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Re: [Cryptography] Opening Discussion: Speculation on "BULLRUN"
by Eugen Leitl 06 Sep '13

06 Sep '13

----- Forwarded message from Phillip Hallam-Baker <hallam(a)gmail.com> ----- Date: Thu, 5 Sep 2013 16:58:07 -0400 From: Phillip Hallam-Baker <hallam(a)gmail.com> To: "Perry E. Metzger" <perry(a)piermont.com> Cc: "cryptography(a)metzdowd.com" <cryptography(a)metzdowd.com> Subject: Re: [Cryptography] Opening Discussion: Speculation on "BULLRUN" On Thu, Sep 5, 2013 at 4:41 PM, Perry E. Metzger <perry(a)piermont.com> wrote: > On Thu, 5 Sep 2013 15:58:04 -0400 "Perry E. Metzger" > <perry(a)piermont.com> wrote: > > I would like to open the floor to *informed speculation* about > > BULLRUN. > > Here are a few guesses from me: > > 1) I would not be surprised if it turned out that some people working > for some vendors have made code and hardware changes at the NSA's > behest without the knowledge of their managers or their firm. If I > were running such a program, paying off a couple of key people here > and there would seem only rational, doubly so if the disclosure of > their involvement could be made into a crime by giving them a > clearance or some such. > Or they contacted the NSA alumni working in the industry. > 2) I would not be surprised if some of the slow speed at which > improved/fixed hashes, algorithms, protocols, etc. have been adopted > might be because of pressure or people who had been paid off. > > At the very least, anyone whining at a standards meeting from now on > that they don't want to implement a security fix because "it isn't > important to the user experience" or adds minuscule delays to an > initial connection or whatever should be viewed with enormous > suspicion. Whether I am correct or not, such behavior clearly serves > the interest of those who would do bad things. > I think it is subtler that that. Trying to block a strong cipher is too obvious. Much better to push for something that is overly complicated or too difficult for end users to make use of. * The bizare complexity of IPSEC. * Allowing deployment of DNSSEC to be blocked in 2002 by blocking a technical change that made it possible to deploy in .com. * Proposals to deploy security policy information (always send me data encrypted) have been consistently filibustered by people making nonsensical objections. 3) I would not be surprised if random number generator problems in a > variety of equipment and software were not a very obvious target, > whether those problems were intentionally added or not. > Agreed, the PRNG is the easiest thing to futz with. It would not surprise me if we discovered kleptography at work as well. > 4) Choices not to use things like Diffie-Hellman in TLS connections > on the basis that it damages user experience and the like should be > viewed with enormous suspicion. > > 5) Choices not to make add-ons available in things like chat clients > or mail programs that could be used for cryptography should be viewed > with suspicion. I think the thing that discouraged all that was the decision to make end user certificates hard to obtain (still no automatic spec) and expire after a year. -- Website: http://hallambaker.com/ _______________________________________________ The cryptography mailing list cryptography(a)metzdowd.com http://www.metzdowd.com/mailman/listinfo/cryptography ----- 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: [Cryptography] Opening Discussion: Speculation on "BULLRUN"
by Eugen Leitl 06 Sep '13

06 Sep '13

----- Forwarded message from "Perry E. Metzger" <perry(a)piermont.com> ----- Date: Thu, 5 Sep 2013 16:41:18 -0400 From: "Perry E. Metzger" <perry(a)piermont.com> To: cryptography(a)metzdowd.com Subject: Re: [Cryptography] Opening Discussion: Speculation on "BULLRUN" X-Mailer: Claws Mail 3.9.0 (GTK+ 2.24.20; x86_64-apple-darwin12.4.0) On Thu, 5 Sep 2013 15:58:04 -0400 "Perry E. Metzger" <perry(a)piermont.com> wrote: > I would like to open the floor to *informed speculation* about > BULLRUN. Here are a few guesses from me: 1) I would not be surprised if it turned out that some people working for some vendors have made code and hardware changes at the NSA's behest without the knowledge of their managers or their firm. If I were running such a program, paying off a couple of key people here and there would seem only rational, doubly so if the disclosure of their involvement could be made into a crime by giving them a clearance or some such. 2) I would not be surprised if some of the slow speed at which improved/fixed hashes, algorithms, protocols, etc. have been adopted might be because of pressure or people who had been paid off. At the very least, anyone whining at a standards meeting from now on that they don't want to implement a security fix because "it isn't important to the user experience" or adds minuscule delays to an initial connection or whatever should be viewed with enormous suspicion. Whether I am correct or not, such behavior clearly serves the interest of those who would do bad things. 3) I would not be surprised if random number generator problems in a variety of equipment and software were not a very obvious target, whether those problems were intentionally added or not. 4) Choices not to use things like Diffie-Hellman in TLS connections on the basis that it damages user experience and the like should be viewed with enormous suspicion. 5) Choices not to make add-ons available in things like chat clients or mail programs that could be used for cryptography should be viewed with suspicion. Perry -- Perry E. Metzger perry(a)piermont.com _______________________________________________ The cryptography mailing list cryptography(a)metzdowd.com http://www.metzdowd.com/mailman/listinfo/cryptography ----- 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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[Cryptography] Sabotaged hardware (was Re: Opening Discussion: Speculation on "BULLRUN")
by Eugen Leitl 06 Sep '13

06 Sep '13

----- Forwarded message from "Perry E. Metzger" <perry(a)piermont.com> ----- Date: Fri, 6 Sep 2013 10:25:17 -0400 From: "Perry E. Metzger" <perry(a)piermont.com> To: Jerry Leichter <leichter(a)lrw.com> Cc: cryptography(a)metzdowd.com Subject: [Cryptography] Sabotaged hardware (was Re: Opening Discussion: Speculation on "BULLRUN") X-Mailer: Claws Mail 3.9.0 (GTK+ 2.24.20; x86_64-apple-darwin12.4.0) On Thu, 5 Sep 2013 22:31:50 -0400 Jerry Leichter <leichter(a)lrw.com> wrote: > For example, at > http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2013/09/05/us/documents-reveal-nsa-campa…, > the following goal appears for FY 2013 appears: "Complete enabling > for [redacted] encryption chips used in Virtual Public Network and > Web encryption devices". The Times adds the following note: > "Large Internet companies use dedicated hardware to scramble > traffic before it is sent. In 2013, the agency planned to be able > to decode traffic that was encoded by one of these two encryption > chips, either by working with the manufacturers of the chips to > insert back doors or by exploiting a security flaw in the chips' > design." This is troubling. It implies that there are widely used crypto accelerators in use at large organizations that intentionally harm the security of users. Random number generator flaws would seem like an obvious possibility here. This is especially disturbing because other actors can now start doing teardowns on a wide variety of such devices looking to find the flaws so they can themselves attack the traffic in question. Perry -- Perry E. Metzger perry(a)piermont.com _______________________________________________ The cryptography mailing list cryptography(a)metzdowd.com http://www.metzdowd.com/mailman/listinfo/cryptography ----- 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] [liberationtech] NSA Laughs at PCs, Prefers Hacking Routers and Switches
by Eugen Leitl 06 Sep '13

06 Sep '13

----- Forwarded message from Jim Thompson <jim(a)netgate.com> ----- Date: Thu, 5 Sep 2013 15:07:00 -0500 From: Jim Thompson <jim(a)netgate.com> To: pfSense support and discussion <list(a)lists.pfsense.org> Subject: Re: [pfSense] [liberationtech] NSA Laughs at PCs, Prefers Hacking Routers and Switches X-Mailer: Apple Mail (2.1786.1) Reply-To: pfSense support and discussion <list(a)lists.pfsense.org> Read ‘em and weep: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/06/us/nsa-foils-much-internet-encryption.htm… My take is that most places don’t enable PFS (because it’s “hard”) in IPSec. In theory, Transport Layer Security (TLS) can choose appropriate ciphers since SSLv3, but in everyday practice many implementations have refused to offer PFS or only provide it with very low encryption grade. http://www.ietf.org/mail-archive/web/tls/current/msg02134.html I don’t know the situation on pfSense (I’ve not gone to look, as I’m elbows deep in an IPv6 IPsec issue atm.) In theory, OpenSSL supports perfect forward secrecy using elliptic curve Diffie–Hellman since version 1.0. Do we set "enable-ec_nistp_64_gcc_128” on pfSense? Do we enable the DHE-RSA-AES128-SHA cipher suite? How about ECDHE-RSA-AES128-SHA? Do we build the 64-bit optimized version for 64-bit images? http://vincent.bernat.im/en/blog/2011-ssl-perfect-forward-secrecy.html Anyway, the ‘evidence’ is that there is some fundamental weakness in DH, since the NSA itself recommends EC crypto rather than DH in their “Suite B” offering. http://www.nsa.gov/ia/programs/suiteb_cryptography/ One would think that pfSense would follow suit. _______________________________________________ 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: [liberationtech] NYTimes and Guardian on NSA
by Eugen Leitl 06 Sep '13

06 Sep '13

----- Forwarded message from Daniel Colascione <dancol(a)dancol.org> ----- Date: Thu, 05 Sep 2013 12:48:53 -0700 From: Daniel Colascione <dancol(a)dancol.org> To: liberationtech <liberationtech(a)lists.stanford.edu> Cc: Richard Brooks <rrb(a)acm.org> Subject: Re: [liberationtech] NYTimes and Guardian on NSA User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10.6; rv:17.0) Gecko/20130801 Thunderbird/17.0.8 Reply-To: liberationtech <liberationtech(a)lists.stanford.edu> On 9/5/13 12:32 PM, Richard Brooks wrote: > Latest articles: > > http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/06/us/nsa-foils-much-internet-encryption.htm… > > http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/sep/05/nsa-gchq-encryption-codes-secu… > > > I find most of this (if not all) silly. They seem shocked that the > NSA does cryptanalysis. It would be nice if the newspapers had > people with some knowledge of the domain writing articles. > There is a massive difference between cryptanalysis and decade-long, well-funded, and top-secret program to subtly weaken international cryptographic protocols and sabotage industry implementations. -- Liberationtech is a public list whose archives are searchable on Google. Violations of list guidelines will get you moderated: https://mailman.stanford.edu/mailman/listinfo/liberationtech. Unsubscribe, change to digest, or change password by emailing moderator at companys(a)stanford.edu. ----- 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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Spy Files: New WikiLeaks docs expose secretive, unruly surveillance industry
by Eugen Leitl 06 Sep '13

06 Sep '13

http://rt.com/news/wikileaks-spy-files-release-402/ Spy Files: New WikiLeaks docs expose secretive, unruly surveillance industry Published time: September 04, 2013 16:06 Edited time: September 05, 2013 10:00 Get short URL Screenshot from a leaked documentScreenshot from a leaked document Tags Central Asia, Information Technology, Intelligence, Internet, Middle East, WikiLeaks The growing surveillance industry complex is providing governments with increasingly sophisticated spying software to track and control their citizens, the latest documents obtained by the pro-transparency group, WikiLeaks reveal. A trove of documents, outlining the activities of dozens of companies operating in the ever-expanding electronic snooping industry, were made available by the pro-transparency group on Wednesday. ‘Lawful interception’, mass monitoring, network recording, signals and communication intelligence, and tactical interception devices were among the services and products provided by a litany of Western based firms, as outlined in hundreds of pages of documents covering trade brochures, internal memos, and invoices. "WikiLeaks' Spy Files #3 is part of our ongoing commitment to shining a light on the secretive mass surveillance industry. This publication doubles the WikiLeaks Spy Files database,” the accompanying press release cites Julian Assange. “The WikiLeaks Spy Files form a valuable resource for journalists and citizens alike, detailing and explaining how secretive state intelligence agencies are merging with the corporate world in their bid to harvest all human electronic communication." One 2011 document showed how companies such as UK-based Gamma Group, German-based Desoma and Swiss-based Dreamlab are working in concert to “create Telecommunications Intelligence Systems for different telecommunications networks to fulfill the customers’ needs” regarding “massive data interception and retention.” In March, Gamma International, which is a subsidiary of Gamma group, made Reporters Without Borders 'Corporate Enemies of the Internet' list for 2013, which singled out five “digital mercenaries” who sell their surveillance technology to authoritarian regimes. The firm’s FinFisher Suite (which includes Trojans to infect PCs, mobile phones, other consumer electronics and servers, as well as technical consulting), is considered to be one of the most sophisticated in the world. During the search of an Egyptian intelligence agency office in 2011, human rights activists found a contract proposal from Gamma International to sell FinFisher to Egypt. Bill Marczak, a computer science doctoral candidate at the University of California, helped investigate the use of FinFisher spyware against activists and journalists in Bahrain in 2012, as well as in other states. “We don’t have any sort of contracts, so that we could see financial dealings between companies and these governments. The only indications that we have as to where the spyware has been used are based on the research. In cases that we’ve seen the spyware has been targeted against activists and journalists in a particular country. We’ve been scanning the internet looking for this technology. So we found, as I said, spywares in Bahrain. We saw it being targeted against Bahraini journalists and activists last year. We’ve also found servers for the spyware in a number of other countries, such as Turkmenistan, Qatar, Ethiopia,” Marczak told RT. RT was the only Russian broadcaster that collaborated with WikiLeaks in this investigation, which also brought into the spotlight other companies including Cobham, Amees, Digital Barriers, ETL group, UTIMACO, Telesoft Technologies and Trovicor. Trovicor, incidentally, also features among Reporters Without Borders “digital mercenaries.” The firm, whose monitoring centers are capable of intercepting phone calls, text messages, voice over IP calls (like Skype) and Internet traffic, has also been accused by of helping Bahrain imprison and torture activists and journalists. Screenshot from a leaked documentScreenshot from a leaked document While a smoking gun in the form of government contracts or invoices was not forthcoming, internal documents discovered by WikiLeaks do confirm that the firm’s dealings with autocratic states. In a December 2010 correspondence between Nicolas Mayencourt, the CEO of Dreamlab Technologies AG, and Thomas Fischer from Gamma Group’s Germany-based branch Gamma International GmbH, a “quotation concerning the Monitoring system for iproxy (infection proxy)-project” is provided for an unspecified end customer in Oman. One concern involved keeping the client [Oman] aware of any changes made to the proxy [intermediary] server infected with their software for the sake of culling information from select targets. “During the integration tests in Oman in September 2010 the end customer figured out that not all of the components of the iproxy infrastructure are under their full control. It is, for example possible that changes of the Oman-network may occur without their knowledge. Thus, it might occur that ISPs [Internet service providers] may modify some of the current configuration. Therefore, the question arose whether it is possible to identify such a modification in the network setup by monitoring the whole iproxy infrastructure. >From this point of view, a request for an efficient and user-friendly monitoring of the iproxy infrastructure including all components of the systems was derived. This requirement is discussed and a proposal for solution is described in this offer.” The infection process as was conducted on-site in Oman in 2010 can be conducted in two different variants, as described in a separate document, ‘System Manual Project O’, prepared for the Gulf client. The first is described as a binary infection, whereby binaries (non-text computer files) are infected after being downloaded by the configured target. “In order to do this, the software analyzes the data streams on the NDPs [network data processors] at both of the Internet exchanges (IX). As soon as a matching type of binary is downloaded, the infection mechanism is initiated, then it attaches loader and payload (trojan) to the binary.” Screenshot from a leaked documentScreenshot from a leaked document The second method is described as update infection, which “works by sending counterfeit server responses to predefined applications (for example iTunes, Winamp, OpenOffice and SimpleLite), when they are searching for updates.” Data can be captured both through traditional public switch telephone networks (PSTN), mobile providers and internet protocol suites across a range of devices. The user’s information, including his or her IP address, user name, [cell] phone number, the date time and identity of the person being communicated with, and the method or protocol (mail, WWW, Skype, chat, voice, fax, and SMS) are all up for grabs. Upon being captured, the data is stored in a ‘Data Warehouse’ and “retrieved on command.” Quotations for the project, enumerated in Swiss francs (CHF), are broken down in multiple categories: Monitoring and alarming 83,355.00 Services provided by Dreamlab 34,400.00 Training 5,400.00 Annual solution maintenance 24,000.00 Redundant monitoring implementation 57,955.00 Services provided by Dreamlab for redundancy 5,760.00 Annual solution maintenance for redundant system 12,000.00 Note: 1 CHF = 1.06720 USD Although such software does have legitimate applications for law enforcement, it can easily be used to stifle civil society, as Marczak argues was the case in Bahrain. Apart from journalists and activists, he noted that in the Malaysia and Ethiopia, members of the political opposition were apparently being targeted as well. One piece of FinFisher spyware discovered, for example, contained details relating to the upcoming Malaysian elections. “You couldn’t say exactly who was targeted against, but the use of election-related content suggests politically motivated targeting. We also found a sample of this spyware that appeared to be targeted at activists in Ethiopia. The spyware contained a picture of Ethiopian opposition leaders that was displayed when the user opened it. By opening the picture the user copied the spyware,” he said.

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PayPal freezes MailPile's account
by rysiek 06 Sep '13

06 Sep '13

Hi there, You might remember MailPile, the privacy-aware, encryption-supporting webmail: http://mailpile.is/ Today PayPal froze MailPile's account with $45k on it: http://www.mailpile.is/blog/2013-09-05_PayPal_Freezes_Campaign_Funds.html http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/mailpile-taking-e-mail-back?c=activity PayPal's comment: "Please provide an itemized budget and your development goal dates for your project" MailPile team's comment: "After going round and round on the phone with PayPal, I am left with the very strong feeling that this entrpreneurial freedom is in jeopardy. If PayPal has financial risks to mitigate, why is that specially true in our case? Are the risks larger because we are successful?" inb4 "why would they use PayPal" -- from what I've heard they didn't plan it originally but it was brought in by popular demand. -- Pozdr rysiek

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Re: [cryptography] Bruce Schneier on BULLRUN and related NSA programs
by Eugen Leitl 06 Sep '13

06 Sep '13

----- Forwarded message from ianG <iang(a)iang.org> ----- Date: Fri, 06 Sep 2013 13:01:54 +0300 From: ianG <iang(a)iang.org> To: cryptography(a)randombit.net Subject: Re: [cryptography] Bruce Schneier on BULLRUN and related NSA programs User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10.8; rv:17.0) Gecko/20130801 Thunderbird/17.0.8 On 6/09/13 10:49 AM, coderman wrote: > select quotes from > > "The NSA Is Breaking Most Encryption on the Internet" > http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2013/09/the_nsa_is_brea.html > > """ > Remember this: The math is good, but math has no agency. Code has > agency, and the code has been subverted. Nice quote! > Bruce Schneier • September 5, 2013 7:32 PM > > "You recommended to 'Prefer symmetric cryptography over public-key > cryptography.' Can you elaborate on why?" Some of us have been saying this for a while. E.g., " #2.4 Avoid Public Key Cryptography like the Plague Public key cryptography is the kiss of death to simplicity. The problem is that it is not simple, not amenable to KISS, and full of traps that will swallow a battleship. Although the very basic idea is understandable and elegant, none of the instantiations of public key cryptography can create simple interfaces that are free of minefields. ..." http://iang.org/ssl/h2_divide_and_conquer.html#h2.4 > It is more likely that the NSA has some fundamental mathematical > advance in breaking public-key algorithms than symmetric algorithms. It is more likely that the implementors made a mistake. This can be seen also in that all the symmetric algorithms are amenable to black-box and deterministic testing, whereas the asymmetric ones are not so amenable. Oh, and forget the key sizes. This is not about the key sizes. iang _______________________________________________ cryptography mailing list cryptography(a)randombit.net http://lists.randombit.net/mailman/listinfo/cryptography ----- 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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The US government has betrayed the Internet. We need to take it back
by Eugen Leitl 06 Sep '13

06 Sep '13

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/sep/05/government-betrayed-in… The US government has betrayed the Internet. We need to take it back The NSA has undermined a fundamental social contract. We engineers built the Internet – and now we have to fix it Bruce Schneier The Guardian, Thursday 5 September 2013 20.04 BST Internet business cables in California. 'Dismantling the surveillance state won't be easy. But whatever happens, we're going to be breaking new ground.' Photograph: Bob Sacha/Corbis Government and industry have betrayed the Internet, and us. By subverting the Internet at every level to make it a vast, multi-layered and robust surveillance platform, the NSA has undermined a fundamental social contract. The companies that build and manage our Internet infrastructure, the companies that create and sell us our hardware and software, or the companies that host our data: we can no longer trust them to be ethical Internet stewards. This is not the Internet the world needs, or the Internet its creators envisioned. We need to take it back. And by we, I mean the engineering community. Yes, this is primarily a political problem, a policy matter that requires political intervention. But this is also an engineering problem, and there are several things engineers can – and should – do. One, we should expose. If you do not have a security clearance, and if you have not received a National Security Letter, you are not bound by a federal confidentially requirements or a gag order. If you have been contacted by the NSA to subvert a product or protocol, you need to come forward with your story. Your employer obligations don't cover illegal or unethical activity. If you work with classified data and are truly brave, expose what you know. We need whistleblowers. We need to know how exactly how the NSA and other agencies are subverting routers, switches, the Internet backbone, encryption technologies and cloud systems. I already have five stories from people like you, and I've just started collecting. I want 50. There's safety in numbers, and this form of civil disobedience is the moral thing to do. Two, we can design. We need to figure out how to re-engineer the Internet to prevent this kind of wholesale spying. We need new techniques to prevent communications intermediaries from leaking private information. We can make surveillance expensive again. In particular, we need open protocols, open implementations, open systems – these will be harder for the NSA to subvert. The Internet Engineering Task Force, the group that defines the standards that make the Internet run, has a meeting planned for early November in Vancouver. This group needs to dedicate its next meeting to this task. This is an emergency, and demands an emergency response. Three, we can influence governance. I have resisted saying this up to now, and I am saddened to say it, but the US has proved to be an unethical steward of the Internet. The UK is no better. The NSA's actions are legitimizing the Internet abuses by China, Russia, Iran and others. We need to figure out new means of Internet governance, ones that makes it harder for powerful tech countries to monitor everything. For example, we need to demand transparency, oversight, and accountability from our governments and corporations. Unfortunately, this is going play directly into the hands of totalitarian governments that want to control their country's Internet for even more extreme forms of surveillance. We need to figure out how to prevent that, too. We need to avoid the mistakes of the International Telecommunications Union, which has become a forum to legitimize bad government behavior, and create truly international governance that can't be dominated or abused by any one country. Generations from now, when people look back on these early decades of the Internet, I hope they will not be disappointed in us. We can ensure that they don't only if each of us makes this a priority, and engages in the debate. We have a moral duty to do this, and we have no time to lose. Dismantling the surveillance state won't be easy. Has any country that engaged in mass surveillance of its own citizens voluntarily given up that capability? Has any mass surveillance country avoided becoming totalitarian? Whatever happens, we're going to be breaking new ground. Again, the politics of this is a bigger task than the engineering, but the engineering is critical. We need to demand that real technologists be involved in any key government decision making on these issues. We've had enough of lawyers and politicians not fully understanding technology; we need technologists at the table when we build tech policy. To the engineers, I say this: we built the Internet, and some of us have helped to subvert it. Now, those of us who love liberty have to fix it. • Bruce Schneier writes about security, technology, and people. His latest book is Liars and Outliers: Enabling the Trust That Society Needs to Thrive. He is working for the Guardian on other NSA stories

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regarding the NSA crypto "breakthrough"
by coderman 06 Sep '13

06 Sep '13

of all the no such agency disclosures, this one fuels the most wild speculation. """ James Bamford, a veteran chronicler of the NSA, describes the agency as having made "an enormous breakthrough several years ago in its ability to cryptanalyze, or break, unfathomably complex encryption systems employed by not only governments around the world but also many average computer users". That sounds a lot like saying that the the spooks have managed to break at least some of the cryptographic codes that protect everything from secure e-mail to e-commerce. """ however, the crypto breakthrough discussed is more mundane: deployment of deep packet inspection with SSL/TLS capabilities.[0] this represents three significant efforts: 1. upgrading physical infrastructure (DPI systems at this scale use ASICs for processing, not software which can be upgraded on demand.) 2. secret partnerships with service providers to obtain server SSL/TLS secret keys. 3. key distribution to provision the DPI classifiers/sniffers with requisite secret keys when updated by service providers. hence, a "crypto breakthrough" providing unprecedented actionable visibility into previously opaque streams, with such inspection occurring at the edges rather than the mothership (where all encrypted data is sent, decryptable or not...) these efforts are compartmented, with few aware of how these different pieces fit together, thus fueling speculation about the nature of this break. from a technician point of view, you would notice the new ability to see inside SSL traffic, but may not understand how it was done. (e.g. with keys handed over in secret agreement for "reasonable compensation" and national security, rather than a basement full of quantum computers breaking web server keys...) class break in discrete log? quantum code crackers? you've been watching too much Sneakers![1] ;) 0. "SSL: Intercepted today, decrypted tomorrow" , should read "SSL: Intercepted and decrypted in real-time, almost everywhere" http://news.netcraft.com/archives/2013/06/25/ssl-intercepted-today-decrypte… less than a third of a percent of SSL/TLS web traffic uses forward secrecy! 1. "Sneakers" still the best hacker film to date... http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0105435/

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