- cypherpunks@lists.ogf.org

[tor-talk] Tor Weekly News — September, 11th 2013
by Eugen Leitl 11 Sep '13

11 Sep '13

----- Forwarded message from Lunar <lunar(a)torproject.org> ----- Date: Wed, 11 Sep 2013 17:21:30 +0200 From: Lunar <lunar(a)torproject.org> To: tor-news(a)lists.torproject.org, tor-talk(a)lists.torproject.org Subject: [tor-talk] Tor Weekly News — September, 11th 2013 User-Agent: Mutt/1.5.21 (2010-09-15) Reply-To: tor-talk(a)lists.torproject.org ======================================================================== Tor Weekly News September 11th, 2013 ======================================================================== Welcome to the eleventh issue of Tor Weekly News, the weekly newsletter that covers what is happening in the taut Tor community. tor 0.2.4.17-rc is out ---------------------- There are now confirmations [1] that the sudden influx of Tor clients which started mid-August [2] is indeed coming from a botnet. “I guess all that work we’ve been doing on scalability was a good idea,” wrote Roger Dingledine in a blog post about “how to handle millions of new Tor clients” [3]. On September 5th, Roger Dingledine announced the release of the third release candidate for the tor 0.2.4 series [4]. This is an emergency release “to help us tolerate the massive influx of users: 0.2.4 clients using the new (faster and safer) ‘NTor’ circuit-level handshakes now effectively jump the queue compared to the 0.2.3 clients using ‘TAP’ handshakes” [5]. It also contains several minor bugfixes and some new status messages for better monitoring of the current situation. Roger asked relay operators to upgrade to 0.2.4.17-rc [6]: “the more relays that upgrade to 0.2.4.17-rc, the more stable and fast Tor will be for 0.2.4 users, despite the huge circuit overload that the network is seeing.” For relays running Debian or Ubuntu, upgrading to the development branch can be done using the Tor project’s package repository [7]. New versions of the beta branch of the Tor Browser Bundle are also available [8] since September 6th. The next Tails release, scheduled for September 19th [9] will also contain tor 0.2.4.17-rc [10]. Hopefully, this will be the last release candidate. What looks missing at this point to declare the 0.2.4.x series stable is simply enough time to finish the release notes. [1] http://blog.fox-it.com/2013/09/05/large-botnet-cause-of-recent-tor-network-… [2] https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-talk/2013-September/029822.html [3] https://blog.torproject.org/blog/how-to-handle-millions-new-tor-clients [4] https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-talk/2013-September/029857.html [5] https://bugs.torproject.org/9574 [6] https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-relays/2013-September/002701.html [7] https://www.torproject.org/docs/debian.html.en#development [8] https://blog.torproject.org/blog/new-tor-02417-rc-packages [9] https://mailman.boum.org/pipermail/tails-dev/2013-September/003622.html [10] https://mailman.boum.org/pipermail/tails-dev/2013-September/003621.html The future of Tor cryptography ------------------------------ After the last round of revelations from Edward Snowden, described as “explosive” by Bruce Schneier [11], several threads started on the tor-talk mailing list to discuss Tor cryptography. A lot of what has been written is speculative at this point. But some have raised concerns [12] about 1024 bit Diffie–Hellman key exchange [13]. This has already been addressed with the introduction of the “ntor” handshake [14] in 0.2.4 and Nick Mathewson encourages everybody to upgrade [15]. Another thread [16] prompted Nick to summarize [17] his views on the future of Tor cryptography. Regarding public keys, “with Tor 0.2.4, forward secrecy uses 256-bit ECC, which is certainly better, but RSA-1024 is still used in some places for signatures. I want to fix all that in 0.2.5 — see proposal 220 [18], and George Kadianakis’ draft hidden service improvements [19,20], and so forth.” Regarding symmetric keys, Nick wrote: “We’re using AES128. I’m hoping to move to XSalsa20 or something like it.” In response to a query, Nick clarifies that he doesn’t think AES is broken: only hard to implement right, and only provided in TLS in concert with modes that are somewhat (GCM) or fairly (CBC) problematic. The effort to design better cryptography for the Tor protocols is not new. More than a year ago, Nick Mathewson presented proposal 202 [21] outlining two possible new relay encryption protocols for Tor cells. Nick mentioned that he’s waiting for a promising paper to get finished here before implementation. A third question was raised [22] regarding the trust in algorithms certified by the US NIST [23]. Nick’s speculations put aside, he also emphasized that several NIST algorithms were “hard to implement correctly” [24]. Nick also plans to change more algorithms [25]: “Over the 0.2.5 series, I want to move even more things (including hidden services) to curve25519 and its allies for public key crypto. I also want to add more hard-to-implement-wrong protocols to our mix: Salsa20 is looking like a much better choice to me than AES nowadays, for instance.” Nick concluded one of his emails with the words: “these are interesting times for crypto”, which sounds like a good way to put it. [11] https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2013/09/the_nsa_is_brea.html [12] https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-talk/2013-September/029917.html [13] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diffie–Hellman_key_exchange [14] https://gitweb.torproject.org/torspec.git/blob_plain/HEAD:/proposals/216-nt… [15] https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-talk/2013-September/029930.html [16] https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-talk/2013-September/029927.html [17] https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-talk/2013-September/029941.html [18] https://gitweb.torproject.org/torspec.git/blob_plain/HEAD:/proposals/220-ec… [19] https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-dev/2013-August/005279.html [20] https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-dev/2013-August/005280.html [21] https://gitweb.torproject.org/torspec.git/blob_plain/HEAD:/proposals/202-im… [22] https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-talk/2013-September/029933.html [23] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Institute_of_Standards_and_Technology [24] https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-talk/2013-September/029937.html [25] https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-talk/2013-September/029929.html Toward a better performance measurement tool -------------------------------------------- “I just finished […] sketching out the requirements and a software design for a new Torperf implementation“ announced Karsten Loesing [26] on the tor-dev mailing list. The report begins with: “Four years ago, we presented a simple tool to measure performance of the Tor network. This tool, called Torperf, requests static files of three different sizes over the Tor network and logs timestamps of various request substeps. These data turned out to be quite useful to observe user-perceived network performance over time [27]. However, static file downloads are not the typical use case of a user browsing the web using Tor, so absolute numbers are not very meaningful. Also, Torperf consists of a bunch of shell scripts which makes it neither very user-friendly to set up and run, nor extensible to cover new use cases.” The specification lays out the various requirements for the new tool, and details several experiments like visiting high profile websites with an automated graphical web browser, downloading static files, crafting a canonical web page, measuring hidden service performance, and checking on upload capacity. Karsten added “neither the requirements nor the software design are set in stone, and the implementation, well, does not exist yet. Plenty of options for giving feedback and helping out, and most parts don’t even require specific experience with hacking on Tor. Just in case somebody’s looking for an introductory Tor project to hack on.” Saytha already wrote that this was enough material to get the implementation started [28]. The project needs enough work that anyone interested should get involved. Feel free to join him! [26] https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-dev/2013-September/005386.html [27] https://metrics.torproject.org/performance.html [28] https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-dev/2013-September/005388.html More monthly status reports for August 2013 ------------------------------------------- The wave of regular monthly reports from Tor project members continued this week with Sukhbir Singh [29], Matt Pagan [30], Ximin Luo [31], mrphs [32], Pearl Crescent [33], Andrew Lewman [34], Mike Perry [35], Kelley Misata [36], Nick Mathewson [37], Jason Tsai [38], Tails [39], Aaron [40], and Damian Johnson [41]. [29] https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-reports/2013-September/000326.ht… [30] https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-reports/2013-September/000327.ht… [31] https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-reports/2013-September/000328.ht… [32] https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-reports/2013-September/000329.ht… [33] https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-reports/2013-September/000330.ht… [34] https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-reports/2013-September/000331.ht… [35] https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-reports/2013-September/000332.ht… [36] https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-reports/2013-September/000333.ht… [37] https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-reports/2013-September/000334.ht… [38] https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-reports/2013-September/000335.ht… [39] https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-reports/2013-September/000336.ht… [40] https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-reports/2013-September/000337.ht… [41] https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-reports/2013-September/000338.ht… Miscellaneous news ------------------ Not all new Tor users are computer programs! According to their latest report [42], Tails is now booted twice as much as it was six months ago (from 100,865 to 190,521 connections to the security feed). [42] https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-reports/2013-September/000336.ht… Thanks to Frenn vun der Enn [43] for setting up a new mirror [44] of the Tor project website. [43] http://enn.lu/ [44] https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-mirrors/2013-September/000351.ht… With the Google Summer of Code ending in two weeks, the students have sent their penultimate reports: Kostas Jakeliunas for the Searchable metrics archive [45], Johannes Fürmann for EvilGenius [46], Hareesan for the Steganography Browser Extension [47], and Cristian-Matei Toader for Tor capabilities [48]. [45] https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-dev/2013-September/005380.html [46] https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-dev/2013-September/005394.html [47] https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-dev/2013-September/005409.html [48] https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-dev/2013-September/005412.html Damian Johnson announced [49] that he had completed the rewrite of DocTor in Python [50], “a service that pulls hourly consensus information and checks it for a host of issues (directory authority outages, expiring certificates, etc). In the case of a problem it notifies tor-consensus-health@ [51], and we in turn give the authority operator a heads up.” [49] https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-reports/2013-September/000338.ht… [50] https://gitweb.torproject.org/doctor.git [51] https://lists.torproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/tor-consensus-health Matt Pagan has migrated [52] several Frequently-Asked Questions from the wiki to the official Tor website [53]. This should enable more users to find the answers they need! [52] https://svn.torproject.org/cgi-bin/viewvc.cgi/Tor?view=revision&revision=26… [53] https://www.torproject.org/docs/faq.html In his previous call for help to collect more statistics [54], addressed to bridge operators, George Kadianakis forgot to mention that an extra line with “ExtORPort 6669” needed to be added to the tor configuration file [55]. Make sure you do have it if you are running a bridge on the tor master branch. [54] https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-relays/2013-August/002477.html [55] https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-relays/2013-September/002691.html For the upgrade of tor to the 0.2.4.x series in Tails, a tester spotted a regression while “playing with an ISO built from experimental, thanks to our Jenkins autobuilder” [56]. This marks a significant milestone in the work on automated builds [57] done by several members of the Tails team in the course of the last year! [56] https://mailman.boum.org/pipermail/tails-dev/2013-September/003617.html [57] https://labs.riseup.net/code/issues/5324 Tails’ next “low-hanging fruit” session will be on September 21st at 08:00 UTC [58]. Mark the date if you want to get involved! [58] https://mailman.boum.org/pipermail/tails-dev/2013-September/003566.html David Fifield gave some tips on how to setup a test infrastructure [59] for flash proxy [60]. [59] https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-dev/2013-September/005402.html [60] https://crypto.stanford.edu/flashproxy/ Marek Majkowski reported [61] on how one can use his fluxcapacitor tool [62] to get a test Tor network started with Chutney [63] ready in only 6.5 seconds. A vast improvement over the 5 minutes he initially had to wait [64]! [61] https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-dev/2013-September/005403.html [62] https://github.com/majek/fluxcapacitor.git [63] https://gitweb.torproject.org/chutney.git [64] https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-dev/2013-September/005413.html Eugen Leitl drew attention [65] to a new research paper which aims to analyze the content and popularity of Hidden Services by Alex Biryukov, Ivan Pustogarov, and Ralf-Philipp Weinmann from the University of Luxembourg [66]. [65] https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-talk/2013-September/029856.html [66] http://cryptome.org/2013/09/tor-analysis-hidden-services.pdf Tor Help Desk roundup --------------------- The Tor help desk had a number of emails this week asking about the recent stories in the New York Times, the Guardian, and ProPublica regarding NSA’s cryptographic capabilities. Some users asked whether there was a backdoor in Tor. Others asked if Tor’s crypto was broken. There is absolutely no backdoor in Tor. Tor project members have been vocal in the past about how tremendously irresponsible it would be to backdoor our users [67]. As it is a frequently-asked question, users have been encouraged to read how the project would respond to institutional pressure [68]. The Tor project does not have any more facts about NSA’s cryptanalysis capabilities than what has been published in newspapers. Even if there is no actual evidence that Tor encryption is actually broken, the idea is to remain on the safe side by using more trusted algorithms for the Tor protocols. See above for a more detailed write-up. [67] https://blog.torproject.org/blog/calea-2-and-tor [68] http://www.torproject.org/docs/faq.html.en#Backdoor Help the Tor community! ----------------------- Tor is about protecting everyone’s freedom and privacy. There are many ways to help [69] but getting involved in such a busy community can be daunting. Here’s a selection of tasks on which one could get started: Get tor to log the source of control port connections [70]. It would help in developing controller applications or libraries (like Stem [71]) to know which program is responsible for a given access to the control facilities of the tor daemon. Knowledge required: C programming, basic understanding of network sockets. Diagnose what is currently wrong with Tor Cloud images [72]. Tor Cloud [73] is an easy way to deploy bridges and it looks like the automatic upgrade procedure caused problems. Let’s make these virtual machines useful again for censored users. Knowledge required: basic understanding of Ubuntu system administration. [69] https://www.torproject.org/getinvolved/volunteer.html.en [70] https://bugs.torproject.org/9698 [71] https://stem.torproject.org/ [72] https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-dev/2013-September/005417.html [73] https://cloud.torproject.org/ Upcoming events --------------- Sep 29 | Colin at the Winnipeg Cryptoparty | Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada | http://wiki.skullspace.ca/index.php/CryptoParty | Sep 29-01 | Tor at OpenITP Circumvention Tech Summit IV | Berlin, Germany | https://www.openitp.org/openitp/circumvention-tech-summit.html | Oct 09-10 | Andrew speaking at Secure Poland 2013 | Warszawa, Poland | http://www.secure.edu.pl/ This issue of Tor Weekly News has been assembled by Lunar, dope457, mttp, malaparte, harmony, Karsten Loesing, and Nick Mathewson. Want to continue reading TWN? Please help us create this newsletter. We still need more volunteers to watch the Tor community and report important news. Please see the project page [74], write down your name and subscribe to the team mailing list [75] if you want to get involved! [74] https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/wiki/TorWeeklyNews [75] https://lists.torproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/news-team -- tor-talk mailing list - tor-talk(a)lists.torproject.org To unsusbscribe or change other settings go to https://lists.torproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/tor-talk ----- 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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hardware RNG
by Juan Garofalo 11 Sep '13

11 Sep '13

very naive question here : Wouldn't it be possible to build a RNG using something like a zener diode and a $2 microcontroller? J.

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NIST reopens RNG public comment period
by Eugen Leitl 11 Sep '13

11 Sep '13

http://csrc.nist.gov/publications/PubsDrafts.html Sep. 9, 2013 SP 800-90 A Rev 1 B and C DRAFT Draft SP 800-90 Series: Random Bit Generators 800-90 A Rev. 1: Recommendation for Random Number Generation Using Deterministic Random Bit Generators 800-90 B: Recommendation for the Entropy Sources Used for Random Bit Generation 800-90 C: Recommendation for Random Bit Generator (RBG) Constructions In light of recent reports, NIST is reopening the public comment period for Special Publication 800-90A and draft Special Publications 800-90B and 800-90C. NIST is interested in public review and comment to ensure that the recommendations are accurate and provide the strongest cryptographic recommendations possible. The public comments will close on November 6, 2013. Comments should be sent to RBG_Comments(a)nist.gov. In addition, the Computer Security Division has released a supplemental ITL Security Bulletin titled "NIST Opens Draft Special Publication 800-90A, Recommendation for Random Number Generation Using Deterministic Random Bit Generators, For Review and Comment (Supplemental ITL Bulletin for September 2013)" to support the draft revision effort. Draft SP 800-90 A Rev. 1 (721 KB) Draft SP 800-90 B (800 KB) Draft SP 800-90 C (1.1 MB)

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Re: [liberationtech] iPhone 5S Fingerprint and Records (Was: iPhone5S and 5th amendment)
by Eugen Leitl 11 Sep '13

11 Sep '13

----- Forwarded message from Andy Isaacson <adi(a)hexapodia.org> ----- Date: Tue, 10 Sep 2013 16:37:36 -0700 From: Andy Isaacson <adi(a)hexapodia.org> To: liberationtech <liberationtech(a)lists.stanford.edu> Subject: Re: [liberationtech] iPhone 5S Fingerprint and Records (Was: iPhone5S and 5th amendment) User-Agent: Mutt/1.5.20 (2009-06-14) Reply-To: liberationtech <liberationtech(a)lists.stanford.edu> On Tue, Sep 10, 2013 at 05:54:44PM -0400, Scott Elcomb wrote: > Starting a new thread - it's related but a slightly different topic. > > Despite having several devices with fingerprint scanners, I've never used one. > > With the release of iPhone 5S and all the discussion around it, I'm > curious if fingerprints on file with various Law Enforcement agencies > could be printed out or otherwise used to unlock devices detained at > border crossings or during other investigations? Printing a fingerprint is pretty easy: http://dasalte.ccc.de/biometrie/fingerabdruck_kopieren?language=en No word yet if this technique works on the iPhone reader. -andy -- Liberationtech is a public list whose archives are searchable on Google. Violations of list guidelines will get you moderated: https://mailman.stanford.edu/mailman/listinfo/liberationtech. Unsubscribe, change to digest, or change password by emailing moderator at companys(a)stanford.edu. ----- 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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[Cryptography] EFF press release on latest FISA opinions release
by Eugen Leitl 11 Sep '13

11 Sep '13

----- Forwarded message from "Perry E. Metzger" <perry(a)piermont.com> ----- Date: Tue, 10 Sep 2013 19:12:32 -0400 From: "Perry E. Metzger" <perry(a)piermont.com> To: cryptography(a)metzdowd.com Subject: [Cryptography] EFF press release on latest FISA opinions release X-Mailer: Claws Mail 3.9.0 (GTK+ 2.24.20; x86_64-apple-darwin12.4.0) The documents haven't yet been completely processed, but they've already found some interesting features. Quoting: The NSA apparently believed that it had the authority to search the telephone records database in order to obtain the 'reasonable articulable suspicion' required to investigate those numbers. Essentially, they were conducting suspicionless searches to obtain the suspicion the FISA court required to conduct searches. https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2013/09/government-releases-nsa-surveillance-… Note that the USG has misleadingly claimed that this document release was part of an effort to be "transparent" -- in fact, these are the result of an EFF FOIA and were released at court order. -- Perry E. Metzger perry(a)piermont.com _______________________________________________ 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: [Cryptography] soft chewy center
by Eugen Leitl 11 Sep '13

11 Sep '13

----- Forwarded message from "Perry E. Metzger" <perry(a)piermont.com> ----- Date: Tue, 10 Sep 2013 19:05:40 -0400 From: "Perry E. Metzger" <perry(a)piermont.com> To: bmanning(a)isi.edu Cc: bmanning(a)vacation.karoshi.com, cryptography(a)metzdowd.com Subject: Re: [Cryptography] soft chewy center X-Mailer: Claws Mail 3.9.0 (GTK+ 2.24.20; x86_64-apple-darwin12.4.0) On Tue, 10 Sep 2013 21:58:28 +0000 bmanning(a)vacation.karoshi.com wrote: > some years back, i was part of a debate on the relative value of > crypto - and it was pointed out that for some sectors, crypto > ensured _failure_ simply because processing the bits introduced > latency. for these sectors, speed was paramount. > > think HFT or any sort of "Flash Mob" event where you want in/out as > quickly as possible. The latency cost of a stream cipher implemented in hardware can be as little as the time it takes a single XOR gate to operate -- which is to say, low even by the standards of my friends who do high frequency trading (many of whom do, in fact, claim to encrypt most of their communications). Certainly crypto is not the only (or even most important) way to make systems secure. In breaking in to a system, implementation bugs are where you look, not cracking cipher keys. However, latency qua latency seems like a poor reason to avoid encrypting your traffic. It might, of course, be a reason to avoid certain architectural decisions in how you use the crypto -- a public key operation per packet would clearly add unacceptable latency in many applications. Perry -- Perry E. Metzger perry(a)piermont.com _______________________________________________ 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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WREN: The First Satellite YOU Can Fly
by Eugen Leitl 11 Sep '13

11 Sep '13

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1467273745/wren-fly-a-real-spacecraft-b… The only satellite in Earth orbit that YOU can control DIRECTLY ! You are the pilot. Launch is this year! Even nowadays space is not opened to the public, but we will change that - this year ! We are four guys in a garage, and we have dedicated ourselves to open space for everyone. For that purpose we designed the miniaturized satellite WREN. It’s a so called Pocketqub-Femtosatellite. It has only 5x5x5cm³ of volume and 250g of mass, and fits perfectly into your hand, like a tennis ball. Despite of its size, it even has real thrusters. It can be remotely positioned by you in every direction and it has a camera onboard for taking pictures from outer space. It will be released into a polar orbit before the end of this year on board of the UNISAT-5 deployer, which is launched inside a DNEPR Rocket from Yasni in Russia. It will race around the globe every 98 minutes, passing every point of the earth during each day, seven days a week, just waiting for the command to be remotely flown by you. System overview WREN System Overview WREN is equipped with a camera, a gyro and a magnetic field sensor. Those three components will form an adaptive feedback guidance system which helps you to easily navigate the satellite by your own by using its momentum wheels and microthrusters. The camera is equipped with an image processing system which can find the position of the sun and the earth automatically. This technology will make the control of the satellite more easy. With the camera system you can of course remotely take pictures of the earth, the sun and other space objects. You can navigate the satellite directly in order to make your own picture. The communication up- and downlink will be performed at 437,405 MHz, a frequency in the 70cm amateur radio band which has been kindly assigned to us by the International Amateur Radio Union (IARU). Wren will be flying in a sun synchronous orbit at 700km of altitude at an incredible speed of 7500 m/second, so that it will take only 98 minutes to fly one time all around the planet. Practically, a link is possible for about 10 minutes from a single ground station, up to three times a day. The mission control software is equipped with prediction algorithms in order to predict the flyby- time according to your location, so you can prepare yourself for the upcoming communication window and take control over the satellite again. We hope that amateur radio enthusiasts will join our network and provide a link from time to time to use WRENs lifetime as long as possible. Send a message into deep space You can send a message into deep space. Of course it will be also receptable on earth. Everytime WREN sends his status to earth, it will also send out one of the saved messages. If WREN survives for years, your message will be sent several times into the deep far universe. Project Status The rocket launch is scheduled for November this year. Wren is currently in the final assembly process and will be integrated into the deployer in October this year, after the shaker test. We will be helped out with a professional ground station after launch for the first weeks, but we want to build our own mobile groundstation to be able to establish the link for you anytime. We will publish the plans for the groundstation as soon as it is ready and working, so everybody can build it! How do we get into space so cheaply? Bringing one kilogram of mass into orbit costs about 50000$. Rockets must carry their fuel all the way up, so the laws of physics make them big, heavy and expensive. So how do we fly so relatively cheaply? First, we are light, about 250 grams. And we fly piggyback on a bigger satellite called "UNISAT-5". This satellite, together with some others, are all stored in one rocket, so the costs for the launch will be shared according to the mass. Wren will be stored in a deployment unit called MRFOD. Wren will be waiting inside this MRFOD in the satellite "UNISAT-5" for his release into the open space The rocket will go up in November and will release UNISAT-5 and other satellites. Wren will be released into space out of Unisat about one month later. Please Spread the message We want to bring space into your living room. To achieve this we need your help, not only by asking you for backing us with money but also by telling the story to everybody you know who may be interested in space. We also need amateur radio guys who would like to take part in project and follow Wren all along its way around the planet by listening its beacon and messages you pledged for, being heard. Our blogs and webpages, reports and videos are just a few components of the whole message. You are the messengers, you are the carrier of the idea of transporting space into everybody's living room - and beyond!

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SPDZ, a practical protocol for Multi-Party Computation
by Eugen Leitl 11 Sep '13

11 Sep '13

http://www.mathbulletin.com/research/Breakthrough_in_cryptography_could_res… Breakthrough in cryptography could result in more secure computing (9/10/2013) Tags: computer science, research, security, cryptography Nigel Smart, Professor of Cryptology New research to be presented at the 18th European Symposium on Research in Computer Security (ESORICS 2013) this week could result in a sea change in how to secure computations. The collaborative work between the University of Bristol and Aarhus University (Denmark) will be presented by Bristol PhD student Peter Scholl from the Department of Computer Science. The paper, entitled 'Practical covertly secure MPC for dishonest majority - or: Breaking the SPDZ limits', builds upon earlier joint work between Bristol and Aarhus and fills in the missing pieces of the jigsaw from the groups prior work that was presented at the CRYPTO conference in Santa Barbara last year. The SPDZ protocol (pronounced "Speedz") is a co-development between Bristol and Aarhus and provides the fastest protocol known to implement a theoretical idea called "Multi-Party Computation". The idea behind Multi-Party Computation is that it should enable two or more people to compute any function of their choosing on their secret inputs, without revealing their inputs to either party. One example is an election, voters want their vote to be counted but they do not want their vote made public. The protocol developed by the universities turns Multi-Party Computation from a theoretical tool into a practical reality. Using the SPDZ protocol the team can now compute complex functions in a secure manner, enabling possible applications in the finance, drugs and chemical industries where computation often needs to be performed on secret data. Nigel Smart, Professor of Cryptology in the University of Bristol's Department of Computer Science and leader on the project, said: "We have demonstrated our protocol to various groups and organisations across the world, and everyone is impressed by how fast we can actually perform secure computations. "Only a few years ago such a theoretical idea becoming reality was considered Alice in Wonderland style over ambitious hope. However, we in Bristol realised around five years ago that a number of advances in different areas would enable the pipe dream to be achieved. It is great that we have been able to demonstrate our foresight was correct." The University of Bristol is now starting to consider commercialising the protocol via a company Dyadic Security Limited, co-founded by Professor Smart and Professor Yehuda Lindell from Bar-Ilan University in Israel. Note: This story has been adapted from a news release issued by the University of Bristol

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Re: [cryptography] Forward Secrecy Extensions for OpenPGP: Is this still a good proposal?
by Eugen Leitl 11 Sep '13

11 Sep '13

----- Forwarded message from Adam Back <adam(a)cypherspace.org> ----- Date: Tue, 10 Sep 2013 22:09:26 +0200 From: Adam Back <adam(a)cypherspace.org> To: "Fabio Pietrosanti (naif)" <lists(a)infosecurity.ch> Cc: Ian Brown <ian.brown(a)oii.ox.ac.uk>, cryptography(a)randombit.net Subject: Re: [cryptography] Forward Secrecy Extensions for OpenPGP: Is this still a good proposal? User-Agent: Mutt/1.5.21 (2010-09-15) You know coincidentally we (the three authors of that paper) were just talking about that very topic in off-list (and PGP encrypted:) email. I remain keen on forward-secrecy, and it does seem to be in fashion again right now. Personally I think we in the open community need to up our game an order of magnitude. We thought we won the last crypto wars when mandatory key escrow was abandoned, and US crypto export regs basically scrapped. But it turns out instead they just went underground and sabotaged everything they could gain influence over with a $250m/year black budget and limited regard for law, ethics and human rights. Apparently including SSL MITMs using CAs keys. You've got to think (NSA claims to be the biggest employer of mathematicians) that seeing the illegal activities the US has been getting up to with the fruits of their labour that they may have a mathematician retention or motivation problem on their hands. Who wants their life's work to be a small part in the secret and illegal creation of a surveillance state, with a real risk of creating the environment for a hard to recover fascist political regime over the next century if the events allow even worse governments to get in that further overthrow democratic pretense. How about this for another idea, go for TLS 2.0 that combines ToR and TLS, and deprecate HTTP (non TLS) and TLS 1.x and SSL. Every web server a ToR node, every server an encrypted web cache, many browsers a ToR node. Do something to up the game, not just blunder along reacting and failing year on year to deploy fixes for glaring holes. Adam On Tue, Sep 10, 2013 at 08:35:08PM +0200, Fabio Pietrosanti (naif) wrote: > Hi all, > > i just read about this internet draft "Forward Secrecy Extensions for > OpenPGP" available at > http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-brown-pgp-pfs-03 . > > Is it a still good proposal? > > Should it be revamped as an actual improvement of currently existing use > of OpenPGP technology? _______________________________________________ cryptography mailing list cryptography(a)randombit.net http://lists.randombit.net/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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[cryptography] ProPublica's Jeff Larson on the NSA Crypto Story and Another View
by Eugen Leitl 11 Sep '13

11 Sep '13

----- Forwarded message from John Young <jya(a)pipeline.com> ----- Date: Tue, 10 Sep 2013 14:38:01 -0400 From: John Young <jya(a)pipeline.com> To: cryptography(a)randombit.net, cyperhpunks(a)cpunks.org, cryptome(a)freelists.org Subject: [cryptography] ProPublica's Jeff Larson on the NSA Crypto Story and Another View X-Mailer: QUALCOMM Windows Eudora Version 7.1.0.9 ProPublica's Jeff Larson on the NSA Crypto Story http://source.mozillaopennews.org/en-US/articles/propublicas-jeff-larson-ns… Describes two months of digging through the Snowden documents, using search tool Intella, finding code words, looking for references to those, scrambling to understand and explain the technology to experts and the public, traveling between New York and London, thrill of working with NYT, Guardian and others. Claims extraordinary security was laid on to protect the material. But doesn't say what it was or is. Pretty good gritty back story compared to the burnished fronts. Hard to tell if it is a front story as well due to admission of withholding materials. Nothing said about consulting with USG or HMG. Here's a much less polite viewpoint: http://ohtarzie.wordpress.com/2013/09/10/fuck-the-guardian-take-your-drip-a… _______________________________________________ cryptography mailing list cryptography(a)randombit.net http://lists.randombit.net/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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