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France - sadly not a friend of principle or truth
by Zenaan Harkness 26 Nov '15

26 Nov '15

So France again demonstrates they are America's lapdogs: "[US president Obama and French president Hollande] criticised Russia for hitting moderate Syrian opposition forces, which they said only bolster President Bashar al-Assad’s government. Hollande would not provide a date for Assad’s transition from power but said it must be “as soon as possible.” " http://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2015/nov/24/russian-jet-downed-by-tur… Perhaps France would like to name, identify and locate the "moderate" terrorists/ "rebels" (as Putin has asked for on multiple occasions) and explain to the world how beheadings, and a machine gun shooting of a pilot parachuting for his life, somehow constitute "moderate" behaviour? France - sadly no friend of principle or truth these days. Again, almost all prominent politicians these days appear to be utterly compromised, -and- beholden to USA's interests - France no less than anyone else. Again I say, Russian president Putin is close to the only true statesmen on the world stage today. He has brought Russia back from the absolute brink of total collapse after Yeltsin and Gorbachev, and consistently matches his and Russia's actions with his words and vice versa - the very definition of integrity (for those who have yet to do so, I recommend reading his actual speeches from the last couple years). It is so sad to me that most of the Western world today is, evidently, so utterly compromised (whether by money, sex or blackmail I can only postulate, but this is a self evident fact based on the behaviour of said politicians directly against the interests of their nations and the people they supposedly represent - we can only put down to stupidity a small proportion of all such compromised behaviour). I am grateful that there is at least one leader of a major nation who is not so compromised - this today is Vladimir Putin; I can only hope that future Russian presidents sustain such a level of integrity and commitment to national interests and his/her own people, as he does. He is rightfully popular, and we ought be rightfully proud to have such an example in front of us. Too many things today brings tears to this advocate for sanity, Zenaan

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DOSIR
by Michael Best 26 Nov '15

26 Nov '15

I'm looking for old copies of the Daily Open Source Infrastructure Reports, the copies I have only go back to late July. If anyone has previous editions and is willing to share, it can help reduce future FOIA requests. --Mike

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Countdown to SHA-3 Collisions
by Michael Best 26 Nov '15

26 Nov '15

The SHA-3 standard was released by NIST in August of this year. I'm wondering if anyone has done the math on how long until we should no longer consider it pretty secure enough-ish. For comparison, here's the 2012 maths for SHA-1: https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2012/10/when_will_we_se.html > On a NIST-sponsored hash function mailing list > <http://csrc.nist.gov/groups/ST/hash/email_list.html>, Jesse Walker (from > Intel; also a member of the Skein <http://www.schneier.com/skein.html>team) > did some back-of-the-envelope calculations to estimate how long it will be > before we see a practical collision attack against SHA-1. I'm reprinting > his analysis here, so it reaches a broader audience. > According to E-BASH <http://bench.cr.yp.to/ebash.html>, the cost of one > block of a SHA-1 operation on already deployed commodity microprocessors is > about 214 cycles. If Stevens' attack > <http://2012.sharcs.org/slides/stevens.pdf> of 260 SHA-1 operations > serves as the baseline, then finding a collision costs about 214 * 260 ~ 2 > 74cycles. > A core today provides about 231 cycles/sec; the state of the art is 8 = 23 cores > per processor for a total of 23 * 231 = 234 cycles/sec. A server > typically has 4 processors, increasing the total to 22 * 234 = 236 cycles/sec. > Since there are about 225 sec/year, this means one server delivers about 2 > 25 * 236 = 261 cycles per year, which we can call a "server year." > There is ample evidence that Moore's law will continue through the mid > 2020s. Hence the number of doublings in processor power we can expect > between now and 2021 is: > 3/1.5 = 2 times by 2015 (3 = 2015 - 2012) > 6/1.5 = 4 times by 2018 (6 = 2018 - 2012) > 9/1.5 = 6 times by 2021 (9 = 2021 - 2012) > So a commodity server year should be about: > 261 cycles/year in 2012 > 22 * 261 = 263 cycles/year by 2015 > 24 * 261 = 265 cycles/year by 2018 > 26 * 261 = 267 cycles/year by 2021 > Therefore, on commodity hardware, Stevens' attack should cost > approximately: > 274 / 261 = 213 server years in 2012 > 274 / 263 = 211 server years by 2015 > 274 / 265 = 29 server years by 2018 > 274 / 267 = 27 server years by 2021 > Today Amazon rents compute time on commodity servers for about $0.04 / > hour ~ $350 /year. Assume compute rental fees remain fixed while server > capacity keeps pace with Moore's law. Then, since log2(350) ~ 8.4 the > cost of the attack will be approximately: > 213 * 28.4 = 221.4 ~ $2.77M in 2012 > 211 * 28.4 = 219.4 ~ $700K by 2015 > 29 * 28.4 = 217.4 ~ $173K by 2018 > 27 * 28.4 = 215.4 ~ $43K by 2021 > A collision attack is therefore well within the range of what an organized > crime syndicate can practically budget by 2018, and a university research > project by 2021. > Since this argument only takes into account commodity hardware and not > instruction set improvements (e.g., ARM 8 specifies a SHA-1 instruction), > other commodity computing devices with even greater processing power (e.g., > GPUs), and custom hardware, the need to transition from SHA-1 for collision > resistance functions is probably more urgent than this back-of-the-envelope > analysis suggests. > Any increase in the number of cores per CPU, or the number of CPUs per > server, also affects these calculations. Also, any improvements in > cryptanalysis will further reduce the complexity of this attack. > The point is that we in the community need to start the migration away > from SHA-1 and to SHA-2/SHA-3 now.

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FBI PSA: Hacktivists Threaten Law Enforcement
by Ryan Carboni 26 Nov '15

26 Nov '15

http://www.ic3.gov/media/2015/151118.aspx Law enforcement personnel and public officials may be at increased risk of being targeted by hacktivists. Hacking collectives are effective at leveraging open source, publicly available information identifying officers and public officials, their employers or associates, and their families. With this in mind, officers and public officials should be highly aware of their email account security and their online presence and exposure. For example, posting images wearing uniforms displaying name tags or listing their police department on social media sites can increase an officer's risk of being targeted or attacked. Many legitimate online posts are linked directly to personal social media accounts. Law enforcement personnel and public officials need to maintain an enhanced awareness of the content they post and how it may reflect on themselves, their family, and their employer, or how it could be used against them in court or during online attacks.

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Re: [Cryptography] Pearl Harbor and Crypto
by grarpamp 26 Nov '15

26 Nov '15

On Wed, Nov 25, 2015 at 12:11 PM, Arnold Reinhold <agr(a)me.com> wrote: > I’m surprised no one has proposed this simple system for dealing with the security implications of the European refugee crisis: when the refugees are being processed initially, give them all cheap cell phones or special SIM cards for the ones they already have. Then get a voice sample along with ID photo and other biometric data, say be asking them to test the phone. Give the refugees a modest monthly voice and text budget they can add to, more if they supply their own phone. The phones would serve a humanitarian purpose, helping the refugees get settled, find lost loved ones and look for work. But the phones would also allow them all to be tracked 7/24, just like the rest of us. Any phone that falls off the network or stops being used by the same voice would add its owner to a suspect list. The phones could even serve as a credential: “Cell phone please” instead of “Papers please” at checkpoints. Tracking? Suspect (for casting off inhumane chains even, or any other nonreason)? Internal checkpoints? Really? Seems the global GDR is hiring lately, you better apply. cc: cpunks due to censors

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"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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