November 2014 - cypherpunks - lists.cpunks.org

Re: "Blackphone" said to be "a super-secure nsa-proof"
by Ulex Europae 14 Oct '16

14 Oct '16

At 05:25 AM 1/17/2014, Jim Bell forwarded: ><<http:///>http://www.yahoo.com/tech/startup-launching-a-super-secure-nsa-proof-735110…> It's been long enough, has anyone acquired one of these and tested it? Ulex

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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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HavenCo - Rebirth?
by grarpamp 07 Apr '15

07 Apr '15

Highly doubt Ryan, Avi or any cpunks are involved, or that much of anything will actually be in SeaLand. Seems like a news driven oppurtunistic biz to cover tower operation and maintenance costs. Anyone have any facts? Such as who's behind it and why? http://www.sealandgov.org/sealand-news-1/HavenCo http://www.havenco.com/

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Tox.im
by Cathal Garvey 03 Feb '15

03 Feb '15

Anyone looked this over? I only just discovered it, but it seems nice: * P2P * Encrypted * Voice/Video/Chat/Files * GPL'd https://github.com/irungentoo/toxcore It's written mostly in C(++) with a dash of assembly, which worries me security wise.. -- T: @onetruecathal, @IndieBBDNA P: +353876363185 W: http://indiebiotech.com

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How come search engines don't crawl the list and I can't find 'robots.txt'?
by Georgi Guninski 13 Jan '15

13 Jan '15

AFAICT the list archives don't show in search engines and in addition don't see /robots.txt. How so?

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Russia want completely ban Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies
by Anton Nesterov 27 Dec '14

27 Dec '14

Ministry of Finance of Russia drafted a bill to ban cryptocurrencies with administrative or criminal penalty for mining and other operation. Also they want to censor bitcoin-related websites. This will come into force in 2015. http://top.rbc.ru/economics/01/08/2014/940521.shtml (in Russian)

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SpaceX Will Announce Micro-Satellites For Low Cost Internet Within Three Months
by Eugen Leitl 22 Dec '14

22 Dec '14

http://techcrunch.com/2014/11/10/spacex-will-announce-micro-satellites-for-…

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Re: [Cryptography] Toxic Combination
by Alfie John 15 Dec '14

15 Dec '14

On Mon, Dec 1, 2014, at 08:55 AM, Guido Witmond wrote: > I'm starting to consider the combination of current best practice with > server certificates and password to be a Toxic Combination. > > The general issue is twofold: > > People need to validate the authenticity of a site before typing in > their password; > > The password gets transmitted to the other party. And this is taken advantage of every day by phishing attacks. However although your solution of setting up DNSSEC and DANE is the _correct_ solution, it's just too complex and hard to get right for a lot of system admins so it's not going to get uptake - just look at how PGP is also the _correct solution_ for encrypting messages and yet has not had the uptake since 1991! I think a better solution would be something like implementing Digest Authentication (RFC 2069, but replacing MD5 with something like AES-256 and allow it to be upgradable) in the browser. The password field value would then be replaced with the value from the DA call and no secrets would be leaked. This solution would get way faster adoption. Alfie > Most people assume that if it looks like their bank and the address bar > is green then it should be safe. Regrettably, it’s not. Criminals obtain > valid certificates using stolen creditcards and passports. The true > method for authenticating a site requires verification of server > certificate fingerprints. And if you don’t know what that means, you > have to spot the spelling errors, the differences in layout and other > mistakes to detect the scammers. Good luck! > > The second part is just as problematic: The password must remain secret, > yet it must be transmitted to the other side to log in. > > This is the Toxic Combination. One failure to detect a scammer’s site > and the password is compromised. The scammers can do everything that you > can do with the password. > > > [promo] > > For more information, please see: > > http://eccentric-authentication.org/blog/2014/11/30/spot-the-differences.ht… > > http://eccentric-authentication.org/Usable-Security.pdf > > [/promo] -- Alfie John alfiej(a)fastmail.fm

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Re: GoldBug SF projects [was: Bittorrent Bleep]
by grarpamp 13 Dec '14

13 Dec '14

On Mon, Sep 22, 2014 at 3:12 AM, Bernd Stramm <bernd.stramm(a)gmail.com> wrote: > To the extent that linux versions of these projects are available, I put > them in the opensuse build system. > From there you can get RPMs, and a few DEBs, including the source versions. > OBS signs them. If I wanted to try Unix/OBS versions I would. And I might if these issues are ever resolved and they are picked up and looked at by more Unix's. > So quit whining I'm defending users who might be considering running the binaries you distribute. As far as I can tell, no one has ever been able to reproduce them from your sources. And you haven't posted sufficient details about your platform to make whatever compilation notes you posted worthwhile. "32 bit windows" could be anything. I also can't find OpenPGP signatures for the binaries or the sources that you distribute. Nor can I find a reply from you or "Mike Weber" or anyone else regarding all these issues. > If you use windows, it is your own fault. So if I use the source without blobs I'm safe, but if I use your windows binaries I'm rooted? Or should this mean that you know windows sucks but you're writing to it anyways, and perhaps you don't care much about the implementation quality there. Now because you're a member of GoldBug Messenger on SF... / http://lists.gnupg.org/pipermail/gnupg-users/2013-July/047137.html / "[Today ...] the EFF in conjunction with the Chaos Computer Club announced a / new secure Instant Messenger called: GoldBug.sf.net (http://goldbug.sf.net)" Are you suggesting that users ignore the falsehood you put in your announcements and just trust your software? (Is that what all those anonymous 5-star 1-review posts of GoldBug to mostly second and third class windows software aggregator sites are about... building trust? You can google for those.) Or are you saying that you somehow forgot to post your own project denial of Randolph / Thomas posting as if they were associated with your projects? Ok, well maybe you did forget that, so let's see who has control... Currently: http://sourceforge.net/projects/goldbug/ "Brought to you by: berndhs, mikeweber" ... and what they do with that control... / http://lists.gnupg.org/pipermail/gnupg-users/2013-July/047137.html This gnupg thread also shows two other witnesses to... / "a review on sourceforge which indicates that the CCC has no idea / of it" / "... I also note that about 30 minutes ago, a representative of the Chaos / Computer Club (CCC) posted a one-star review of GoldBug in which he said / that CCC had never heard of GoldBug, despite GoldBug claiming to be / associated with CCC. / / About five minutes ago the GoldBug project admin disabled reviews and / the one-star review is no longer visible. / / This kind of behavior on the part of the GoldBug project leaders is / deeply irresponsible. This, by itself, should persuade people to not / use it. Responsible programmers *welcome* criticism -- we don't / suppress it." Currently: http://sourceforge.net/projects/goldbug/reviews "This project does not allow reviews to be posted." Now of course back then "Mike Weber" may have been the only one in the SF GB project, plus the apparent, in my opinion, shills Thomas and Randolph. However, you are now also on the SF GB project since at least Oct 26 2013. https://web.archive.org/web/20131004145711/http://sourceforge.net/projects/… https://web.archive.org/web/20131026004244/http://sourceforge.net/projects/… So lets see if your project has improved its behaviour since pointed out by people on gnupg list in Jul 2013... no it hasn't. To wit: Your project just censored my post and turned on list moderation so that no one else can speak. Oopsie, footshot ;-) https://web.archive.org/web/20140922090221/http://sourceforge.net/p/goldbug… https://web.archive.org/web/20140922201304/http://sourceforge.net/p/goldbug… http://sourceforge.net/p/goldbug/mailman/goldbug-forum/ "1 message has been excluded from this view by a project administrator." 14 out of 15 posts. "Your mail to 'GoldBug-Forum' ... is being held ... Post to moderated list" So the question now begs, with you being fully aware, and perhaps even complicit... why do you remain associated with projects that have serious issues? If you choose to remain, you definitely need to get "Mike", and you, to post an answer on this stuff. And if you choose to leave, an exit statement from you would surely serve you well as a possible member of the FOSS/Suse community. > So quit whining As long as all these questions remain unanswered, I will not quit defending users, or the names of Tor, EFF, CCC. Last minute additions... # These two addresses are '550 user unknown' ... berndhs(a)users.sourceforge.net mikeweber(a)users.sourceforge.net # A story about one particular Michael Weber http://www.businessinsider.com/swiss-software-developer-bitcoin-2014-4 # Another email found spot-on and dooble - "Alexis Megas" - textbrowser(a)gmail.com, textfield@us... # They uncensored my post to their list (second in this thread), # but have not yet approved my first from this thread, or possibly # this third post. http://sourceforge.net/p/goldbug/mailman/goldbug-forum/ # I'm aware of no replies other than Bernd above. Maybe for Goldbug et al it's all about the cute puppies... / http://lists.gnupg.org/pipermail/gnupg-users/2013-July/047137.html / "Some net communities already call it the 'Neuland Messenger' due to / the Font Name of the Logo." Really, they do call it that? Well shoot your foot again, seems that phrase has no applicable google search results on the net other than your own announcement and a ... http://www.infodog.com/RESULTS/brdrsl.htm?evno=2000110102&bno=31800 "Bern"ese mountain show dog. You silly "novice bitches", hopefully the twitters will have their way with you and your apparently bogus projects too. https://twitter.com/GoldBugIM Bye bye.

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