[Omnitech]

From the Guardian UK article of Sept. 5:

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"Since 2011, the total spending on Sigint enabling has topped $800m. The program "actively engages US and foreign IT industries to covertly influence and/or overtly leverage their commercial products' designs", the document states. None of the companies involved in such partnerships are named; these details are guarded by still higher levels of classification.

Among other things, the program is designed to "insert vulnerabilities into commercial encryption systems". These would be known to the NSA, but to no one else, including ordinary customers, who are tellingly referred to in the document as "adversaries".

"These design changes make the systems in question exploitable through Sigint collection … with foreknowledge of the modification. To the consumer and other adversaries, however, the systems' security remains intact."

The document sets out in clear terms the program's broad aims, including making commercial encryption software "more tractable" to NSA attacks by "shaping" the worldwide marketplace and continuing efforts to break into the encryption used by the next generation of 4G phones. [...]

The document also shows that the NSA's Commercial Solutions Center, ostensibly the body through which technology companies can have their security products assessed and presented to prospective government buyers, has another, more clandestine role.

It is used by the NSA to "to leverage sensitive, co-operative relationships with specific industry partners" to insert vulnerabilities into security products. Operatives were warned that this information must be kept top secret "at a minimum".

A more general NSA classification guide reveals more detail on the agency's deep partnerships with industry, and its ability to modify products. It cautions analysts that two facts must remain top secret: that NSA makes modifications to commercial encryption software and devices "to make them exploitable", and that NSA "obtains cryptographic details of commercial cryptographic information security systems through industry relationships".

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[Omnitech]

If I recall correctly, there was a special fork of Linux that was supposedly "hardened" by some NSA technology group and promoted as a "security enhanced" version of Linux and given away free.

I don't know why anyone in their right mind would come within 10 miles of anything that touched that distro now.

[offyoutoddle]

If I recall correctly, there was a special fork of Linux that was supposedly "hardened" by some NSA technology group and promoted as a "security enhanced" version of Linux and given away free.

I don't know why anyone in their right mind would come within 10 miles of anything that touched that distro now.

Yes I remember too. I also remember thinking the devil would go to work on a snow plough the day anyone would adopt that, and that was then!

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[anon62607]

valeuche sir, I was just thinking about you yesterday - remembering the thread here that you and I and SonicReducer, among others, were participating in re: encryption a couple of months back.

It appears that SonicReducer may have been more correct than either of us on the question of security back-doors. I trust you have read the revelations from this week.

With that particular discussion I don't think anything there was inaccurate, particularly with respect to the IV discussion. I built a mini app myself to exercise what was supposedly happening and it wasn't reproducible (with the initialization vector being ignored and subsequent blocks in CBC mode ignoring the forwarded CBC IV).

The topic of the AES cipher algorithm itself having a backdoor in it is still (even now) not really credible, I think. Most of the discussion in the slides about influencing international standards seems to be directed toward public key cryptosystems.

If you did want to be particularly safe though, only use symmetric ciphers and select a cipher developed by a single person, publically vetted and then use it only on an unconnected computer, or a computer with an open source, self compiled operating system.

The scale of what the NSA was doing is pretty surprising. In the back of my mind I knew it was possible but didn't really think it was being done, so it's a little easy to think of all of this as earth shattering and build paranoia up but, as I mentioned before, I think Schneier is still pretty spot on with the reality of the situation.

[Omnitech]

So I was just going through one of the Ars Technica articles on this and had an "Aha!" moment.

Turns out, Dual_EC_DRBG is based on Elliptic Curve encryption. Guess who owns most of the patents for Elliptic Curve encryption? Used to be a company called Certicom.

Guess who bought Certicom in 2009.


From the BlackBerry wikipedia article:

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"Certicom Corp. is a cryptography company founded in 1985 by Gordon Agnew,[110] Ron Mullin and Scott Vanstone.

The Certicom intellectual property portfolio includes over 350 patents and patents pending worldwide that cover key aspects of elliptic curve cryptography (ECC): software optimizations, efficient hardware implementations, methods to enhance the security, and various cryptographic protocols.[citation needed]

The National Security Agency (NSA) has licensed 26 of Certicom's ECC patents as a way of clearing the way for the implementation of elliptic curves to protect US and allied government information.[111]

Certicom's current customers include General Dynamics, Motorola, Oracle, Research In Motion and Unisys.[citation needed]

On January 23, 2009, VeriSign entered into an agreement to acquire Certicom.[112] Research In Motion put in a counter-offer, which was deemed superior.[113] VeriSign did not match this offer,[114] and so Certicom announced an agreement to be acquired by RIM,.[115] Upon the completion of this transaction, Certicom became a wholly owned subsidiary of RIM, and was de-listed from the Toronto Stock Exchange on March 25, 2009."

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[anon62607]

The USA is now going to look like a real laughing-stock every time they try to whine about why they don't trust network equipment from Huawei and so on, attempting to characterize China as the Big Evil Doer.

Takes one to know one, I suppose.

I think that's sort of the rub. It really isn't just the NSA that's doing this kind of thing, I'm sure the Russians, Chinese, Israelis and whoever else out there interested in communications intelligence is doing exactly the same thing - to the point of trying to influence standards bodies and placing engineers on the staffs of companies (even US companies) developing cryptographic products.

I know in the back of everyone's minds they're thinking that, well, yes, the NSA is doing it and their funding is enormous, but no one else is devoting the same level of resources so if the NSA is cut off, privacy is secure. I think that's the most dangerous assumption and the least likely. China and Russia are filled with cryptographers, mathematicians, and have their nationals working as engineers in US organizations and are on international standards bodies. The only thing they can't do that the NSA can is provide a reluctant company with a national security letter compelling cooperation. Everything else is probably being done.

[Omnitech]

I think that's sort of the rub. It really isn't just the NSA that's doing this kind of thing, I'm sure the Russians, Chinese, Israelis and whoever else out there interested in communications intelligence is doing exactly the same thing - to the point of trying to influence standards bodies and placing engineers on the staffs of companies (even US companies) developing cryptographic products.

I know in the back of everyone's minds they're thinking that, well, yes, the NSA is doing it and their funding is enormous, but no one else is devoting the same level of resources so if the NSA is cut off, privacy is secure. I think that's the most dangerous assumption and the least likely. China and Russia are filled with cryptographers, mathematicians, and have their nationals working as engineers in US organizations and are on international standards bodies. The only thing they can't do that the NSA can is provide a reluctant company with a national security letter compelling cooperation. Everything else is probably being done.

What the Russians can't do is force the largest manufacturer of carrier routing hardware in the world to install an NSA backdoor into every router and switch and firewall, under threat of causing them great pain selling equipment outside the USA, or other sorts of business trouble.

China is a different story - Huawei has actually gained significant marketshare around the world, particularly in developing countries. And Huawei's founder and CEO is an ex PLA bigwig. They are also demonstrably corrupt, having been caught many times stealing competitors IP for their own products.

[MarsupilamiX]

Very dangerous POV as far as I'm concerned.

First they came ... - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

I remember that quote from another thread.
Did you grow tired of the Benjamin Franklin citation?

Posted via CB10

[Omnitech]

I remember that quote from another thread.
Did you grow tired of the Benjamin Franklin citation?

I am a little amazed that you seem to be trying to re-start that argument again.

Seriously, have you nothing better to do?

[IgotsThis]

Don't worry. Soon we will be worse than London with cameras on every single street corner, and when RFID chips are introduced to the general population that's when the real fun begins ;D

BBM channels: c00121c99 for some knowledge and c00123fca for some real hip hop

[anon62607]

What the Russians can't do is force the largest manufacturer of carrier routing hardware in the world to install an NSA backdoor into every router and switch and firewall, under threat of causing them great pain selling equipment outside the USA, or other sorts of business trouble.

China is a different story - Huawei has actually gained significant marketshare around the world, particularly in developing countries. And Huawei's founder and CEO is an ex PLA bigwig. They are also demonstrably corrupt, having been caught many times stealing competitors IP for their own products.

All the Russians need is an engineer in the right place in that company and they don't have to care what the executives of the company do.

And if you've ever worked in a large American technology company you know there is no shortage of senior Chinese and Russian engineers working in those companies. (Of course, a bought-off American could do the same thing, I'm not trying to imply anything inherently negative about foreign national engineers, I'm just saying that there is a potential route in by 'mis-engineering')

[MarsupilamiX]

I am a little amazed that you seem to be trying to re-start that argument again.

Seriously, have you nothing better to do?

I just got reminiscent, that's all.
There was no ill intent

Posted via CB10

[Omnitech]

All the Russians need is an engineer in the right place in that company and they don't have to care what the executives of the company do.

And if you've ever worked in a large American technology company you know there is no shortage of senior Chinese and Russian engineers working in those companies. (Of course, a bought-off American could do the same thing, I'm not trying to imply anything inherently negative about foreign national engineers, I'm just saying that there is a potential route in by 'mis-engineering')

All countries are on an even playing-field wrt to placing operatives in companies. Of course, the larger and more well-funded the security apparatus of a nation, the more likely it is that can be done. So if anything, the USA is in a better position to do that than most of its geopolitical competitors.

But the USA also has unique leverage it can bring to bear on its native companies which are pre-eminent in the various technology sectors. (As we have now seen how the NSA leverages various US-based online providers to operate as an extension of their surveillance mechanism, so they can also leverage companies like Cisco in ways that no other state can.)

[demc]

Users who really care about their security and privacy should not, in my opinion, rely on BlackBerry or Apple or, for that matter, any other device vendor. Instead, they might be better off with a solution such as PGP/GnuPG, where the user actually controls the encryption process him/herself.

Posted via CB10

[offyoutoddle]

Users who really care about their security and privacy should not, in my opinion, rely on BlackBerry or Apple or, for that matter, any other device vendor. Instead, they might be better off with a solution such as PGP/GnuPG, where the user actually controls the encryption process him/herself.

Posted via CB10

I am still concerned about even pgp as it is only a witches brew of several commercial algorithms. Typically however weaknesses in the platform you run the software on (your hardware and your OS) are possibly your enemy here. Or to use an analogy if a doors lock is strong, target the hinges or the frame.



Posted via CB10

[anon62607]

All countries are on an even playing-field wrt to placing operatives in companies. Of course, the larger and more well-funded the security apparatus of a nation, the more likely it is that can be done. So if anything, the USA is in a better position to do that than most of its geopolitical competitors.

But the USA also has unique leverage it can bring to bear on its native companies which are pre-eminent in the various technology sectors. (As we have now seen how the NSA leverages various US-based online providers to operate as an extension of their surveillance mechanism, so they can also leverage companies like Cisco in ways that no other state can.)

it's actually almost the same. if you have a team of engineers working on a product and you are an intelligence agency, what's the best way of getting a back door placed in the product? it's not by telling the executives of the company to place one in the product, they just go to the engineers and tell them to do it and then there is the risk that one of the engineers talks.

it's better to place an engineer on the team working on it and subvert it that way. only if that fails would you try to work directly with the company.

it does look like from many of the descriptions that's what has been going on, weakening standards rather than specific products or in the case where it was a specific product (and there aren't many actual examples of this yet, despite the rampant paranoia) it was introduced by a single engineer claiming it was a mistake.

[anon62607]

I am still concerned about even pgp as it is only a witches brew of several commercial algorithms. Typically however weaknesses in the platform you run the software on (your hardware and your OS) are possibly your enemy here. Or to use an analogy if a doors lock is strong, target the hinges or the frame.



Posted via CB10

I'm not that worried about PGP (or gpg anyway) but it really is true that the platform itself that is running PGP is much more vulnerable to attack.

if you really are concerned about security, do as Schneier recommends: buy a new computer that has never been connected to the Internet and put one of the hardened Linux distros on it. your sensitive plaintexts communications only ever are on that box, anything coming in or going out of it are encrypted and it never gets connected to the Internet in any way.

[Omnitech]

it's actually almost the same. if you have a team of engineers working on a product and you are an intelligence agency, what's the best way of getting a back door placed in the product? it's not by telling the executives of the company to place one in the product, they just go to the engineers and tell them to do it and then there is the risk that one of the engineers talks.

it's better to place an engineer on the team working on it and subvert it that way. only if that fails would you try to work directly with the company.

It's certainly one way, but hardly the only way.

There are various documented cases of the US Guv'mint openly compelling companies to put security vulnerabilities in their products. Here are two of the most famous:

Only NSA can listen, so that's OK | Telepolis
How NSA access was built into Windows | Telepolis

I used to be skeptical of the NSAKEY/Windows thing until I saw detailed documentation on it and Cryptonym's hack to replace one of the CryptoAPI's keys with one of your choosing to see how that works, and then these recent NSA revelations.

weakening standards rather than specific products or in the case where it was a specific product (and there aren't many actual examples of this yet, despite the rampant paranoia)

Of course there are no actual examples, that stuff was specifically avoided in the news stories published on Thursday.

The NYT, Guardian and ProPublica are already taking a substantial legal risk by publishing that stuff - if they did not redact specific references to specific products I don't doubt for a second they would be getting a visit from the Men in Black real quick-like.

This is reputedly one of the actual (redacted) documents, this is more of an overview:

http://s3.documentcloud.org/document...ypt-guide2.pdf

[iN8ter]

Users who really care about their security and privacy should not, in my opinion, rely on BlackBerry or Apple or, for that matter, any other device vendor. Instead, they might be better off with a solution such as PGP/GnuPG, where the user actually controls the encryption process him/herself.

Posted via CB10

That can be cracked as well. All those run of the mill consumer encryption products do is protect you from other normal people who may try to steal information from your account (encrypted storage at cloud providers, two stage authentication, etc.), in transmission (SSL and End-to-end encryption), or from your devices (via on-device encryption, bitlocker, etc.). That will not protect you from the tech those Government agencies have. They will break that encryption.

Encrypting email is simply not usable unless you know what others are using - everyone, because if people you communicate with a lot do not use it, then it becomes too much of a hassle to juggle and switch gears constantly. Businesses can reliable use this. Consumers cannot reliably use that. You don't know what client someone will access it from (Thick Client, Web Client, etc.) or what email service they use, etc.

It's almost impossible to reliably use encryption and digital signing without a real groupware client like Microsoft Outlook, as well, or at least an offline email client like Live Mail, Thunderbird, etc. That is, unless it's built into the service and everyone you email uses that service.

I've tried, years ago Comodo was giving away free email certificates. The whole thing sounded good on paper, but in practically it was pretty much unusable.

[iN8ter]

I'm not that worried about PGP (or gpg anyway) but it really is true that the platform itself that is running PGP is much more vulnerable to attack.

if you really are concerned about security, do as Schneier recommends: buy a new computer that has never been connected to the Internet and put one of the hardened Linux distros on it. your sensitive plaintexts communications only ever are on that box, anything coming in or going out of it are encrypted and it never gets connected to the Internet in any way.

Would not be able to get a decent amount of work from a Linux distro. Even a Mac would be hard for me to use these days, to be honest.

But then again, I have never had issues with Windows. The Linux Kernel is open source. If there is a way to get in any of those, the NSA probably knows by now.

Those people get paid to do nothing more than find a way in, and they are as good as the best security experts in the field. Only difference is they don't talk nearly as much about it in public :-P

I don't use email much anymore, anyways. Most people I know barely use email, if at all. They all use other methods of communication which puts the weak link OFF of my machine.

It really doesn't matter which OS you run if that data is being stored off-site. That's the main issue these days, and that is why in this "internet age" things like "My OS is more secure than yours" is a much weaker argument than it was in the 95-2005 decade.