at his workplace to a journalist that he has never met. Let's call that journalist Glenn. For the sake of argument, let's say that both individuals are active participants in the Web of Trust. Edward also knows that the network systems administrators at his workplace are very sophisticated, and intercept all encrypted communications for purposes of active MITM attacks to obtain the communications content. So Edward decides to download Glenn's key from subkeys.pgp.net, and requests that his gpg client provide him with a trust value for Glenn's key. Now, the network systems administrators at Edward's workplace have anticipated this. They have a compromised HTTPS CA cert, as well as have compromised a couple of highly trusted keys from the Web of Trust. Let's call one of these GPG keys Roger. When Edward goes to download a key to use for Glenn, the network systems administrator gives him a new fake key that they generate on the spot. The network systems administrator also attaches a fully trusted signature using Roger's compromised key. They also block the actual key for Glenn from reaching Edward. Edward's GPG client has trust in a couple keys. It turns out that one of his trusted keys, Bruce, has full trust in Roger's key (the compromised key). Edward's GPG client then computes a fully trusted path from Bruce to Roger to the fake Glenn, and Edward then sends an encrypted email to fake Glenn that is then subsequently read by the network systems administrator. Game over for Edward :/. This scenario is possible against arbitrary keys using any of the high degree keys in the Strong Set. They effectively function as single point of failure CAs for the Web of Trust, which destroy its utility as an independent key authentication mechanism. 3. It doesn't scale very well to the global population. The amount of storage to maintain the Web of Trust for the whole world would be immense. For the level of authentication it provides, it just doesn't make sense to have this much storage involved. So what should we do instead? Well, I think it is important to take a step back and think about what the Web of Trust is trying to accomplish. Aside from being a global popularity contest and some kind of weird quasi-religious hacker ritual, it is an authentication mechanism for the keys that you retrieve. It turns out there are lots of ways to authenticate keys using multipath authentication that do not suffer from the Web of Trust's downsides**. Here's a few examples: 1. Every time GPG downloads a new key, re-download it several times via multiple Tor circuits to ensure you always get the same key. 2. Every time I verify a signature from a key sent to an email address that is not mine (like a mailinglist), my mail client adds a tiny amount of trust to that key (since each new public email+signature downloaded represents an observation of the key via a potentially distinct network path that should also be observed by multiple people, including the sender). 3. Every time I am about to encrypt mail to a key, check the key servers for that email address, download the key, and make sure it is still the same (SSH/TOFU-style). 4. When downloading a key, GPG could verify that the same email to key mapping exists on multiple key servers, with each key server authenticated by an independent TLS key that is stored in the GPG source code or packaging itself. (Perspectives/notary-style cryptographic multipath authentication). ** The Web of Trust is technically capable of multipath authentication by itself, but only if you are aware of all of the multiple paths that *should* exist. Unfortunately, nothing authenticates the whole Web of Trust in its entirety, so it is impossible to use it to reliably verify that multiple paths to a key do actually exist and are valid. -- Mike Perry -- 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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