January 2014 - cypherpunks - lists.cpunks.org

TorMail completely compromised, FBI using accounts in unrelated investigations
by Rich Jones 27 Jan '14

27 Jan '14

http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2014/01/tormail/ Bonus link for y'all. Hope you used PGP. Happy monday! R If You Used This Secure Webmail Site, the FBI Has Your Inbox - By Kevin Poulsen<http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/author/kevin_poulsen/> - 01.27.14 - 6:30 AM While investigating a hosting company known for sheltering child porn last year the FBI incidentally seized the entire e-mail database of a popular anonymous webmail service called TorMail. Now the FBI is tapping that vast trove of e-mail in unrelated investigations. The bureau's data windfall, seized from a company called Freedom Hosting, surfaced in court papers last week when prosecutors indicted a Florida man for allegedly selling counterfeit credit cards online. The filings show the FBI built its case in part by executing a search warrant on a Gmail account used by the counterfeiters, where they found that orders for forged cards were being sent to a TorMail e-mail account: "platplus(a)tormail.net." Acting on that lead in September, the FBI obtained a search warrant for the TorMail account, and then accessed it from the bureau's own copy of "data and information from the TorMail e-mail server, including the content of TorMail e-mail accounts," according to the complaint<http://www.justice.gov/usao/nj/Press/files/pdffiles/2014/Roberson,%20Sean%2…>(.pdf) sworn out by U.S. Postal Inspector Eric Malecki. The tactic suggests the FBI is adapting to the age of big-data with an NSA-style collect-everything approach, gathering information into a virtual lock box, and leaving it there until it can obtain specific authority to tap it later. There's no indication that the FBI searched the trove for incriminating evidence before getting a warrant. But now that it has a copy of TorMail's servers, the bureau can execute endless search warrants on a mail service that once boasted of being immune to spying. "We have no information to give you or to respond to any subpoenas or court orders," read TorMail's homepage. "Do not bother contacting us for information on, or to view the contents of a TorMail user inbox, you will be ignored." In another e-mail case, the FBI last year won a court order compelling secure e-mail provider Lavabit to turn over the master encryption keys<http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2013/10/lavabit_unsealed/>for its website, which would have given agents the technical ability to spy on all of Lavabit's 400,000 users - though the government said it was interested only in one. (Rather than comply, Lavabit shut down and is appealing the surveillance order). TorMail was the webmail provider of choice for denizens of the so-called Darknet <http://www.wired.com/opinion/2013/10/thompson/> of anonymous and encrypted websites and services, making the FBI's cache extraordinarily valuable. The affair also sheds a little more light on the already-strange story of the FBI's broad attack on Freedom Hosting, once a key service provider for untraceable websites. Freedom Hosting specialized in providing turnkey "Tor hidden service" sites -- special sites, with addresses ending in .onion, that hide their geographic location behind layers of routing, and can be reached only over the Tor anonymity network. Tor hidden services are used by those seeking to evade surveillance or protect users' privacy to an extraordinary degree - human rights groups and journalists as well as serious criminal elements. By some estimates, Freedom Hosting backstopped fully half of all hidden services at the time it was shut down last year -- TorMail among them. But it had a reputation for tolerating child pornography on its servers. In July, the FBI moved on the company and had the alleged operator, Eric Eoin Marques, arrested at his home in Ireland. The U.S. is now seeking his extradition for allegedly facilitating child porn on a massive scale; hearings are set to begin in Dublin this week. According to the new document, the FBI obtained the data belonging to Freedom Hosting's customers through a Mutual Legal Assistance request to France - where the company leased its servers - between July 22, 2013 and August 2 of last year. That's two days before all the sites hosted by Freedom Hosting , including TorMail, began serving an error message with hidden code embedded in the page, on August 4. Security researchers dissected the code and found it exploited a security hole <http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2013/08/freedom-hosting/> in Firefox to de-anonymize users with slightly outdated versions of Tor Browser Bundle, reporting back to a mysterious server in Northern Virginia. Though the FBI hasn't commented (and declined to speak for this story), the malware's behavior was consistent with the FBI's spyware deployments<http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2009/04/fbi-spyware-pro/>, now known as a "Network Investigative Technique." No mass deployment of the FBI's malware had ever before been spotted in the wild. The attack through TorMail alarmed many in the Darknet, including the underground's most notorious figure -- Dread Pirate Roberts, the operator of the Silk Road drug forum, who took the unusual step of posting a warning on the Silk Road homepage. An analysis he wrote on the associated forum now seems prescient. "I know that MANY people, vendors included, used TorMail<http://en.reddit.com/r/SilkRoad/comments/1jrnhx/important_security_announce…>," he wrote. "You must think back through your TorMail usage and assume everything you wrote there and didn't encrypt can be read by law enforcement at this point and take action accordingly. I personally did not use the service for anything important, and hopefully neither did any of you." Two months later the FBI arrested<http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2013/10/silk-road-raided/>San Francisco man Ross William Ulbricht as the alleged Silk Road operator. The connection, if any, between the FBI obtaining Freedom Hosting's data and apparently launching the malware campaign through TorMail and the other sites isn't spelled out in the new document. The bureau could have had the cooperation of the French hosting company that Marques leased his servers from. Or it might have set up its own Tor hidden services using the private keys obtained from the seizure, which would allow it to adopt the same .onion addresses used by the original sites. The French company also hasn't been identified. But France's largest hosting company, OVH, announced on July 29<http://forum.ovh.com/showthread.php?89685-Le-nouveau-contrat-de-serveur-ded…>, in the middle of the FBI's then-secret Freedom Hosting seizure, that it would no longer allow Tor software on its servers. A spokesman for the company says he can't comment on specific cases, and declined to say whether Freedom Hosting was a customer. "Wherever the data center is located, we conduct our activities in conformity with applicable laws, and as a hosting company, we obey search warrants or disclosure orders," OVH spokesman Benjamin Bongoat told WIRED. "This is all we can say as we usually don't make any comments on hot topics."

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re: request for leaks: standards for secret (not published)
by Joseph Tag 27 Jan '14

27 Jan '14

All I know is that L3-Communications ( Comm.Sys.-East Division ) was at least one company who built/used Local Management Device/Key Processor ( LMD/KP ) combo ( LINUX Server ? ) . Another website of interest is the US Navy SPAWAR Info Assurance site in Charleston, South Carolina. Joe Tag --- you wrote --- Subject: Re: request for leaks: standards for secret (not published) true hardware random number generator requirements used by NSA Message-ID: <CAJVRA1T755rypnamvrP17YiXDPQP9dd1jpn2QPCJFsHp_SGguw(a)mail.gmail.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 On Sun, Jan 19, 2014 at 8:49 PM, coderman <coderman(a)gmail.com> wrote: > ... could this be true by tweaking constants and > growing key bits? > AES ~= MEDLEY > ECDSA ~= SHILLELAGH > ECDH ~= BATON > SHA ~= SAVILLE > ADH ~= WALBURN > TRNG ~= JOSEKI-1 as linked, there are clues from PKCS interop which tell us about: BATON: block cipher in use since at least 1995. 320-bit key and uses a 128-bit block in most modes, and also supports a 96-bit ECB mode. 160 bits of the key are checksum material. It supports a "shuffle" mode of operation, like the NSA cipher JUNIPER. It may use up to 192 bits as an initialization vector, regardless of the block size. SAVILLE: used for voice? 128-bit key, two modes? and per http://cryptome.org/poet-acm.htm some others? ACCORDION FIREFLY KEESEE MAYFLY SHILLELAGH WEASEL (perhaps that last a stream cipher? ;)

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Good books on algorithm design?
by Griffin Boyce 27 Jan '14

27 Jan '14

Hello all, I'm looking at books on algorithm design, and would love some recommendations. =) Algorithm Design by Kleinman/Tardos looks okay, as does Introduction to Algorithms by Cormen/Leiserson, but both are seriously like a hundred dollars. Ideally looking for something with a solid foundations section. A steep learning curve is okay though (and somewhat expected) best, Griffin

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BitCloud
by Rich Jones 26 Jan '14

26 Jan '14

Tor-like anonymity network, but backed by a new cryptocurrency in order to pay for the relay bandwidth. It's a nice thought! https://github.com/wetube/bitcloud http://www.reddit.com/r/bitcloud http://talk.bitcloudproject.org/ Meat: https://github.com/wetube/bitcloud/blob/master/bitcloud.org More logos of the 'loading' interface than actual code at this point, which is certainly a bad sign, but people are at least enthusiastic about the idea. As an approach to solving the autonomy problem, though, I think I'm more interested in radios than new overlay networks.. R

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bitcoin
by Juan Garofalo 26 Jan '14

26 Jan '14

So, what do you think is going to happen 'if' bitcoin ever threatens the 'integrity' of the financial mafia, I mean, the integrity of the financial system of the Free and Democratic World?

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Re: Infiltration/Exfiltration
by Anonymous Remailer (austria) 26 Jan '14

26 Jan '14

On 01/20/2014 09:17 AM, John Young wrote: > This how Cryptome got its first contributions from this cave. And > still does along with a long list of others. WikiLeaks and Snowden > the best yelled about, but far from disclosing the most information > which is done quietly and without "batshit" hyperbole and vulgar > braggardy. I'm talking about something slightly different here. With most of the information on Cryptome, it looks like someone came across some information and decided to exfiltrate it. They probably weren't deliberately looking for it or had joined the agency for the specific purpose of having access to and leaking such information. In this case, I'm talking about actual infiltration: going in with the explicit purpose of betraying the secrecy of the organization and getting valuable data out of it. > Claims of needing journalism and slow drips to hold public attention > are merely monetizing justifications. Biblical fundamentalism. I too wish the leaks would come at a faster pace. But I don't think Snowden posting the leaks to, say, an FTP server somewhere would have got any response. There are too many leaks with too much technical jargon. Joe Average would have given up after the first four pages. What the Guardian and other media outlets are doing is making the information more accessible to people. I wish they'd do it more quickly, yes, but I do think there is some value in what they're doing. > And may be much worse, as in the Snowden case, a rationale > for not releasing information except to a few selected abusers, > journalistic, technical and political "freedom of informaton." In > the bogosity of "doing no harm to national security" just like > secretkeepers who use that exact lingo. I'll admit here that I am not someone who believes that there should be no secrets. I do believe keeping certain things secret, at least for a little while, has value. But those things should respect civil and human rights and adhere to the principles of the Constitution. In too many cases, Snowden and Ellsberg being prime examples, official secrecy was used for no other reason than to cover up wrongdoing. The "national security" bullshit was just that - bullshit because they could. That's why I think we need more deliberate infiltrators. People who are well versed in the Constitution with a strong bend for civil and human rights. People who don't buy into the bullshit but also see value in some of the work being done. Someone who can filter through that and find what needs to be exposed while still protecting what shouldn't be.

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mixmaster with 4096-bit RSA
by Anonymous Remailer (austria) 26 Jan '14

26 Jan '14

There is a mixmaster version that allows RSA keys of 4096 bits. http://www.zen19351.zen.co.uk/mixmaster302/ This is compatible with current s/w at size 1024 but for larger keys uses additional HMAC integrity and AES encryption steps over the 3DES and MD5 already present. Temporary test remailers are set up (do not use for real sensitive traffic). Test this new version and be ready for remailer key upgrades. This is the error legacy mixmaster generates with a large RSA key. $ fortune | ./mixmaster --chain=carrots -s test --to=abuse(a)carrots.org.uk Error: Encryption failed! carrots carrots(a)carrots.org.uk ad5a9748f33dd704dc85ae1dd1287870 2:3.0.2 CNm 2013-11-06 2014-01-15 -----Begin Mix Key----- ad5a9748f33dd704dc85ae1dd1287870 1026 ABDgYu+FBuHFxPHl1vH23f+V4+YH2NZg4HxFGxA1 QVUlG31H9QjYCjuwpbNOnwmNG6BpGL6CglP7W6T7 bFl2Dv+ptQkASiTm4Wj87w3AdoI+mGXU2bBe4k81 holEIXlCozL+P5Sw6TBKPXkyBBnP/5BBHATl1Q4J FmpX/B7e7ZqlLdkc3wpY4QlXtMF4+KnurKAxUI7e ruVr4W93+hFpJBB6WPP4CZaVEsIuqTKDUndWCcH2 xJMW8eLrqlm/ZR/kGmFTiOio0cM6dhrpaow+OMtg xPktl2joXhJYDZ3tFNJ9MduIrbaXRe9xtD8MqA6c NQBRE9fRM6gl8MfewYPEOTnxliCqoSYEeb7FZBvF IoBQIpJqkddO+zi+pw47TKEoo4eJs74Hq8hN6sA7 7SeJn4Ej9sOxKQgeLeb+RGyCtWdgllIAgWQGuU1q xPQqxCCx6Yo4VKU8GUfE5RtLxKwWCbCWpXJrhHjt g1rL7slvDhkbVUNFj02hq5tmr22+lr3eKW81hiwe 6B8kJV8w+MtFOy1H/IamhwSJyb6xCqbPB7hbobX0 5iHY76BDJQpx8LH/9SeNOkSjO+2x+LzEt9Whz4jT Ll+kxHS6a0lJBWKvWi4ikJV+oDM+XsiuQXE5yL61 jyF/tIX9eYaz3WVZxwEPcVypGVRqrq8jlhWPYpJe mqrW4wAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA AAAAAQAB -----End Mix Key----- coconuts coconuts(a)coconuts.org.uk bb6cf51abe871947a759ecb5b97ffa3f 2:3.0.2 MCNm 2013-11-11 2014-01-30 -----Begin Mix Key----- bb6cf51abe871947a759ecb5b97ffa3f 1026 ABCiAmzGS+qdEddcI9isI5Z/7VFu5KewVGYUwhDN hqq2DP49GXEui584aeyCN5llmVGEck9hcYA9DUiw /yVU/pxfaBfjf5PvFSckG+cagcL30hwTUIzz7KEK zyr0eamM1y74kUgMbnsldSdoeS66bundJhKd4z+F xgdLWdf355UIzXq94PXOi51x85A6nUVjfUetsUhW ZbknbCjCUlKkM2zV1Ty1gcxMzE6GoVRUmymYXJda 1cWoHQvITwx/lWGLGVu0cTb09bbFTY1IghviJOaF UkMtMoDqQYFcaYBcmK/2ghmuFZsoIjiyGkvIPliV vMyX8hCUZUYpIHuF65KLfnddCYQek5DqnYNQ3aFT H34MdXWIOZwoGQmy3/JJ66UnDfPOMDQK1nFimBjr SVwDGT4tgbpYxBN7ytqxQxlVxQ99s5BnraLCVlpW BiKhHLS48zZMnlp0S3ffcmaijJ60TKJOR0gkxqAA hxBoszpN+0Z9KSOmDxP/HYM7ZBFzSyFcPGTpqTXp ZFrcIfG64rf8IfVgWryuubYUkcyy04aygSzHBMl6 yln4vGKJJ8/z/zd9HEvATKkJ4kqiscY6yV96D2hl KKtbGn2QUVCbH6v64wF0/a5d+z2ZKrEOYhL7EmPI gLGQCcv9W7m5tdaBa4LXu09dArWNPwmwpOOC787T yp42ewAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA AAAAAQAB -----End Mix Key-----

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HOPE X Call For Speakers
by Greg Newby 25 Jan '14

25 Jan '14

Attention all hackers, makers, whistleblowers, artists, phone phreaks, rebels, technologists, and free thinkers everywhere! Come and share your ideas, thoughts, and passions with thousands of really bright, creative, and open-minded people in New York City this summer at HOPE X. We have room for around 100 talks and panels covering a wide range of topics, limited only by our collective imagination. Past talks and panels have included: anonymity, surveillance and countersurveillance, social engineering, hardware hacking, cryptography, privacy, security, censorship, programming, democracy and law, digital protests, society hacking, copyright, phone phreaking and telecommunications, new technologies, all manner of experimentation, and so much more. We are constantly searching for innovative subjects and presentation formats. Come and show us what you've got! All types of presentations are encouraged, from solo talks to panels, debates, demonstrations, and interactive discussions. (Workshop ideas and art exhibitions are also welcome - see the applicable sections on the HOPE X site.) Most presentations will be allotted 55 minutes - including time for questions from the audience. If you would like to be a speaker, submit a title and a description of the proposed presentation (two to three paragraphs) along with a short biography (three or four sentences will suffice). Submissions should be sent by email to speakers(a)hope.net. Be sure to tell us why you think the topic and content are relevant to the hacker community and to HOPE X attendees. We also recommend reading our additional tips on speaker submissions which can be found at http://x.hope.net under "Call for Participants."

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Microsoft claims to fight back against NSA
by Jim Bell 25 Jan '14

25 Jan '14

From: http://news.yahoo.com/microsoft-bold-plan-beat-nsa-053014453.html "Microsoft is tired of waiting for the United States government to rein in the National Security Agency so it’s taking matters into its own hands. The Financial Times reports that Microsoft “will allow foreign customers to have their personal data stored on servers outside the U.S.,” a move that other tech companies such as Google have so far resisted due to cost concerns. However, Microsoft’s general counsel Brad Smith tells The Financial Times that “people should have the ability to know whether their data are being subjected to the laws and access of governments in some other country and should have the ability to make an informed choice of where their data resides.” That Microsoft is willing to go this far shows how much the NSA spying scandal has damaged trust between American tech companies and their international customers. Microsoft even took the unusual step late last year of classifying the United States government as “advanced persistent threat” to its customers’ security, a designation that the company normally uses only cyber terrorists sponsored by foreign governments." --------------------------quote ends------------------------------------------------------- Jim Bell's comment begins: Well, I suppose it's desirable that such big companies talk like they're fighting back against USG/NSA, but their final 'bite' had better be far more serious and definitive than their current 'bark'. Jim Bell

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request for leaks: standards for secret (not published) true hardware random number generator requirements used by NSA
by coderman 25 Jan '14

25 Jan '14

on an unrelated tangent, also curious about the secret encryption suites (better than AES/ECDSA/ECDH/SHA? or just undisclosed different?[0]) perhaps the only individual who designed and implemented thought he was working on coding for radios lugged by grunts out in fields of adventure, now long retired into obscurity forever more... been trying to buy me some blackers with bitcoin; coming up empty not even a mucked boot for my fishing function. is it so much to ask??? best regards, except to earthhumans 0. that is to say, could this be true by tweaking constants and growing key bits? AES ~= MEDLEY ECDSA ~= SHILLELAGH ECDH ~= BATON SHA ~= SAVILLE ADH ~= WALBURN TRNG ~= JOSEKI-1 bonus points for leaking to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NSA_Suite_A_Cryptography via the NSA TAO Covert Network!

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