- cypherpunks - lists.cpunks.org

Re: [pfSense] Can pfSense be considered trusted? What implementations of VPNs can now be trusted?
by Eugen Leitl 11 Oct '13

11 Oct '13

----- Forwarded message from Vick Khera <vivek(a)khera.org> ----- Date: Thu, 10 Oct 2013 15:23:06 -0400 From: Vick Khera <vivek(a)khera.org> To: pfSense support and discussion <list(a)lists.pfsense.org> Subject: Re: [pfSense] Can pfSense be considered trusted? What implementations of VPNs can now be trusted? Message-ID: <CALd+dcctKmfLxK+nnyCYGkc0Z6JCYJi3e3wUuOHc=+ObaOhZeQ(a)mail.gmail.com> Reply-To: pfSense support and discussion <list(a)lists.pfsense.org> On Thu, Oct 10, 2013 at 1:19 PM, Jim Thompson <jim(a)netgate.com> wrote: > > Is there any mechanism to insert ciphers into Pfsense that are not > currently supported? > > You have the source code. > > I, for one, am uninterested in non standards-compliant (and thus > interoperable) implementations. > I personally choose the ciphers that are "hardware" optimized, since my low-end home router (ALIX) gets me faster vpn performance when I do, and I transfer files to/from office all the time. So if the GUI recommends XYZ because it is hardware accelerated, I choose it. That said, a lot of the panic-driven-secure-your-web-sites-against-the-NSA instructions recommend enabling ciphers that use ephemeral session keys. The OpenSSL included in pfSense 2.1 supports many of these. Type this "/usr/local/bin/openssl ciphers" to see them all. The ones that end with "E" in the first component are the ones with the ephemeral key-. Now, how to convince the GUI to make use of these for IPsec or OpenVPN I do not know. I'm sure you can do it via direct config file tweakage, though. I think IPsec renegotiates keys every 60 minutes anyway, so they'd have to do a lot of key breaking to snoop your data, unless they could predict your keys or sneak a MitM attack on you. To list the "strong" ciphers only, use this: /usr/local/bin/openssl ciphers "TLSv1.2:-MD5:-RC4:-aNULL:-MED:-LOW:-EXP:-NULL" _______________________________________________ List mailing list List(a)lists.pfsense.org http://lists.pfsense.org/mailman/listinfo/list ----- End forwarded message ----- -- Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> http://leitl.org ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820 http://ativel.com http://postbiota.org AC894EC5: 38A5 5F46 A4FF 59B8 336B 47EE F46E 3489 AC89 4EC5

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[webp2p] Demo of a WebRTC P2P network
by Eugen Leitl 11 Oct '13

11 Oct '13

----- Forwarded message from Max Jonas Werner <mail(a)makk.es> ----- Date: Thu, 10 Oct 2013 21:19:33 +0200 From: Max Jonas Werner <mail(a)makk.es> To: webp2p(a)librelist.com Subject: [webp2p] Demo of a WebRTC P2P network Message-Id: <5256FDC5.9090906(a)makk.es> Reply-To: webp2p(a)librelist.com (this is an x-post from discuss-webrtc) Hi, for all those interested in WebRTC DataChannel development: We've released a prototype implementation of an in-browser P2P network this week. You can find the library and demos at https://github.com/boplish/ This is actually part of a bigger project the details of which you'll find in our papers (http://inet.cpt.haw-hamburg.de/publications/vws-lwpcd-13.html and http://inet.cpt.haw-hamburg.de/publications/vws-cunwp-13.html) so we'll be working constantly on extending the codebase and appreciate any feedback. Cheers! Max ----- End forwarded message ----- -- Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> http://leitl.org ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820 http://ativel.com http://postbiota.org AC894EC5: 38A5 5F46 A4FF 59B8 336B 47EE F46E 3489 AC89 4EC5

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[pfSense] Crypto/RNG Suggestions
by Eugen Leitl 10 Oct '13

10 Oct '13

----- Forwarded message from Jim Pingle <lists(a)pingle.org> ----- Date: Thu, 10 Oct 2013 08:19:40 -0400 From: Jim Pingle <lists(a)pingle.org> To: pfSense support and discussion <list(a)lists.pfsense.org> Subject: [pfSense] Crypto/RNG Suggestions Message-ID: <52569B5C.5030804(a)pingle.org> User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; WOW64; rv:17.0) Gecko/20130801 Thunderbird/17.0.8 Reply-To: pfSense support and discussion <list(a)lists.pfsense.org> I'm moving this to a fresh thread so that it will be unencumbered by the other discussion that has strayed a bit. Even if one were to ignore government agency interference, finding the best crypto choices is a good topic, but it can easily get lost in the other discussion when some people have written off the other topic. So lets try to keep this thread solely on the technical topic of cryptographic quality. On 10/10/2013 5:39 AM, Giles Coochey wrote: > 1. Which Ciphers & Transforms should we now consider secure (pfsense > provides quite a few cipher choices over some other off the shelf hardware. I haven't yet seen anything conclusive. People have called into question some or all of ECC, NSA's suggested Suite B, and so on. I put some links in a previous message[1]. If anyone knows of some solid research showing specific ciphers have been compromised, I'd love to see it so we can inform users. > 2. What hardware / software & configuration changes can we consider to > improve RNG and ensure that should we increase the bit size of our > encryption, reduce lifetimes of our SAs that we can still ensure we have > enough entropy in the RNG on a device that is typically starved of > traditional entropy sources. We use the RNG from FreeBSD so that may be a better question for a FreeBSD-specific forum or list. There may be people here that know, however, you're more likely to get better feedback from FreeBSD directly. Jim 1: http://lists.pfsense.org/pipermail/list/2013-October/004773.html _______________________________________________ List mailing list List(a)lists.pfsense.org http://lists.pfsense.org/mailman/listinfo/list ----- End forwarded message ----- -- Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> http://leitl.org ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820 http://ativel.com http://postbiota.org AC894EC5: 38A5 5F46 A4FF 59B8 336B 47EE F46E 3489 AC89 4EC5

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Re: [pfSense] Can pfSense be considered trusted? What implementations of VPNs can now be trusted?
by Eugen Leitl 10 Oct '13

10 Oct '13

----- Forwarded message from Giles Coochey <giles(a)coochey.net> ----- Date: Thu, 10 Oct 2013 14:50:41 +0100 From: Giles Coochey <giles(a)coochey.net> To: list(a)lists.pfsense.org Subject: Re: [pfSense] Can pfSense be considered trusted? What implementations of VPNs can now be trusted? Message-ID: <5256B0B1.2050501(a)coochey.net> User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; WOW64; rv:17.0) Gecko/20130801 Thunderbird/17.0.8 Reply-To: pfSense support and discussion <list(a)lists.pfsense.org> Trying to get this back on-topic, I will change the subject however, to alleviate the issues the anti-tin-foil-hat-brigade have. (ps I am also top-posting on purpose as I believe the conversation below has near to no relevance to my questions, but simply is an argument as to whether these questions should be asked, to which I believe in the affirmative). I have various questions to offer for discussion which have been bothering me since various security related issues that have appeared in the media recently: (see: https://www.schneier.com/crypto-gram-1309.html) Clearly, at the moment, open source security tools ought to have an advantage over closed-source tools. However, peer review of open-source code is not always complete, and there have been questions whether even algorithms have been subverted. 1. The random number generator - As pfSense uses FreeBSD this may well be a FreeBSD specific question, however, are there any ways within pfsense that we can improve the entropy pool that the random number gets its randomness from? Has anyone had any experience of implementing an external entropy source (e.g. http://www.entropykey.co.uk/) in pfsense? 2. Cipher Selection - we're not all cryptoanalysts, so statements like 'trust the math' don't always mean much to us, given the reports in the media, what is considered a safe cypher? I recently switched from AES-256 to Blowfish-256, hashing from SHA-1 to SHA-512 and pfs group 2 to pfs group 5, and I reduced my SA lifetimes from 28800 to 1800. Could that be considered overkill? What Cipher's are others using? Have any of you, who have been made recently aware of the media coverage recently, also changed your cipher selection? What kind of changes did you make? 3. pfSense - In general do you consider pfsense secure?? As we are apparently told, asking whether the NSA has inserted or influenced the code in any way either in the pfsense code, or the upstream base (FreeBSD) is a question that we can't ask, as if it were the case then the NSA would have instructed someone in the know, to answer in the no. On 10/10/2013 12:33, Rüdiger G. Biernat wrote: > This discussion about security/NSA/encryption IS important. Please go on. > > > Von Samsung Mobile gesendet > > > -------- Ursprüngliche Nachricht -------- > Von: Giles Coochey > Datum:10.10.2013 11:39 (GMT+01:00) > An: list(a)lists.pfsense.org > Betreff: Re: [pfSense] NSA: Is pfSense infiltrated by "big brother" > NSA or others? > > On 10/10/2013 09:38, Thinker Rix wrote: > > On 2013-10-10 01:13, Przemys?aw Pawe?czyk wrote: > >> On Thu, 10 Oct 2013 00:05:22 +0300 > >> Thinker Rix <thinkerix(a)rocketmail.com> wrote: > >> > >>> Well, actually I started this thread with a pretty frank, > >>> straight-forward and very simple question. > >> That's right and they were justified. > > > > Thank you! > > > >> BTW, you pushed to the corner the (un)famous American hubris (Obama: US > >> is exceptional.), that's the nasty answers from some. > > > > Yes, I guess I have hit a whole bunch of different nerves with my > > question, and I find it to be highly interesting to observe some of > > the awkward reactions, socioscientificly and psychologically. > > > > I have been insulted, I have been bullied, I have been called to > > self-censor myself and at the end some users "virtually joined" to > > give the illusion of a majority an muzzle me, stating, that my > > question has no place at this pfSense mailing list. Really amazing, > > partly hilarious reactions, I think. > > These reactions say so much about how far the whole surveillance and > > mind-suppression has proceeded already and how much it has influenced > > the thoughts and behavior of formerly free people by now. Frightening. > > > >> Thinker Rix, you are not alone at your unease pressing you to ask > >> those questions about pfSense and NSA. > > > > Thank you for showing your support openly! > > I too was surprised to see some activity on the pfsense list, after > seeing only a few posts per week I checked today to find several dozen > messages talking about a topic I have been concerned with myself - as a > network security specialist, how much can I trust the firewalls I use, > be they embedded devices, software packages, or 'hardware' from > manufacturers. > There are many on-topic things to discuss here: > 1. Which Ciphers & Transforms should we now consider secure (pfsense > provides quite a few cipher choices over some other off the shelf > hardware. > 2. What hardware / software & configuration changes can we consider to > improve RNG and ensure that should we increase the bit size of our > encryption, reduce lifetimes of our SAs that we can still ensure we have > enough entropy in the RNG on a device that is typically starved of > traditional entropy sources. > > This is so much on-topic, I am surprised that there has been a movement > to call this thread to stop, granted - it may seem that the conversation > may drift into a political one, with regard to privacy law etc... > however, that is a valid sub-topic for a discussion list that addresses > devices that are designed and implemented to safe-guard privacy. > > -- > Regards, > > Giles Coochey, CCNP, CCNA, CCNAS > NetSecSpec Ltd > +44 (0) 8444 780677 > +44 (0) 7983 877438 > http://www.coochey.net > http://www.netsecspec.co.uk > giles(a)coochey.net > > > > _______________________________________________ > List mailing list > List(a)lists.pfsense.org > http://lists.pfsense.org/mailman/listinfo/list > > > _______________________________________________ > List mailing list > List(a)lists.pfsense.org > http://lists.pfsense.org/mailman/listinfo/list -- Regards, Giles Coochey, CCNP, CCNA, CCNAS NetSecSpec Ltd +44 (0) 8444 780677 +44 (0) 7983 877438 http://www.coochey.net http://www.netsecspec.co.uk giles(a)coochey.net _______________________________________________ List mailing list List(a)lists.pfsense.org http://lists.pfsense.org/mailman/listinfo/list ----- End forwarded message ----- -- Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> http://leitl.org ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820 http://ativel.com http://postbiota.org AC894EC5: 38A5 5F46 A4FF 59B8 336B 47EE F46E 3489 AC89 4EC5

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[GnuPG] : Question - collective entity key management
by Tomas Overdrive Petru 10 Oct '13

10 Oct '13

Hi all, may I have a question? I need to manage key for encrypt/sign of [not-only] e-mail communication for group of peoplewhich is partially dynamic. Basically it is some elected administrative board. My ideawas to create some master key than subkeys and in case subkeys are revoced [member of admin-board was not elected,whole admin-board is re-elected etc.]. Problem is, that all of the members are using same email e.g. member(a)board.eg As soon as member should not be able to read this email, his key should be disallowed to decrypt messages on this email. Can I ask for some HowTo or just correct my point of view, because it seems definitely wrong. Thx, ~ Over -- “Borders I have never seen one. But I have heard they exist in the minds of some people.” ― Thor Heyerdahl www...................http://overdrive.a-nihil.net twitter...............https://twitter.com/#!/idoru23 blog..................http://d8ofh8.blogspot.com GnuPG public key......http://overdrive.a-nihil.net/overdrive.txt GnuPG key FingerPrint.072C C0AD 88EF F681 5E52 5329 8483 4860 6E19 949D

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Re: [pfSense] Can pfSense be considered trusted? What implementations of VPNs can now be trusted?
by Eugen Leitl 10 Oct '13

10 Oct '13

----- Forwarded message from Ian Bowers <iggdawg(a)gmail.com> ----- Date: Thu, 10 Oct 2013 10:13:51 -0400 From: Ian Bowers <iggdawg(a)gmail.com> To: pfSense support and discussion <list(a)lists.pfsense.org> Subject: Re: [pfSense] Can pfSense be considered trusted? What implementations of VPNs can now be trusted? Message-ID: <CAOtTuaoHDtm21xvTW941JTBgj3Wo93TxZ7X25ECFS7WPbi+_7Q(a)mail.gmail.com> Reply-To: pfSense support and discussion <list(a)lists.pfsense.org> On Thu, Oct 10, 2013 at 9:50 AM, Giles Coochey <giles(a)coochey.net> wrote: > Trying to get this back on-topic, I will change the subject however, to > alleviate the issues the anti-tin-foil-hat-brigade have. (ps I am also > top-posting on purpose as I believe the conversation below has near to no > relevance to my questions, but simply is an argument as to whether these > questions should be asked, to which I believe in the affirmative). > > I have various questions to offer for discussion which have been > bothering me since various security related issues that have appeared in > the media recently: (see: https://www.schneier.com/crypto-gram-1309.html) > > Clearly, at the moment, open source security tools ought to have an > advantage over closed-source tools. However, peer review of open-source > code is not always complete, and there have been questions whether even > algorithms have been subverted. > > 1. The random number generator - As pfSense uses FreeBSD this may well be > a FreeBSD specific question, however, are there any ways within pfsense > that we can improve the entropy pool that the random number gets its > randomness from? Has anyone had any experience of implementing an external > entropy source (e.g. http://www.entropykey.co.uk/) in pfsense? > 2. Cipher Selection - we're not all cryptoanalysts, so statements like > 'trust the math' don't always mean much to us, given the reports in the > media, what is considered a safe cypher? I recently switched from AES-256 > to Blowfish-256, hashing from SHA-1 to SHA-512 and pfs group 2 to pfs group > 5, and I reduced my SA lifetimes from 28800 to 1800. Could that be > considered overkill? What Cipher's are others using? Have any of you, who > have been made recently aware of the media coverage recently, also changed > your cipher selection? What kind of changes did you make? > 3. pfSense - In general do you consider pfsense secure?? As we are > apparently told, asking whether the NSA has inserted or influenced the code > in any way either in the pfsense code, or the upstream base (FreeBSD) is a > question that we can't ask, as if it were the case then the NSA would have > instructed someone in the know, to answer in the no. > > > > 1) I don't have the expertise to talk about RNGs in such a way that I feel confident that my response is something other people should actually listen to. The good ones are based on thermal noise or some other sort of "truly" random source. but flaws in the software that processes this can make it less random. This is a rabbit hole I've chosen not to dive down yet, but made it a point to be aware of and follow along with as things unfold. So I'll defer to others here. 2) Apologies for answering out of order, but it's early and my brain is working that way. PFS group 5 is typically a good functional minimum, I bump it up where appropriate, but I find in the higher PFS group I run into interop issues when connecting to different vendors. Most everything supports groups 1, 2, and 5, but 5 is my minimum unless someone has a good reason. Cisco has a reputation for support of legacy protocols and configurations (which is a double edged sword for sure), and even they are saying groups 1 and 2 should not be used. For SA lifetimes I'm ok with 28800 for phase 1, and 3600 for phase 2. Phase 2 is really where you need to mix it up frequently. it's less important with phase 1. Opinions on this differ, but if you have PFS in play on phase 2, the lifetime of phase 1 becomes much less important. But play it how you like it, modern CPUs have the horsepower to renegotiate frequently. For encryption ciphers I rock AES-256 all day every day when I can. I've done my homework on the AES development and selection process, and I'm satisfied (for now) with how open it was and how it was critiqued. It's also the strongest encryption cipher that with widespread support, and even on my home network I have LAN-2-LAN tunnels to multiple vendors' gear. roll that into how primitive many remote access clients can be, and AES-256 typically comes out on top as the best you can get and still have a good chance of your peer supporting it. As far as hashing, I'm still rocking SHA-1 for now because I see abuse of the hashing algorithm for a functional attack as something that would only realistically be used in a real-time man in the middle type attack. A lot of other cards have to have fallen down for this to become a problem. I'm under that kind of attack, I've got bigger problems. That being said, I can't think of a good reason NOT to bump up hashing either. so play it as you like it. 3) FreeBSD is very mature, and very well reviewed. I've looked into FreeBSD to my personal satisfaction. OpenBSD may be abrasive as a community at times, but their work product is pretty impressive in terms of being clean and funcitonal. I was very happy with how they handled that whole IPSec fiasco in 2011. I've been following pfSense for a while now, and I've used it off and on for years. I'm very satisfied by the quality and oversight of the coding. But by all means dig as long as your curiosity holds out. you can never be "100% sure" of the security of any software, but "sufficiently sure" is absolutely worth looking into. Ian _______________________________________________ List mailing list List(a)lists.pfsense.org http://lists.pfsense.org/mailman/listinfo/list ----- End forwarded message ----- -- Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> http://leitl.org ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820 http://ativel.com http://postbiota.org AC894EC5: 38A5 5F46 A4FF 59B8 336B 47EE F46E 3489 AC89 4EC5

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[guardian-dev] ADTN: Anonymous Delay-Tolerant Network
by Eugen Leitl 10 Oct '13

10 Oct '13

----- Forwarded message from Michael Rogers <michael(a)briarproject.org> ----- Date: Thu, 10 Oct 2013 13:03:58 +0100 From: Michael Rogers <michael(a)briarproject.org> To: OpenITP Dev <dev(a)lists.openitp.org> Cc: Ana Barroso <ana(a)megfau.lt>, Jeremy Lakeman <Jeremy.Lakeman(a)gmail.com>, Briar Development List <briar-devel(a)lists.sourceforge.net>, Guardian Dev <guardian-dev(a)lists.mayfirst.org> Subject: [guardian-dev] ADTN: Anonymous Delay-Tolerant Network Message-ID: <525697AE.7010807(a)briarproject.org> User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux i686; rv:17.0) Gecko/20130801 Thunderbird/17.0.8 -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 Hi all, Ana Barroso gave an exciting presentation at CTS IV about a new idea for anonymous communication. Briefly, the idea is to use short-range communication between mobile devices to create a delay-tolerant network. Any member of the network can send messages anonymously to the whole network, and members who know each other can use the network to exchange end-to-end encrypted private messages. An adversary who can observe the whole network and participate in it can't tell: * Which users are sending messages, as opposed to just forwarding them * Which user is the source of an anonymous message * Which users are the source and destination of a private message * Which users know each other These are strong anonymity properties that are clearly applicable to activist use cases, so I'd like to see this thing built. It does't, unfortunately, follow that I can build it on my own, but with our collective skills, experience and fragments of reusable code I think we can put together a proof-of-concept Android app with minimal risk of karoshi. I've set up a Github project and a couple of mailing lists. Please join the adtn-devel list if you'd like to discuss or contribute to the project, or the adtn-announce list for occasional updates. Ana's working on a tech report that will describe how her idea works. Looking forward to your comments, suggestions and pull requests. https://github.com/akwizgran/adtn http://sourceforge.net/p/adtn/mailman Cheers, Michael -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.10 (GNU/Linux) iQEcBAEBAgAGBQJSVpetAAoJEBEET9GfxSfMaJEH/iMdicp88t1+euSXpDW8FAEn py+0ZjxPL2haJN4BKKY17qzP8hA9Qk07RSzex22PFzastczcfGTRHen7R5VWCckd Ti0QuDaJCtGXrl3JGeKhsPwDYh7UR4/pe3n0GwJz5zemwMsIQNRYAMLrJJmwlU7M 4C+zd9x9j+jXtJvOpoGzfEcnNUfBq0I/NfQZ+hVDHBuu351R0nzskswj6NvgPFT4 4a0QRQ9Oljv7Fca9j/HG1RPMatMYl/qGOR0UrlJoE/x8VM1NEHoZbzP75ldm3dom mrbRc+LMCIaSJ4cK2SShIVSb/GDG+M/rYZj6T79+KsfjFJAXcG7VuXatZy3Nr1A= =vK8q -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- _______________________________________________ Guardian-dev mailing list Post: Guardian-dev(a)lists.mayfirst.org List info: https://lists.mayfirst.org/mailman/listinfo/guardian-dev To Unsubscribe Send email to: Guardian-dev-unsubscribe(a)lists.mayfirst.org Or visit: https://lists.mayfirst.org/mailman/options/guardian-dev/eugen%40leitl.org You are subscribed as: eugen(a)leitl.org ----- End forwarded message ----- -- Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> http://leitl.org ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820 http://ativel.com http://postbiota.org AC894EC5: 38A5 5F46 A4FF 59B8 336B 47EE F46E 3489 AC89 4EC5

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Cryptographers condemn US National Security Agency’s tapping and tampering, but mathematicians shrug.
by Eugen Leitl 10 Oct '13

10 Oct '13

http://www.nature.com/news/researchers-split-over-nsa-hacking-1.13911 Researchers split over NSA hacking Cryptographers condemn US National Security Agency’s tapping and tampering, but mathematicians shrug. Ann Finkbeiner 08 October 2013 The National Security Agency is the largest employer of mathematicians in the United States. PATRICK SEMANSKY/ASSOCIATED PRESS The US National Security Agency (NSA) has upset a great many people this year. Since June, newspapers have been using documents leaked by former intelligence worker Edward Snowden to show how the secretive but powerful agency has spied on the communications of US citizens and foreign governments. Last month, the media reported that the NSA, which is based in Fort Meade, Maryland, had undermined Internet security standards. The revelations have sparked international outrage at the highest levels — even the president of Brazil cancelled a visit to the United States because of the spying. Yet amid the uproar, NSA-supported mathematicians and computer scientists have remained mostly quiet, to the growing frustration of others in similar fields. “Most have never met a funding source they do not like,” says Phillip Rogaway, a computer scientist at the University of California, Davis, who has sworn not to accept NSA funding and is critical of other researchers’ silence. “And most of us have little sense of social responsibility.” Mathematicians and the NSA are certainly interdependent. The agency declares that it is the United States’ largest maths employer, and Samuel Rankin, director of the Washington DC office of the American Mathematical Society, estimates that the agency hires 30–40 mathematicians every year. The NSA routinely holds job fairs on university campuses, and academic researchers can work at the agency on sabbaticals. In 2013, the agency’s mathematical sciences programme offered more than US$3.3 million in research grants. Furthermore, the NSA has designated more than 150 colleges and universities as centres of excellence, which qualifies students and faculty members for extra support. It can also fund research indirectly through other agencies, and so the total amount of support may be much higher. A leaked budget document says that the NSA spends more than $400 million a year on research and technology — although only a fraction of this money might go to research outside the agency itself. “I understand what’s in the newspapers, but the NSA is funding serious long-term fundamental research and I’m happy they’re doing it.” Many US researchers, especially those towards the basic-research end of the spectrum, are comfortable with the NSA’s need for their expertise. Christopher Monroe, a physicist at the University of Maryland in College Park, is among them. He previously had an NSA grant for basic research on controlling cold atoms, which can form the basis of the qubits of information in quantum computers. He notes that he is free to publish in the open literature, and he has no problems with the NSA research facilities in physical sciences, telecommunications and languages that sit on his campus. Monroe is sympathetic to the NSA’s need to track the development of quantum computers that could one day be used to crack codes beyond the ability of conventional machines. “I understand what’s in the newspapers,” he says, “but the NSA is funding serious long-term fundamental research and I’m happy they’re doing it.” Dena Tsamitis, director of education, outreach and training at Carnegie Mellon University’s cybersecurity research centre in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, also wants to maintain the relationship. She oversees visitors and recruiters from the NSA but her centre gets no direct funding. She says that her graduate students understand the NSA’s public surveillance to be “a policy decision, not a technology decision. Our students are most interested in the technology.” And the NSA, she says — echoing many other researchers — “has very interesting technology problems”. The academics who are professionally uneasy with the NSA tend to lie on the applied end of the spectrum: they work on computer security and cryptography rather than pure mathematics and basic physics. Matthew Green, a cryptographer at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland, says that these researchers are unsettled in part because they are dependent on protocols developed by the US National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) to govern most encrypted web traffic. When it was revealed that the NSA had inserted a ‘back door’ into the NIST standards to allow snooping, some of them felt betrayed. “We certainly had no idea that they were tampering with products or standards,” says Green. He is one of 47 technologists who on 4 October sent a letter to the director of a group created last month by US President Barack Obama to review NSA practices, protesting because the group does not include any independent technologists. Edward Felten, who studies computer security at Princeton University in New Jersey, says that the NSA’s breach of security standards means that cryptographers will need to change what they call their threat model — the set of assumptions about possible attacks to guard against. Now the attacks might come from the home team. “There was a sense of certain lines that NSA wouldn’t cross,” says Felten, “and now we’re not so sure about that.” Nature 502, 152 (10 October 2013) doi:10.1038/502152a

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re: NSA data centre power surges & unknowns...
by Bill Stewart 10 Oct '13

10 Oct '13

Current quantum computers aren't that big, but they're only good for multiplying numbers up to 15 (I've heard rumors of 21!) As with the early Cray supercomputers, where the size of the air conditioners and power systems were much larger than the round wirey bits, a quantum computer is likely to be pretty small but may have some bigger helium coolers on-site. Remember that you're trying to entangle subatomic particles, and maybe have some magnetic detector things that still aren't all that big. If quantum computers became practical, they'd be using them to crack codes, factoring 1024-bit numbers or whatever. What's really big are the NON-quantum computers they'd be using to attack those problems now. The reason they need all that space is almost certainly for conventional data storage and processing. They want to be able to collect and store everybody's phone calls, locations, credit card purchases, and internet traffic, so they're handling multiple petabytes of data a day, finding the interesting bits, correlating the interesting people with other people who might have been in the same place at the same time, saving the parts that might be useful later. Maybe doing some voice recognition on all their phone calls. It takes a lot of basic horsepower and storage, and the correlation takes a lot of memory. I think they've bought themselves a lot of cheap-ass electrical work, done by people who assume that scaling up power requirements for a conventional data center by a factor of 10-100 doesn't change the principles. At 07:11 PM 10/9/2013, brian carroll wrote: >Lodewijk andrÃ© de la porte <<mailto:l@odewijk.nl>l(a)odewijk.nl> wrote: > > > The massive quantum computer has unpredictable power consumption. > >Lee Azzarello ><<mailto:lee@guardianproject.info>lee(a)guardianproject.info> wrote: > > > I guess inventing new math to break crypto has some physics problems. > > >these comments has me contemplating what a >large-scale networked quantum computer >installation would involve.. and to what extent >the image of racks of servers may note correlate >with the computing technology inside the boxes, >or in some percentage of the data centre. > >in other words- how would a quantum installation >differ from the classical computer systems of >the last many decades- would they be of yet >another smaller scale or would an installation >inherently be enormous. what if the data centre >was all quantum computing in terms of the data >throughput - do these numbers correlate or are >different approaches to security calculations required > >is it possible that a 'computer within a >computer' could exist, such that a quantum chip >could be embedded and use a classical electronic >based system, that is, some form of stealth or >hidden computing that occurs in a parallel >hidden framework, including for networking data. >could ethernet or fibre channel be used or would >it need to be different, say tuned resonant >circuits computing in other dimensionality.

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Re: [pfSense] NSA: Is pfSense infiltrated by "big brother" NSA or others?
by Eugen Leitl 10 Oct '13

10 Oct '13

----- Forwarded message from Giles Coochey <giles(a)coochey.net> ----- Date: Thu, 10 Oct 2013 10:39:46 +0100 From: Giles Coochey <giles(a)coochey.net> To: list(a)lists.pfsense.org Subject: Re: [pfSense] NSA: Is pfSense infiltrated by "big brother" NSA or others? Message-ID: <525675E2.4090707(a)coochey.net> User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; WOW64; rv:17.0) Gecko/20130801 Thunderbird/17.0.8 Reply-To: pfSense support and discussion <list(a)lists.pfsense.org> On 10/10/2013 09:38, Thinker Rix wrote: > On 2013-10-10 01:13, Przemysław Pawełczyk wrote: >> On Thu, 10 Oct 2013 00:05:22 +0300 >> Thinker Rix <thinkerix(a)rocketmail.com> wrote: >> >>> Well, actually I started this thread with a pretty frank, >>> straight-forward and very simple question. >> That's right and they were justified. > > Thank you! > >> BTW, you pushed to the corner the (un)famous American hubris (Obama: US >> is exceptional.), that's the nasty answers from some. > > Yes, I guess I have hit a whole bunch of different nerves with my > question, and I find it to be highly interesting to observe some of > the awkward reactions, socioscientificly and psychologically. > > I have been insulted, I have been bullied, I have been called to > self-censor myself and at the end some users "virtually joined" to > give the illusion of a majority an muzzle me, stating, that my > question has no place at this pfSense mailing list. Really amazing, > partly hilarious reactions, I think. > These reactions say so much about how far the whole surveillance > and mind-suppression has proceeded already and how much it has > influenced the thoughts and behavior of formerly free people by > now. Frightening. > >> Thinker Rix, you are not alone at your unease pressing you to ask >> those questions about pfSense and NSA. > > Thank you for showing your support openly! I too was surprised to see some activity on the pfsense list, after seeing only a few posts per week I checked today to find several dozen messages talking about a topic I have been concerned with myself - as a network security specialist, how much can I trust the firewalls I use, be they embedded devices, software packages, or 'hardware' from manufacturers. There are many on-topic things to discuss here: 1. Which Ciphers & Transforms should we now consider secure (pfsense provides quite a few cipher choices over some other off the shelf hardware. 2. What hardware / software & configuration changes can we consider to improve RNG and ensure that should we increase the bit size of our encryption, reduce lifetimes of our SAs that we can still ensure we have enough entropy in the RNG on a device that is typically starved of traditional entropy sources. This is so much on-topic, I am surprised that there has been a movement to call this thread to stop, granted - it may seem that the conversation may drift into a political one, with regard to privacy law etc... however, that is a valid sub-topic for a discussion list that addresses devices that are designed and implemented to safe-guard privacy. -- Regards, Giles Coochey, CCNP, CCNA, CCNAS NetSecSpec Ltd +44 (0) 8444 780677 +44 (0) 7983 877438 http://www.coochey.net http://www.netsecspec.co.uk giles(a)coochey.net _______________________________________________ List mailing list List(a)lists.pfsense.org http://lists.pfsense.org/mailman/listinfo/list ----- End forwarded message ----- -- Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> http://leitl.org ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820 http://ativel.com http://postbiota.org AC894EC5: 38A5 5F46 A4FF 59B8 336B 47EE F46E 3489 AC89 4EC5

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