At 04:21 PM 9/25/2013, you wrote:

About your only choices are hams or (slightly higher budget) microsats with onboard flash and DTN (notice you can deliver packets during flyby). Hams also do launch microsats, so there's some overlap. I've been waiting for consumer phased arrays, just saw Locata VRay today -- perhaps not for much longer now. Prime your phased array with s00per-s3kr1t sat ephemerides, and you're good to go. Really hard to jam, too -- optical ones impossible to jam, even.

For very high latency you could just use a global sneakernet. http://what-if.xkcd.com/31/ has some numbers. You could probably already run stock Usenet over uucp over that.

Yes, I understand some of these, maybe all, are used for mil-gov-spy communications, likely in pretty advanced versions, and long in use before and with the internet. But not for high-value comsec of the present era. Mil-gov-spy use of and spying on the internet and commercial-grade encryption, https and the like, for low-value communications should indicate much better and more varied means are used for high-value. Smil, intelnet, nsanet, and other intra-IC networks are minimally secure, advertised and touted on internet outlets, thus typical fat food for foodies at lower levels of clearance. Commercial-grade comsec, which is all the public has have access to, appears tailored by standards setting and selective crypto competitons to convince of reliability. Openness promoted as a seal of approval. Fine propaganda that. Now what about what is not known openly. Well, that is what's below Snowden's tip of the iceberg slides, papers and briefings. Where's the hardware specs?

On Wed, Sep 25, 2013 at 01:29:45PM -0700, Rich Jones wrote:

Free and Open 4G radios/base stations are actually quite exciting for this reason. The thing which actually prevents mesh networks from working is mathematical: past a certain network size, path finding becomes too

It's not mathematics, it's braindead algorithms. Geographic routing needs no admin chatter. You only need to handle the edge cases. Notice that 40 GBit/s fiber WAN is low end, while your LoS WLAN will have trouble transporting even 10 MBit/s in adverse weather.

computationally expensive, so wifi based mesh networks can only cover a certain radius before they stop working. With the 4G spectrum, however, the distances between hops vastly increases, meaning that city-wide mesh networks can grow and remain performant. This allows for free communication and file transfer without centralized authorities. Obviously there are still threats, but there is a lot of freedom gained from network autonomy.

Tony Arcieri writes:

What threat are you trying to prevent that isn't already solved by the use of cryptography alone?

The threat of people saying "we'll just throw some cryptography at it and then all our problems will be solved". Peter.

On Wed, Sep 25, 2013 at 11:19 PM, coderman wrote:

On Wed, Sep 25, 2013 at 1:36 PM, Tony Arcieri wrote:

...

... What threat are you trying to prevent that isn't already solved by the use of cryptography alone?

this is some funny shit right here... LOL

someone pointed out that i might be an ass about a legitimate query. here's a subset of all the things crypto alone does not protect: - your source of entropy, upon which all secrets rely. - your crypto implementation, which may leaks keys profusely out the side. - the peers you crypto with; often the most important info. - the complexity of attacking your crypted comms, which may be reduced to a tractable search space due to architectural or design flaws introduced by accident or $250,000,000 malicious intent. - the data in motion or at rest, beyond your crypto boundaries. i could go on...

That kind of technology is already widely deployed in walkie talkies - I think I remember at HOPE a speaker mentioning that the NYPD used this technique until they abandoned it due to its inconvenience. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frequency-hopping_spread_spectrum On Wed, Sep 25, 2013 at 1:50 PM, grarpamp wrote:

On 9/25/13, John Young wrote:

...

Now that it appears the Internet is compromised what other means can rapidly deliver tiny fragments of an encrypted message, each unique for transmission, then reassembled upon receipt, kind of like packets but much smaller and less predictable, dare say random?

The legacy transceiver technologies prior to the Internet or developed parallel to it, burst via radio, microwave, EM emanations, laser, ELF, moon or planetary bounce, spread spectrum, ELF, hydro, olfactory, quanta, and the like.

Presumably if these are possible they will remain classified, kept in research labs for advanced study, or shelved for future use.

There is a spread spectrum radio tech where you broadcast on essentially all frequencies / wideband at once. To the eavesdropper it appears as simply a rise in unlocatable background noise levels. Yet there is a twist... you and your peer posess a crypto key. That key is used to select and form a broadcast/reception frequency map over the entire spectrum. You drive it with software radio. Think of the map as a vertically slotted grille mask over your spectrum analyzer. The grille spacing/width/overlap is random. What you see is your distributed signal hidden in the noise. Pass it down your stack for further processing and decoding.

It's been a while since I've seen this described, whether formally, or applied. Link to paper[s] covering the topic would be appreciated.

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On Wed, Sep 25, 2013 at 02:04:34PM -0700, Rich Jones wrote:

That kind of technology is already widely deployed in walkie talkies - I think I remember at HOPE a speaker mentioning that the NYPD used this technique until they abandoned it due to its inconvenience.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frequency-hopping_spread_spectrum

Here's a potentially disruptive technology for global communication that bypasses the fiber infrastructure, and hence more difficult to tap and almost impossible to disrupt by other means than total orbit denial weapons. http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/165194-nasa-prepares-to-launch-space-lase... NASA prepares to launch 600Mbps space laser system to replace conventional radio links By Sebastian Anthony on August 29, 2013 at 10:05 am19 Comments NASA is preparing to launch the Lunar Laser Communications Demonstration (LLCD), a testbed that will use lasers to send and receive data between Earth and the Moon. This will be the first time that NASA uses lasers instead of conventional S-band radio waves to communicate with spacecraft, allowing for massive data rates of up to 600 megabits per second, while also consuming much less power and requiring much smaller antennae. Ultimately, shifting to laser-based communications will allow NASA to receive much more data from spacecraft, allowing them to be outfitted with high-res cameras and other modern sensors that generate more data than S-band links can support. Optical communications, as opposed to radio frequency (RF) communications (or simply “radio”), are desirable for three key reasons: Massive bandwidth, higher security, and lower output power requirements. All of these traits derive from the frequency of optical and radio waves. While S-band signals are in the 2-4GHz range (similar to your GSM, LTE, or WiFi link), the laser light used by the LLCD (near-infrared in this case) is measured in hundreds of terahertz. As a result, the wavelength of S-band signals is around 10cm, while near-infrared has a wavelength of just 1000nm — or about 100,000 times shorter. Not only can you cram a lot more data into into the same physical space, but there’s also terahertz (compared to megahertz in the S band) of free, unlicensed space that can be used. A diagram of the LLCD architecture Because the wavelength is smaller, the sending and receiving antennae can also be a lot smaller, allowing for smaller/lighter spacecraft and much easier reception here on Earth. By the time a conventional RF signal arrives at Earth from outer space, the beam can cover an area as wide as 100 miles, requiring very large dish antennae (such as the Deep Space Network) to pick those signals up. Receiving laser signals, which are 100,000 times shorter, requires a much smaller dish. As a corollary, due to these beams being much tighter, they’re much harder for an enemy to snoop on, thus increasing security. Transmitting data via laser also requires less power than RF. NASA's LLCD laser link diagram The LLCD will be deployed upon the Lunar Atmosphere Dust Environment Explorer (LADEE), which is scheduled for launch in September. LADEE (which could be pronounced lay-dee or lad-ee, we’re not sure) will orbit the Moon, seeking to confirm whether the mysterious glow observed by Apollo astronauts was caused by dust in the lunar atmosphere. Thanks to the LLCD, NASA will have a 20Mbps uplink to LADEE (apparently 4,800 times faster than existing S-band uplinks), and LADEE will have a 600Mbps downlink to NASA (five times faster than current state-of-the-art lunar-distance links). The mission will only last for 30 days, after which, if it’s a success, NASA will launch the long-duration Lunar Communications Relay Demonstration (LCRD), which will hitch a ride aboard a commercial Loral satellite. The LCRD will allow NASA to perform further testing of space laser communications, with the hope of eventually replacing RF links in future spacecraft. Moving forward, space laser communications will allow for the creation of spacecraft that are smaller, cheaper, and capable of more advanced functionality. With 600Mbps of downlink capacity, we’ll be able to outfit spacecraft with high-resolution cameras and other advanced sensors that generate vast amounts of data — and view that data in real time, rather than waiting for the data to slowly dribble over the airwaves.

On Wed, Sep 25, 2013 at 11:23 PM, coderman wrote:

... today what you want is multiples of MIMO QAM channels. you _can_ achieve gigabits over miles; we have the technology!

i used to be a free space optics fan. but they're old skewl, inefficient, subject to the whims of nature and certainly not multi-path friendly! radio is where it's at., and software defined radio is how you speak it. EOM

At 09:16 PM 9/25/2013, you wrote:

Fundamentally, what you're asking for doesn't make sense. Threat models are about economics, scale, and mistakes, and even if we don't have security bugs, we still have economics.

An NSA technical report says a unit was set up in Bell Laboratories over 50 years ago to research fledgling ideas which the over-militarized NSA staff didn't have time or skill to look into. So it was done at Bell, IBM, MIT, Philco, NCR, RCA, and ilk, back then and as now with today's iconized coms, orgs and edus. Inside of which, then and now, are the cypherpunks playing chess with suits and slicks, manipulating the infrastructure to generate exploits the suits can't, or don't want, to care about so long as quarterlies are fat. Calling upon the sagacity of this forum the question might be answered as you say by developing ways to piggy-back, rig, boot-leg, twist and turn switches and valves, to swipe a little bit of the infrastructure pipelines to use for less controlled purposes. Whatever the infrastructure is, internet, EM spectrum, radio, laser, cable, optics, farts, prayer. Whatever happened to hunches and gut feelings as cover for IP theft and lucky accidents. Pilfering by insiders sold or shared off the market has an ancient history, Snowdens galore forever, the mothers of invention and payback to suits sucking blood of labor. Now then, cough, cough, suppose the internet will continue to be the comms medium of choice for citizens and consumers and their besuited gang of exploiters. Workarounds to exploit the exploiters will flower by avid hackers multiplying like rabbits inside and outside the hegemons. What else besides that healthy pilfering industry which happily generates profits for hackers and cypherpunks to set up their own exploiting ventures? As might have been asked before the internet, before telecoms, before radio, before drums and smoke and yodel and grunts and skull banging. What are lab rats doing when not angling for scale-up capital? Nothing commercial, hopefully, nothing worth feeding to John Markoff, to Glenn Greenwald, to WikiLeaks, to vultures. Probably not worth this all too open call for hot shit swapping.