November 2015 - cypherpunks - lists.cpunks.org

"Following Paris attacks, encryption services face new scrutiny"
by jim bell 25 Nov '15

25 Nov '15

http://news.yahoo.com/following-paris-attacks--encryption-services-face-new… Following Paris attacks, encryption services face new scrutiny Alyssa Bereznak, Yahoo Tech By Alyssa Bereznak, Yahoo Tech .A crowd near the Eiffel tower a week after the start of the Paris attacks. (AP Photo/Laurent Cipriani) A crowd near the Eiffel tower a week after the start of the Paris attacks. (AP Photo/Laurent Cipriani) Four days after the Nov. 13 terrorist attacks that shook Paris, Pavel Durov, the founder and CEO of the messaging app Telegram, posted a photo on Instagram of himself on a balcony in France. In the image, he is dressed in black and looking off to the side, the Eiffel Tower in the background framing his stoic expression. If you saw it at a glance, you’d think it was a tribute to the mourning nation. But then there’s this caption: “I think the French government is as responsible as ISIS for this, because it is their policies and carelessness which eventually led to the tragedy,” it reads. “They take money away from hardworking people of France with outrageously high taxes and spend them on waging useless wars in the Middle East and on creating [a] parasitic social paradise for North African immigrants. It is a disgrace to see Paris in the hands of shortsighted socialists who ruin this beautiful place.” Though otherwise confusing, the statement made one thing clear: Durov would rather blame the tragedy that had befallen Paris on French taxes than call attention to the way members of the Islamic state have taken to using his encrypted messaging app to communicate.

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Interest free money in history (Russia in this case :)
by Zenaan Harkness 25 Nov '15

25 Nov '15

This is not a new concept, and not an exclusively Islamic concept. And it has been tried with incredible success historically. No wonder Russia is despised by the "elite" of "the West". Russia Debates Unorthodox Orthodox Financial Alternative http://journal-neo.org/2015/11/22/russia-debates-unorthodox-orthodox-financ… It's not a short article, but here's a key quote to get you salivating: "Under Czar Alexander III and his Finance Minister Nikolai Bunge, Russia established the Peasant Land Bank in the beginning of the 1880’s to give interest-free loans to the liberated peasantry that had been freed from serfdom in 1861 by his father, Alexander II and given land. The Land Bank invested in the modernization of Russian agriculture with farmers only paying a small handling charge for credits. The result was such a spectacular rise in Russian wheat, and other cereals that Russia became the world “bread basket” up to outbreak of World War I, exceeding the combined production of the USA, Argentina and Canada by some 25%. "

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Fwd: [Cryptography] A Paris Cryptographer On Encryption and Terrorists
by grarpamp 25 Nov '15

25 Nov '15

---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Henry Baker <hbaker1(a)pipeline.com> Date: Tue, Nov 24, 2015 at 10:34 AM Subject: [Cryptography] A Paris Cryptographer On Encryption and Terrorists To: cryptography(a)metzdowd.com FYI -- https://nadim.computer/2015/11/23/on-encryption-and-terrorists.html Nadim Kobeissi On Encryption and Terrorists Nov 23, 2015 In light of the recent terrorist attacks, things are getting heated for the regular security and encryption software developer. Being one myself, I’ve been on the receiving end of a small avalanche of requests from journalists, political pundits and even law enforcement. I’m also someone who was born and raised in Beirut and who recently immigrated to Paris, both of which were the sites of twin attacks, one day apart from each other. It seems necessary to share some perspective on what’s going on with encryption software, the terrorists supposedly using it, and what this means for the rights and the security of our global communities. The encryption software community writes a large variety of software, from secure instant messaging to flight tower communication management to satellite collision prevention. We do this for a number of reasons, but there’s always an underlying shared understanding: that we’re using mathematics and engineering to contribute towards a society that’s safer, more capable and able to communicate with a sense of privacy and dignity inherent to all modern societies. The premise driving the people writing encryption software is not exactly that we’re giving people new rights or taking some away: it’s the hope that we can enforce existing rights using algorithms that guarantee your ability to free speech, to a reasonable expectation of privacy in your daily life. When you make a credit card payment or log into Facebook, you’re using the same fundamental encryption that, in another continent, an activist could be using to organize a protest against a failed regime. In a way, we’re implementing a fundamental technological advancement not dissimilar from the invention of cars or airplanes. Ford and Toyota build automobiles so that the entire world can have access to faster transportation and a better quality of life. If a terrorist is suspected of using a Toyota as a car bomb, it’s not reasonable to expect Toyota to start screening who it sells cars to, or to stop selling cars altogether. And yet, this is the line of questioning that has besieged the cryptography community immediately after the Paris attacks. A simple mention of my encryption software in an Arabic-speaking forum is enough to put me on the receiving end of press inquiries such as “are you aware of any terrorists using your software? Do you feel it’s your responsibility to monitor terrorist activity?” Or, more bluntly, do I feel like I’m complicit in aiding terrorists, by the simple fact that I write cryptography software or currently do PhD research in applied cryptography? The brouhaha that has ensued from the press has been extreme. I’ve received calls that bluntly want to interview me regarding “technology used by terrorists, such as yours.” A Wired article, like many alongside it, finds an Arabic PDF guide on encryption and immediately attributes it as an “ISIS encryption training manual” even though it was written years ago by Gaza activists with no affiliation to any jihadist group. In this rush to blame a field that is largely unknowable to the public and therefore at once alluring and terrifying, little attention has been paid to facts: The Paris terrorists did not use encryption, but coordinated over SMS, one of the easiest to monitor methods of digital communication. They were still not caught, indicating a failure in human intelligence and not in a capacity for digital surveillance. But even in light of all the evidence pointing towards a human intelligence failure, cryptography, being to the outsider a scary and mysterious usage of secret codes and complicated algorithms, remains an easy target. The press again drives the discussion, each time with a lessened priority for measured questioning and proper investigation. Why haven’t you inserted back doors into your software? Do you want terrorists to use your tools? The call for backdoors is nothing new. During my career in the private sector, I’ve seen requests to backdoor encryption software so as to please potential investors, and have seen people in the field who appeared to stand for secure software balk under the excuse of “if that’s what the customer wants,” even if it results in irreparable security weaknesses. I’ve had well-intentioned intelligence officers ask me informally, out of honest curiosity, why it is that I would refuse to insert backdoors. The issue is that cryptography depends on a set of mathematical relationships that cannot be subverted selectively. They either hold completely or not at all. It’s not something that we’re not smart enough to do; it’s something that’s mathematically impossible to do. I cannot backdoor software specifically to spy on jihadists without this backdoor applying to every single member of society relying on my software. And I’ve seen what guarantees secure communication can give a society. I’ve seen my software used in Hong Kong to organize protests against a government otherwise unwilling to give people their rights. I’ve seen my colleagues produce software used by Egyptians rallying for democracy. I’ve had childhood friends call me from Beirut, desperate to know of a way to organize protests against a government that would lock them up were they to use public phone lines. I’ve set up communication lines for LGBTQ organizations so that they can give counsel without fearing ostracization or reprisal. And in the comfort of my new life in France, I’ve also relied on encryption so that I know I’m obtaining my simple right to privacy when discussing my daily life with my friends or with my partner. I’ve come to see encryption as the natural extension a computer scientist can give a democracy. A permeation of the simple assurance that you can carry out your life freely and privately, as enshrined in the constitutions and charters of France, Lebanon as well as the United States. To take away these guarantees doesn’t work. It doesn’t produce better intelligence. It’s not why our intelligence isn’t competing in the first place. But it does help terrorist groups destroy the moral character of our politics from within, when out of fear, we forsake our principles. If we take every car off the street, every iPhone out of people’s pockets and every single plane out of the sky, it wouldn’t do anything to stop terrorism. Terrorism isn’t about means, but about ends. It’s not about the technology but about the anger, the ignorance that holds a firm grip over the actor’s mind. I grew up and spent a decade of my childhood in south Beirut and was literally neighbors with the security sector of Hezbollah, a guerilla organization that fights frequent wars with Israel. During the 2006 war, an Israeli fighter jet carpet-bombed the entire neighborhood, razing my home and that of many others to the ground. While walking through a field of rubble and unexploded cluster bombs to try and find my house, I distantly saw a friend of mine, far away on the other side of whatever it was that I was staring across. We locked eyes. Then, we burst out laughing. We laughed for a long time. In 2008, I got the opportunity to move away from Lebanon and to get an education abroad. This opportunity was rare and unusual. Making encryption software is hard, too: for many of my first years abroad, much of my software was riddled with bugs, and it took practice and feedback in order to start getting things right namely, what my education abroad of Lebanon really was about. Visiting south Beirut a few years later, I found that I had changed but that no one else there had. The rubble was mostly but not completely gone. I also found that people were angry, and that Hezbollah had pledged to rebuild their homes. Left without any hope for a good education, for a happy life, with much of their families missing, with their friends dead, many pledged themselves in return. That’s what’s causing terrorism, not encryption software. nadim(a)nadim.computer _______________________________________________ The cryptography mailing list cryptography(a)metzdowd.com http://www.metzdowd.com/mailman/listinfo/cryptography

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Reminders to censoring ADMIN's
by grarpamp 25 Nov '15

25 Nov '15

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vuEQixrBKCc Instead of focusing on people words, listen their message, you might learn something. Perspective... get some.

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Re: Rare Intelligent Yahoo article: Not so rare stupid opinions by Hillary Clinton. This time on encryption.
by John Young 25 Nov '15

25 Nov '15

http://news.yahoo.com/hillary-clinton-showed-government-still-213151251.html Hillary Clinton Showed How the Government Still Doesn't Understand the Encryption Debate >"develop solutions that will both keep us safe and protect our privacy" This is the agreed upon script for national security, encryption, commerce, education,politics,religion, since the Internet was invented and long before. But neither safety nor privacy have been satisfactorily provided during the time this script has been incessantly spoken, written, broadcast, legislated. Crypto advocates as well as those for national security have conspired to follow a script that both agree cannot be fulfilled. Edward Snowden is merely the latest to preach this impossible dream so successful, lucrative and risk-free by advocates and marketers of crypto and natsec. None of the opportunistic companies and cryptographers marching in lockstep to this script with authorities expect the dream to be realized, so they agree to keep repeating the sales and dangerless script for doomed-to-fail national security and encryption and then demand more funding and trust for better solutions. Whether doomed to fail is deliberate to assure markets, media and lecture fees could be debated, and will be debated, and is being debated. This debate fosters the notion of opposition rather than complicity. As seen in the Snowden affair, dribble non-threatening information, call for debate, pretend risk-taking in consultation with authorities. So Manning and Snowden and a few others are left hanging in the wind, in jail, in exile. The smartest and least gullible are on the run, keeping away from publicity and foolish leaking, avoiding honey pots of secure drops and ratting to law enforcement and spies, and disbelieving anyone who promotes and monetizes the script of safety and privacy. Nobody like that is here nor on any fora on crypto and natsec suffused with tattletales, fora run for that very purpose.

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Privacy Wiki
by Tomas Overdrive Petru 24 Nov '15

24 Nov '15

Dear mailing-list, I have found just recently that I'm not aware of actual situation of full HD encryption and container encryption after extinction of TrueCrypt. Is here somebody who was able to follow this topic during recent volatile and turbulent times after Truecrypt extinction? Links appreciated but some xplanation why this or that would be even better. Useful output of potential discussion will be added here https://brmlab.cz/project/crypto-anonymity_knowbase and tested. In case you have some feedback about this DIY notepad about crypto much appreciated, too. Regards, - Over -- “Borders I have never seen one. But I have heard they exist in the minds of some people.” ― Thor Heyerdahl Telegram...................@over23 facebook chat..............overdrive23(a)chat.facebook.com facebook...................facebook.com/overdrive23 projects...................https://brmlab.cz/user/overdrive twitter....................https://twitter.com/#!/over2393 last.fm....................http://www.last.fm/user/overdrive23 GnuPG key FingerPrint......08EA E4DC EF85 0F02 9267 5B48 2E58 6902 C5F8 794C Public key ................http://overdrive.dronezone.eu/overdrive.txt

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Reaching the Sheeple, Building a Cpunk Symbiot Army
by grarpamp 24 Nov '15

24 Nov '15

On Sat, Nov 14, 2015 at 4:53 AM, rysiek <rysiek(a)hackerspace.pl> wrote: > Dnia poniedziałek, 9 listopada 2015 22:41:16 Tomas Overdrive Petru pisze: >> Really? So what is purpose of this thread if I can ask? To complain that >> ordinary people are sheep? > > I am slowly starting to think that this is the purpose of this whole *list*. Cpunk care about the sheeple, and their gripe is a legit frustration... sheeple seem to be biologically unreachable regarding the risks they face in this area. Can anyone point out a successful strategy that has been used for the cpunk to reach and enlighten them such that they make some sort of change for themselves, or act to change their world? Now look at a certain subset of sheeple... the NRA. These folks are built of the same sort as the average sheeple, but it is discovered one thing that motivates and resonates them... guns, and the surrounding rhetoric and issues. And it so happens that they also have a strong interest in privacy and dislike of government nature. They mention against the NSA and spying and databases in their convention speeches, you can find them on youtube. And their political action call tree and fundraising is one to be reckoned with. If cpunks would just reach out, these guys would be a close symbiot army. For example, if you show them your encrypted chat app it's not long before lightbulb and they ask you "Wait, so you mean I can talk shit with my buds about how many rounds of ammo I got in the basement, moonshine, and that damn president we got... all without the gubmint hearing me?" "Yep," you say, at which point you've become instant friends. Yet where is the cpunk set up with a booth at NRA conventions and gun shows giving demos and handing out pamphlets??? The sheeple may be mostly hopeless cause, but there are various groups that could be allied with in order to multiply cpunk numbers to the level necessary to effect change. Which ones and why? The religious... Doctor Patient... Attorney Client... ??? Where is Cpunk focusing its efforts and getting results? Wasting on Johnny who might not ever get it, or on cultivating a symbiot army that will cause change and thus bring something new to Johnny by default.

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Russia actually kind of cracked (?) Tor
by Anton Nesterov 24 Nov '15

24 Nov '15

On 11 July 2014 Russia's Interior Ministry posted a contract seeking a group "to study the possibility of obtaining technical information on users and users' equipment of Tor anonymous network" for $59,000. When media reports appeared, mentioning of Tor was deleted. Then company who won this contract (The Central Research Institute of Economics, Informatics, and Control Systems, subsidiary of Rostec) then posted a contract to hire a law firm tasked with negotiating a way out of the deal http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-09-22/russia-s-plan-to-crack-to… Now source of Kommersant close to the one of two parties of the deal says that project was nearly finished, but CRI EICS didn't meet the deadline, so that why there is court involved. Results was passed to the Interior Ministry where it's already in use. Representative of hired law firm told Kommersant that Interior Ministry wants to just knock down the price or force CRI EICS to pay the forfeit. Kommersant piece also mention a case when one user was deanonymized when he used Tor Browser to post trip reports and prosecuted for propaganda of illegal substances (I don't believe that was result of "cracking Tor", he probably failed somehow (maybe used real name), also it would be strange to perform probably costly attack for fine less than $100). http://www.kommersant.ru/doc/2861002 Kommersant report (in Russian) -- https://nesterov.pw GPG key: 0CE8 65F1 9043 2B11 25A5 74A7 1187 6869 67AA 56E4 https://keybase.io/komachi/key.asc

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Rare Intelligent Yahoo article: Not so rare stupid opinions by Hillary Clinton. This time on encryption.
by jim bell 24 Nov '15

24 Nov '15

http://news.yahoo.com/hillary-clinton-showed-government-still-213151251.html Hillary Clinton Showed How the Government Still Doesn't Understand the Encryption Debate Every time there is a major terror attack that shocks the international consciousness, there are renewed calls for surveillance and increased policing. And even though we're slowly learning that encryption techniques had nothing to do with the attacks on Paris, politicians are still revitalizing a debate as old as the Internet — whether or not the government should be able to break encryption. Encryption is the process of taking a message, or any block of text or information, and scrambling it so that it can only be read by the intended recipient. It's baked into many message and email systems automatically, preventing law enforcement from catching the messages in transit and unpacking their contents. On Thursday, Hillary Clinton called on tech companies to avoid seeing the government as an "adversary" and to "develop solutions that will both keep us safe and protect our privacy" before another attack like Paris occurs. "Encryption of mobile communications presents a particularly tough problem," Clinton said during a speech at the Council on Foreign Relations last week. "We should take the concerns of law enforcement and counterterrorism professionals seriously. They have warned that impenetrable encryption may prevent them from accessing terrorist communications and preventing a future attack." Silicon Valley has been vowing in droves to not bend to the political pressure to change their encryption standards. But it's not because they're stubborn, naive or capitalistic. It's because "weakening" encryption is nearly impossible. [end of portion quoted]

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Russian heart propaganda
by Zenaan Harkness 24 Nov '15

24 Nov '15

For anyone who needs some "positive bits" to enlighten a sheep. Yes there are negative bits here and there. I would hope we focus on the uplifting and the heart. http://www.pravdareport.com/world/europe/24-11-2015/132679-russian_altruism…

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