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Julian Assange: Cryptographic Call to Arms

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Re: Julian Assange: Cryptographic Call to Arms

#31

Post by belorn »

18hrs wrote: post #22
acabal wrote: post #18

I agree with the sentiment, but Assange's prose is a little dense. Maybe it's OK for his target audience, as I assume the layman won't be reading cryptome.org. What we really need is a champion to explain in relatable, plain English why encryption is essential even for mom and dad, and to explain it in a more mainstream venue. I think a big reason why people don't encrypt mail, etc., is because: 1) they don't know wh…

For this reason I am fond of Jonathan Zittrain. Not that he particularly aligns with Assange but he is very good at presenting these issues in a compelling manner.

Eben Moglen has also made several good talks about the abolishment of privacy, and its effects. I would especially suggest listening to the Berlin talk made this year called "Why Freedom of Thought Requires Free Media and Why Free Media Require Free Technology".

Re: Julian Assange: Cryptographic Call to Arms

#32

Post by plaguuuuuu »

beloch wrote: post #26

Assange certainly has a flair for the dramatic... but he doesn't understand encryption. http://www.zdnet.com/blog/btl/wikileaks-insurance-file-decry... Wikileaks has distributed AES encrypted files that it claims are full of government secrets. They have withheld the information needed to decrypt some of those files ( although some keys have leaked from wikileaks, oddly enough) as a deterrent to persecution by govern…

So Assange, who has actually developed part of Truecrypt, doesn't understand encryption. In that case I wonder what the rest of the tc team is smoking to let him contribute :p

The use of AES is clever. It will be crackable at some point in the future for sure - everyone knows this. I'd be willing to put 20 bucks on NSA already having cracked it anyway, even if that makes me one of those tinfoil hat types, but that would make no difference to Wikileaks - in fact it probably plays into Wikileaks' hands.

The fact that the insurance file probably -will- be cracked at some point in the future means that the information will ultimately be public. Perhaps this encourages more prompt action against Assange but it's a matter of weighing up this risk with the perhaps higher priority of eventually releasing the information - even if every mechanism of distributing the key in case of emergency fails, it will be cracked ONE day. I think this strategy is easily plausible enough.

One could claim that Assange's strategy is poor - certainly being under house arrest hasn't been empowering - but saying Assange is ignorant of encryption is ridiculous.

Re: Julian Assange: Cryptographic Call to Arms

#33

Post by codeulike »

beloch wrote: post #26

Assange certainly has a flair for the dramatic... but he doesn't understand encryption. http://www.zdnet.com/blog/btl/wikileaks-insurance-file-decry... Wikileaks has distributed AES encrypted files that it claims are full of government secrets. They have withheld the information needed to decrypt some of those files ( although some keys have leaked from wikileaks, oddly enough) as a deterrent to persecution by govern…

You're talking about the Insurance Files, right? Why would Assange give a toss if the government decrypted that? Its their stuff in the first place. Also, the Insurance Files were an exception to the way Wikileaks usually did business, not a demonstration of their typical use of encryption.

What use would a one-time-pad be with the only key around his neck when he got arrested? He needed a dead-mans-handle type arrangement.

There are lots of things that can be claimed about Assange, but claiming that he doesn't know encryption is not one of them.

ref: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WikiLeaks#Insurance_files

Re: Julian Assange: Cryptographic Call to Arms

#34

Post by casca »

beloch wrote: post #26

Assange certainly has a flair for the dramatic... but he doesn't understand encryption. http://www.zdnet.com/blog/btl/wikileaks-insurance-file-decry... Wikileaks has distributed AES encrypted files that it claims are full of government secrets. They have withheld the information needed to decrypt some of those files ( although some keys have leaked from wikileaks, oddly enough) as a deterrent to persecution by govern…

To anyone reading this, please note that while some of beloch's points are valid, the analysis of AES and the breakability thereof is not. While it's true that at some point it's likely that AES will be broken, it's also true that at some point our solar system will be destroyed.

OTP is theoretically unbreakable, but that would require a key that is as long as the ciphertext, at which point Mr Assange can just keep the data on the USB stick around his neck.

Re: Julian Assange: Cryptographic Call to Arms

#35

Post by guessWhy »

beloch wrote: post #26

Assange certainly has a flair for the dramatic... but he doesn't understand encryption. http://www.zdnet.com/blog/btl/wikileaks-insurance-file-decry... Wikileaks has distributed AES encrypted files that it claims are full of government secrets. They have withheld the information needed to decrypt some of those files ( although some keys have leaked from wikileaks, oddly enough) as a deterrent to persecution by govern…

a) No one time pad is used, because that would make the whole point of publishing the encrypted blob pointless in the first place. The point of publishing it is that the key could be published very easily in an emergency, e.g. using a tweet. If the one time pad key has to be published, he could just keep the data to himself and publish it unencrypted later. Pretty pointless.

b) The argument about deferred encryption may be correct. However this is not related to the relations between Wikileaks and any government. (The argument may also be wrong. It could turn out that decrypting AES is still hard even in 100 years. In any case it is likely to be safe until the data is de-classified anyway.)

Re: Julian Assange: Cryptographic Call to Arms

#36

Post by [deleted] »

psykotic wrote: post #29
beloch wrote: post #26

Assange certainly has a flair for the dramatic... but he doesn't understand encryption. http://www.zdnet.com/blog/btl/wikileaks-insurance-file-decry... Wikileaks has distributed AES encrypted files that it claims are full of government secrets. They have withheld the information needed to decrypt some of those files ( although some keys have leaked from wikileaks, oddly enough) as a deterrent to persecution by govern…

> AES is based on factoring. And you say _he_ doesn't understand cryptography?

[deleted]

Re: Julian Assange: Cryptographic Call to Arms

#37

Post by munin »

beloch wrote: post #26

Assange certainly has a flair for the dramatic... but he doesn't understand encryption. http://www.zdnet.com/blog/btl/wikileaks-insurance-file-decry... Wikileaks has distributed AES encrypted files that it claims are full of government secrets. They have withheld the information needed to decrypt some of those files ( although some keys have leaked from wikileaks, oddly enough) as a deterrent to persecution by govern…

so the purpose of the whole scheme is so that you can publish a very small amount of information that would decrypt the entire blob. a key has these properties.

the 'key' in this case would be a multi-gb random document. how do you publish this quickly?

Re: Julian Assange: Cryptographic Call to Arms

#38

Post by [deleted] »

beloch wrote: post #26

Assange certainly has a flair for the dramatic... but he doesn't understand encryption. http://www.zdnet.com/blog/btl/wikileaks-insurance-file-decry... Wikileaks has distributed AES encrypted files that it claims are full of government secrets. They have withheld the information needed to decrypt some of those files ( although some keys have leaked from wikileaks, oddly enough) as a deterrent to persecution by govern…

[deleted]

Re: Julian Assange: Cryptographic Call to Arms

#39

Post by beloch »

psykotic wrote: post #29
beloch wrote: post #26

Assange certainly has a flair for the dramatic... but he doesn't understand encryption. http://www.zdnet.com/blog/btl/wikileaks-insurance-file-decry... Wikileaks has distributed AES encrypted files that it claims are full of government secrets. They have withheld the information needed to decrypt some of those files ( although some keys have leaked from wikileaks, oddly enough) as a deterrent to persecution by govern…

> AES is based on factoring. And you say _he_ doesn't understand cryptography?

I'm not in classical crypto, so I occasionally mess up and call algorithms based on computational difficult "based on factoring". The end result is the same though. Publication with delay.

Re: Julian Assange: Cryptographic Call to Arms

#40

Post by codeulike »

spindritf wrote: post #4

> The world is not sliding, but galloping into a new transnational dystopia. This development has not been properly recognized outside of national security circles. I agree with Moxie Marlinspike on that, we were preparing for fascism but got social democracy[1]. Assange is still preparing for fascism. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eG0KrT6pBPk

In that video, Moxie argues for a slightly different focus due to a different situation, but the overall concern is the same.
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