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the NSA revelations all in one chart
by Eugen Leitl 17 Jul '14

17 Jul '14

http://projects.propublica.org/nsa-grid/ The NSA Revelations All in One Chart This is a plot of the NSA programs revealed in the past year according to whether they are bulk or targeted, and whether the targets of surveillance are foreign or domestic. Most of the programs fall squarely into the agency’s stated mission of foreign surveillance, but some – particularly those that are both domestic and broad-sweeping – are more controversial. Just as with the New York Magazine approval matrix that served as our inspiration, the placement of each program is based on judgments and is approximate. For more details, read our FAQ or listen to our podcast. Also, take our quiz to test your NSA knowledge.

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BadBIOS forensics
by Bluelotus 17 Jul '14

17 Jul '14

I am donating BadBIOS infected laptops, flashdrives, tampered live fedora CD, infected personal files (plain text files, MP3, PDF, jpg, tiff, doc), infected external DVD writer, etc. to any one interested in conducting forensics. I wrote threads on my limited ability to perform forensics in /r/badBIOS subreddit of reddit.com. My other threads are in other subreddits. Look at my submit history. My laptops were indicted, infected and implanted.

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Mathematicians discuss severing ties to the NSA
by Tom 17 Jul '14

17 Jul '14

FYI: http://www.ams.org/notices/201406/rnoti-p623.pdf -- This message has been scanned for viruses and dangerous content by MailScanner, and is believed to be clean.

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Re: [Cryptography] What has Bitcoin achieved?
by grarpamp 17 Jul '14

17 Jul '14

On Wed, Jul 16, 2014 at 6:41 PM, <dan(a)geer.org> wrote: > http://www.cnbc.com/id/101841875 > Breyer also predicted big things for digital currencies. > > He said the leader in the field may not end up being bitcoin, which > is the most prominent name now but has faced price volatility, theft > and scandal over the past year. Other providers will emerge. > > "I have zero doubt in the next five to seven years that we will see > at least half a dozen multibillion dollar digital currency companies," > he said. All currencies and property exhibit volatility, scandal and theft. It is a laugh to suggest otherwise, especially for anything 'new'. And of course there will be new digital currency 'companies'. Let's just call them what they will be, large central banks and govt's. But none of them will have the property that their currency is not under their control. Other than the obivous head start bitcoin has in the digital currency game, that is what bitcoin offers philosophically... freedom from control. No company can or will offer that with their currency. And people are choosing freedom to the tune of roughly $100M moved per day [1] when they could just as easily use the current centralized digital currencies of CC/ACH/wire. If bitcoin itself ends up not scaling well enough, or being anonymous enough, or resistant enough to centralization... another decentral digital currency will do better and take its place. The only real question is, will a decentralized currency such as bitcoin beat the centralizers in the race to global adoption by the masses? And similarly to reach point of no return adoption before centralizers realize it's too late to say no? You really don't want to let big central things emerge (here $trillion-dollar corps), bad things always happen with that. [1] http://bitcoincharts.com/bitcoin/ http://blockchain.info/charts http://www.coindesk.com/

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Keybase.io
by Scott Blaydes 17 Jul '14

17 Jul '14

I know Keybase.io is old news, but I still have a couple of invites if anyone in interested. Bonus if your request is encrypted. Thank you, Scott Blaydes ========================\ /---------------------------------------------------------- scott(a)sbce.org \ / *BSD/Linux Advocate crypto user GPG 096EECF0D8A2381E \/ Society for Better Computing Ethics gpg key on keyserver / \ http://sbce.org/ -------------------------------------------/ \==================================

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Re: [Cryptography] Security clearances and FOSS encryption?
by Eugen Leitl 16 Jul '14

16 Jul '14

----- Forwarded message from Phillip Hallam-Baker <phill(a)hallambaker.com> ----- Date: Tue, 15 Jul 2014 14:00:21 -0400 From: Phillip Hallam-Baker <phill(a)hallambaker.com> To: "Rick Smith, Cryptosmith" <me(a)cys.me> Cc: "cryptography(a)metzdowd.com" <cryptography(a)metzdowd.com> Subject: Re: [Cryptography] Security clearances and FOSS encryption? Message-ID: <CAMm+LwiUT1cEt2gAfKXaqK27a8yD6A+sd1+j_7u+hyJoSh3CTg(a)mail.gmail.com> On Tue, Jul 15, 2014 at 12:14 PM, Rick Smith, Cryptosmith <me(a)cys.me> wrote: > I think our discussion is getting a little muddy: some authors are using > "security clearance" when they really mean "employment" by a government > agency (directly or as a contractor, including military and intel > organizations). > > The security clearance is a side-effect of one's employment. > > And let me remind everyone, again, that you don't need a clearance or any > public form of government employment in order to be a spy, confidential > informant, or agent provocateur. Exactly, the people to worry about are the people who don't declare their affiliations and/or clearances. And that is why what the NSA did with the Bullrun program is such a problem. How would a government spy be likely to behave? One possibility is that they would be a very visible and prominent technical contributor leading a major working group working for a company like BBN or Van Dyke or SAIC or one of the other beltway contractors that is likely a wholly owned subsidiary of the CIA/NSA from the days that they had to conceal the funding sources to the black budget. But another possibility is that they would be a less technical, non technical type who was always willing to do work like write up reports or drafts or chair a working group and you would wonder how they managed to do so much without an apparent source of funds. In other words an NSA plant looking to derail a project is going to look just like the 10% of IETF members who do 80% of the actual technical work. _______________________________________________ The cryptography mailing list cryptography(a)metzdowd.com http://www.metzdowd.com/mailman/listinfo/cryptography ----- End forwarded message -----

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The next gen P2P secure email solution ["meta" data]
by grarpamp 16 Jul '14

16 Jul '14

On Tue, Jul 15, 2014 at 5:03 PM, John Denker <jsd(a)av8n.com> wrote: > http://www.metzdowd.com/pipermail/cryptography/2014-July/022150.html > It seems to me that the binary distinction between "metadata" and > other data is a crock. As a glaring example of the problem, common > protocols for encrypted email encrypt only the main body of the > message, leaving /all/ the headers unencrypted. This is a serious > security breach, as discussed below [*]. > > We can do better than this. We need to do better than this. > > At first glance, one might think that "data is data" and we should > not distinguish "metadata" from other data, but actually I wish to > go in the other direction, and distinguish /more/ classes of data. > ... > Let's be clear: A great deal of the stuff that appears in RFC822 > headers is not needed for delivery of the message, and MUST NOT > be sent in the clear. > ... > To say the same thing another way: Assume the law of the jungle. > The only privacy rights you have are the ones you can enforce on > your own, using the strength of your cryptography. Well, when you give up those rights by still disclosing your source IP and trusting your 'destination organization' [aka provider] with address info regarding you and who you're mailing... it's not much of a solution. Put in as many classes as you want... besides the body of the message which you control, you can't fix centralized Email. Here's another class of provider and browser based non solutions... https://cpunks.org/pipermail/cypherpunks/2014-July/004894.html There's a thread of this subject ongoing that acknowledges Email can't really be fixed against the issues of the day... and discusses other possible messaging designs towards a next gen solution... https://cpunks.org/pipermail/cypherpunks/2013-December/002638.html https://cpunks.org/pipermail/cypherpunks/2014-July/004900.html The goal is likely one or both of these over an anonymous P2P network... o direct delivery to your recipients online node. o stored delivery to same (push or pull, only exposes destination). More interesting than wasting time on futility of old Email.

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The ultimate goal of the NSA is total population control
by Eugen Leitl 15 Jul '14

15 Jul '14

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/jul/11/the-ultimate-goal-of-t… The ultimate goal of the NSA is total population control At least 80% of all audio calls, not just metadata, are recorded and stored in the US, says whistleblower William Binney – that's a 'totalitarian mentality' Antony Loewenstein theguardian.com, Friday 11 July 2014 00.54 BST William Binney testifies before a German inquiry into surveillance. Photograph: Getty Images William Binney is one of the highest-level whistleblowers to ever emerge from the NSA. He was a leading code-breaker against the Soviet Union during the Cold War but resigned soon after September 11, disgusted by Washington’s move towards mass surveillance. On 5 July he spoke at a conference in London organised by the Centre for Investigative Journalism and revealed the extent of the surveillance programs unleashed by the Bush and Obama administrations. “At least 80% of fibre-optic cables globally go via the US”, Binney said. “This is no accident and allows the US to view all communication coming in. At least 80% of all audio calls, not just metadata, are recorded and stored in the US. The NSA lies about what it stores.” The NSA will soon be able to collect 966 exabytes a year, the total of internet traffic annually. Former Google head Eric Schmidt once argued that the entire amount of knowledge from the beginning of humankind until 2003 amount to only five exabytes. Binney, who featured in a 2012 short film by Oscar-nominated US film-maker Laura Poitras, described a future where surveillance is ubiquitous and government intrusion unlimited. “The ultimate goal of the NSA is total population control”, Binney said, “but I’m a little optimistic with some recent Supreme Court decisions, such as law enforcement mostly now needing a warrant before searching a smartphone.” He praised the revelations and bravery of former NSA contractor Edward Snowden and told me that he had indirect contact with a number of other NSA employees who felt disgusted with the agency’s work. They’re keen to speak out but fear retribution and exile, not unlike Snowden himself, who is likely to remain there for some time. Unlike Snowden, Binney didn’t take any documents with him when he left the NSA. He now says that hard evidence of illegal spying would have been invaluable. The latest Snowden leaks, featured in the Washington Post, detail private conversations of average Americans with no connection to extremism. It shows that the NSA is not just pursuing terrorism, as it claims, but ordinary citizens going about their daily communications. “The NSA is mass-collecting on everyone”, Binney said, “and it’s said to be about terrorism but inside the US it has stopped zero attacks.” The lack of official oversight is one of Binney’s key concerns, particularly of the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (Fisa), which is held out by NSA defenders as a sign of the surveillance scheme's constitutionality. “The Fisa court has only the government’s point of view”, he argued. “There are no other views for the judges to consider. There have been at least 15-20 trillion constitutional violations for US domestic audiences and you can double that globally.” A Fisa court in 2010 allowed the NSA to spy on 193 countries around the world, plus the World Bank, though there’s evidence that even the nations the US isn’t supposed to monitor – Five Eyes allies Britain, Canada, Australia and New Zealand – aren’t immune from being spied on. It’s why encryption is today so essential to transmit information safely. Binney recently told the German NSA inquiry committee that his former employer had a “totalitarian mentality” that was the "greatest threat" to US society since that country’s US Civil War in the 19th century. Despite this remarkable power, Binney still mocked the NSA’s failures, including missing this year’s Russian intervention in Ukraine and the Islamic State’s take-over of Iraq. The era of mass surveillance has gone from the fringes of public debate to the mainstream, where it belongs. The Pew Research Centre released a report this month, Digital Life in 2025, that predicted worsening state control and censorship, reduced public trust, and increased commercialisation of every aspect of web culture. It’s not just internet experts warning about the internet’s colonisation by state and corporate power. One of Europe’s leading web creators, Lena Thiele, presented her stunning series Netwars in London on the threat of cyber warfare. She showed how easy it is for governments and corporations to capture our personal information without us even realising. Thiele said that the US budget for cyber security was US$67 billion in 2013 and will double by 2016. Much of this money is wasted and doesn't protect online infrastructure. This fact doesn’t worry the multinationals making a killing from the gross exaggeration of fear that permeates the public domain. Wikileaks understands this reality better than most. Founder Julian Assange and investigative editor Sarah Harrison both remain in legal limbo. I spent time with Assange in his current home at the Ecuadorian embassy in London last week, where he continues to work, release leaks, and fight various legal battles. He hopes to resolve his predicament soon. At the Centre for Investigative Journalism conference, Harrison stressed the importance of journalists who work with technologists to best report the NSA stories. “It’s no accident”, she said, “that some of the best stories on the NSA are in Germany, where there’s technical assistance from people like Jacob Appelbaum.” A core Wikileaks belief, she stressed, is releasing all documents in their entirety, something the group criticised the news site The Intercept for not doing on a recent story. “The full archive should always be published”, Harrison said. With 8m documents on its website after years of leaking, the importance of publishing and maintaining source documents for the media, general public and court cases can’t be under-estimated. “I see Wikileaks as a library”, Assange said. “We’re the librarians who can’t say no.” With evidence that there could be a second NSA leaker, the time for more aggressive reporting is now. As Binney said: “I call people who are covering up NSA crimes traitors”.

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Rainforest Connection and WildLeaks
by Eugen Leitl 15 Jul '14

15 Jul '14

Interesting uses of old mobile phones https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/topherwhite/rainforest-connection-phon… (I'm sure you'll how this be made applicable in other contexts (say, urban environment) and with other modifications). One group hopes to end poaching, WikiLeaks-style http://www.pri.org/stories/2014-07-14/one-group-hopes-end-poaching-wikileak…

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Experts report potential software "back doors" in U.S. standards
by Eugen Leitl 15 Jul '14

15 Jul '14

http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/07/15/usa-nsa-software-idUSL2N0PP2BM201… Experts report potential software "back doors" in U.S. standards BY JOSEPH MENN SAN FRANCISCO, July 14 Mon Jul 14, 2014 8:58pm EDT (Reuters) - U.S. government standards for software may enable spying by the National Security Agency through widely used coding formulas that should be jettisoned, some of the country's top independent experts concluded in papers released on Monday. Such mathematical formulas, or curves, are an arcane but essential part of most technology that prevents interception and hacking, and the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has been legally required to consult with the NSA's defensive experts in approving them and other cryptography standards. But NIST's relationship with the spy agency came under fire in September after reports based on documents from former NSA contractor Edward Snowden pointed to one formula in particular as a Trojan horse for the NSA. NIST discontinued that formula, called Dual Elliptic Curve, and asked its external advisory board and a special panel of experts to make recommendations that were published on Monday alongside more stinging conclusions by the individual experts. Noting the partially obscured hand of the NSA in creating Dual Elliptic Curve - which Reuters reported was most broadly distributed by security firm RSA [USN:nL2N0JZ1B6] - the group delved into the details of how it and other NIST standards emerged. It found incomplete documentation and poor explanations in some cases; in others material was withheld pending legal review. As a whole, the panels recommended that NIST review its obligation to confer with the NSA and seek legal changes "where it hinders its ability to independently develop the best cryptographic standards to serve not only the United States government but the broader community." They also urged NIST to weigh the advice of individual task force members who made more dramatic suggestions, such as calling for the replacement of a larger set of curves approved for authenticating users, in part because they were selected through unclear means by the NSA. "It is possible that the specified curves contain a back door somehow," said Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor Ron Rivest, a co-founder of RSA and the source of the letter R in its name. Though the curves could be fine, he wrote, "it seems prudent to assume the worst and transition away." More broadly, Rivest wrote, "NIST should ask the NSA for full disclosure regarding all existing standards... If NSA refuses to answer such an inquiry, then any standard developed with significant NSA input should be assumed to be `tainted,'" absent proof of security acceptable to outsiders. In an email exchange, Rivest told Reuters that "NIST needs to have a process whereby evidence is publicly presented" about how the curves were chosen. The curves faulted on Monday had been questioned by outsiders after media reports in September said the NSA could break much widely used security software, without detailing which ones or how. "These curves are ubiquitous in commercial cryptography," Johns Hopkins University professor Matthew Green said in an interview. "If you connected to Google or Facebook today, you probably used one." Rivest's long association with RSA, now part of electronic storage maker EMC Corp, made his remarks more poignant. But prominent task force colleagues including Internet co-creator Vint Cerf and Ed Felten, former chief technologist at Federal Trade Commission, also gave strongly worded verdicts on the Department of Commerce unit. "It cannot be accepted that NIST's responsibilities should be co-opted by the NSA's intelligence mission," wrote Cerf, who now works at Google Inc. While Rivest called the internal history of Dual Elliptic Curve a "smoking gun" with an "almost certain" NSA back door, Felten wrote that NSA might not remain alone in its ability to use it and other possible NIST-approved holes for spying. In each of three cases, including Dual Elliptic Curve and the more common curves faulted by Rivest, Felten said the suspected back door access "reduces the security of users against attack by other adversaries, including organized crime groups or foreign intelligence services." The NSA might have been able to generate curves that pass cursory security tests but are still breakable through the aid of sheer computing power, because it can try millions of curves and get a few that fit its goals. But a researcher working for another country could discover the flaw, Felten said. In the case of the curves approved under the FIPS 186 standard for authenticating digital signatures, NIST should start over and pick its own curves publicly rather than relying on the NSA, Felten and others said. Several experts said NIST had to hire more cryptographers and strengthen its internal processes to avoid relying on NSA. NIST acting Director Willie May agreed in a statement, saying his agency "must strengthen its in-house cryptography capabilities to ensure we can reach independent conclusions about the merits of specific algorithms or standards." NIST did not respond to a Reuters email asking about the fate of the suspect curves. (Reporting by Joseph Menn; Editing by Ken Wills)

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