[liberationtech] skype

John Young jya at pipeline.com
Sat Mar 30 08:16:57 PDT 2013


This cryptanalysis of Microsoft/Skype is applicable to the whole
Internet -- by design purpose-made to spy and lightly obfuscate
with patently false denials and illusory privacy and comsec --
blessed by security wizards in public, chuckled, rued and
reneged in private, usually under NDA and secrecy bonds --
flimsy, false bonds which themselves are chuckled, rued
and reneged as the experts race to turn on each other's
betrayal and grab for market share by doing the same.

Cybersecurity is the latest adverting billboard for this (leached
from WMD spying and national security long coddled by top
secret national laboratories complicitly aiding each other while
pretending opposition).

To paraphrase Jon Callas, criticism of cybersecurity is
a key escrow part of the script.

(What Jon said was "Remember, the only difference between
lawful access and espionage is whose jurisdiction it is.")

And cybersecurity wizards, like all security whores, work
for law enforcement and spies, whether Spamhaus, Spothaus,
or CyberBunker, wittingly or unwittingly showing how to attack
under light defense -- the very reason for creating and promulgating
the Internet, aka: pick your favorite and most trusted communications
medium against which even implacatory silence, getting off the grid,
pleading a deal, lovers ratting on lovers, Schmidt shitting on JA,
Manning induced to shit on himself, Swartz induced to shit on
himself, a stream of others induced to shit on and be shit on,
to wit social media, chat, Jabber, Anon, paste, backdoored encrypt,
nym, false front, megaload, the latest trick to beat the competition
while being meticulously tracked, profiled, archives, mined, targeted,
siphoned, accused with perfect evidence, APT'd, Monsegured,
Barrett Browned, slew of others like them, just when least exptected.

To paraphrase Emmanuel Goldstein, at least 25% of Internet users
are informants.

At 10:18 AM 3/30/2013, Eugen Leitl wrote:
>----- Forwarded message from Rich Kulawiec <rsk at gsp.org> -----
>
>From: Rich Kulawiec <rsk at gsp.org>
>Date: Sat, 30 Mar 2013 10:04:49 -0400
>To: liberationtech <liberationtech at mailman.stanford.edu>
>Subject: Re: [liberationtech] skype
>User-Agent: Mutt/1.5.21 (2010-09-15)
>Reply-To: liberationtech <liberationtech at lists.stanford.edu>
>
>On Thu, Mar 21, 2013 at 02:36:53PM -0700, Yosem Companys wrote:
> > Rich, that's because you're not thinking like the average non-technical
> > user, who usually does the following:
>
>[snip thorough and IMHO, on-point analysis]
>
>You make an excellent (series of) points.  And I have to concede that
>you're right.
>
>So let me refocus my comments on the efforts made (here and elsewhere)
>to get Microsoft to cough up answers: can't everyone see that these
>responses have been carefully wordsmithed within an inch of their lives
>in what is an obvious and deliberate attempt to say as little as possible
>and omit as much as possible?
>
>Microsoft, like many corporations, employs professional spokesliars who
>are very, very good at crafting wording that can be defended (should it
>come to that) but which doesn't present the truth in a straightforward
>fashion.  That's their JOB.  After all: anyone there could tell the truth
>-- it's not hard.  But it takes a trained and practiced professional to
>evade it, obscure it, conceal it, dance around it in convincing fashion --
>and even use it in limited ways when it serves the purpose.
>
>         "A man who tells lies, like me, merely hides the truth.  But a
>         man who tells half-lies has forgotten where he put it."
>                 --- Mr. Dryden, "Lawrence of Arabia"
>
>Microsoft is never, ever, ever going to provide full, honest, truthful
>answers to these questions.  Why should they?  What's in it for them?
>How would those answers make money for Microsoft?  (And if you think
>for a moment that Microsoft has ANY corporate value other than "making
>money", then you live in a different universe than I do.)
>
>So what *is* the truth?  I dunno.
>
>I think (and I emphasize "think", because I do not know) that Skype is
>probably spyware.  I think it's got backdoors that have been designed
>into it.  I think Microsoft has, is, and will hand over information on
>Skype users, usage, and content to governments, including the United
>States, but possibly including other ones.  I think that Skype has
>probably also been cracked by other governments.  I think that it also
>has security issues, some of which are known/partially-known, some
>of which might be intentional.  I think that nobody should be using it
>for any purpose ever.
>
>That said, though, even if I'm right on all those points, that's not
>going to stop people from using it.  And that's where *you're* right:
>I wish you weren't, but you are, and I don't know how to fix that situation.
>
>---rsk
>--
>Too many emails? Unsubscribe, change to digest, or change password 
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>
>----- End forwarded message -----
>--
>Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> http://leitl.org
>______________________________________________________________
>ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820 http://www.ativel.com http://postbiota.org
>8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A  7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE





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