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Schneier is not just a blog! by Anonymous Coward · 2015-10-28 11:16 · Score: 5, Informative · on Revisiting the Infamous Sony BMG Rootkit Scandal 10 Years Later (networkworld.com)

It contains priceless discussions, too! Often more technical and polite than most forums..

In case you missed them, here is some coverage of the Sony BMG Rootkit and a few later articles which reference it:

Schneier is not just a blog! by Anonymous Coward · 2015-10-28 11:16 · Score: 5, Informative · on Revisiting the Infamous Sony BMG Rootkit Scandal 10 Years Later (networkworld.com)

It contains priceless discussions, too! Often more technical and polite than most forums..

In case you missed them, here is some coverage of the Sony BMG Rootkit and a few later articles which reference it:

Schneier is not just a blog! by Anonymous Coward · 2015-10-28 11:16 · Score: 5, Informative · on Revisiting the Infamous Sony BMG Rootkit Scandal 10 Years Later (networkworld.com)

It contains priceless discussions, too! Often more technical and polite than most forums..

In case you missed them, here is some coverage of the Sony BMG Rootkit and a few later articles which reference it:

Schneier is not just a blog! by Anonymous Coward · 2015-10-28 11:16 · Score: 5, Informative · on Revisiting the Infamous Sony BMG Rootkit Scandal 10 Years Later (networkworld.com)

It contains priceless discussions, too! Often more technical and polite than most forums..

In case you missed them, here is some coverage of the Sony BMG Rootkit and a few later articles which reference it:

Schneier is not just a blog! by Anonymous Coward · 2015-10-28 11:16 · Score: 5, Informative · on Revisiting the Infamous Sony BMG Rootkit Scandal 10 Years Later (networkworld.com)

It contains priceless discussions, too! Often more technical and polite than most forums..

In case you missed them, here is some coverage of the Sony BMG Rootkit and a few later articles which reference it:

Schneier is not just a blog! by Anonymous Coward · 2015-10-28 11:16 · Score: 5, Informative · on Revisiting the Infamous Sony BMG Rootkit Scandal 10 Years Later (networkworld.com)

It contains priceless discussions, too! Often more technical and polite than most forums..

In case you missed them, here is some coverage of the Sony BMG Rootkit and a few later articles which reference it:

Re:Bruce Schneier's View? by rastos1 · 2015-10-26 20:29 · Score: 0 · on US Military Websites Still Relying On SHA-1 (netcraft.com)

https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2005/02/sha1_broken.html

"Impossible" for Apple by c · 2015-10-21 01:16 · Score: 4, Interesting · on Apple Tells US Judge It's 'Impossible' To Break Through Locks On New iPhones (reuters.com)

It's a straight up application of Schneier's Law:

Anyone, from the most clueless amateur to the best cryptographer, can create an algorithm that he himself can't break.

-- Bruce Schneier

Someone might be able to break it, but if they can I doubt they'd talk about it.

Re:Logjam by Lothsahn · 2015-10-15 14:43 · Score: 1 · on How Is the NSA Breaking So Much Crypto? (freedom-to-tinker.com)

ECDH is possibly backdoored by the NSA. From what we know, DH is mathematically sound, provided you generate your own, large enough (2048b or larger) prime.

ECDH in TLS only uses curves proposed by NIST. Some cryptographers believe that constants used to pre-compute the curves are in fact backdoored, which would explain how they decrypt most of the traffic. Curve 25519 and a few others are very likely safe, but not available in TLS1.2. ALL available ECDH curves in TLS were proposed by NIST.

I believe that between precomputed ECDH curves and Logjam, the NSA is able to decrypt nearly https traffic.

https://www.schneier.com/blog/...
"I no longer trust the constants. I believe the NSA has manipulated them through their relationships with industry." - Bruce Schneier on ECDHE curves in TLS

I trust Bruce.

Ideally, the standards body would introduce curve 25519 to TLS1.2. Until then, server operators need to take this advice, configure their servers to prefer DHE (not EC) with 2k+ keys, and turn off older ciphers including EC*.

Oh, and get firefox to fix this bug: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/s...

Re:Breaking. lol. by buchner.johannes · 2015-10-15 12:40 · Score: 2 · on How Is the NSA Breaking So Much Crypto? (freedom-to-tinker.com)

Backdoors. thank you very much.

Nope. They mention that in the paper and then proceed to show how it can be done without them.

Just because it can be done without backdoors, doesn't mean the NSA isn't going the easy route. That the NSA is tapping large datacenters before encryption and has access to the private keys of major companies is known now. Schneier says:

The new Snowden revelations are explosive. Basically, the NSA is able to decrypt most of the Internet. They're doing it primarily by cheating, not by mathematics.

Re:Quantum-safe encryption? by juanfgs · 2015-10-15 12:28 · Score: 1 · on How Is the NSA Breaking So Much Crypto? (freedom-to-tinker.com)

my mind isn't cooperating today, pretty much any semantically secure algorithm with a key space of 256 bits or more should be safe https://www.schneier.com/blog/...

Re:Please add this to the FAQ by Zontar+The+Mindless · 2015-10-07 11:08 · Score: 2 · on Jimmy Wales and Former NSA Chief Ridicule Government Plans To Ban Encryption

I can't believe anybody is able to suggest "government-only backdoors" while keeping a straight face, in the wake of this recent epic FAIL based on exactly the same premise.

Re:Well there goes the cipherhood by Bob+the+Super+Hamste · 2015-10-06 06:50 · Score: 5, Interesting · on Team Constructs Silicon 2-qubit Gate, Enabling Construction of Quantum Computers (phys.org)

Well AES, Twofish, serpent, etc. were all designed with quantum computers in mind hence the 256 bit key lengths. To brute force with even with quantum computers it takes more energy than can be reasonably harvested from our sun. What I wonder is if there are other weaknesses in symmetric key crypto that can be exploited with quantum computers that aren't a brute force attack. This is where the interesting results will happen.

Re:Technology, not politics by Okian+Warrior · 2015-09-13 17:33 · Score: 2 · on Ask Slashdot: Best Country To Avoid Government Surveillance?

Assuming "back door" means "any security bug, including a but that nobody knows about yet," well, "good luck with that."

There's a move afoot to rebrand lawful intercept away from the term "back door". This is a transparent attempt to gain legitimacy by framing, making it seem more palatable to users.

Bruce Schneier even commented on the practice, after hearing Keith Alexander (quote copied below, from the linked article).

A backdoor is what it is: an engineered way to bypass security, supposedly only used for lawful means.

Don't drink the coolaid, and think about what people say instead of just repeating what they say.

A backdoor isn't a bug, and rebranding it to sound safe doesn't make it so.

[FBI Director Comey said] There is a misconception that building a lawful intercept solution into a system requires a so-called "back door," one that foreign adversaries and hackers may try to exploit.

But that isn't true. We aren't seeking a back-door approach. We want to use the front door, with clarity and transparency, and with clear guidance provided by law. We are completely comfortable with court orders and legal process--front doors that provide the evidence and information we need to investigate crime and prevent terrorist attacks.

Re:Seems like a little random build size by cold+fjord · 2015-09-07 03:38 · Score: 2 · on Debian Working on Reproducible Builds To Make Binaries Trustable

That's a tricky problem.

Countering "Trusting Trust"

Re:How do people not understand by Lennie · 2015-08-21 05:04 · Score: 2 · on Jeb Bush Comes Out Against Encryption

Bruce Scheier said it best:

Metadata Equals Surveillance
https://www.schneier.com/blog/...

Re:Is "Snowden document" a new English word now? by ShaunC · 2015-08-17 15:07 · Score: 1 · on How an Obscure Acronym Helped Link AT&T To NSA Spying

I remember read it somewhere that many later leaking documents only named after Snowden to cover the real sources.

We can reasonably assume that any documents containing dates or references beyond June 2013 didn't come from Snowden. He himself denies providing the documentation of NSA's spying on Angela Merkel. Bruce Schneier has a blog entry making the case for multiple individuals. It seems likely to me that there are at least three, counting Snowden (and not counting Manning).

In any event, the NYT article about the latest set of documents says "AT&T's cooperation has involved a broad range of classified activities, according to the documents, which date from 2003 to 2013" and goes on to explicitly source them to Snowden.

Biometrics are not security by ShaunC · 2015-08-04 04:48 · Score: 1 · on EFF and MuckRock Need Your Help Tracking Biometric Surveillance

This headline reminds me of the "enter your credit card number here to see if it's been stolen" type of things. I realize that's not what's going on here, but that form asks for a lot, and while much of it is optional, I'm hesitant to touch it.

Biometric markers are not security and should never be used as more than one component of a multifactor approach. Any system created to read and authenticate a biometric identifier can already be tricked by today's technology into accepting either a reproduction of that identifier or a surreptitiously obtained sample of the true identifier. Fingerprints can be lifted and faked; blood or other molecular scans can be fooled by misappropriated material; even iris scans can be forged. It's really not hard to get someone's fingerprint, hair, blood, saliva, iris scan, or similar if you have more than a passing interest. Tomorrow's public technology will make it even simpler for small-time criminals, and heaven only knows what level of planting/forgery law enforcement and intelligence are already capable of.

For many years, when I've objected to biometrics by saying things like "my fingerprint is irrevocable, it isn't like a password where I can just change it once it's compromised," the counter-argument has always been "oh don't worry, no one is actually keeping *scans* of your fingerprints, they're condensed into some mathematical hash." That might be accurate for the fingerprint scanner on your iPhone, but it's bullshit when it comes to the government. The recent OPM compromise has many outlets reporting that federal employees' fingerprints themselves were compromised. Not hashes, but fingerprints that can be reproduced, either ink on paper or the high-res digital version that I'm more familiar with. I'm ready and willing to listen to the government's opinion on how those will be replaced...

Anyone relying on biometrics for security is in for a Bad Time.

Cameron by koan · 2015-07-31 04:14 · Score: 1 · on Cameron Tells Pornography Websites To Block Access By Children Or Face Closure

* All Britons' communications must be easy for criminals, voyeurs and foreign spies to intercept.

* Any firms within reach of the UK government must be banned from producing secure software.

* All major code repositories, such as Github and Sourceforge, must be blocked.

* Search engines must not answer queries about web-pages that carry secure software.

* Virtually all academic security work in the UK must cease -- security research must only take place in proprietary research environments where there is no onus to publish one's findings, such as industry R&D and the security services.

* All packets in and out of the country, and within the country, must be subject to Chinese-style deep-packet inspection and any packets that appear to originate from secure software must be dropped.

* Existing walled gardens (like IOs and games consoles) must be ordered to ban their users from installing secure software.

* Anyone visiting the country from abroad must have their smartphones held at the border until they leave.

* Proprietary operating system vendors (Microsoft and Apple) must be ordered to redesign their operating systems as walled gardens that only allow users to run software from an app store, which will not sell or give secure software to Britons.

* Free/open source operating systems -- that power the energy, banking, ecommerce, and infrastructure sectors -- must be banned outright.
https://www.schneier.com/blog/...

Re:LibreSSL (MOO!) by Demonoid-Penguin · 2015-07-22 17:17 · Score: 2 · on Bug Exposes OpenSSH Servers To Brute-Force Password Guessing Attacks

A strong, unique password (aka a secret) is the only thing that matters

A secret matters. A secret password is not the only thing that matters. The modern default for sshd is already protected against the attack in the story - I put the relevant default setting in the post you didn't read when replying id_rsa.pub is stored on the remote system (as ~/.ssh/authorized_keys) - the only way an attacker can have access to that is if they already have access to the remote system. If they have access to the system the game is already over.

Certificates are nothing but long passwords that people can't remember and thus need to store in plaintext.

Certificates are nothing but long and complex, far more than any password could be, that people can't remember so they don't make the common mistake of using weak passwords bruteforced by the attack in the main story (which only works if you've fucked with default sshd) , and thus need to store in plaintext if you stupidly don't use a passphrase

TFTFY.

If an attacker can read the public key stored in ~/.ssh/authorized_keys on the remote machine it's game over because they have access. If they have access it's still game over if you used a password.

If the attacker has access to the local system and you use passphrases to protect your ssh keys - it's still likely game over, just as it is if you use passwords only (because they can install spying processes).

The longer and more complex the secret string is the harder it is bruteforce - regardless of whether it's a password you type or one that supply by and encryption process. To say that one you type is more secure is just silly.

Claiming that good security is based on using authentication you can remember just shows how poor your understanding of security is. That's the most common failing - not a strength. Maybe if you read and understood Bruce Shneier's articles and forums instead of regurgitating sections you clearly don't understand, you'd have more credibility (you have none on his forums either).
Why do you think Bruce recommends using encryption keys for authentication? (Hint: he's a cryptographer)
Why do you think Bruce recommends people use a password manager rather on relying on the weakest link in the chain of security (the meatbag at the end)? He wrote a password manager for that reason. If you can remember the password it will be broken.

The problem is you don't realize what a password actually is in relation to security. [...]

You've posted the same sort of babble on Bruce's forum before - it's been debunked many times, you've been called out as a dangerous fool there. And I'll call you the same here.

Re:Shellphish here! by Joce640k · 2015-07-09 00:00 · Score: 1 · on DARPA's $4M Cyber-Threat Clash Down To Seven Challengers

Also let us know how an automated security product is supposed to work.

One of the fundamental tenets of 'security' is that it's a ongoing process, not a finished product:

https://www.schneier.com/essay...

Security theater questions by tepples · 2015-07-02 07:26 · Score: 2 · on Ask Slashdot: Dealing With Passwords Transmitted As Cleartext?

Send an e-mail with a verification URL

How do you encrypt this unique verification URL on its way to the subscriber to your service?

security questions

I'm sorry; I misread this as "security theater questions". See "The Curse of the Secret Question" by Bruce Schneier and "Wish-It-Was Two Factor" by Alex Papadimoulis.

Re:Beware 'appliances' by ShaunC · 2015-06-26 08:55 · Score: 2 · on Cisco Security Appliances Found To Have Default SSH Keys

This is a *security* focused appliance that made this goof from one of the more well regarded vendors in the market.

"Goof?" I'm not convinced. It's just as likely that this was engineered into the products intentionally.

News broke last year that NSA was intercepting Cisco equipment enroute to customers and making a few tweaks. Cisco made a big production a few months ago about how they were suddenly willing to ship to random addresses to avoid NSA interdiction. Perhaps that's because whatever NSA needs is already built in, and always has been, and the whole story about NSA physically yanking packages from carriers was misdirection. Put that story out there and people who are able to control the delivery chain will have a strong, but very false, sense of security.

Re:Wow. Just wow by dunkindave · 2015-06-23 04:44 · Score: 3, Insightful · on New Snowden Leaks Show NSA Attacked Anti-Virus Software

They are intentionally weakening the protections we use to keep ourselves safe.

No, the weaknesses were created by the AV vendors, not the NSA and GCHQ. Do you also object to other security researchers looking though code for weaknesses, and when they find something say they are weakening the software's security? (Unfortunately there are some companies that have tried that). The difference here is mainly in what is done with the knowledge once found, and what these organizations are doing with it is consistent with their missions. In the industry it is called equities, namely deciding what is in the nation's best interest, whether to reveal a flaw so it can be fixed, or keep it secret so it can be used against an adversary.

Re:Veracrypt by MyFirstNameIsPaul · 2015-06-21 05:40 · Score: 3, Interesting · on Two Years After Snowden Leaks, Encryption Tools Are Gaining Users

Schneier has some interesting points in this blog post.

and yet real secuirty research is all but outlawed by onproton · 2015-06-15 16:34 · Score: 1 · on US Navy Solicits Zero Days

I am finding it harder and harder to accept that the people in charge of these types of programs aren't aware of just how glaringly hypocritical they are. I can't help but be reminded of the quote:

We grow up in a controlled society, where we are told that when one person kills another person, that is murder, but when the government kills a hundred thousand, that is patriotism.
- Howard Zinn

Find a zero day and report it to someone who might fix it, that is criminal. Find a zero day and report it to the navy, you've done a service for your country. There is a unfortunate disconnect when the things the government does in the name of keeping us safe, end up making us all decidedly less safe in the end.

Movie Plot again ? by DrYak · 2015-06-14 14:37 · Score: 2 · on US Teen Pleads Guilty To Teaching ISIS About Bitcoin Via Twitter

some asshole politician is going to try and use that as an argument against crypto-currencies

Googling around...
Apparently the story about this teen has been reported in the Washington post (among other).

I would have thought instead that this was straight out of Bruce Schneier's Movie Plot Threat Contest

my plot by Kishin · 2015-06-14 06:23 · Score: 2 · on A Tale of Election Intrigue Wins Bruce Schneier's 8th Movie-Plot Contest

So, how did you all like mine [1]? The goal was to show the danger of their double standard: they get ironclad security; we get backdoors. They argue that anonymity, encryption, and security can be the end of the country. I argue that, if true, then it's also a confession on their part. ;)

[1] https://www.schneier.com/blog/...

Re:The first question that comes to my mind by Ly4 · 2015-06-14 04:45 · Score: 3, Informative · on Report: Russia and China Crack Encrypted Snowden Files

Throw enough resources at a[n] encryption problem, it becomes a matter of time until it's cracked.

That is completely wrong, unless you define 'enough time' as 'longer than the age of the universe'.

More here (scroll down to the quote from Applied Cryptography): https://www.schneier.com/blog/...

The Effects of Near Misses on Risk Decision-Making by harryjohnston · 2015-06-09 11:51 · Score: 1 · on Ask Slashdot: Should We Expect Attacks When Windows 2003 Support Ends?

Relevant.

Latest Chrome and Firefox betas break websites by schwit1 · 2015-06-05 01:02 · Score: -1, Offtopic · on Chrome Beta Now Automatically Pauses Less Important Flash Content

If a website uses a weak ephemeral Diffie-Hellman key it will fail. https://www.schneier.com/blog/...

They don't do anything but annoy by gurps_npc · 2015-06-02 01:29 · Score: 4, Interesting · on US Airport Screeners Missed 95% of Weapons, Explosives In Undercover Tests

They don't scare the terrorists.

If a terrorist wants to blow up a plane, they use a Surface to Air Missile from just outside the airport.

If they want to hijack a plane, it won't work anymore because the doors are heavily locked - any explosive capable of opening the cockpit door will crash the plane.

The routinely miss liquids - water, suntan lotion, etc. I traveled with someone that packed suntan lotion in a carry on bag and they missed it. They found and took the blade out of his safety razor, but missed the suntan lotion.

Even their own original studies claim that any benefit is far exceeded by the cost. The basic rule for MOST government agencies is if the cost exceeds $1 million per life saved, don't bother - smoke detectors cost $210,000 per life saved. http://www.econ.ucsb.edu/~tedb/Courses/UCSBpf/readings/interventions.pdf

But the TSA argues they should be allowed to spend $10 million per life saved - and admit they actually cost $180 million per life saved. https://www.schneier.com/blog/...

Their budget should be cut to 1% of what it currently is, that way we will only be spending twice what we spend on other industries to save lives.

Re:Give it time by grcumb · 2015-05-25 09:48 · Score: 1 · on Privacy Behaviors Changed Little After Snowden

People can't change that radically.

Schneier suggests that actually they have, and that media is mis-reporting the results:

It's worth reading these results in detail. Overall, these numbers are consistent with a worldwide survey from December. The press is spinning this as "Most Americans' behavior unchanged after Snowden revelations, study finds," but I see something very different. I see a sizable percentage of Americans not only concerned about government surveillance, but actively doing something about it. "Third of Americans shield data from government." Edward Snowden's goal was to start a national dialog about government surveillance, and these surveys show that he has succeeded in doing exactly that.

Re:King Frosty The First Beats All! by ale2011 · 2015-05-21 21:00 · Score: 2 · on Academics Build a New Tor Client Designed To Beat the NSA

Can anyone confirm NSA / GCHQ and Chinese intelligence's ability to monitor Tor user's traffic, from entry to exit?

Are there any articles online which can substantiate that claim??

See e. g. How the NSA Attacks Tor/Firefox Users With QUANTUM and FOXACID. That's NSA monitoring, based on Snowden disclosures. More references in the Astoria article.

Oblig. Schneier essay on Full Disclosure by Phil+Urich · 2015-05-12 14:09 · Score: 1 · on Photo Printing Website Artisan State Allows Access To All User-Uploaded Photos

https://www.schneier.com/essay... Well worth the read if you haven't before.

Re:Fear of the West? by Anonymous Coward · 2015-05-10 17:59 · Score: 0 · on Russian Company Unveils Homegrown PC Chips

Hey, I'm an American and I'd like to have one of these Russian PCs for more or less the same reason! Sometimes it's nice to have a weird foreign architecture around...

When I look around me, I see the normal US architecture is designed by Chinese, Indians, Israelis, Malaysians, Brits, Frenchies and the occasional American.

Re:Fear of the West? by mrchaotica · 2015-05-10 12:54 · Score: 2 · on Russian Company Unveils Homegrown PC Chips

Hey, I'm an American and I'd like to have one of these Russian PCs for more or less the same reason! Sometimes it's nice to have a weird foreign architecture around...

Beating is for wussies by mi · 2015-04-24 12:00 · Score: 1 · on Allegation: Philly Cops Leaned Suspect Over Balcony To Obtain Password

Drug him and beat him with a $5 wrench until he tells us the password

XKCD did not invent it — the method is known as rubberhose cryptoanalis for ages — unlike wrench, a hose is less likely to leave visible marks.

But beating is for wussies — and drugging is completely gratuitous. The real men of the wonderful entity lovingly referred to as "Russkiy Mir" (Pax Russiana) use the swifter variation known as thermorectal cryptanalysis.

It does not have to involve any beating and requires a $5 soldering iron. I'll leave the details to your imagination...

Sounds like one of Schneier's by wiredog · 2015-04-15 05:22 · Score: 1 · on GAO Warns FAA of Hacking Threat To Airliners

Movie-Plot Threat Contest entries.

Re:the real traitors by Qzukk · 2015-04-07 08:31 · Score: 2 · on Snowden Demystified: Can the Government See My Junk?

No, as long as no undeserved molestation has resulted from such surveillance, it does not qualify for "Police State".

Sorry, but having Big Brother observe each and every one of us through the telescreen is absolutely Police State. Being put on "a list" is unquestionably a threat, even if nobody is at liberty to say just what being on that list does. (It does do something, right? I mean, you're not just supporting Big Government spending your tax dollars to make lists and throw them away and then making more lists, right?)

You'd be OK with the government having "a list" of every gun owner in the country, right? Because at this point, I'm pretty sure the NSA has one. Those forms that sellers mail in on toilet paper go somewhere.

Snowden does not mention it

Oh, he doesn't?

It is interesting to note that this rule specifically avoids fingerprinting users believed to be located in Five Eyes countries, while other rules make no such distinction. For instance, the following fingerprint targets users visiting the Tails and Linux Journal websites, or performing certain web searches related to Tails, and makes no distinction about the country of the user

-- https://www.schneier.com/blog/... (emphasis added)

Oh dear, it looks like you might be right. XKeyscore wasn't from the UK, it's run right here in the good ol' US of A. Against fellow Americans, "without distinction".

not only have we seen any evidence of innocents prosecuted

Absence of Evidence is not Evidence of Absence, especially when the government has demonstrated the ability to destroy evidence and immediately kill any court proceeding for "national security". Al Haramain's lawyer had their warrantless wiretap transcript mailed to him, the government destroyed that evidence and killed their lawsuit repeatedly due to "lack" of evidence.

we have not even seen allegations

What would such an allegation look like? How would we tell it apart from the waves of everyone else getting released for false convictions, because they've only been in prison since the NSA started spying on everyone instead of being imprisoned for 30 years?

Maybe it'd look like the IRS denying your nonprofit status application? I wonder if we'll ever find those emails...

From spy satellite to cellphone ? by bdubSOv1iKIJ403M · 2015-04-06 11:03 · Score: 1 · on New Smartphone Camera Could Tell You What Things Are Made of

There's some older data on hyperspectral imaging at https://www.schneier.com/blog/...

General limitations.
It's only skin deep. It's not a tricorder.
Composite and mixed signals, aren't labeled for you. While hyperspectral imaging gives more-unique material signatures than RGB imaging, figuring out the most likely combination of known pure signatures, to match a noisy input signal, is still hard. Have fun with linear algebra and matrix inversion ?

Re:Tin foil hat time by Lord+Crc · 2015-04-03 02:18 · Score: 4, Informative · on TrueCrypt Audit: No NSA Backdoors

There's talk that they influenced the decision of some recommended constants for Elliptic Curve Cryptography.

You'll want to use constants that ensures the cryptographic strength of the algorithm, so picking them are non-trivial and hence a recommended set was published. This is the same for most algorithms. AES has constants and they are part of what makes the algorithm AES and not some other variant.

Anyway, here's what Bruce Schneier said about ECC:

I no longer trust the constants. I believe the NSA has manipulated them through their relationships with industry.

https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2013/09/the_nsa_is_brea.html#c1675929

And here's a nice background on ECC:
https://blog.cloudflare.com/a-relatively-easy-to-understand-primer-on-elliptic-curve-cryptography/

Tht elephant in the room by Okian+Warrior · 2015-03-28 07:25 · Score: 1 · on IBM and OpenPower Could Mean a Fight With Intel For Chinese Server Market

The elephant in the room, of course, is security.

With NSA "upgrade factories" - where spyware is installed by the NSA before delivery - China and everyone else is looking for alternatives to American products.

(And note that the spyware can be implanted in the BIOS, and even the hard drive firmware, and will persist even if the system is wiped, or the BIOS is replaced.)

The scope of economic damage this has done is astonishing. I've never believed in trickle-down economics, but once China starts making servers my guess is our IT industry will tank from the top down.

Expect an economic crisis in, oh... about 5 years.

(The solution would appear to be a complete open-source ecosystem including BIOS and hard drive firmware. Just as I can verify my linux installation, there should be verifiable BIOS and hard drive firmware, so that any country can purchase any computer, and be confident of its security.)

Schneier got it right a decade and a half ago by Max+Hyre · 2015-03-21 07:19 · Score: 4, Informative · on OS X Users: 13 Characters of Assyrian Can Crash Your Chrome Tab

This exploit rang a bell, so I searched Bruce Schneier's website. And, sure enough, on July 15, 2000, he observed ``Unicode is just too complex to ever be secure.'' Doesn't exactly warm the cockles of the paranoid's heart.

Re:git blame by Kishin · 2015-02-26 10:37 · Score: 1 · on Moxie Marlinspike: GPG Has Run Its Course

Oh no, he's smart: almost every high assurance security offering ever marketed has been ignored by consumers. They *don't give a fuck*. Being the demand side of the equation, they're the reason [1] the suppliers are producing insecure garbage all the time. It's what they buy. Steven Lipner, who managed VAX High Assurance VMM, wrote about the what it taught management here [2]. Summary: users wanted the features more than security and would decide against any product developing features too slow (read: all high security systems). Many users also wanted lower costs (security adds costs) and integration with whatever garbage went mainstream. Intel tried three times [3] to do their part with i432 being a marvel of engineering and Itanium being used in a highly secure, affordable OS [4]. Intel's security-oriented efforts tanked to the tune of billions lost as market favored backward compatibility and price/performance instead.

So, users and market don't give a fuck. Only a niche segment does. Unless subsidized by grants or government contracts, high assurance systems are typically not built at all. All the secure stuff being built is grant-funded academia, defense-funded commercial, and/or high priced, patented I.P. for niche use (eg smartcard, embedded). Those of us left doing custom solutions pre-Snowden had very little business with most doing it on the side of better paying work. Post-Snowden, there's more demand, the demand is once again making insecure tradeoffs, false security abounds, and talent to do high assurance is still mostly nonexistent after market killed it off post-OrangeBook. On top of the millions using ad-driven services and tech that sells them out. Truly don't give a fuck and it ain't changing.

[1] https://www.schneier.com/blog/...

[2] http://blogs.microsoft.com/cyb...

[3] https://www.schneier.com/blog/...

[4] http://www.secure64.com/secure...

Nick P, Security Engineer/Researcher (High assurance focus)

Re:git blame by Kishin · 2015-02-26 10:37 · Score: 1 · on Moxie Marlinspike: GPG Has Run Its Course

Oh no, he's smart: almost every high assurance security offering ever marketed has been ignored by consumers. They *don't give a fuck*. Being the demand side of the equation, they're the reason [1] the suppliers are producing insecure garbage all the time. It's what they buy. Steven Lipner, who managed VAX High Assurance VMM, wrote about the what it taught management here [2]. Summary: users wanted the features more than security and would decide against any product developing features too slow (read: all high security systems). Many users also wanted lower costs (security adds costs) and integration with whatever garbage went mainstream. Intel tried three times [3] to do their part with i432 being a marvel of engineering and Itanium being used in a highly secure, affordable OS [4]. Intel's security-oriented efforts tanked to the tune of billions lost as market favored backward compatibility and price/performance instead.

So, users and market don't give a fuck. Only a niche segment does. Unless subsidized by grants or government contracts, high assurance systems are typically not built at all. All the secure stuff being built is grant-funded academia, defense-funded commercial, and/or high priced, patented I.P. for niche use (eg smartcard, embedded). Those of us left doing custom solutions pre-Snowden had very little business with most doing it on the side of better paying work. Post-Snowden, there's more demand, the demand is once again making insecure tradeoffs, false security abounds, and talent to do high assurance is still mostly nonexistent after market killed it off post-OrangeBook. On top of the millions using ad-driven services and tech that sells them out. Truly don't give a fuck and it ain't changing.

[1] https://www.schneier.com/blog/...

[2] http://blogs.microsoft.com/cyb...

[3] https://www.schneier.com/blog/...

[4] http://www.secure64.com/secure...

Nick P, Security Engineer/Researcher (High assurance focus)

Re:What about computers? by Dr_Barnowl · 2015-02-19 22:25 · Score: 1 · on How NSA Spies Stole the Keys To the Encryption Castle

They messed with an algorithm for generating pseudo-random numbers ;

Schneir's article

TLDR : the suspicion is that they embedded a secret key in the maths of this random number generator algorithm that would let them break any TLS connection after snooping 32 bytes of traffic.

As Bruce takes pains to point out, you can't prove anything. But really, they were pushing an RNG with no obvious advantage over the others in the running (3x slower), known flaws (slight bias in it's output), and this great big whopping potential security hole that you might conveniently exploit if you were the one who picked the "random numbers" in the appendix.

Leaving Law Enforcement A Way In by jdschulteis · 2015-02-17 14:32 · Score: 2 · on Obama Says He's 'A Strong Believer In Strong Encryption'

Dear Mr. President,

Back in 1997 a group of leading experts wrote a paper about "leaving law enforcement a way in". From that paper's Executive Summary:

The deployment of key-recovery-based encryption infrastructures to meet law enforcement's stated specifications will result in substantial sacrifices in security and greatly increased costs to the end user. Building the secure computer-communication infrastructures necessary to provide adequate technological underpinnings demanded by these requirements would be enormously complex and is far beyond the experience and current competency of the field. Even if such infrastructures could be built, the risks and costs of such an operating environment may ultimately prove unacceptable. In addition, these infrastructures would generally require extraordinary levels of human trustworthiness.

Re:The upshot is by Uberbah · 2015-02-14 05:22 · Score: 1 · on 'Google Search On Steroids' Brings Dark Web To Light

The sad thing is this isn't a joke

It is for your friendly neighborhood fusion center. Just ask Ross Ulbricht.

Re:Attack vector Port is SSH (22), passwd guessing by chihowa · 2015-02-10 12:58 · Score: 1 · on New Multi-Purpose Backdoor Targets Linux Servers

Good security includes such layers (but doesn't rely only on them). It's entirely effective against non-targeted automated attacks, which comprise well over 99% of the attacks your network will face. (Of course, a good password or key based auth is just as effective. A good password or key and no root login is more effective.) Allowing root login adds another attack opportunity with predictable parameters. It's all about minimizing the surface open to attack.

Since >99% of all ssh attacks on the internet are automated and target root, you can drop (or tarpit or whatever) all of those attempts without affecting legitimate users. This leaves your attention free to address the attacks that are actually dangerous (and leaves your logs less cluttered or easily filtered).

Look at it another way... what do you gain, security wise, from allowing a superuser to login directly from the network? Especially when most of the attacks you see are trying to log in directly as that superuser.

[As an aside, "security by obscurity" gets a bad rap and the term is often bandied about as a self-evident truth like "correlation is not causation". "Security by obscurity" refers to keeping the design of an implementation secret, not to using secrets in your implementation (is having a password security by obscurity?).

Depending only on obscurity is poor security, but using obscurity as a layer (where it's effective) in a larger security process can be extremely effective. Schneier has a good essay on this subject.]

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