February 2015 - cypherpunks@lists.ogf.org

Re: "Blackphone" said to be "a super-secure nsa-proof"
by Ulex Europae 14 Oct '16

14 Oct '16

At 05:25 AM 1/17/2014, Jim Bell forwarded: ><<http:///>http://www.yahoo.com/tech/startup-launching-a-super-secure-nsa-proof-735110…> It's been long enough, has anyone acquired one of these and tested it? Ulex

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Re: [Cryptography] Bruce Schneier has gotten seriously spooked
by Eugen Leitl 07 Sep '16

07 Sep '16

----- Forwarded message from Brian Gladman <brg(a)gladman.plus.com> ----- Date: Sat, 07 Sep 2013 09:33:28 +0100 From: Brian Gladman <brg(a)gladman.plus.com> To: Cryptography Mailing List <cryptography(a)metzdowd.com> Subject: Re: [Cryptography] Bruce Schneier has gotten seriously spooked User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.2; WOW64; rv:17.0) Gecko/20130801 Thunderbird/17.0.8 On 07/09/2013 01:48, Chris Palmer wrote: >> Q: "Could the NSA be intercepting downloads of open-source encryption software and silently replacing these with their own versions?" > > Why would they perform the attack only for encryption software? They > could compromise people's laptops by spiking any popular app. Because NSA and GCHQ are much more interested in attacking communictions in transit rather than attacking endpoints. Endpoint attacks cost more to undertake, only give access to a limited amount of data and involve much greater risks that their attack will either be discovered or their means of attack will leave evidence of what they have done and how they have done it. The internal bueaucratic costs of gaining approval for (adverarial) endpoint attacks also makes it a more costly process than the use of network based interception. There is significant use of open source encryption software in end to end encryption solutions, in file archivers, in wifi and network routers, and in protecing the communications used to manage and control such components when at remote locations. The open source software is provided in source code form and is compiled from source in a huge number of applications and this means that the ability to covertly substitute broken source code could provide access to a huge amount of traffic without the risks involved in endpoint attacks. I stress that I am NOT suggesting that this has happened (or is happening), simply that it has attractions from an NSA/GCHQ viewpoint. Fortunately, I think it is a difficult attack to mount covertly (that is, without the acqiecience of the author(s) of the software in question). On the more general debate here, in my view, 'security for the masses' through the deployment of encryption is a 'pipe dream' that isn't going to happen. Functionality (and the complexity that comes with it) is the enemy of security and it is very clear that the public places a much higher value on functionality than it does on security (or privacy). Every time a new device comes onto the market, it starts with limited functionality and some hope of decent security but rapidly evolves to be a high functionality product in which the prospect of decent security declines rapidly to zero. Raspberry Pis look interesting _now_ but I would be willing to bet that they won't buck the trend of increasing funtionality and declining security simply because this is what the majority in even this limited user community will want. To buck this trend we need an effort like the Raspberry Pi effort but one driven by our community with a strong commitment to simplicty and deliberately limited functionality in both hardware and software. Brian Gladman _______________________________________________ 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: [liberationtech] Interesting things in keyservers
by Eugen Leitl 17 Aug '16

17 Aug '16

----- Forwarded message from micah <micah(a)riseup.net> ----- Date: Sat, 20 Jul 2013 10:05:42 -0400 From: micah <micah(a)riseup.net> To: Micah Lee <micahflee(a)riseup.net>, 'liberationtech' <liberationtech(a)lists.stanford.edu> Subject: Re: [liberationtech] Interesting things in keyservers User-Agent: Notmuch/0.15.2 (http://notmuchmail.org) Emacs/24.3.1 (x86_64-pc-linux-gnu) Reply-To: liberationtech <liberationtech(a)lists.stanford.edu> Hi Micah! Micah Lee <micahflee(a)riseup.net> writes: > I'm working on a talk for OHM2013 about PGP. Can anyone send me examples > of interesting keys in key servers that you know of? Since you are preparing a talk about the subject, I'm going to be pedantic and correct your usage of "PGP", because it is important to get your terminology straight when giving a talk. I presume you aren't giving a talk about the commercial software, but instead you are actually giving a talk about OpenPGP which is the standard specified by RFC4880 that different programs like GnuPG, Seahorse, MacGPG, and PGP etc. all implement. If that is true, then you should refer to it as OpenPGP, and not PGP. I dont know what your talk will consist of, besides the funny enigmail XSS and goatse.cx stuff (thanks for that! always good to have some goatse early in the morning), but I would like to point out a few things that might be useful to mention. One is a wiki page that I created with some people: https://we.riseup.net/riseuplabs+paow/openpgp-best-practices - it contains some useful hints about using OpenPGP, maintaining a good key and some general good practices that people often dont know about (such as the importance of keeping your keys updated to get critical revocation and expiration extension certifications!) One thing mentioned on that page that I wanted to highlight, because you used pgp.mit.edu links in your original email, is that the keyserver pgp.mit.edu is not a good one to use/promote. Everyone uses it as their 'goto' keyserver, but it is a really bad idea! As a keyserver, it has been broken for years. For a long time it was just dropping revocations, subkey updates and expirations on the floor. That is *really* bad. Eventually, they upgraded their keyserver software, but it is *still* running an older version of SKS, a version that fails to handle 16-digit subkeyid lookups (among other failings). So, please don't rely on pgp.mit.edu for your security, and please don't include them in your slides! If you are looking for one to use, I highly recommend using the SKS pool address (hkp://pool.sks-keyservers.net or http://hkps.pool.sks-keyservers.net/ - or if you want a more close geographical pool, have a look at http://sks-keyservers.net/overview-of-pools.php) Finally, there seems to be some amazing misconceptions about keyservers, keys and the web of trust. In particular this http://cryptome.org/2013/07/mining-pgp-keyservers.htm circulated recently and it pained me to see because it suggested various wreckless conclusions that were dangerously off the mark[0] (and used pgp.mit.edu, hah). While it is true that we've jokingly called the OpenPGP web of trust "the original social network" because of the exposed social relational graphing that can be done by querying keyservers, and it is for this reason that many activists I know do not want to have signatures uploaded to keyservers (and instead use the bulky local-only signature work-around)... ... but for some reason people seem to think that if it is on a keyserver, is true, or it means something that it doesn't. People don't realize critical things, such as the fact that I can create a key with the UID Nadim Kobeissi and upload it to the keyservers[1]. That doesn't mean that is the real Nadim's key (this is what exchanging key fingerprints and doing certifications is for, so you can know, with a certain degree of certainty, that this person is the person who controls that secret key material). Or people think that because I signed your key and that signature is on the keyserver that indicates: I trust you; we met in person at that date; we know each other; we are involved in a criminal conspiracy with each other; or many other wrong assumptions about what that certification means. I can sign Edward Snowden's key and send that to the keyservers[1]. Hell, I can sign Snowden's key with my fake Nadim Kobeissi key[1] and then send it to the keyservers. Does that mean that Nadim and Snowden have met in person?! No, it does not at all. Anyways, I can keep going... but I dont know what the focus of your OHM talk is about, so going on like this isn't particularly useful to you and your talk... however, I'd be happy to provide more feedback about your talk if you would like![2] After all, we Micahs need to stick together, micah 0. "the cryptome article just sounds like impenetrable bullshit from someone with no interest in actually understandning what's happening" - I'm not saying who said this... 1. no, I didn't do that, nor did I upload the edward snowden or bradly manning keys. -- Too many emails? Unsubscribe, change to digest, or change password by emailing moderator at companys(a)stanford.edu or changing your settings at https://mailman.stanford.edu/mailman/listinfo/liberationtech ----- 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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NSA Attacks on VPN, SSL, TLS, SSH, Tor
by John Young 17 Dec '15

17 Dec '15

Der Spiegel released largest single day number of Snowden docs today, 666 pages, on NSA Attacks on VPN, SSL, TLS, SSH, Tor. http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/nsa-documents-attacks-on-vpn-ssl-… We offer a RAR of the 44 docs: http://cryptome.org/2014/12/nsa-spiegel-14-1228.rar (197MB)

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FOIPA adventures
by coderman 22 Aug '15

22 Aug '15

"you want me to consent to make my FBI file public? Are you fucking mad?" - https://twitter.com/thegrugq/status/563036665837789184 --- i am currently making requests through MuckRock.com which i recommend for their helpful and dedicated staff, as well as their time devoted to review and reporting on released information. i am using the professional service, which lets you set requests private until reviewed and ready to release publicly. this implies a bit of trust in MuckRock, and i hope it is not misplaced. few years back i asked for participants in a similar effort. some things resulted: 1) this also opens up the requester to risk; that is, whoever is filing must also potentially show some trust, if a falsified DOJ-361 is sent and used as pretext to "deter" you. i have not heard of this actually happening, but i was also not willing to push it. '''beware who you accept, coder, or they're setting you up for USC 18 fuckery. sure, it may in the end be ok. but you're in misery until cleared.'''' 2) the information is going to be public; if you've got a file because you're a privacy enthusiast, then filing to make your file public is the opposite of enjoying your privacy. there is merit in taking one for team earth human, however... --- as a first report, deliveries of USPS forms DOJ-361 to multiple, and a batch of three sent concurrently. two arrived promptly, but one got scrutiny before leaving town (forms to FBI, perhaps related to ? :) a) INTERPOL Washington FOIA Service Center (202)-616-0201 U.S. Department of Justice Washington, D.C. 20530 --- Form DOJ-361 sent, currently: February 4, 2015 , 11:41 pm - Arrived at USPS Facility - WASHINGTON, DC 20066 Tracking Number: 9405510200829494303833 b) U.S. Department of Justice United States Marshals Service Office of General Counsel Washington, DC 20530-1000 --- Form DOJ-361 sent, currently: February 4, 2015 , 11:40 pm - Arrived at USPS Facility - WASHINGTON, DC 20066 "Your item arrived at our USPS facility in WASHINGTON, DC 20066 on February 4, 2015 at 11:40 pm. The item is currently in transit to the destination." Tracking Number: 9405510200830593742348 c) Record/Information Dissemination Section (RIDS) FBI-Records Management Division 170 Marcel Drive, Winchester, VA 22602-4843 --- Form DOJ-361 sent, currently: February 3, 2015 , 6:15 pm - Arrived at USPS Origin Facility - PORTLAND, OR 97218 "Your item arrived at our USPS origin facility in PORTLAND, OR 97218 on February 3, 2015 at 6:15 pm. The item is currently in transit to the destination." Tracking Number: 9405510200828494428195 [ i offered to send via FAX if mail was problematic and excessively latent. ]

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Dollar Value of a Datamined "Free" Service User?
by grarpamp 08 Apr '15

08 Apr '15

Many companies do not charge users of their services. They say things like "It's free and always will be." Pick any "free" service... Facebook, Google, Yahoo, Match, Reddit, the list goes on and on. Only the smallest of free services can be supported by someone's personal funds. So for larger services it's well understood that if their users aren't paying them, the money must come from somewhere. The old model answer of former years was advertising through page ads, clickstreams, referrals and those sorts of obvious and observable things. Combined with burning off stock market offerings. The new model answer includes all the former ways, plus much deeper profiling and analysis of users, their pictures, messages, interests, locations, etc... all done on the secret unobservable corporate backend, and selling off that metadata to the highest bidders. And perhaps more dollars from simply lying, violating their publicly posted hole ridden privacy policies, and selling directly identifiable user data as well. Or say taking immunity from prosecution from having given/sold it away to cozy governments. All of which have monetary values associated with them. Companies also hide their revenue, costs, and their "active in last three months" vs "dead user" numbers. Some usable public statements and government/market filings are available. And datacenter and employee costs can be approximated. There is current value analysis, such as in selling what's hot by this months clicks. And future/lifetime value analysis, such as Target datamining for pregnant women to own. There are also dataset specific values, such as names and addresses vs political alignments. The values could be represented in $dollars per month per user. Anyway, question... Anyone have links to studies made within the last five years that have attempted to calculate the dollar value of datamined users?

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HavenCo - Rebirth?
by grarpamp 08 Apr '15

08 Apr '15

Highly doubt Ryan, Avi or any cpunks are involved, or that much of anything will actually be in SeaLand. Seems like a news driven oppurtunistic biz to cover tower operation and maintenance costs. Anyone have any facts? Such as who's behind it and why? http://www.sealandgov.org/sealand-news-1/HavenCo http://www.havenco.com/

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Governments Covertly Fund Internet Freedom Activists
by Polity News 08 Mar '15

08 Mar '15

When asked for public records about internet freedom funding, the governments of the Netherlands and Sweden classified and redacted documents about the contracts. http://piratetimes.net/governments-covertly-fund-internet-freedom-activists/

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Cypherpunk Politics
by grarpamp 06 Mar '15

06 Mar '15

What of political license / subscription to theory, and actual politiking like Pirate Party? Are the various cypherpunk manifesto's serve as actual platform and/or docs for same? Who is forming such entities in today? Where are they now? What are the platform/action?

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Re: Backward compatibility bites again (like RC4 in WPA2)
by coderman 05 Mar '15

05 Mar '15

On 12/9/14, grarpamp <grarpamp(a)gmail.com> wrote: > https://www.imperialviolet.org/2014/12/08/poodleagain.html > > Similar how continued insistence on centralized > SMTP continues to bite. at least they're trying. RC4 in WPA2, and no signs anyone cares...

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