- cypherpunks - lists.cpunks.org

all-in-one versus segregation
by dan＠geer.org 19 Mar '15

19 Mar '15

Excerpts from this BBC article, The card aiming to end Nigeria's fraud problem www.bbc.com/news/technology-31438226 Last year, the National Electronic Identity (e-ID) Card was launched in collaboration with MasterCard, with President Goodluck Jonathan the first recipient... The smart card's Match-On-Card technology matches a holder's fingerprint against a profile stored in the embedded chip... The card is also a travel document, conforming to the same standards as international passports. It contains electronic identification information, as well as Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) technology that allows for document signing, non-repudiation and encryption. The eID card contains users' biometric data, including fingerprints... Fully 70% of adult Nigerians do not have a formal bank account... again bring up the tradeoffs between all-in-one functionality versus segregation of duties. I personally don't want one technology to rule them all, but I have many choices and I know how to make them. Others, not so much. Has anyone here been involved in design, rollout, or analysis of the Nigerian solution and want to comment on how risk management tradeoffs were evaluated? To me (the guy living in a world of choice), I don't want to be 0wned at all but, more than that, I don't want to be 0wned by one central entity even if its mission statement is to do so for my own good (cf., "I can't defend the country until I'm into all the networks." -- K. Alexander and/or cradle to grave tracking of everything in the food pipeline and/or Elon Musk's comment that it will soon be illegal to drive your own car yourself). But let's start with Nigeria, unless some one of you is better able to discuss Pakistan's new program that requires a fingerprint to get a SIM card. theguardian.com/world/2015/mar/03/pakistan-fingerprint-mobile-phone-users --dan "The wisest thing in the world is to cry out before you are hurt. It is no good to cry out after you are hurt; especially after you are mortally hurt. People talk about the impatience of the populace; but sound historians know that most tyrannies have been possible because men moved too late. it is often essential to resist a tyranny before it exists." G.K. Chesterton, _Eugenics and Other Evils: An Argument Against the Scientifically Organized State_

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Bitshops.net
by Lodewijk andré de la porte 18 Mar '15

18 Mar '15

Hey everyone, I've just yesterday released Bitshops.net. There's dragons still, but overall it works decently. It provides private e-commerce using client-side cryptography. It has Bitcoin-based escrow. There's also encrypted chat (once an order is created). Much everything I'd want to say is explained on the site (where I can update it, too). The algorithms used are AES-256 and NTRUEncrypt (through LLVM). Come pick me apart But leave enough to recover Just ask me anything Best regards, Lewis

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JoinMarket: Increase the privacy of bitcoin and earn interest
by grarpamp 18 Mar '15

18 Mar '15

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=919116 https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/2zc5tc https://github.com/chris-belcher/joinmarket While JoinMarket is one specific application, it's not hard to imagine your very own microloan daemon as the next big thing. Complete with credit ratings, investment choices, anonymous p2p market channels, automation, etc.

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NIST - Cybersecurity in a Post-Quantum World
by Polity News 18 Mar '15

18 Mar '15

"The advent of practical quantum computing will break all commonly used public key cryptographic algorithms. In response, NIST is researching cryptographic algorithms for public key-based key agreement and digital signatures that are not susceptible to cryptanalysis by quantum algorithms." - NIST. http://www.nist.gov/itl/csd/ct/post-quantum-crypto-workshop-2015.cfm Workshop April 2-3, 2015 at NIST campus in Gaithersburg, Maryland (near DC). my questions - What deciphering and decryption capabilities does the US government already have? How long until encryption we use today becomes obsolete? Is it already obsolete? Will there be a situation where the US government and large corporations have quantum computers capable of deciphering today's encryption standards, but average consumers would not have access to quantum encryption? What would the impact be on mass surveillance and privacy concerns?

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IETF OpenPGP WG reopened
by Blibbet 16 Mar '15

16 Mar '15

FYI, in the last few days, the IETF OpenPGP working group has 'reopened'. This is a good time to make sure any technical issues in OpenPGP are addressed. List-Id: "Ongoing discussion of OpenPGP issues." <openpgp.ietf.org> List-Unsubscribe: <https://www.ietf.org/mailman/options/openpgp>, <mailto:openpgp-request@ietf.org?subject=unsubscribe> List-Archive: <http://www.ietf.org/mail-archive/web/openpgp/> List-Post: <mailto:openpgp@ietf.org> List-Help: <mailto:openpgp-request@ietf.org?subject=help> List-Subscribe: <https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/openpgp>, <mailto:openpgp-request@ietf.org?subject=subscribe>

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Entrepreneurship, Austrian Economics, and the Cryptorevolution
by grarpamp 16 Mar '15

16 Mar '15

Patrick Byrne, crypto, blockchain, markets, regulation, etc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vFOpSTodk_U

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Cypherpunk Politics
by grarpamp 16 Mar '15

16 Mar '15

On Sun, Mar 15, 2015 at 4:32 PM, <dan(a)geer.org> wrote: > Please don't let this start an exploration of any rat-hole, Well, if so defined, Libertarian vs. Monopoly is a hole. Not clear whether that balance has shifted much yet, but people are finally developing wide recognition, tools, and methods that may bring that effect in the future. The internet and things are still a bit young politically but are growing up fast. Perhaps the first gen cpunk was the base philosophy plus the science of possible tools. Second gen the coding, beta test validation and trial runs. Third gen the application to results... > eternal vigilance is the price of freedom [...] there are no final > victories A truth.

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Cypherpunk Politics [was: REAL-ID Coming]
by grarpamp 15 Mar '15

15 Mar '15

On Tue, Mar 3, 2015 at 5:19 AM, rysiek <rysiek(a)hackerspace.pl> wrote: >> Crypto isn't going to stop the metamining surveillance. And as in the >> subject, standing in line to happily get and show their papers please isn't >> going to stop that either. > > Agreed. > >> Where are that mass of geeks, cryptos, internets... those making >> such technical measures... where are they acting in politics? >> Running for office, bringing issues to their councils, donating, >> and so on. > > There might, or might not, be hackers among us who are trying to hack on > policy level. But those hackers, if they indeed are following (or maybe even > taking part in) the discussions here, might not want to come out with such > information, as the level of hostility towards any persons or organisations > that can be painted as "working with The Man" or "taking the Man's money" is > too damn high™. Who cares, that's up to the cpunk. If the cypherpunk is pure, working with the man to get cpunk shit done is just another hacking skin to hang on their wall. And a highly prized one of social engineering at that. Cpunks should bow the fuck down in respect to such a fellow cpunk, not fling hostile FUD at them just because they're working the system. For that matter, they should join them to add another voice. There are probably more US persons on this list than there are in their entire Congress. Think about that... Now in the other direction of possible hostility... should The Man discover a cpunk within their ranks, well yes, there is a risk there. The usual opsec applies. > In other words, FUD spread by "the Man" and the disinformation campaign, > sowing dissent, creating hostility and distrust within the community, and in > general the divide and conquer approach work wonders. That's why the above masses need to activate and throw the FUD back, and more, at The Man. Two can play that game. Problem is, right now there is only one real player on the field of politics, his name is The Man, and he's not on team cpunk.

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Computer-stored encryption keys are not safe from side-channel attacks
by Eugen Leitl 14 Mar '15

14 Mar '15

http://www.techrepublic.com/article/computer-stored-encryption-keys-are-not… Computer-stored encryption keys are not safe from side-channel attacks By Michael Kassner March 11, 2015, 1:25 PM PST Using side-channel technology, researchers at Tel Aviv University can extract decryption keys from RSA and ElGamal implementations without altering or having control of a computer. Figure A: Tel Aviv University researchers built this self-contained PITA receiver. Image courtesy of Daniel Genkin, Lev Pachmanov, Itamar Pipman, Eran Tromer, and Tel Aviv University Not that long ago, grabbing information from air-gapped computers required sophisticated equipment. In my TechRepublic column Air-gapped computers are no longer secure, researchers at Georgia Institute of Technology explain how simple it is to capture keystrokes from a computer just using spurious electromagnetic side-channel emissions emanating from the computer under attack. Daniel Genkin, Lev Pachmanov, Itamar Pipman, and Eran Tromer, researchers at Tel Aviv University, agree the process is simple. However, the scientists have upped the ante, figuring out how to ex-filtrate complex encryption data using side-channel technology. The process In the paper Stealing Keys from PCs using a Radio: Cheap Electromagnetic Attacks on Windowed Exponentiation (PDF), the researchers explain how they determine decryption keys for mathematically-secure cryptographic schemes by capturing information about secret values inside the computation taking place in the computer. "We present new side-channel attacks on RSA and ElGamal implementations that use the popular sliding-window or fixed-window (m-ary) modular exponentiation algorithms," the team writes. "The attacks can extract decryption keys using a low measurement bandwidth (a frequency band of less than 100 kHz around a carrier under 2 MHz) even when attacking multi-GHz CPUs." If that doesn't mean much, this might help: The researchers can extract keys from GnuPG in just a few seconds by measuring side-channel emissions from computers. "The measurement equipment is cheap, compact, and uses readily-available components," add the researchers. Using that philosophy the university team developed the following attacks. Software Defined Radio (SDR) attack: This comprises of a shielded loop antenna to capture the side-channel signal, which is then recorded by an SDR program installed on a notebook. Portable Instrument for Trace Acquisition (PITA) attack: The researchers, using available electronics and food items (who says academics don't have a sense of humor?), built the self-contained receiver shown in Figure A. The PITA receiver has two modes: online and autonomous. Online: PITA connects to a nearby observation station via Wi-Fi, providing real-time streaming of the digitized signal. Autonomous: Similar to online mode, PITA first measures the digitized signal, then records it on an internal microSD card for later retrieval by physical access or via Wi-Fi. Consumer radio attack: To make an even cheaper version, the team leveraged knowing that side-channel signals modulate at a carrier frequency near 1.7 MHz, which is within the AM radio frequency band. "We used a plain consumer-grade radio receiver to acquire the desired signal, replacing the magnetic probe and SDR receiver," the authors explain. "We then recorded the signal by connecting it to the microphone input of an HTC EVO 4G smartphone." Cryptanalytic approach This is where the magic occurs. I must confess that paraphrasing what the researchers accomplished would be a disservice; I felt it best to include their cryptanalysis description verbatim: "Our attack utilizes the fact that, in the sliding-window or fixed window exponentiation routine, the values inside the table of ciphertext powers can be partially predicted. By crafting a suitable ciphertext, the attacker can cause the value at a specific table entry to have a specific structure. "This structure, coupled with a subtle control flow difference deep inside GnuPG's basic multiplication routine, will cause a noticeable difference in the leakage whenever a multiplication by this structured value has occurred. This allows the attacker to learn all the locations inside the secret exponent where the specific table entry is selected by the bit pattern in the sliding window. Repeating this process across all table indices reveals the key." Figure B is a spectrogram displaying measured power as a function of time and frequency for a recording of GnuPG decrypting the same ciphertext using different randomly generated RSA keys. The research team's explanation: "It is easy to see where each decryption starts and ends (yellow arrow). Notice the change in the middle of each decryption operation, spanning several frequency bands. This is because, internally, each GnuPG RSA decryption first exponentiates modulo the secret prime p and then modulo the secret prime q, and we can see the difference between these stages. "Each of these pairs looks different because each decryption uses a different key. So in this example, by observing electromagnetic emanations during decryption operations, using the setup from this figure, we can distinguish between different secret keys." Figure B: A spectrogram Image courtesy of Daniel Genkin, Lev Pachmanov, Itamar Pipman, Eran Tromer, and Tel Aviv University Any way to prevent the leakage? One solution, albeit unwieldy, is operating the computer in a Faraday cage, which prevents any spurious emissions from escaping. "The cryptographic software can be changed, and algorithmic techniques used to render the emanations less useful to the attacker," mentions the paper. "These techniques ensure the behavior of the algorithm is independent of the inputs it receives." Interestingly, the research paper tackles a question about side-channel attacks that TechRepublic readers commented on in my earlier article, "It's a hardware problem, so why not fix the equipment?" Basically the researchers mention that the emissions are at such a low level, prevention is impractical because: Any leakage remnants can often be amplified by suitable manipulation as we do in our chosen-ciphertext attack; and Leakage is often an inevitable side effect of essential performance-enhancing mechanisms. Something else of interest: the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) considers resistance to side-channel attacks an important evaluation consideration in its SHA-3 competition.

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Using ECC keys in GPG - why is this still deprecated?
by Mike Ingle 13 Mar '15

13 Mar '15

Why is GPG so reluctant to let you use ECC keys? Is it just a backward compatibility thing, or are they not trusted yet? I have the code written to use GnuPG 2.x with Confidant Mail, and I am trying to decide whether to ship GPG 1.4.x or 2.x with the next Windows build. If I ship 2.x and people start using ECC keys, then 2.x is effectively mandatory from then on. What do you think? Mike

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