December 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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NSA Attacks on VPN, SSL, TLS, SSH, Tor
by John Young 16 Dec '15

16 Dec '15

Der Spiegel released largest single day number of Snowden docs today, 666 pages, on NSA Attacks on VPN, SSL, TLS, SSH, Tor. http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/nsa-documents-attacks-on-vpn-ssl-… We offer a RAR of the 44 docs: http://cryptome.org/2014/12/nsa-spiegel-14-1228.rar (197MB)

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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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Re: Backward compatibility bites again (like RC4 in WPA2)
by coderman 04 Mar '15

04 Mar '15

On 12/9/14, grarpamp <grarpamp(a)gmail.com> wrote: > https://www.imperialviolet.org/2014/12/08/poodleagain.html > > Similar how continued insistence on centralized > SMTP continues to bite. at least they're trying. RC4 in WPA2, and no signs anyone cares...

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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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What happened to Snowden 2.0?
by Archivists 26 Jan '15

26 Jan '15

After the reported arrest there has been absolutely zero media activity. NDA in effect?

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Re: [cryptome] Re: [cryptography] NSA Attacks on VPN, SSL, TLS, SSH, Tor
by John Young 14 Jan '15

14 Jan '15

File size varies with programs. A screen shot of the RAR tally http://cryptome.org/nsa-spiegel-rar.jpg

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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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