How Snowden's Email Provider Tried To Foil The FBI Using Tiny Font • Hacker News Board

Re: How Snowden's Email Provider Tried To Foil The FBI Using Tiny Font

#21

Post by ethanhunt_ » Fri, Oct 04, 2013, 5:13 AM UTC

anologwintermut wrote: post #17

spikels wrote: post #14

How can you not love this guy? Please donate to his defense fund: http://tinyurl.com/m65n4ko http://lavabit.com/ Lavabit Legal Defense Fund 10387 Main Street, Suite 205 Fairfax, VA 22030 (703) 291-1999

Because, if this article is correct[0], his refusal to obey a court order is the only reason the FBI made him hand over private keys. The story is the FBI asked for Snowden's emails and correspondence. Lavabit said they would not hand over the information(but admitted they had the technical capability ... it was server side encryption after all). Only after that refusal did the FBI start taking more drastic action. T…

> The story is the FBI asked for Snowden's emails and correspondence.

That's not the story that you linked.

From the article you linked: "The filings show that Lavabit was served on June 28 with a so-called “pen register” order requiring it to record, and provide the government with, the e-mail “from” and “to” lines on every e-mail, as well as the IP address used to access the mailbox. Because they provide only metadata, pen register orders can be obtained without “probable cause” that the target has committed a crime."

Re: How Snowden's Email Provider Tried To Foil The FBI Using Tiny Font

#22

Post by sxp » Fri, Oct 04, 2013, 5:19 AM UTC

>To make use of these keys, the FBI would have to manually input all 2,560 characters, and one incorrect keystroke in this laborious process would render the FBI collection system incapable of collecting decrypted data

That would take an intern less than an hour to digitize. Maybe three interns if you needed redundancy. This seems like a completely useless action on Levison's part since it end up giving the FBI the information they wanted but will still piss them off.

Re: How Snowden's Email Provider Tried To Foil The FBI Using Tiny Font

#23

Post by guelo » Fri, Oct 04, 2013, 5:23 AM UTC

anologwintermut wrote: post #17

spikels wrote: post #14

How can you not love this guy? Please donate to his defense fund: http://tinyurl.com/m65n4ko http://lavabit.com/ Lavabit Legal Defense Fund 10387 Main Street, Suite 205 Fairfax, VA 22030 (703) 291-1999

Because, if this article is correct[0], his refusal to obey a court order is the only reason the FBI made him hand over private keys. The story is the FBI asked for Snowden's emails and correspondence. Lavabit said they would not hand over the information(but admitted they had the technical capability ... it was server side encryption after all). Only after that refusal did the FBI start taking more drastic action. T…

After studying the requirements Lavabit said they could write code to do it for $3500. But the FBI said they didn't trust Lavabit to do it right and thought it cost too much. They demanded direct access. http://imgur.com/A3RNQWY

Re: How Snowden's Email Provider Tried To Foil The FBI Using Tiny Font

#24

Post by kudzoo » Fri, Oct 04, 2013, 5:27 AM UTC

guelo wrote: post #23

anologwintermut wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because, if this article is correct[0], his refusal to obey a court order is the only reason the FBI made him hand over private keys. The story is the FBI asked for Snowden's emails and correspondence. Lavabit said they would not hand over the information(but admitted they had the technical capability ... it was server side encryption after all). Only after that refusal did the FBI start taking more drastic action. T…

After studying the requirements Lavabit said they could write code to do it for $3500. But the FBI said they didn't trust Lavabit to do it right and thought it cost too much. They demanded direct access. http://imgur.com/A3RNQWY

Why is scp redacted? And only partially so...

Re: How Snowden's Email Provider Tried To Foil The FBI Using Tiny Font

#25

Post by ars » Fri, Oct 04, 2013, 5:28 AM UTC

kabdib wrote: post #13

Other wonderful delivery methods: - Baked into cuneiform - Wax tablets. "Oh, sorry, it got hot in my car and they're a little runny..." - In the form of a crossword puzzle. - Knitted into a scarf. "Perl one, skip two..." Best to have hardware from which it is impossible to export a key.

> Best to have hardware from which it is impossible to export a key.

How is that best? Just hand over the hardware.

Re: How Snowden's Email Provider Tried To Foil The FBI Using Tiny Font

#26

Post by jgeraert » Fri, Oct 04, 2013, 5:33 AM UTC

Clever. We did something similar for a friend getting married. Instead of giving his present directly we created a text file encrypted with his public pgp key. We printed out the ascii-armored cryptotext and handed it over. He had lots of fun typing it back into his computer.

Re: How Snowden's Email Provider Tried To Foil The FBI Using Tiny Font

#27

Post by lifeformed » Fri, Oct 04, 2013, 5:42 AM UTC

kabdib wrote: post #13

Other wonderful delivery methods: - Baked into cuneiform - Wax tablets. "Oh, sorry, it got hot in my car and they're a little runny..." - In the form of a crossword puzzle. - Knitted into a scarf. "Perl one, skip two..." Best to have hardware from which it is impossible to export a key.

In all seriousness, is it possible to design a system where it is simply impossible to hand over data to a third party?

Re: How Snowden's Email Provider Tried To Foil The FBI Using Tiny Font

#28

Post by guelo » Fri, Oct 04, 2013, 5:44 AM UTC

kudzoo wrote: post #24

guelo wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

After studying the requirements Lavabit said they could write code to do it for $3500. But the FBI said they didn't trust Lavabit to do it right and thought it cost too much. They demanded direct access. http://imgur.com/A3RNQWY

Why is scp redacted? And only partially so...

I think whoever created that imgur image had the word highlighted when they captured it. If you look at the pdf it's not there. (page 100 http://s3.documentcloud.org/documents/801182/redacted-pleadi...)

Re: How Snowden's Email Provider Tried To Foil The FBI Using Tiny Font

#29

Post by pavanky » Fri, Oct 04, 2013, 5:57 AM UTC

kabdib wrote: post #13

Other wonderful delivery methods: - Baked into cuneiform - Wax tablets. "Oh, sorry, it got hot in my car and they're a little runny..." - In the form of a crossword puzzle. - Knitted into a scarf. "Perl one, skip two..." Best to have hardware from which it is impossible to export a key.

one 4 point character per page, delivered as a stack, but unstapled. Bonus points if the pages are numbered, but are sampled from a psuedo random number generator with large cycles.

Re: How Snowden's Email Provider Tried To Foil The FBI Using Tiny Font

#30

Post by adrianb » Fri, Oct 04, 2013, 6:35 AM UTC

lifeformed wrote: post #27

kabdib wrote: post #13

Other wonderful delivery methods: - Baked into cuneiform - Wax tablets. "Oh, sorry, it got hot in my car and they're a little runny..." - In the form of a crossword puzzle. - Knitted into a scarf. "Perl one, skip two..." Best to have hardware from which it is impossible to export a key.

In all seriousness, is it possible to design a system where it is simply impossible to hand over data to a third party?

I believe Julian Assange worked on a system that would make it impossible for an external entity to determine if there is any useful information on a data partition. Basically you would have a hard drive full of random numbers and it would be unfeasible to determine if there is any actual information on it, without the right keys and tools.