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More Encryption Is Not the Solution

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Re: More Encryption Is Not the Solution

#81

Post by NegativeK »

EthanHeilman wrote: post #75
Nrsolis wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the take-away from this article is that the political/legal environment is part of implementation detail you need to consider when considering a "private" communication mechanism. No crypto-system is truly secure unless BOTH sides can be trusted. If either one is even remotely possible to compromise, then that will happen . In the case where one of those parties is well-known and has something to lose, you ca…

>No crypto-system is truly secure unless BOTH sides can be trusted. If either one is even remotely possible to compromise, then that will happen. Depends on what you want to keep secret and mean by secure. Homomorphic encryption ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homomorphic_computing ) schemes work even when an end-point is untrusted. For example a game of mental poker ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mental_poker ) each…

Homomorphic encryption, at the moment, doesn't work at all if you want practicality.

Re: More Encryption Is Not the Solution

#82

Post by dobbsbob »

Zigurd wrote: post #62
Nrsolis wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the take-away from this article is that the political/legal environment is part of implementation detail you need to consider when considering a "private" communication mechanism. No crypto-system is truly secure unless BOTH sides can be trusted. If either one is even remotely possible to compromise, then that will happen . In the case where one of those parties is well-known and has something to lose, you ca…

Of course we have a form of Clipper through such agreements. Lotus Notes had a secret key escrow mechanism that was discovered in the '90s. It is very unlikely that Notes was the only supposedly secure product with secret arrangements with law enforcement and/or intelligence services, and it is even less likely that the pace and intensity of such arrangements has declined since then. On the other hand, Edward Snowden…

Snowden also admitted if they are personally targeting you it's game over unless you're a master of tradecraft and encryption. If you have an unencrypted bootloader then they can break into your hotel room while you're either sleeping (or drugged) or not around and evil maid attack. They did this in Dubai already to a Ukrainian fraudster they were after.

They could also just plant bugs/cameras and watch you type in passwords, or rent the room beside you and set up Van Eck/TEMPEST equipment. They could mess with the power socket in the wall to do encryption analysis as well or replace your powerbar with an evil bar.

You would need guards to watch your room, a SICP tent and TEMPEST proof NATO standards laptop, OpenBSD to softraid encrypt the discs leaving no bootloader (or carry around the bootloader on a usb or CD), and you would have to custom manufacture the equipment yourself in Taiwan to ensure no backdoors and pick it up in person, or manually solder in hardware firewalls to block signals from leaking out of proprietary blobs.

Re: More Encryption Is Not the Solution

#83

Post by EthanHeilman »

NegativeK wrote: post #81
EthanHeilman wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>No crypto-system is truly secure unless BOTH sides can be trusted. If either one is even remotely possible to compromise, then that will happen. Depends on what you want to keep secret and mean by secure. Homomorphic encryption ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homomorphic_computing ) schemes work even when an end-point is untrusted. For example a game of mental poker ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mental_poker ) each…

Homomorphic encryption, at the moment, doesn't work at all if you want practicality.

Fully homomorphic encryption isn't very practical yet, but partial homomorphic schemes such as blind signing have been practical for 10 years.

Re: More Encryption Is Not the Solution

#84

Post by throw7 »

conformal wrote: post #42
Nrsolis wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the take-away from this article is that the political/legal environment is part of implementation detail you need to consider when considering a "private" communication mechanism. No crypto-system is truly secure unless BOTH sides can be trusted. If either one is even remotely possible to compromise, then that will happen . In the case where one of those parties is well-known and has something to lose, you ca…

> Have YOU inspected your CPU/Firmware/OS/Applications for backdoors? Even with the full source code? this is absolutely spot on, especially the firmware. nobody talks about it and the attack surface is huge. just to be explicit, hardware backdoors exist as well :)

Exactly. There was revelation in a recent court case that the feds had the ability to turn on and listen in on conversations from your cell phone that you thought was off.

Re: More Encryption Is Not the Solution

#85

Post by Zigurd »

dobbsbob wrote: post #82
Zigurd wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course we have a form of Clipper through such agreements. Lotus Notes had a secret key escrow mechanism that was discovered in the '90s. It is very unlikely that Notes was the only supposedly secure product with secret arrangements with law enforcement and/or intelligence services, and it is even less likely that the pace and intensity of such arrangements has declined since then. On the other hand, Edward Snowden…

Snowden also admitted if they are personally targeting you it's game over unless you're a master of tradecraft and encryption. If you have an unencrypted bootloader then they can break into your hotel room while you're either sleeping (or drugged) or not around and evil maid attack. They did this in Dubai already to a Ukrainian fraudster they were after. They could also just plant bugs/cameras and watch you type in p…

That's correct, but black bag jobs don't scale.

Re: More Encryption Is Not the Solution

#86

Post by russellsprouts »

gpcz wrote: post #76
cavilling_elite wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is feasible today. Although it takes a decent skill set. Open source communities like OpenCore.org have enough FPGA architecture to build your own RISC computer from scratch. I suspect as FPGA's become more popular and speeds improve the hacker community will move towards one-off computers they made themselves. This coupled with your idea of 3d printing for casing is interesting.

Doesn't that just offload the backdoor potential to the FPGA rather than a CPU?

I think it would be impossible, from a computer science standpoint, to create a backdoor in an FPGA that could compromise your own OS, in a general case. Perhaps, the computer that you use to program the chip could be compromised, to change the code that is put on the FPGA.

Re: More Encryption Is Not the Solution

#87

Post by gpcz »

russellsprouts wrote: post #86
gpcz wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doesn't that just offload the backdoor potential to the FPGA rather than a CPU?

I think it would be impossible, from a computer science standpoint, to create a backdoor in an FPGA that could compromise your own OS, in a general case. Perhaps, the computer that you use to program the chip could be compromised, to change the code that is put on the FPGA.

When I wrote that, I was under the assumption that people would use open-source CPU designs from OpenCore for convenience. With a little help from Xilinx and Altera, it wouldn't be too hard for a government to have the synthesizer detect when an OpenCore design is being used and surreptitiously put a backdoor in. I admit that it would be hard to write software to simultaneously detect a completely unique CPU design is being synthesized, figure out its instruction set and weaknesses, and finally create a hardware backdoor that could circumvent any software written for that device.

As always, there's a tradeoff between cost and security. How many hardware hackers are good enough (or motivated enough) to design their own brand new ISA and CPU design, then bootstrap a compiler and OS for their homemade CPU? Maybe 0.001% of the population, if that.

Re: More Encryption Is Not the Solution

#88

Post by cinquemb »

gpcz wrote: post #87
russellsprouts wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it would be impossible, from a computer science standpoint, to create a backdoor in an FPGA that could compromise your own OS, in a general case. Perhaps, the computer that you use to program the chip could be compromised, to change the code that is put on the FPGA.

When I wrote that, I was under the assumption that people would use open-source CPU designs from OpenCore for convenience. With a little help from Xilinx and Altera, it wouldn't be too hard for a government to have the synthesizer detect when an OpenCore design is being used and surreptitiously put a backdoor in. I admit that it would be hard to write software to simultaneously detect a completely unique CPU design i…

Well, I'd be down to try at somepoint, if I knew where to start. I feel like moving forward from now, in general, the future will require these skills in order to maintain some sovernty over onself.
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