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N.S.A. Foils Much Internet Encryption

nytimes.com

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Re: N.S.A. Foils Much Internet Encryption

#281

Post by swombat »

dailyrorschach wrote: post #38
a3n wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess I'm with you on the ability to crack. Any researcher should be able to try as hard as they want, and succeed. I draw the line at collecting everything without specific warrants, regardless of what they do with it, against their charter and the Constitution. I draw the line at hardware backdoors for equipment that I buy, and insertion of vulnerabilities into encryption standards that I take advantage of. Or I…

I'd agree with that. I've often been wondering if where we're headed is a some kind of reform compromise. Not that I think it's ideal or right, but for example I could see the NSA having a Chinese wall around data for Americans, such that FBI and other investigators could not use data collected by the NSA, but could open their own collections with a warrant. I'm quite opposed to what the NSA has done - but I don't se…

As a non-American, I find your lack of support for people who weren't born in your little patch of land quite uninspiring.

Re: N.S.A. Foils Much Internet Encryption

#282

Post by betterunix »

anigbrowl wrote: post #276
betterunix wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is not just about cryptanalysis. The NSA has been deliberately introducing weaknesses into cryptosystems used by the general public. That is beyond keeping cryptanalysis techniques secret, which we all assumed they would do and which few really drew any issue with. We are talking about an honest-to-goodness conspiracy , one that yesterday many would have written off as a conspiracy theory that was not even worth…

Basically, what we thought were the rules of the game Er...speak for yourself buddy. If you thought that you could get proper crypto security from a boxed software product then I'd like to offer you a fantastic deal on a bridge.

There is a difference between incompetence / mistakes, which we know to expect from cryptosystems, and deliberate sabotage.

Re: N.S.A. Foils Much Internet Encryption

#283

Post by lukifer »

tptacek wrote: post #85

You can't have read Applied Cryptography from the mid-90s and not understand this to have been NSA's M.O. from the jump. Bruce Scheier, who was quoted in the Guardian piece about the same story, is America's foremost popularizer of the notion of NSA as crypto's global passive adversary. People who build real cryptosystems have never, ever been allowed to rely on the goodwill of the NSA not to cryptanalyze their syste…

Crypto noob here: Is it feasible to subvert "unknown unknown" vulneraties by applying multiple layers of different forms of encryption? While a chain is only as strong as its weakest link, it intuitively seems like encrypted data is as strong as its strongest link.

Re: N.S.A. Foils Much Internet Encryption

#284

Post by anigbrowl »

gknoy wrote: post #172
tptacek wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, I'm a little baffled by Schneier's reaction to this. The revelation is advanced cryptanalytic capabilities at NSA, which is literally an article of faith with Schneier. Why is he freaking out about this when he didn't instead freak out about wholesale call record database dumps or AT&T fiber taps?

I think there is a fundamental difference advanced Cryptanalysis (which we always assumed they had due to hiring practices and history) and being able to break crypto by subverting infrastructure. If the NSA said, "Our super smart brain trust figured out how to own your stuff with math five years ago ... ha ha!", I think we would be Totally Fine with that. Hats off to them for winning that game, but at least they pla…

But speaking as a non-American here, what do you expect? The NSA is in the spying business, and ultimately its performance is measured by results, not methodologies. All this hand-wringing is a bit like people expressing horror over the discovery that the CIA sometimes stoops to burglary or deception.

I mean, in an ideal world the only way to compromise my password would be to for a beautiful lady spy to seduce me and trick me into revealing it in a moment of passion, but in the meantime it's a safer bet that they'll just try and fish it out of my modem/router/ISP/etc.

Note to NSA: I'm actually happily married, so please don't send over any beautiful lady spies, which would be totally awkward.

Re: N.S.A. Foils Much Internet Encryption

#285

Post by coldtea »

tptacek wrote: post #194
gamble wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even without naming the companies involved, it's very hard to imagine they are inserting backdoors in less-valued products while somehow missing the crown jewels of Windows and TPM.

Ah, so if we can imagine it, it must be true.

Well, that's what happens when they lose the "good faith".

Re: N.S.A. Foils Much Internet Encryption

#286

Post by RexRollman »

gamble wrote: post #236
m0nastic wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My argument isn't that the NSA hasn't backdoored TPM's (which I freely admit I can't convince you of), it's that TPM's are not "The Crown Jewels".

TPM 2.0 is a crown jewel for the NSA. Windows 8 full-disk encryption is based on TPM, and Windows 8.1 certification requires a TPM 2.0 module. It already is or soon will be universal in PC hardware. The NSA was involved its creation, and resisted changes to the standard. At the same time the German government was claiming there were no backdoors in Windows or TPM, privately they had already concluded it was compromis…

Yeah, I have to agree. The wide distribution of Windows makes it an important thing to have access to. In fact, I would go so far as to say that every commercial WDE is suspect.

Re: N.S.A. Foils Much Internet Encryption

#287

Post by superuser2 »

anigbrowl wrote: post #276
betterunix wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is not just about cryptanalysis. The NSA has been deliberately introducing weaknesses into cryptosystems used by the general public. That is beyond keeping cryptanalysis techniques secret, which we all assumed they would do and which few really drew any issue with. We are talking about an honest-to-goodness conspiracy , one that yesterday many would have written off as a conspiracy theory that was not even worth…

Basically, what we thought were the rules of the game Er...speak for yourself buddy. If you thought that you could get proper crypto security from a boxed software product then I'd like to offer you a fantastic deal on a bridge.

Do you think you can write one yourself? How many people are actually qualified to do that?

Where do you think one would get proper crypto?

Re: N.S.A. Foils Much Internet Encryption

#288

Post by anigbrowl »

betterunix wrote: post #282
anigbrowl wrote: post #276

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Basically, what we thought were the rules of the game Er...speak for yourself buddy. If you thought that you could get proper crypto security from a boxed software product then I'd like to offer you a fantastic deal on a bridge.

There is a difference between incompetence / mistakes, which we know to expect from cryptosystems, and deliberate sabotage.

I said nothing about incompetence. Rather, I assume that any commercial product of that kind is compromised, because spies have such an obvious interest in compromising it. I mean, if I were a spy I wouldn't just ask companies to put backdoors in (although I would do that too), I would actively spy on the software companies. I have always assumed powerful intelligence agencies adopted a zero-sum approach to things, because ultimately they are judged on results, not a purity score.

Re: N.S.A. Foils Much Internet Encryption

#289

Post by mhax »

tptacek wrote: post #85

You can't have read Applied Cryptography from the mid-90s and not understand this to have been NSA's M.O. from the jump. Bruce Scheier, who was quoted in the Guardian piece about the same story, is America's foremost popularizer of the notion of NSA as crypto's global passive adversary. People who build real cryptosystems have never, ever been allowed to rely on the goodwill of the NSA not to cryptanalyze their syste…

While taking for granted the NSA's M.O. (also having read Applied Cryptography some years ago) this leak somehow hits harder than the rest.

Yes, we had to assume it was happening and we'd have been foolish not to. But to have it laid out in no uncertain terms, is somehow quite devastating.

Re: N.S.A. Foils Much Internet Encryption

#290

Post by tytso »

magicalist wrote: post #150
tytso wrote: post #87

I am so glad I resisted pressure from engineers working at Intel to let /dev/random in Linux rely blindly on the output of the RDRAND instructure. Relying solely on an implementation sealed inside a chip and which is impossible to audit is a BAD idea. Quoting from the article... "By this year, the Sigint Enabling Project had found ways inside some of the encryption chips that scramble information for businesses and g…

Was that really a seriously considered plan? I don't see how that would ever be a suitable /dev/random replacement. Obviously it works for /dev/urandom, but it should be added to the entropy pool for /dev/random at most.

Not only did it happen before, just TODAY I had to fight back an attempt by a Red Hat engineer who wanted to add a configuration option which would once again allow RDRAND to be used directly, bypassing the entropy pool: https://lkml.org/lkml/2013/9/5/212
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