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Proof of Stake...
by Juan Garofalo 07 Feb '14

07 Feb '14

...does it work?

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Penetration of Target's HVAC Controls
by John Young 06 Feb '14

06 Feb '14

Good to see the report on Target's penetration through its remote heating and cooling controls. These and a slew of other building automation systems are often run on central computers along with data processing. Data processing may be protected but the other systems often are not, for IT sec tends to focus on the data of businesses housed in a structure but not the systems running or monitoring the structure with its operating systems most often overseen by maintenance and operation staff seldom skilled in cybersec. We have seen quite a few buildings with decent data protection and building physical and electronic security systems, but lacking oversight of the security of building automation systems often remote from the facilities with 24x7 access, and from there who knows where else -- central automation firms may link up to hundreds of other buildings in a batch of countries. Critical infrastructure protection seldom covers the great variety of buildings. Some use the same Internet connection, separated only by software and folders, with folders of the automation system in obscure locations seldom seen by principal IT data admins. Different duties, contracts, staff, budgets. Much interest in data security, hardly any for automation security. This is not the case for experienced designers, constructors and operators of buildings. Although compartmentalization among them continues to erect easy to penetrate "firewalls" and gaps of responsibility. Spies very much like the porosity and attention to data protection.

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The Spies in Your 3D Printer
by Gutem 06 Feb '14

06 Feb '14

This article remembered me a documentary about how Xerox's technicians intercepted Communications from Russia's embassy at Cold War... http://3dprintingindustry.com/2014/02/04/spies-3d-printer/ Att, - Gutem ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Registered Linux User: 562142

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Fwd: [Cryptography] (MIT) TALK: Thursday 02-06-2014 Thursday 02-06-14 NSA Surveillance and What To Do About It
by Robert Hettinga 05 Feb '14

05 Feb '14

Pass it along, if you know someone local who should be there. Cheers, RAH Begin forwarded message: > From: Peter Trei <petertrei(a)gmail.com> > Subject: [Cryptography] (MIT) TALK: Thursday 02-06-2014 Thursday 02-06-14 NSA Surveillance and What To Do About It > Date: February 4, 2014 at 7:54:47 PM AST > To: cryptography(a)metzdowd.com > > I know this is late notice, but some here may be interested. > > > > Subject: TALK: Thursday 02-06-2014 Thursday 02-06-14 NSA Surveillance and What To Do About It > > NSA Surveillance and What To Do About It > Speaker: Bruce Schneier > > Host: MIT Big Data Initiative at CSAIL > Host Affiliation: MIT CSAIL > > Date: Thursday, February 06, 2014 > Time: 5:00 PM to 6:00 PM > Refreshments Time: 4:45 PM > Location: 32-123 > > ABSTRACT: > Edward Snowden has given us an unprecedented window into the NSA's surveillance activities. Drawing from both the Snowden documents and revelations from previous whistleblowers, this talk describes the sorts of surveillance the NSA conducts and how it conducts it. The emphasis will be on the technical capabilities of the NSA, and not the politics or legality of their actions. I will then discuss what sorts of countermeasures are likely to frustrate any nation-state adversary with these sorts of capabilities. These will be techniques to raise the cost of wholesale surveillance in favor of targeted surveillance: ubiquitous encryption, target dispersal, anonymity tools, and so on. > > [I cut out Bruce's bio - no one here needs it - pt] > > Relevant URL: http://bigdata.csail.mit.edu/ For more information please contact: Susana Kevorkova, 617-324-8424, <a href="mailto:skevorkova@csail.mit.edu">skevorkova(a)csail.mit.edu</a> > _______________________________________________ > The cryptography mailing list > cryptography(a)metzdowd.com > http://www.metzdowd.com/mailman/listinfo/cryptography

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Re: My contacts have been deleted [Incident: 140202-009907]
by jim bell 03 Feb '14

03 Feb '14

Incidents: 140126-043015 140127-126735 140127-132061 140128-041612 140128-126181 140202-010643 140202-009907 I have discovered this article, showing that Yahoo staff like to play games with customers, trying to dissuade them from re-activating old accounts. But my issue, today, is far stronger: I did not allow an account to become 'old' and 'unused': My account (jamesdbell8(a)yahoo.com) was quite literally taken from me, one week ago while I was trying to use it daily, even hourly. (I am now using a new account, 'jamesdbell9(a)yahoo.com', to communicate with you. Do not try to convince me that you have 'lost' my data. That's not possible. No doubt Yahoo has backups of backups of backups. The data IS, indeed, 'there', somewhere. And if it's not 'there', it's in the NSA where you illegally sent it as it was being generated. Maybe you don't want to take the time and trouble to access it and restore it to my use, but that merely shows how callous, rude, and malicious your staff really is! Fix the problem immediately so I am only temporarily damaged, not permanently damaged. Jim Bell ________________________________ From: jim bell <jamesdbell9(a)yahoo.com> To: Yahoo Customer Care <customercare-en(a)cc.yahoo-inc.com> Sent: Sunday, February 2, 2014 1:05 PM Subject: Re: My contacts have been deleted [Incident: 140202-009907] Incidents: 140126-043015 140127-126735 140127-132061 140128-041612 140128-126181 140202-010643 I am talking about restoring both my contacts and my emails in account 'jamesdbell8(a)yahoo.com', NOT 'jamesdbell9(a)yahoo.com . I have gotten some (effectively) rude and certainly unhelpful emails from Yahoo staff claiming that my account is supposed to be deleted soon. I have repeatedly challenged your staff's original assertion that the account was stopped due to 'abuse'. Due to recent public news reports, it appears that millions of Yahoo email accounts were 'hacked', or at least were attempted to be 'hacked'. You staff has, negligently and rudely, never acknowledge the existence of this 'hacking' in regard to my own email account. Effectively, you blamed me for something that (maybe) somebody else did. I believe that your software reacted very badly to whatever malicious attempts were made against my email: I think your system has effectively deleted my account ONLY due to your own mistakes, not specifically the actions of some 'hackers'. You need to EXPLAIN what has actually happened, why it had the effect on my email account that it did, apologize, and then immediately restore the account (including all emails and address book entries) to me. And, you must do so IMMEDIATELY. Jim Bell ________________________________ From: Yahoo Customer Care <customercare-en(a)cc.yahoo-inc.com> To: jamesdbell9(a)yahoo.com Sent: Sunday, February 2, 2014 12:31 PM Subject: My contacts have been deleted [Incident: 140202-009907] My contacts have been deleted Recently you requested personal assistance from our on-line support center. Below is a summary of your request and our response. Subject My contacts have been deleted Discussion Thread Response Via Email (Curtis) 02/02/2014 12:31 PM Hello Jim, Thank you for contacting Yahoo Mail. I went to restore your contacts, and the only files I could restore from only contained the same contacts you have in your Address Book already. No action was taken. I tried every option to restore your missing Yahoo Contacts, but unfortunately, I wasn’t able to get them back for you. The good news is that you can keep this from happening again by making the occasional backup copy of your contacts. Here’s how to export them as a CSV file. Exporting your Yahoo Contacts as a Comma Separated Value (CSV) file 1. Sign in to your Yahoo Contacts page. 2. Select Actions | Export All. 3. Select the Export Now button that corresponds to the application you would like to export to. * If you're not sure, click Yahoo CSV. This file type can be easily imported into Yahoo Contacts. All of your Yahoo Contacts are now saved in a CSV file on your computer, which is readable by Yahoo Contacts and programs like Microsoft Excel. * To make it easier to find this CSV file in the future, we recommend moving it to a folder on your computer that you'll remember, or writing down its location. * You can make changes to the data in the file if you wish, as long as you don't change the field names in the first row of the file (changing these field names will make the file unreadable by Yahoo Contacts). Need help with something else? * Learn how to request restoration of email or instant messages. * If you have any other concerns that you need to contact Yahoo for, please submit another inquiry through our Yahoo Contacts help form. Thank you again for contacting Yahoo Mail. Regards, Curtis Yahoo Customer Care Auto-Response 02/02/2014 03:18 AM This is an automated message acknowledging your recent submission for help to Yahoo Customer Care. Please do not reply to this automated message as replies will not been seen or answered by a Yahoo Customer Care representative. • If you reported abuse, we will investigate and take action where appropriate, and may be contacted if additional information is required to complete our investigation. We appreciate your efforts to make our community better. • If you are submitting a request for assistance, or asking a question, a representative will respond as soon as possible. Your Incident ID is: 140202-009907 Sincerely, The Yahoo Customer Care Team We will assume your issue has been resolved if we do not hear from you within 72 hours. Thank you for allowing us to be of service to you. [---001:002237:33423---]

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Re: [p2p-hackers] The next gen P2P secure email solution
by grarpamp 02 Feb '14

02 Feb '14

On Fri, Jan 10, 2014 at 12:58 AM, James A. Donald <jamesd(a)echeque.com> wrote: > On Mon, Dec 30, 2013 at 12:34 AM, ianG <iang(a)iang.org> wrote: >> >> So sad. I have a clue and don't trust Skype. But I can't for the life of >> me migrate my friends off of it. It's as addictive as crack. It's just >> better than the alternatives. > > > Anything that is as good as skype is going to allow contact tracing, that > this person talks to that person. No... we are specifically talking about developing decentralized solutions here, so that that centralized lookup authority context and risk goes away. Yes... a low latency non-fixed-length non-chaffed network will still have some characteristic risks... timing, etc. Yet likely nowhere near the order of the above centralized issues. > But it does not have to allow mass interception (the original skype did not > allow mass interception), and it does not have to allow undetectable > interception, which the original skype did allow. That is just designing good applied crypto in the former, which nullifies the latter.

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Yet another interesting take on assassination markets.
by jim bell 02 Feb '14

02 Feb '14

See the article by Tomasz.Wegrzanowski(a)gmail.com (Spell that 5 times really fast!) http://t-a-w.blogspot.com/2013/11/if-assassination-markets-were-real.html I'd praise this guy's take on assassination markets, but since 90% of it is virtually identical to my own from January 1995 (before I'd published Part 1 of AP), that would pretty much be me patting myself on the back. Even so, there are some things on which we disagree: For example, TAW (Tomasz Wegrzanowski) says he believes that today's 'assassination markets' are probably scams. (I know only of Sanjuro's "Assassination Market", and David's DPL, or Digital Prediction Lottery; Technically, DPL doesn't label itself as an 'assassination market', but for purposes of my analysis I will label it one.) It is hypothetically possible that either or both of these are some government honey-pot, although I don't think so. I have previously pointed out that I see little reason for any government to, now, promote a system similar to my AP idea, particularly when I wasn't promoting AP itself since my release from the Federal governments' 'gated communities' in March 2012. Indeed, to do so would have been about as much a mistake as 2003's FutureMAP system. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_Awareness_Office#Futures_Markets_A… (And I'm not implying FutureMAP was a bad idea; rather I think that to float the idea as they did led to so much negative reaction that they had to withdraw it, amazingly within one day too!) But I also don't believe that either system is likely to be a money- (Bitcoin-) seeking scam, either. The reason is based on Game theory. Imagine somebody starts up an AP-type operation. Imagine further that it is acting is what I'd call a 'healthy' fashion, actively collecting at least dozens of hundreds of individual donations per day. (This would be strongly impeded if the system collected minimum donations of 1.0 BTC, like Sanjuro's system started out doing , or it was somehow not sufficiently easy to use, or it did not provide the various proofs of operational security sufficient to induce confidence in potential donors.) I think if it was 'working', such a system would quickly develop hundreds of target-names, albeit some with tiny reward amounts, and would certainly collect enough donations within, say, three months to raise the bounties to a level sufficient to result in at least one, uh, 'hit'. Prior to that, many potential donors would still hold back, either because they weren't confident that somebody would be rewarded, or they would wait to see if something 'happened'. But suppose that one 'hit' occurred. Suppose the system demonstrated that some unknown-named person had correctly predicted the date of death of the person listed. (This should be unavoidable: It should not be possible for the system to conceal the existence of a correct donation; in any case, the public and all potential future donors would insist on the exposure of all relevant donations naming that particular target.) Would the operator 'defect' or 'cooperate' (both are terms used in Game Theory.) Would the operator of that system actually pay the stated amount, or would he refuse? (I am assuming that the system was at least set up to have the technical ability to prove, to the public, that the reward had been paid to the correct predictor.) To me, it is obvious that if the operator indeed pays the reward, and this fact can be proven to the public without revealing the true name of the correct predictor, for every Bitcoin paid out as a reward, this confidence-building measure will result in at least tens, and probably many hundreds of Bitcoins of further donations from other themselves naming other targets. In other words, at that point it would become totally illogical for the system operator to 'defect', to refuse to pay a (relatively) small donation, because by doing that he would be foregoing further donations that would be collectively hundreds of times larger. (Nobody would donate to a system which provably refused to pay on a correction 'prediction', or failed to sufficiently disprove the non-payment of the reward.) This same analysis would apply after the second 'hit', and the third, and the fourth, etc. At no point, I think, would the 'assassination market' system operator find it financially more advantageous to refuse to pay the reward, than to pay it and remain in operation and collect far more donations. He will always be better off by paying the reward. There is, however, one exception that I can think of to this analysis. A person (or persons, or a government) might conceivably run an 'AM'-type organization, for a while, specifically for the purpose of discrediting the entire concept of AP. That person might run the system, for a while, even paying off one, or a dozen or two, predictions, and collect a substantial reward in the process, eventually intending to run away, thereby leading to 'fear, uncertainty, and doubt' over the question of whether a credible 'AP'-type system could exist. The big problem, for that person, is that by doing so he would be inadvertently demonstrating the proper (for awhile) functioning, and effect of, that system. Once demonstrated to work, for that period of time, it would become obvious that such a system could, indeed, function 'properly' if the person or people involved are motivated to do so. And, there would be nothing they could do about stopping credible, reliable people from initiating and running an honest AP-type organization. Eventually, reputable systems would win out, because they would build up the longevity leading confidence as to their offers. Jim Bell

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Jim Bell's Email crash: Why not sue Yahoo AND the NSA?
by jim bell 02 Feb '14

02 Feb '14

I just received a seeming 'boilerplate' (pre-canned) email from Yahoo email, saying that my previous account (jamesdbell8(a)yahoo.com) will be deleted. It does not repeat the previous claim of "abuse" on the account, but the timing of the events strongly suggests that the source of the problem was an attack on probably millions of Yahoo email addresses that has occurred over the last week or so. Naturally, I am completely outraged that they allowed such an event to result in actual loss of 'all' data in the account. Could it be that Yahoo's system was truly damaged so seriously as to cause the complete loss of my email and address-list database? However, I am reminded of the old saying, "If you get lemons, make lemonade". Because of Edward Snowden's revelations, we have known that the NSA has been storing all domestic, and probably as many foreign, emails as they could get their grubby little hands on. Why not a class-action lawsuit demanding that Yahoo obtain prior emails from the NSA? While it is difficult to sue the US (primarily due to something called "Sovereign Immunity"), I am aware that the Federal government has already waived Sovereign immunity for everything except money damages. (In other words, you can sue them for 'declaratory' and 'injunctive' relief: A court could order the NSA to deliver the data back to Yahoo.) Does anyone out in the Wide World of Cypherpunks know of an attorney wanting to take on this kind of issue? It could put the NSA in a world of hurt for taking the data, and make them realize that one consequence of taking hold of such a massive amount of data is that they will ultimately be sued if it is necessary to recover. It would also put email providers such as Yahoo on notice that they have additional obligations (other than those they think they have) to recover lost emails. Jim Bell

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Re: [p2p-hackers] The next gen P2P secure email solution
by grarpamp 01 Feb '14

01 Feb '14

On Fri, Jan 31, 2014 at 11:39 PM, Bill Broadley <bill(a)broadley.org> wrote: > On 01/30/2014 08:51 PM, grarpamp wrote: >> Other than for latency issues in our protocols, there's enough >> fiber to generally ignore our global traffic impact... torrent, video >> and cloud are dominating that, not messaging anymore. > > Indeed. Even the "3rd world" of home internet connections the USA > (ranked 14th) has an average speed of 7mbit/sec. Any reasonable > multiple of Email/IM traffic is basically zero. Not particularly worth > discussing. > > The hardest part of the problem is the feature set and social aspect of > launching a new messaging network. Clearly it's still happening with > Mxit, WhatsApp, WeChat, Line, Viber, MessageMe, Voxer, etc. > > I think WhisperPush's approach with TextSecure is interesting: > * they partnered with cyanogen to because the default on a substantial > number of phones > * It "just works" with any SMS user, granted no security/encryption > * It "just works" securely with any other TextSecure user > * It also "just works" on IOS, granted a user has to track it down > and install it. Why these 'social launches' work for crappy apps is becuase the windows writers cater to and know the forum using, bling ridden, pop, idiot-sphere. While cpunk writers / good apps such as might be found below have historically shied away from that catering/knowing, there is no reason they cannot engage it, or that they cannot partner with people that do to enable their own social launch. https://prism-break.org/ > As far as I know Cyanogen does not have a secure IM app yet. > >>On Sun, Jan 12, 2014 at 3:29 PM, Christian Huitema >>> I believe this is actually an issue. The number of pings per host scales as >>> O(log N), which means the amount of maintenance traffic scales as O(N log N) >>> -- more than linearly with the size of the network. Given the nature of the >>> DHT, the addresses to be pinged > > So yes, per node bandwidth scales with O(log N). System bandwidth with > O(N log N). But it's so small that it's mostly irrelevant. Sure some > phone users will be power limited or have a very low data cap, in those > cases they should install a raspberry pi at home or share a node with > more resources. > > Don't worry about 2 billion users before you get 2000. I don't agree. If you do not design for say 2bn users upfront (as is the general subject of this thread re: nexgen global p2p solutions) and instead target 200k or less, you will hit major roadblocks that are very difficult to rip out and cure becuase your entire mindset from day one was only scaling to a dreamy 200k. Mindset and failure to think big traps projects like these, and if they somehow capture and grow users they'll get overloaded to the point of unusability. The best case they then embarrasingly have is to take a year basically rewriting from scratch, or they fail and users move on. And once a project hits unusability issues, that is a hard image to shake... fool me once. This is a classic issue in systems history, where better upfront design would have prevented it. The examples are plenty, there's really no excuse anymore. >> I think the question is, can we do what we want to do within >> the bandwidth that our target users have available to them... >> such as say a 56k channel, 128k, 512k, etc. If we're using >> 32 of 56k for maintenance, that may leave little left for the >> signal you want to send through. > > 10M users DHTs work today with minimal bandwidth overhead (kbit/sec) > while maintaining MByte/sec (factor of 8000 different). The huge > majority of node bandwidth goes to actually downloading torrents. > > So basically I don't see any particularly big technical hurdles. Not > that there aren't others. The network effect and social issues being > the big ones. > > ChatSecure looks pretty reasonable. In a perfect world I'd hope for a > client that: > * fully decentralized, only has find the bit-torrent mainline DHT to > be able to find peers. Why not use the existing 10M peers to help > find compatible peers. > * IPv6 capable, clearly the easiest way to directly connect other peers > in the future. Comcast is already over 25% and IPv6 seems to be > gathering steam. > * Simple tit-for-tat bandwidth and storage trading between owners. > Reputation based on direct observation (no 3rd parties). > * support for 2 tiers of peers, those with long connection times > bandwidth and power to burn and those with intermittent connections > and are power/bandwidth limited. > * allowing people to have a home node that trades bandwidth/storage > with peers and then a mobile node with the same crypto identify > that can leverage the home node and any of it's peers. > > Ideally I could have a 2TB disk ($100) at hosting my more important > files (200GB) and earning the good will of it's peers by hosting > encrypted blobs for them. Leave it connected to a raspberry pi/beagle > board black for $40. Then as needed I can use the goodwill of those > peers to record for whatever bandwidth/storage needs I have. > > So basically my node and it's friends could act collectively as my > IM/Mail/File server. The p2p pooled anon secure model is interesting. I think MaidSecure was the most recent thing making the rounds in this area. Maybe FreeNet is also similar. > _______________________________________________ > p2p-hackers mailing list > p2p-hackers(a)lists.zooko.com > http://lists.zooko.com/mailman/listinfo/p2p-hackers

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Re: [Cryptography] The crypto behind the blackphone
by grarpamp 01 Feb '14

01 Feb '14

On Mon, Jan 27, 2014 at 4:10 PM, Jon Callas <jon(a)callas.org> wrote: > My truest personal goal for Blackphone is read an Android hardening guide sometime in the future that will give a list of the things you should do to lock down your Android phone, and at the end it will say, "Or you could just buy a Blackphone." I want it to come out of the box the way that serious people like us on this list would want it. > It will also have a set of software and services that people like us would like to have, which is part of the hardening, in my opinion. How would this be any different than what the guardian (and other phone SW projects) are developing, other than shipment of a phone preloaded with your flavor of Android OS? (And perhaps also offering IMEI/SIM cell service?) As opposed to the user flashing Android-ROM-OS into any compatible phone and choosing their service. Thus, save that convenience, why? This question shouldn't imply such products aren't needed. Note some open phone HW projects are selling hardware to which you apply your droid SW rom. Though we're likely at least a handful of years away from seeing a genuinely 'open design' baseband HW layer in a phone, they are talking about approaching it.

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