Fwd: [RISKS] Risks Digest 27.50

[coderman]

here here!

"That's bad. Because it means that people inside our government, at the
direction of government officials, sworn to protect and defend the
constitution and the country, actively conspired to undermine every segment
of the United States along with our key allies...
... the more senior people at NSA knew what
they were doing. They were certainly told by people on the outside often
enough. Frankly, I think some of them should hang. And I mean that
literally."

short walk and sudden stop for Alexander, now that'd be a sight!
( we can dream ... )


---------- Forwarded [ED: and abridged] message ----------
From: RISKS List Owner <risko at csl.sri.com>
Subject: [RISKS] Risks Digest 27.50
...
ACM FORUM ON RISKS TO THE PUBLIC IN COMPUTERS AND RELATED SYSTEMS (comp.risks)
Peter G. Neumann, moderator, chmn ACM Committee on Computers and Public Policy
...

Date: October 1, 2013 9:28:07 AM PDT
From: "Jonathan S. Shapiro" <shap at eros-os.org>
Subject: Cost and Responsibility for Snowden's Breaches

  [Via Dave Farber's IP]

The press has lately been recirculating stories about the dollar damages of
the Snowden disclosures. The repudiation of key cryptography standards - the
ones that underly our electronic currency exchanges and clearinghouses, and
are present in an overwhelming number of products - may in the end cost
billions of dollars of damage. Some of the press would have us believe that
all of this is Snowden's fault. Better, some feel, to focus attention on the
messenger and protect the perpetrator. Or even if not better, easier. It
sells more papers to focus on a "David vs. Goliath" story than to examine
whether Goliath was actually a Philistine.

In compromising these cryptography standards, NSA's alleged goal was to read
the electronic communications of terrorists, arms dealers, and other savory
characters. In a world of open cryptography standards, the only way to do
that was to compromise *everybody*. That includes ordinary citizens,
businesses, governments (ours and others), armed forces command and control,
domestic and global financial systems, and so on. This goes beyond
privacy. Cryptography sits under all of our most essential electronic
communications. Focusing on Snowden has people asking "How safe are my
secrets from the NSA?" when a more pertinent question might be "Is my bank
still safe from the eastern block mafia and the terrorist of the month?"
Banks for the most part don't operate by storing dollar bills; they operate
electronically. Then there is the power delivery infrastructure, or... the
list goes on. *That* is what NSA compromised. And when you understand that,
it becomes clear that the damage to *us* was far worse than any cost to the
terrorists. In fact, the damage is proportional to your dependence on
electronic infrastructure.

That's bad. Because it means that people inside our government, at the
direction of government officials, sworn to protect and defend the
constitution and the country, actively conspired to undermine every segment
of the United States along with our key allies. While the run-of-the-mill
staff may not have understood this, the more senior people at NSA knew what
they were doing. They were certainly told by people on the outside often
enough. Frankly, I think some of them should hang. And I mean that
literally. These decisions by NSA weren't made by extremist muslims. They
were made by people from Harvard, Yale, and Princeton (and elsewhere) right
here in America.

But there is something worse. In a certain sense, the NSA's primary mission
is the discovery of secrets. Being in the secret breaking business, one of
the things they know very well is that the best way to break a secret is to
get someone to tell you what it is. And there is *always* someone who will
tell you, either out of conviction or out of fear of compromise. There was
never a question whether the fact that NSA compromised every first world and
second world country would leak. The only questions were *who* would leak it
and *how soon*. It happened to be Snowden, but if not for Snowden it would
have been somebody else.

So setting aside the technical damage, there is the fact that the
U.S. Government is now known - and more importantly, believed - to have
compromised ourselves and our allies. We need to ask what the consequences
are of that. Here are some questions that suggest themselves:

1. Cryptography is clearly too important to entrust to the government. Who
   can we trust?

2. Fragmentation seems likely. Does that help or hinder us?

3. Do the issues differ for communications cryptography vs. long-term
   storage cryptography? Given that communications is recorded and stored
   forever, I suspect not.

4. Can our allies ever again trust an American-originated crypto system?
   Software system? Can we trust one from them?

5. Can our allies ever again afford to trust an American manufacturer of
   communications equipment, given that every one of the major players seems
   to have gotten in bed with NSA when pressured to do so by the
   U.S. Government?

6. What *other* compromised technologies have been promulgated through
   government-influenced standards and/or back room strong arm tactics?

One thing seems clear: we must now choose between the credibility of
American technology businesses and the continuation of export controls on
cryptography and computer security technology. The controls are ineffective
for their alleged purpose; there are too many ways to circumvent them. The
main use of these laws has been to allow government pressure to be brought
to bear on vendors who won't "play ball" with U.S. Government objectives. As
long as the big players in the U.S. computing and networking industries can
be be backdoored by their government (take that either way), only a fool
would buy from them. If the goal is to destroy the American technology
industry, this strategy is even better than software patents. As long as
those laws remain on the books, the American tech sector has a credibility
problem.

A second thing seems clear: we need to move to openly *developed* standards
for critical systems, not just open *standards*. And not just openly
developed standards, but standards whose "theory of operation" is explained
and critically examined by the public. No more unexplained magic tables of
numbers. We need fully open public review, and public reference
implementations as part of the standardization process.

A third thing seems clear: fixing the cryptography doesn't solve the
problem. Even with back doors, the best place to break crypto is at the
insecure end points. We need to develop information management methods
(e.g. "zero knowledge" methods, but also others) and software architectures
that let us limit the scope of damage when it occurs. The operating systems
- and consequently the applications - that we are using today simply weren't
designed for this. Fortunately, the hardware environment has converged
enough that we can do a lot better than we have in the past. There will
never be perfect security, but we can largely eliminate the exponential
advantage that is currently enjoyed by the attacker.

Jonathan S. Shapiro
....