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REVERSE ENGINEERING NSA SPY ‘RETRO REFLECTOR’ GADGETS WITH THE HACKRF
by Eugen Leitl 03 Jul '14

03 Jul '14

http://www.rtl-sdr.com/reverse-engineering-nsa-spy-retro-reflector-gadgets-… REVERSE ENGINEERING NSA SPY ‘RETRO REFLECTOR’ GADGETS WITH THE HACKRF In 2013 whistleblower Edward Snowden leaked (along with other documents) some information about the American National Security Agencies (NSA) spy tools. One such group of tools named ‘retro reflectors’ has recently been investigated and reverse engineered by Micheal Ossmann, the security researcher behind the recently available for preorder HackRF software defined radio. The HackRF is a SDR similar to the RTL-SDR, but with better performance and transmit capabilities. Newscientist Magazine has written an article about Ossmann’s work here. From their article a retro reflectors are described in the following quote. One reflector, which the NSA called Ragemaster, can be fixed to a computer’s monitor cable to pick up on-screen images. Another, Surlyspawn, sits on the keyboard cable and harvests keystrokes. After a lot of trial and error, Ossmann found these bugs can be remarkably simple devices – little more than a tiny transistor and a 2-centimetre-long wire acting as an antenna. The HackRF comes in to play in the following quote Ossmann found that using the radio [HackRF] to emit a high-power radar signal causes a reflector to wirelessly transmit the data from keystrokes, say, to an attacker. The set-up is akin to a large-scale RFID- chip system. Since the signals returned from the reflectors are noisy and often scattered across different bands, SDR’s versatility is handy, says Robin Heydon at Cambridge Silicon Radio in the UK. Ossmann will present his work at this years Defcon conference in August.

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PayPal and Proton Mail
by Jerry 03 Jul '14

03 Jul '14

Paypal Freezes $275K fundraiser for encrypted mail startup; not sure if encryption is legal. http://www.dailydot.com/politics/paypal-protonmail-freeze/ https://protonmail.ch/

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The next gen P2P secure email solution [paypal/protonmail]
by grarpamp 03 Jul '14

03 Jul '14

On Wed, Jul 2, 2014 at 7:22 PM, rysiek wrote: > Dnia wtorek, 1 lipca 2014 22:20:44 grarpamp pisze: >> I'd rather fund something like... >> "The next gen P2P secure email solution" [1] > You mean like RetroShare? http://retroshare.sourceforge.net/ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Retroshare RetroShare seems geared more to private groups of users doing a variety of things, even if that rides among a larger set of peers. So maybe not designed/optimized for global message delivery at huge scale? I generally meant something similar to what's in the prior thread having this subject [1]. Using completely new/different technology than old email as we know it today (with the exception of your MUA tools that you might still plug into the new tech). RetroShare would qualify as new tech to consider and work forward with, as would any of these and friends... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bitmessage http://i2pbote.i2p.us/ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I2P#E-mail http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TorChat https://freenetproject.org/freemail.html http://dee.su/cables https://github.com/ricochet-im/ricochet https://pond.imperialviolet.org/ ...

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Tor
by Juan 02 Jul '14

02 Jul '14

The tor 'anonimity' network is a project of the US military. As such, it must serve the ends of the US military. If the alleged ends of the tor project do not match the ends of the US military, the alleged tor ends are just a cover lie, or a lame half-truth at best. The real ends of the US military, are, of course, not 'officially' acknowledged though they are widely known, even among half-educated observers. The US military is the biggest criminal organization on the planet and its real purpose is to further the global interests of the US government and US fascist business. To do this they routinely invade countries and murder millions of people. Bear in mind the moral outlook of these people when analyzing their actions. Would the US military create an anonimity network that they can't subvert? Of course not. The tor network can prevent ordinary users A and B from learning their respective locations, but if a third party C (say, US government) can monitor A's and B's traffic, it can 'deanonimize' them. As a side note, tor can be and is routinely blocked, rendering it rather useless. In cases where tor could make people anonymous, at least from the point of view of servers like, say, IRC servers , access is blocked by the servers operators. So much for 'free speech'. Suming up, the first objective of the tor network is to give a 'gratis' and subverted 'tool' to...targets of government surveillance. Pure altruism. Another objective of the tor network is to get around the blocking system of, say, the chinese network. Since china is firewalled, the US military can't easily spy on chinese people. So, what the tor employees (accomplices of the fascist US governemnt) do is 1) pretend that they 'fight' for ' free speech' in china 2) gather information about people in china who, by using tor, signal that they are potentially 'interesting' to the US military. Again, the 'official' motives and the real motives do not match, ------------- So far, I got this far =P - Ill add more stuff later ....

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Court – Official statement part #1
by Eugen Leitl 02 Jul '14

02 Jul '14

Apologies, not sure this has been posted already in the thread, I'm backlogged. https://rdns.im/court-official-statement-part-1 Court – Official statement part #1 Posted on July 2, 2014 by Will As seen possibly here, or here i lost the Tor case and was sentenced to 3 years probation (instead of 3 months jail) and all fees (court and experts, Assumption ~30000EUR, not less than 20k for sure). The sentence is based on §12 which allows for anyone to be dealt with as perpetrator (which is a pretty dictatorial law IMO) and this is based on that i knew it *could* possibly be used for criminal activity (in this case child pornography). I won’t write much more yet before i have the written ruling (i do not even know my probation terms yet) but merely want to explain why i won’t appeal this sentence: First would be that I simply can’t afford it anymore, donations covered a lot of lawyer fees but i had to use my entire money on this case as well, i’m now bankrupt and the garnishment (a rare word, DE: Pfändung) of my income (to pay the 20k+ costs) does not help with it either. I have high medical costs as well besides which are more important. I’m not really interested in more external funding due to taxation issues with larger amounts (and i do not want *another* crime on me). – Second is that i just want to be done with this, i had now years of “issues” (i would write “harassment” but then i get sued again for sure) (Ex: Citing my boss to the police for questioning (x3); physically monitoring my boss in Vienna; citing friends to the police for questioning (x2); confiscation of bank transaction data; Polish extradiction threats for hacking cases there (x2); citing me for useless questioning causing lawyer costs (x5+) etc. etc.) – It’s now finally over and besides the cost i CAN live with this sentence, it does not show up in police registers and won’t be an issue for work and alike in the future. – Third is the mental component, this years of “horror” changed a lot up to me being hospitalized (x3…) with paranoid schizophrenia (which was a wrong diagnosis, but still it’s not helpful if you HAVE to assume permanent monitoring of everything), PTSD (among other issues) and now taking medication – It took it’s toll, including me getting fired for being in the clinic/sick stay for a long time, i just can’t afford to loose my job or go the clinic again even if i actually should be still there. – Fourth is the attention, media and personal – I don’t really like any attention on myself, especially when others should get it (like some public cause, Pirateparty or alike). – So this is it for now, stay tuned for more in a few days.

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Re: [cryptography] Stealthy Dopant-Level Hardware Trojans
by coderman 01 Jul '14

01 Jul '14

On Sun, Jun 22, 2014 at 2:43 AM, Michael Rogers <michael(a)briarproject.org> wrote: >... > http://www.emsec.rub.de/research/publications/Hardware-Trojans/ > ... > PhD students suck at maintaining their web pages. ah well, :) full URI to PDF for posterity: http://www.emsec.rub.de/media/crypto/veroeffentlichungen/2014/02/20/BeckerC… thanks to al! best regards,

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NSA drone flight
by grarpamp 30 Jun '14

30 Jun '14

http://www.wired.com/2014/06/protestors-launch-a-135-foot-blimp-over-the-ns…

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Intersection of Projects [Illegal Activity As Security and Anonymity Metric]
by grarpamp 30 Jun '14

30 Jun '14

In a long thread starting here: https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-talk/2014-June/033406.html On Mon, Jun 30, 2014 at 3:22 PM, Morgan Smith <tor-exit0(a)intersafeit.com> wrote: > On 6/28/2014 10:01 AM, Mark McCarron wrote: >> Anyway, we have a simple solution to this global view and hidden services. We just implement a distributed hosting solution within the Tor system and end-to-end visibility is gone. > I'm nowhere near done sifting through this thread however Freenet may > may already provide this kind of functionality. In the spirit of > software doing one only and doing it well then perhaps it is good to be > handled by a separate project. If I recall correctly, this subthread was about people getting shuttered because their Apache etc was insecure, and that somehow creating [paid] hosting services for them within relatively general purpose nets like Tor was the solution. News: those services are still open to the same exploits, and still use the same HS mechanism that has potential whitepaper exploits too. Further, he [or whoever OP'd the subthread] did not define what they meant by "distributed' or "removing 'visibility' of one end". Stepping back from the above specific, and re: Freenet... I think someone else mentioned or hinted at layering to enhance things. Yes, interestingly you can in fact layer some systems upon general anonymous transports, especially if they offer IP transport. ie: Use Tor/I2P with onioncat, cjdns, phantom... layer tahoe+lafs, freenet, messaging, Bitcoin, torrent, etc on top. Gnunet, MaidSafe and others I missed probably fit somewhere too. Mash it up however you like. (Excepting where they did not coordinate their collision spaces, such as in IPv6 addressing). It tends to be complex, slow and fraught with timeouts, but some combinations work ok. At some point you must regularly sit back from your own project or usage and take time to categorize all the systems out there, what they are good and bad at, and then admit to yourself (or as a user) whether layering is valid... or more importantly, whether you should merge forces with other projects to, up to and including, scrapping old and writing new projects that provide both user utility and resistance against attacks of interest. Or is your usage the best it can be? Can you in fact create an all in one tool? Or can you create a well defined intersection amongst projects / tools such that their layered sum equals coverage against all attack classes, or the subset you're interested in or subject to. And can you create a similar intersection matrix for the services offered (web, messaging, storage) by such networks. Can you coordinate research, structure and promote projects in such a way as to cooperatively and formally provide a complete set of resistance and services?

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Search History Skeptic
by Troy Benjegerdes 30 Jun '14

30 Jun '14

This is close to the tinfoil hat terrority, but what if: * hack target's corporate email * hack target's facebook * observe them (via webcams, etc) * generate psychological profile * plant search results https://www.google.com/search?q=hot+car+death+search * distract target with emails from the boss and facebook posts * target leaves kid in a hot car * target goes to jail. Much cleaner than drones or assassination. But where's the 'profit' part? There's got to be profit here somewhere... What, if any, defense is there to this kind of social engineering attack? * this message copyright 2014 Troy Benjegerdes, License fee for lawyers using this message in a criminal defense case is to donate 1% of legal fees to be split between the EFF and ACLU * (yes, I am shamelessly copyrighting this shit for profit, just like all the so called 'news' outlets are) -- ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Troy Benjegerdes 'da hozer' hozer(a)hozed.org 7 elements earth::water::air::fire::mind::spirit::soul grid.coop Never pick a fight with someone who buys ink by the barrel, nor try buy a hacker who makes money by the megahash

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Reversing Stealthy Dopant-Level Circuits
by stef 30 Jun '14

30 Jun '14

http://eprint.iacr.org/2014/508 > Abstract: A successful detection of the stealthy dopant-level circuit > (trojan), proposed by Becker et al. at CHES 2013, is reported. Contrary to > an assumption made by Becker et al., dopant types in active region are > visible with either scanning electron microscopy (SEM) or focused ion beam > (FIB) imaging. The successful measurement is explained by an LSI failure > analysis technique called the passive voltage contrast. The experiments are > conducted by measuring a dedicated chip. The chip uses the diffusion > programmable device: an anti-reverse-engineering technique by the same > principle as the stealthy dopant-level trojan. The chip is delayered down > to the contact layer, and images are taken with (1) an optical microscope, > (2) SEM, and (3) FIB. As a result, the four possible dopant-well > combinations, namely (i) p+/n-well, (ii) p+/p-well, (iii) n+/n-well and > (iv) n+/p-well are distinguishable in the SEM images. Partial but > sufficient detection is also achieved with FIB. Although the stealthy > dopant-level circuits are visible, however, they potentially make a > detection harder. That is because the contact layer should be measured. We > show that imaging the contact layer is at most 16-times expensive than that > of a metal layer in terms of the number of images -- otr fp: https://www.ctrlc.hu/~stef/otr.txt

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