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surprised and upset? covert HUMINT against domestic corporations
by coderman 11 Oct '14

11 Oct '14

https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2014/10/10/core-secrets/ Core Secrets: NSA Saboteurs in China and Germany By Peter Maass and Laura Poitras The National Security Agency has had agents in China, Germany, and South Korea working on programs that use “physical subversion” to infiltrate and compromise networks and devices, according to documents obtained by The Intercept. The documents, leaked by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden, also indicate that the agency has used “under cover” operatives to gain access to sensitive data and systems in the global communications industry, and that these secret agents may have even dealt with American firms. The documents describe a range of clandestine field activities that are among the agency’s “core secrets” when it comes to computer network attacks, details of which are apparently shared with only a small number of officials outside the NSA. “It’s something that many people have been wondering about for a long time,” said Chris Soghoian, principal technologist for the American Civil Liberties Union, after reviewing the documents. “I’ve had conversations with executives at tech companies about this precise thing. How do you know the NSA is not sending people into your data centers?” Previous disclosures about the NSA’s corporate partnerships have focused largely on U.S. companies providing the agency with vast amounts of customer data, including phone records and email traffic. But documents published today by The Intercept suggest that even as the agency uses secret operatives to penetrate them, companies have also cooperated more broadly to undermine the physical infrastructure of the internet than has been previously confirmed. In addition to so-called “close access” operations, the NSA’s “core secrets” include the fact that the agency works with U.S. and foreign companies to weaken their encryption systems; the fact that the NSA spends “hundreds of millions of dollars” on technology to defeat commercial encryption; and the fact that the agency works with U.S. and foreign companies to penetrate computer networks, possibly without the knowledge of the host countries. Many of the NSA’s core secrets concern its relationships to domestic and foreign corporations. Some of the documents in this article appear in a new documentary, CITIZENFOUR, which tells the story of the Snowden disclosures and is directed by Intercept co-founder Laura Poitras. The documents describe a panoply of programs classified with the rare designation of “Exceptionally Compartmented Information,” or ECI, which are only disclosed to a “very select” number of government officials. Sentry Eagle The agency’s core secrets are outlined in a 13-page “brief sheet” about Sentry Eagle, an umbrella term that the NSA used to encompass its most sensitive programs “to protect America’s cyberspace.” “You are being indoctrinated on Sentry Eagle,” the 2004 document begins, before going on to list the most highly classified aspects of its various programs. It warns that the details of the Sentry Eagle programs are to be shared with only a “limited number” of people, and even then only with the approval of one of a handful of senior intelligence officials, including the NSA director. “The facts contained in this program constitute a combination of the greatest number of highly sensitive facts related to NSA/CSS’s overall cryptologic mission,” the briefing document states. “Unauthorized disclosure…will cause exceptionally grave damage to U.S. national security. The loss of this information could critically compromise highly sensitive cryptologic U.S. and foreign relationships, multi-year past and future NSA investments, and the ability to exploit foreign adversary cyberspace while protecting U.S. cyberspace.” The document does not provide any details on the identity or number of government officials who were supposed to know about these highly classified programs. Nor is it clear what sort of congressional or judicial oversight, if any, was applied to them. The NSA refused to comment beyond a statement saying, “It should come as no surprise that NSA conducts targeted operations to counter increasingly agile adversaries.” The agency cited Presidential Policy Directive 28, which it claimed “requires signals intelligence policies and practices to take into account the globalization of trade, investment and information flows, and the commitment to an open, interoperable, and secure global Internet.” The NSA, the statement concluded, “values these principles and honors them in the performance of its mission.” Sentry Eagle includes six programs: Sentry Hawk (for activities involving computer network exploitation, or spying), Sentry Falcon (computer network defense), Sentry Osprey (cooperation with the CIA and other intelligence agencies), Sentry Raven (breaking encryption systems), Sentry Condor (computer network operations and attacks), and Sentry Owl (collaborations with private companies). Though marked as a draft from 2004, it refers to the various programs in language indicating that they were ongoing at the time, and later documents in the Snowden archive confirm that some of the activities were going on as recently as 2012. TAREX One of the most interesting components of the “core secrets” involves an array of clandestine activities in the real world by NSA agents working with their colleagues at the CIA, FBI, and Pentagon. The NSA is generally thought of as a spying agency that conducts its espionage from afar—via remote commands, cable taps, and malware implants that are overseen by analysts working at computer terminals. But the agency also participates in a variety of “human intelligence” programs that are grouped under the codename Sentry Osprey. According to the briefing document’s description of Sentry Osprey, the NSA “employs its own HUMINT assets (Target Exploitation—TAREX) to support SIGINT operations.” According to a 2012 classification guide describing the program, TAREX “conducts worldwide clandestine Signals Intelligence (SIGINT) close-access operations and overt and clandestine Human Intelligence (HUMINT) operations.” The NSA directs and funds the operations and shares authority over them with the Army’s Intelligence and Security Command. The guide states that TAREX personnel are “integrated” into operations conducted by the CIA, FBI, and Defense Intelligence Agency. It adds that TAREX operations include “off net-enabling,” “supply chain-enabling,” and “hardware implant-enabling.” According to another NSA document, off-net operations are “covert or clandestine field activities,” while supply-chain operations are “interdiction activities that focus on modifying equipment in a target’s supply chain.” The NSA’s involvement in supply-chain interdiction was previously revealed in No Place to Hide, written by Intercept co-founder Glenn Greenwald. The book included a photograph of intercepted packages being opened by NSA agents, and an accompanying NSA document explained the packages were “redirected to a secret location” where the agents implanted surveillance beacons that secretly communicated with NSA computers. The document did not say how the packages were intercepted and did not suggest, as the new documents do, that interception and implants might be done by clandestine agents in the field. The TAREX guide lists South Korea, Germany, and Beijing, China as sites where the NSA has deployed a “forward-based TAREX presence;” TAREX personnel also operate at domestic NSA centers in Hawaii, Texas, and Georgia. It also states that TAREX personnel are assigned to U.S. embassies and other “overseas locations,” but does not specify where. The document does not say what the “forward-based” personnel are doing, or how extensive TAREX operations are. But China, South Korea, and Germany are all home to large telecommunications equipment manufacturers, and China is known to be a key target of U.S. intelligence activities. Although TAREX has existed for decades, until now there has been little information in the public domain about its current scope. A 2010 book by a former Defense Intelligence Agency officer, Lt. Col. Anthony Shaffer, described TAREX operations in Afghanistan as consisting of “small-unit, up-close, intelligence-gathering operatives. Usually two-to-three man units.” “Under Cover” Agents The most controversial revelation in Sentry Eagle might be a fleeting reference to the NSA infiltrating clandestine agents into “commercial entities.” The briefing document states that among Sentry Eagle’s most closely guarded components are “facts related to NSA personnel (under cover), operational meetings, specific operations, specific technology, specific locations and covert communications related to SIGINT enabling with specific commercial entities (A/B/C).” It is not clear whether these “commercial entities” are American or foreign or both. Generally the placeholder “(A/B/C)” is used in the briefing document to refer to American companies, though on one occasion it refers to both American and foreign companies. Foreign companies are referred to with the placeholder “(M/N/O).” The NSA refused to provide any clarification to The Intercept. The document makes no other reference to NSA agents working under cover. It is not clear whether they might be working as full-time employees at the “commercial entities,” or whether they are visiting commercial facilities under false pretenses. The CIA is known to use agents masquerading as businessmen, and it has used shell companies in the U.S. to disguise its activities. There is a long history of overt NSA involvement with American companies, especially telecommunications and technology firms. Such firms often have employees with security clearances who openly communicate with intelligence agencies as part of their duties, so that the government receives information from the companies that it is legally entitled to receive, and so that the companies can be alerted to classified cyber threats. Often, such employees have previously worked at the NSA, FBI, or the military. But the briefing document suggests another category of employees—ones who are secretly working for the NSA without anyone else being aware. This kind of double game, in which the NSA works with and against its corporate partners, already characterizes some of the agency’s work, in which information or concessions that it desires are surreptitiously acquired if corporations will not voluntarily comply. The reference to “under cover” agents jumped out at two security experts who reviewed the NSA documents for The Intercept. “That one bullet point, it’s really strange,” said Matthew Green, a cryptographer at Johns Hopkins University. “I don’t know how to interpret it.” He added that the cryptography community in America would be surprised and upset if it were the case that “people are inside [an American] company covertly communicating with NSA and they are not known to the company or to their fellow employees.” The ACLU’s Soghoian said technology executives are already deeply concerned about the prospect of clandestine agents on the payroll to gain access to highly sensitive data, including encryption keys, that could make the NSA’s work “a lot easier.” “As more and more communications become encrypted, the attraction for intelligence agencies of stealing an encryption key becomes irresistible,” he said. “It’s such a juicy target.” Of course the NSA is just one intelligence agency that would stand to benefit from these operations. China’s intelligence establishment is believed to be just as interested in penetrating American companies as the NSA is believed to be interested in penetrating Chinese firms. “The NSA is a risk [but] I worry a lot more about the Chinese,” said Matthew Prince, chief executive of CloudFlare, a server company. “The insider threat is a huge challenge.” Prince thinks it is unlikely the NSA would place secret agents inside his or other American firms, due to political and legal issues. “I would be surprised if that were the case within any U.S. organization without at least a senior executive like the CEO knowing it was happening,” he said. But he assumes the NSA or CIA are doing precisely that in foreign companies. “I would be more surprised if they didn’t,” he said. Corporate Partners The briefing sheet’s description of Sentry Owl indicates the NSA has previously unknown relationships with foreign companies. According to the document, the agency “works with specific foreign partners (X/Y/Z) and foreign commercial industry entities” to make devices and products “exploitable for SIGINT”—a reference to signals intelligence, which is the heart of the NSA’s effort to collect digital communications, such as emails, texts, photos, chats, and phone records. This language clarifies a vague reference to foreign companies that appears in the secret 2013 budget for the intelligence community, key parts of which were published last year from the Snowden archive. The document does not name any foreign companies or products, and gives no indication of the number or scale of the agency’s ties to them. Previous disclosures from the Snowden archive have exposed the agency’s close relationships with foreign intelligence agencies, but there has been relatively little revealed about the agency gaining the help of foreign companies. The description of Sentry Hawk, which involves attacks on computer networks, also indicates close ties with foreign as well as American companies. The document states that the NSA “works with U.S. and foreign commercial entities…in the conduct of CNE [Computer Network Exploitation].” Although previous stories from the Snowden archive revealed a wide range of NSA attacks on computer networks, it has been unclear whether those attacks were conducted with the help of “commercial entities”—especially foreign ones. The document does not provide the names of any of these entities or the types of operations. Green, the cryptography professor, said “it’s a big deal” if the NSA is working with foreign companies on a greater scale than currently understood. Until now, he noted, disclosures about the agency’s corporate relationships have focused on American companies. Those revelations have harmed their credibility, nudging customers to foreign alternatives that were thought to be untouched by the NSA. If foreign companies are also cooperating with the NSA and modifying their products, the options for purchasing truly secure telecommunications hardware are more limited than previously thought. The briefing sheet does not say whether foreign governments are aware that the NSA may be working with their own companies. If they are not aware, says William Binney, a former NSA crypto-mathematician turned whistleblower, it would mean the NSA is cutting deals behind the backs of friendly and perhaps not-so-friendly governments. “The idea of having foreign corporations involved without any hint of any foreign government involved is significant,” he said. “It will be an alert to all governments to go check with their companies. Bring them into parliament and put them under oath.” The description of Sentry Raven, which focuses on encryption, provides additional confirmation that American companies have helped the NSA by secretly weakening encryption products to make them vulnerable to the agency. The briefing sheet states the NSA “works with specific U.S. commercial entities…to modify U.S manufactured encryption systems to make them exploitable for SIGINT.” It doesn’t name the commercial entities or the encryption tools they modified, but it appears to encompass a type of activity that Reuters revealed last year—that the NSA paid $10 million to the security firm RSA to use a weak random number generator in one of its encryption programs. The avalanche of NSA disclosures since the Snowden leaks began in 2013 has shattered whatever confidence technologists once had about their networks. When asked for comment on the latest documents, Prince, the CEO of CloudFlare, began his response by saying, “We’re hyper-paranoid about everything.”

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Tesla Coils & Corpses, 2014-10-09 — the DOOM and GLOOM Edition
by Eugen Leitl 10 Oct '14

10 Oct '14

----- Forwarded message from Zooko Wilcox-OHearn <zooko(a)leastauthority.com> ----- Date: Thu, 9 Oct 2014 18:12:39 +0000 From: Zooko Wilcox-OHearn <zooko(a)leastauthority.com> To: Tahoe-LAFS development <tahoe-dev(a)tahoe-lafs.org> Subject: Tesla Coils & Corpses, 2014-10-09 — the DOOM and GLOOM Edition Message-ID: <CAM_a8Jy=GrtS+d99Z0-QL__r17F_LKbg7xTVv2siv24rOfFGzA(a)mail.gmail.com> .. -*- coding: utf-8-with-signature-unix; fill-column: 73; -*- Tahoe-LAFS Tesla Coils & Corpses, 2014-10-08 ============================================ The DOOM and GLOOM Edition Daira, Zooko (scribe), Nathan, Andrew (lurker), Za (briefly) [Disclaimer: this is pretty much all just Zooko's rant that he typed in during the meeting, and doesn't reflect anyone else's opinions very much.] We all sat around reading http://eprint.iacr.org/2014/452.pdf . Then Nathan and Zooko got distracted by wondering about basic attack incentives in Bitcoin… Zooko used to think that block rewards and transaction fees deterred roll-back attack, thus making transactions safer when the rewards and fees were higher. But, maybe that's actually incorrect. There are (at least) two cases to consider: 1. no actor controls ≥ 51% of the hashpower, and 2. an actor controls ≥ 51% of the hashpower. Here's the surprising fact about case 2: block rewards do not incentivize such an actor to cooperate with the protocol, and transaction fees incentivize that actor to defect (i.e. to attack)! First look at the block rewards. As an actor who controls 51% of the hashpower, you have the choice of either cooperating with the protocol (mining atop the current longest known chain) or defecting (mining atop a secret alternate chain and then later revealing it in order to supplant the shorter public consensus chain). If you cooperate, then over the next 100 blocks on the public consensus change (the next 1000 minutes), you'll get 51 (on average) of the block rewards. If you defect, then over the next 51 blocks on your secret chain, which is simultaneous with the next 49 blocks on the public chain (i.e. the next 1000 minutes), you'll get exactly 51 of the block rewards! So block rewards do not actually incentivize an actor who controls ≥ 51% of the power to cooperate. (Also, if you cooperate then other people will get 49 block rewards, but if you defect then other people will get 0. That's an incentive to defect, but a very small one.) Next look at the transaction fees. If you cooperate, then you'll get (on average) 51% of the transaction fees that get posted over the next 1000 minutes. If you defect you'll get 100% of the transaction fees. So transaction fees incentivize you to defect! In addition to the consequences of reward, and of fees, of course, there is also the benefit of double-spending, which is an additional incentive to defect. What does this mean? Does it mean that Bitcoin is broken? One interpretation of the above in light of the fact that Bitcoin has never yet been rolled-back is that Bitcoin is designed to avoid any one actor gaining ≥ 51% (case 1 above), but that it breaks badly if that fails (case 2 above). Another way to interpret it is to say, well, there's another incentive overlooked in the analysis of case 2, above, which is the value of Bitcoin. If you are an actor who controls ≥ 51% of the power, then one consequence of launching a large attack (such as a 49-block rollback) would be a crash in the price of Bitcoin in terms of other currencies (e.g. US Dollars). Would that disincentivize you from performing the attack? Well, there are two ways that you might be committed to the value of Bitcoin: by holding the currency yourself or by investing in mining capital. The former is probably not a big incentive on you as a would-be attacker, because you can sell your Bitcoin holdings. You have an advantage over all other traders in terms of knowledge here, and your sell orders might even be able to race ahead of the news/realization of what has happened. In addition, if you can effectively short Bitcoin, then the opposite incentive applies — the fact that the price of Bitcoin would crash is an added incentive for you to perform the attack. The other incentive would be if you have invested in Bitcoin mining capital, and the product of that capital will be worth less if the price of Bitcoin goes down. I think this is a real deterrent — the first real incentive that I've found, in this rant, for a 51%-controller to cooperate! One interpretation of that is that Bitcoin says “Oh, you've gained a massive amount of mining power? That means you have the ability to destroy the currency, and you have a monetary incentive to do so. But, we'll give you a steady transfer of value from all current holders of Bitcoin to you (i.e. the block reward) from now on, so that you will choose not to do that because you anticipate future transfers of Bitcoin value from others to you.” That sounds kind of ugly — it sounds more like you've become an effective rent-extractor than that you are providing any ongoing value to anyone in return for the ongoing transfer from the public to you. Another concern I (Zooko) have is: what if the controller of the mining capital isn't the owner of the mining capital? Suppose you've illicitly taken over two large mining operations, so that now you temporarily control ≥ 51% of all of the Bitcoin the mining power. The legitimate owners of the mining operations will probably eventually discover your incursion and retake control of their capital. One option you have is to go ahead and perform a massive rollback attack, earning earning ⓑ from rewards, fees, short-sales, and double-spends, and selling all of your newly acquired ⓑ as fast as possible because you expect a massive price crash. The end P.S. Daira actually appears to have spent the whole meeting reading the paper, so maybe she learned something entirely different from Zooko's doom and gloom rant. -- Regards, Zooko Wilcox-O'Hearn Founder, CEO, and Customer Support Rep https://LeastAuthority.com Freedom matters. _______________________________________________ tahoe-dev mailing list tahoe-dev(a)tahoe-lafs.org https://tahoe-lafs.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/tahoe-dev ----- End forwarded message -----

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FOIA Backlog for State reaches one year even if you were to double their staff
by Ryan Carboni 09 Oct '14

09 Oct '14

FOIA Backlog for State reaches one year even if you were to double their staff http://foia.state.gov/Learn/Reports/Quarterly/FY2014Q3.pdf

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outernet.is
by Eugen Leitl 09 Oct '14

09 Oct '14

It seems the project is picking up steam, and got mentioned in http://www.heise.de/newsticker/meldung/Nanosatelliten-umgehen-Internet-Zens… http://www.heise.de/tr/artikel/Nanosatelliten-umgehen-Internet-Zensur-23569… </kraut>

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Re: [cryptome] State Hash (see SPHINCS: practical stateless hash-based signatures)
by coderman 09 Oct '14

09 Oct '14

On 10/8/14, Aftermath <aftermath.thegreat(a)gmail.com> wrote: > english is such a funny language perhaps the best language to be funny, ;P strong post-quantum signatures certainly celestial; a bit big, but hey... head of class! avoids NTRU concerns. still no NTRU-Prime. i suppose if i pester djb for minimal privacy by default (httpS://*..cr.yp.to/) i can't also beg for post-quantum schemes and NEON acceleration for all ciphers and signatures. *grin* best regards,

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Revocable Anonymity is Anonymity like Clipper Chip Protection - that is to say, it is not. [was: Another Tor is Possible, Kane/Ksec]
by coderman 07 Oct '14

07 Oct '14

On 10/7/14, Nick Mathewson <nickm(a)alum.mit.edu> wrote: > ... > What's saddest: You didn't explain why you think it's broken. "Revocable Anonymity" is a farce and distraction; Skipjack Clipper Clip[0] equivalent in every sense to the non-starter of "key escrow" and "government / lawful access mandated backdoors". all backdoors, no matter how well intentioned, lead straight to hell.[1] best regards, 0. "The Clipper chip was a chipset that was developed and promoted by the United States National Security Agency as an encryption device, with a built-in backdoor, intended to be adopted by telecommunications companies for voice transmission." - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clipper_chip 1. "The Athens Affair - How some extremely smart hackers pulled off the most audacious cell-network break-in ever" - http://spectrum.ieee.org/telecom/security/the-athens-affair

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Radical-safest TLDs in 2014
by rysiek 07 Oct '14

07 Oct '14

Well, since we had a nice thread about radical-safest TLDs in 2007, why not ask the same question about present day? Now, I know .onion is the "TLD of choice" of sorts, but if hypothetically I were to register a domain for a project that would help people circumvent Internet censorship and monitoring (so, potentially interesting for the copyright enforcing LEAs too), which TLD should I choose for a "clearternet" version of the website? Please note: I'm not asking about *hosting*, just mere TLD for the domain. -- Pozdr rysiek

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Retired NSA Technical Director Explains Snowden Docs
by John Young 06 Oct '14

06 Oct '14

Retired NSA Technical Director Explains Snowden Docs http://www.alexaobrien.com/secondsight/wb/binney.html Best account yet of the Snowden releases by a technically capable person. Eventually, perhaps, the other 96% will receive similar public disclosure to fully inform beyond opportunistic journalism.

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Projects developed anonymously [was: goldbug, ref: btc]
by grarpamp 06 Oct '14

06 Oct '14

On Wed, Sep 24, 2014 at 3:38 AM, Fabio Pietrosanti (naif) <lists(a)infosecurity.ch> wrote: > The only way such "suspicious" projects will have to recover is by being > transparent on who they are, who pay them, what's their goal ;) There's nothing wrong with anonymous development itself, provided it meets high standards expected of crypto related applications. Goldbug and friends blackballed themselves with their actions, topic dodging speech, and non-reproducible binaries. Doubtful anyone will bother looking at their code given that. Satoshi did anonymous well regarding bitcoin. I2P had some anonymous large contributors I think. Truecrypt's anonymity had some mixed results (given the situation with their binaries). What other projects have been largely anonymous? Now that we have anonymous networks, it's likely that many more anonymous projects will appear that do pass muster.

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dhcpd dhclient-script shell security
by grarpamp 06 Oct '14

06 Oct '14

> @ioerror says: > Has anyone written a captive portal aware, privilege separated, uid > zero free, security focused dhcp client in a type safe language? One could write/compile the script in any language, use sudo within or change the perms and/or syscall uid checks for read-writing the tap, 67/68 port binding, ifconfig, route, etc to permit any arbitrary uid, and run it all in a jail. Some capabilities already exist in OS's today. Portal awareness would be a different scope. Tails or OpenBSD might be interested, as would anyone really, in particular if the protocol sends arbitrary data/commands, which the client/script then fails to lint and passes out to exec/params... Also from twitter: http://www.codelabs.ch/adhcp/

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