Title: The True Story of the Internet Part II The True Story of the
   InterNet Part III InfoWar Final Frontier of the Digital Revolution
   Behind the ElectroMagnetic Curtain by TruthMonger Copyright 1997 Pearl
   Publishing InfoWar Table of Contents Epilogue I Broke PGP! When
   ignorance is bliss, it is folly to be wise. Epilogue Discoveries of any
   great moment in mathematics and other disciplines, once they are
   discovered, are seen to be extremely simple and obvious, and make
   everybody, including their discoverer, appear foolish for not having
   discovered them before. It is all too often forgotten that the ancient
   symbol for prenascence of the world is a fool, and that foolishness,
   being a divine state, is not a condition to be either proud or ashamed
   of. Unfortunately, we find systems of education today that have
   departed so far from the plain truth that they now teach us to be proud
   of what we know and ashamed of ignorance. This is doubly corrupt. It is
   corrupt not only because pride in knowledge is to put an effective
   barrier against any advance upon what is already known, since it makes
   one ashamed to look beyond the bounds imposed by one's ignorance. To
   any person prepared to enter with respect into the realm of his great
   and universal ignorance, the secrets of being will eventually unfold,
   and they will do so in a measure according to his freedom from natural
   and indoctrinated shame in his respect of their revelation. In the face
   of the strong, and indeed violent, social pressures against it, few
   people have been prepared to take this simple and satisfying course
   toward sanity. And in a society where a prominent psychiatrist can
   advertise that, given the chance, he would have treated Newton to
   electric shock therapy, who can blame any person for being afraid to do
   so? To arrive at the simplest truth, as Newton knew and practiced,
   requires years of contemplation. Not an activity. Not reasoning. Not
   calculating. Not busy behavior of any kind. Not reading. Not talking.
   Not making an effort. Not thinking. Simply bearing in mind what it is
   one needs to know. And yet those with the courage to tread this path to
   real discovery are not only offered practically no guidance on how to
   do so, they are actively discouraged and have to set about it in
   secret, pretending meanwhile to be diligently engaged in the frantic
   diversions and to conform with the deadening personal opinions that are
   being continually thrust upon them. In these circumstances, the
   discoveries that any person is able to undertake represent the places
   where, in the face of induced psychosis, he has, by his own faltering
   and unaided efforts, returned to sanity. Painfully, and even
   dangerously, maybe. But nonetheless returned, however furtively.-G.
   Spencer Brown.* * The Laws of Form, London: Geo. Allen & Unwin, 1969.
   "Whatever you do will be insignificant, but it is very important that
   you do it." -Mahatma Gandhi I Broke PGP! by RTFM How to Protect Public
   Keys from Tampering In a public key cryptosystem, you don't have to
   protect public keysfrom exposure. In fact, it's better if they are
   widely disseminated.But it is important to protect public keys from
   tampering, to makesure that a public key really belongs to whom it
   appears to belong to.This may be the most important vulnerability of a
   public-keycryptosystem. This whole business of protecting public keys
   from tampering is thesingle most difficult problem in practical public
   key applications. It is the Achilles' heel of public key cryptography,
   and a lot ofsoftware complexity is tied up in solving this one problem.
   You should use a public key only after you are sure that it is a
   goodpublic key that has not been tampered with, and actually belongs
   tothe person it claims to. You can be sure of this if you got
   thispublic key certificate directly from its owner, or if it bears
   thesignature of someone else that you trust, from whom you already
   havea good public key. Also, the user ID should have the full name
   ofthe key's owner, not just her first name. No matter how tempted you
   are-- and you will be tempted-- never,NEVER give in to expediency and
   trust a public key you downloadedfrom a bulletin board, unless it is
   signed by someone you trust. That uncertified public key could have
   been tampered with by anyone,maybe even by the system administrator of
   the bulletin board. SECONDS: What is the hysteria to protect children
   from so-called obscene stuff? GINSBERG: It's a demagogic political
   issue that can be used to divert attention from deeper corruption's
   like the S&L scandal or the rape of the planet by the post-industrial
   nations. Although we conquered literary censorship in books between the
   years '58 and '62 when, through a series of trials, Henry Miller , Lady
   Chatterley's Lover by D.H. Lawrence, Naked Lunch and Howl were all
   cleared and declared to be protected by the Constitution. That same
   kind of censorship which was used on literature and film now only
   applies to the main marketplace of ideas, electronic broadcasting.
   SECONDS: Why do they want to censor things? Why don't they want people
   to become sexually excited? GINSBERG: As Plato pointed out, "When the
   mode of music changes, the walls of the city shake." So when you have
   modern free speech in idiomatic language that people can understand and
   are interested in, immediately it becomes a political issue. Demagogues
   want to hush it up because people get to know too much. If you can get
   people by the balls you control their most deep-seated emotions, which
   are erotic. Once you control that you control all the other emotions.
   You take emotional control, blank out the Eros, and substitute a lot of
   violence. Vulnerabilities =============== No data security system is
   impenetrable. PGP can be circumvented ina variety of ways. In any data
   security system, you have to ask yourself if the information you are
   trying to protect is more valuable to your attacker than the cost of
   the attack. This should lead you to protecting yourself from the
   cheapest attacks, while notworrying about the more expensive attacks.
   Some of the discussion that follows may seem unduly paranoid, butsuch
   an attitude is appropriate for a reasonable discussion of vulnerability
   issues. Compromised Pass Phrase and Secret Key Probably the simplest
   attack is if you leave your pass phrase foryour secret key written down
   somewhere. If someone gets it and alsogets your secret key file, they
   can read your messages and make signatures in your name. Don't use
   obvious passwords that can be easily guessed, such as thenames of your
   kids or spouse. If you make your pass phrase a singleword, it can be
   easily guessed by having a computer try all the wordsin the dictionary
   until it finds your password. That's why a passphrase is so much better
   than a password. A more sophisticated attacker may have his computer
   scan a book of famous quotations tofind your pass phrase. An easy to
   remember but hard to guess passphrase can be easily constructed by some
   creatively nonsensical sayings or very obscure literary quotes. For
   further details, see the section "How to Protect Secret Keys
   fromDisclosure" in the Essential Topics volume of the PGP User's Guide.
   Public Key Tampering A major vulnerability exists if public keys are
   tampered with. Thismay be the most crucially important vulnerability of
   a public keycryptosystem, in part because most novices don't
   immediatelyrecognize it. The importance of this vulnerability, and
   appropriate hygienic countermeasures, are detailed in the section "How
   to ProtectPublic Keys from Tampering" in the Essential Topics volume.
   To summarize: When you use someone's public key, make certain it hasnot
   been tampered with. A new public key from someone else should betrusted
   only if you got it directly from its owner, or if it has beensigned by
   someone you trust. Make sure no one else can tamper withyour own public
   key ring. Maintain physical control of both your public key ring and
   your secret key ring, preferably on your own personal computer rather
   than on a remote timesharing system. Keep abackup copy of both key
   rings. "Not Quite Deleted" Files Another potential security problem is
   caused by how most operating systems delete files. When you encrypt a
   file and then delete theoriginal plaintext file, the operating system
   doesn't actually physically erase the data. It merely marks those disk
   blocks asdeleted, allowing the space to be reused later. It's sort of
   likediscarding sensitive paper documents in the paper recycling bin
   instead of the paper shredder. The disk blocks still contain
   theoriginal sensitive data you wanted to erase, and will probably
   eventually be overwritten by new data at some point in the future. If
   an attacker reads these deleted disk blocks soon after they havebeen
   deallocated, he could recover your plaintext. In fact this could even
   happen accidentally, if for some reason something went wrong with the
   disk and some files were accidentally deleted or corrupted. A disk
   recovery program may be run to recover the damaged files, but this
   often means some previously deleted filesare resurrected along with
   everything else. Your confidential filesthat you thought were gone
   forever could then reappear and be inspected by whomever is attempting
   to recover your damaged disk. Even while you are creating the original
   message with a wordprocessor or text editor, the editor may be creating
   multiple temporary copies of your text on the disk, just because of its
   internal workings. These temporary copies of your text are deleted by
   the word processor when it's done, but these sensitive fragments are
   still on your disk somewhere. Let me tell you a true horror story. I
   had a friend, married withyoung children, who once had a brief and not
   very serious affair. She wrote a letter to her lover on her word
   processor, and deleted the letter after she sent it. Later, after the
   affair was over, thefloppy disk got damaged somehow and she had to
   recover it because itcontained other important documents. She asked her
   husband to salvage the disk, which seemed perfectly safe because she
   knew shehad deleted the incriminating letter. Her husband ran a
   commercial disk recovery software package to salvage the files. It
   recovered the files all right, including the deleted letter. He read
   it, which set off a tragic chain of events. The only way to prevent the
   plaintext from reappearing is to somehow cause the deleted plaintext
   files to be overwritten. Unless you knowfor sure that all the deleted
   disk blocks will soon be reused, youmust take positive steps to
   overwrite the plaintext file, and alsoany fragments of it on the disk
   left by your word processor. You canoverwrite the original plaintext
   file after encryption by using thePGP -w (wipe) option. You can take
   care of any fragments of the plaintext left on the disk by using any of
   the disk utilities available that can overwrite all of the unused
   blocks on a disk. Forexample, the Norton Utilities for MSDOS can do
   this. Even if you overwrite the plaintext data on the disk, it may
   still bepossible for a resourceful and determined attacker to recover
   thedata. Faint magnetic traces of the original data remain on the
   diskafter it has been overwritten. Special sophisticated disk recovery
   hardware can sometimes be used to recover the data. Viruses and Trojan
   Horses Another attack could involve a specially-tailored hostile
   computer virus or worm that might infect PGP or your operating system.
   Thishypothetical virus could be designed to capture your pass phrase
   orsecret key or deciphered messages, and covertly write the captured
   information to a file or send it through a network to the virus's
   owner. Or it might alter PGP's behavior so that signatures are
   notproperly checked. This attack is cheaper than cryptanalytic attacks.
   Defending against this falls under the category of defending against
   viral infection generally. There are some moderately capable anti-viral
   products commercially available, and there are hygienic procedures to
   follow that can greatly reduce the chances of viral infection. A
   complete treatment of anti-viral and anti-wormcountermeasures is beyond
   the scope of this document. PGP has nodefenses against viruses, and
   assumes your own personal computer is atrustworthy execution
   environment. If such a virus or worm actually appeared, hopefully word
   would soon get around warning everyone. Another similar attack involves
   someone creating a clever imitation of PGP that behaves like PGP in
   most respects, but doesn't work theway it's supposed to. For example,
   it might be deliberately crippled to not check signatures properly,
   allowing bogus key certificates tobe accepted. This "Trojan horse"
   version of PGP is not hard for anattacker to create, because PGP source
   code is widely available, soanyone could modify the source code and
   produce a lobotomized zombieimitation PGP that looks real but does the
   bidding of its diabolical master. This Trojan horse version of PGP
   could then be widely circulated, claiming to be from me. How insidious.
   You should make an effort to get your copy of PGP from a reliable
   source, whatever that means. Or perhaps from more than oneindependent
   source, and compare them with a file comparison utility. There are
   other ways to check PGP for tampering, using digital signatures. If
   someone you trust signs the executable version ofPGP, vouching for the
   fact that it has not been infected or tampered with, you can be
   reasonably sure that you have a good copy. You could use an earlier
   trusted version of PGP to check the signature ona later suspect version
   of PGP. But this will not help at all ifyour operating system is
   infected, nor will it detect if your original copy of PGP.EXE has been
   maliciously altered in such a wayas to compromise its own ability to
   check signatures. This test alsoassumes that you have a good trusted
   copy of the public key that youuse to check the signature on the PGP
   executable. I recommend you not trust your copy of PGP unless it was
   originally distributed by MIT or ViaCrypt, or unless it comes with a
   digitally signed endorsement from me. Every new version comes with one
   or moredigital signatures in the distribution package, signed by the
   originator of that release package. This is usually someonerepresenting
   MIT or ViaCrypt, or whoever released that version. Check the signatures
   on the version that you get. I have actually seen several bogus
   versions of PGP distribution packages, even fromapparently reliable
   freeware distribution channels such as CD-ROM distributors and
   CompuServe. Always check the signature when you geta new version.
   Physical Security Breach A physical security breach may allow someone
   to physically acquire your plaintext files or printed messages. A
   determined opponent might accomplish this through burglary,
   trash-picking, unreasonable search and seizure, or bribery, blackmail
   or infiltration of your staff. Some of these attacks may be especially
   feasible against grassroots political organizations that depend on a
   largely volunteer staff. It has been widely reported in the press that
   the FBI's COINTELPRO program used burglary, infiltration, and illegal
   bugging against antiwar and civil rights groups. And look what happened
   atthe Watergate Hotel. Don't be lulled into a false sense of security
   just because you havea cryptographic tool. Cryptographic techniques
   protect data only while it's encrypted-- direct physical security
   violations can stillcompromise plaintext data or written or spoken
   information. This kind of attack is cheaper than cryptanalytic attacks
   on PGP. Tempest Attacks Another kind of attack that has been used by
   well-equipped opponents involves the remote detection of the
   electromagnetic signals from your computer. This expensive and somewhat
   labor-intensive attack isprobably still cheaper than direct
   cryptanalytic attacks. An appropriately instrumented van can park near
   your office and remotely pick up all of your keystrokes and messages
   displayed on your computer video screen. This would compromise all of
   your passwords, messages, etc. This attack can be thwarted by properly
   shielding allof your computer equipment and network cabling so that it
   does notemit these signals. This shielding technology is known as
   "Tempest", and is used by some Government agencies and defense
   contractors. There are hardware vendors who supply Tempest shielding
   commercially, although it may be subject to some kind of Government
   licensing. Nowwhy do you suppose the Government would restrict access
   to Tempest shielding? Exposure on Multi-user Systems PGP was originally
   designed for a single-user MSDOS machine under your direct physical
   control. I run PGP at home on my own PC, andunless someone breaks into
   my house or monitors my electromagnetic emissions, they probably can't
   see my plaintext files or secret keys. But now PGP also runs on
   multi-user systems such as UNIX and VAX/VMS. On multi-user systems,
   there are much greater risks of your plaintext or keys or passwords
   being exposed. The Unix system administrator ora clever intruder can
   read your plaintext files, or perhaps even usespecial software to
   covertly monitor your keystrokes or read what's on your screen. On a
   Unix system, any other user can read your environment information
   remotely by simply using the Unix "ps" command. Similar problems exist
   for MSDOS machines connected on alocal area network. The actual
   security risk is dependent on yourparticular situation. Some multi-user
   systems may be safe because all the users are trusted, or because they
   have system security measures that are safe enough to withstand the
   attacks available tothe intruders, or because there just aren't any
   sufficientlyinterested intruders. Some Unix systems are safe because
   they areonly used by one user-- there are even some notebook computers
   running Unix. It would be unreasonable to simply exclude PGP
   fromrunning on all Unix systems. PGP is not designed to protect your
   data while it is in plaintext form on a compromised system. Nor can it
   prevent an intruder fromusing sophisticated measures to read your
   secret key while it isbeing used. You will just have to recognize these
   risks onmulti-user systems, and adjust your expectations and behavior
   accordingly. Perhaps your situation is such that you should consider
   running PGP only on an isolated single-user system under your
   directphysical control. That's what I do, and that's what I recommend.
   Traffic Analysis Even if the attacker cannot read the contents of your
   encrypted messages, he may be able to infer at least some useful
   information byobserving where the messages come from and where they are
   going, thesize of the messages, and the time of day the messages are
   sent. This is analogous to the attacker looking at your long distance
   phonebill to see who you called and when and for how long, even though
   theactual content of your calls is unknown to the attacker. This
   iscalled traffic analysis. PGP alone does not protect against traffic
   analysis. Solving this problem would require specialized communication
   protocols designed to reduce exposure to traffic analysis in your
   communication environment, possibly with some cryptographic assistance.
   Protecting Against Bogus Timestamps A somewhat obscure vulnerability of
   PGP involves dishonest users creating bogus timestamps on their own
   public key certificates andsignatures. You can skip over this section
   if you are a casual userand aren't deeply into obscure public key
   protocols. There's nothing to stop a dishonest user from altering the
   date andtime setting of his own system's clock, and generating his own
   publickey certificates and signatures that appear to have been created
   at adifferent time. He can make it appear that he signed something
   earlier or later than he actually did, or that his public/secret
   keypair was created earlier or later. This may have some legal or
   financial benefit to him, for example by creating some kind of loophole
   that might allow him to repudiate a signature. I think this problem of
   falsified timestamps in digital signatures isno worse than it is
   already in handwritten signatures. Anyone maywrite a date next to their
   handwritten signature on a contract withany date they choose, yet no
   one seems to be alarmed over this stateof affairs. In some cases, an
   "incorrect" date on a handwrittensignature might not be associated with
   actual fraud. The timestamp might be when the signator asserts that he
   signed a document, ormaybe when he wants the signature to go into
   effect. In situations where it is critical that a signature be trusted
   tohave the actual correct date, people can simply use notaries to
   witness and date a handwritten signature. The analog to this indigital
   signatures is to get a trusted third party to sign asignature
   certificate, applying a trusted timestamp. No exotic oroverly formal
   protocols are needed for this. Witnessed signatures have long been
   recognized as a legitimate way of determining when adocument was
   signed. A trustworthy Certifying Authority or notary could create
   notarized signatures with a trustworthy timestamp. This would not
   necessarily require a centralized authority. Perhaps any trusted
   introducer ordisinterested party could serve this function, the same
   way real notary publics do now. When a notary signs other
   people'ssignatures, it creates a signature certificate of a signature
   certificate. This would serve as a witness to the signature the sameway
   real notaries now witness handwritten signatures. The notary could
   enter the detached signature certificate (without the actual whole
   document that was signed) into a special log controlled by thenotary.
   Anyone can read this log. The notary's signature would havea trusted
   timestamp, which might have greater credibility or more legal
   significance than the timestamp in the original signature. There is a
   good treatment of this topic in Denning's 1983 article inIEEE Computer
   (see references). Future enhancements to PGP might have features to
   easily manage notarized signatures of signatures, with trusted
   timestamps. Cryptanalysis An expensive and formidable cryptanalytic
   attack could possibly bemounted by someone with vast supercomputer
   resources, such as aGovernment intelligence agency. They might crack
   your RSA key byusing some new secret factoring breakthrough. Perhaps
   so, but it isnoteworthy that the US Government trusts the RSA algorithm
   enough insome cases to use it to protect its own nuclear weapons,
   according toRon Rivest. And civilian academia has been intensively
   attacking itwithout success since 1978. Perhaps the Government has some
   classified methods of cracking theIDEA(TM) conventional encryption
   algorithm used in PGP. This isevery cryptographer's worst nightmare.
   There can be no absolute security guarantees in practical cryptographic
   implementations. Still, some optimism seems justified. The IDEA
   algorithm's designers are among the best cryptographers in Europe. It
   has had extensive security analysis and peer review from some of the
   best cryptanalysts in the unclassified world. It appears to have some
   design advantages over the DES in withstanding differential and linear
   cryptanalysis, which have both been used to crack the DES. Besides,
   even if this algorithm has some subtle unknown weaknesses, PGP
   compresses the plaintext before encryption, which should greatly reduce
   those weaknesses. The computational workload to crack it islikely to be
   much more expensive than the value of the message. If your situation
   justifies worrying about very formidable attacks ofthis caliber, then
   perhaps you should contact a data security consultant for some
   customized data security approaches tailored toyour special needs.
   Boulder Software Engineering, whose address andphone are given at the
   end of this document, can provide such services. In summary, without
   good cryptographic protection of your data communications, it may have
   been practically effortless and perhaps even routine for an opponent to
   intercept your messages, especially those sent through a modem or
   E-mail system. If you use PGP and follow reasonable precautions, the
   attacker will have to expend farmore effort and expense to violate your
   privacy. If you protect yourself against the simplest attacks, and you
   feelconfident that your privacy is not going to be violated by
   adetermined and highly resourceful attacker, then you'll probably
   besafe using PGP. PGP gives you Pretty Good Privacy. Copyright
   Anonymous Son, if you think it appropriate, you might tell your mom:
   The Aztecs were extremely clean. The Spanish conquistadors were
   extremely dirty. The Spaniards won. LMBoyd Web Site "The Xenix Chainsaw
   Massacre" "WebWorld & the Mythical Circle of Eunuchs" "InfoWar (Part
   III of 'The True Story of the InterNet') Soviet Union Sickle of Eunuchs
   Secret WebSite