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EU To Counter Echelon With Quantum Cryptography?
jfruhlinger writes "An article on Security.ITWorld.com seems to outline a coming information arms race. The European Union has decided to respond to the Echelon project by funding research into supposedly unbreakable quantum cryptography that will keep EU data out of Echelon's maw. Leaving aside the question of whether such a thing is possible, the political implications are troubling, indicating a widening rift within the Western world. Interestingly, the UK is part of the EU, but its intelligence services are among Echelon's sponsors."
One has to wonder why we call it Quantum Encryption when it really has nothing to do with Encryption. From the article:
The aim is to produce a communication system that cannot be intercepted by anyone
If I understand their intent, they plan to use concepts like Quantum Entanglement to ensure that communication is shared only between the entangled particles. This is a very different concept from using the properties of Quantum Mechanics to scramble information in a reversible manner or creating computers capable of super-fast calculations.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
Sigh.. OK, it's a troll, but someone has to bite.
a. Quantum crypto is invulnerable to a monkey-in-the-middle attack. Poorly implemented SSL is vulnerable to MITM during key exchange.
2. It is widely accepted lore on the Internet, and strongly suspected by respectable people, that there exist quantum computing devices capable of factoring extremely large numbers. If this is true, any form of public-key crypto goes to shit.
iii. Part of the problem with cryptography is that it does nothing to hide the source and destination of the data exchange. In theory, a secure quantum crypto system can't be tapped in the first place, so in theory, sender and reciever are anyonymous.
IV. H.323 is for godless commies.
You're thinking of Navajo code. Should be enough to keep you busy reading for a while. :)
Want to improve your Karma? Instead of "Post Anonymously", try the "Post Humously" option.
Australia admitted the existence of Echelon, and it's part in the global surveilance network some years ago. The reason? The US demanded access to all data from Australia, whereas Australia wanted to remove the names of Australian citizens and businesses not under investigation. They would provide the details when asked, just not up front, to protect against the US using the info for corporate espionage. The Australians refused, the US said "Oh yeah, what are you gonna do?" and the Aussies responded, "Tell the world."
Here's a link, but you can google 'echelon australia' for more info
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
Earlier, in World War I, the US Army utilized members of the Choctaw tribe as operators near the end of the war. This, however, was due to a decision in the field (a captain noted that he had several members of the tribe in his battalion), rather than a formal program.
I think they chose that particular language because it had unique properties that made de-cyphering the language almost impossible. I'm not sure if they applied any additional encryption
The Navajo Code Talkers. They didn't apply additional encryption per say but they had an interesting encoding scheme:
You can also assume that they encoded the messages using standard military/common-sense methods -- i.e: referring to waypoints on a map that your enemy doesn't have access to. If he knows that you are going to attack at "Point Echo" but he doesn't know where that is the information is of limited use to him -- by the time he figures out where Point Echo is the information is out of date and it doesn't matter that he knows it.
In any case the code talkers are an interesting (often ignored) fact of WW2, the recent movie notwithstanding. An interesting subject to read up on sometime.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
The weakness in current encryption/communications systems isn't in the encrypting algorithms, which have withstood the serious efforts of some top-flight mathematicians to bust them. Nor is it necessarily in traffic analysis; keep a line open and transmitting bits 24/7. Isn't hard to design the system so the intended recipient can tell when the "random" bits start a message. Nor is the weakness in key transmission, at least for governments: lots and lots of really long keys can be transported on CDs well in advance of need. The weakness remains where it has been in recent years, with the people using the system, and with keeping their computers out of unauthorized hands. Going to quantum methods doesn't change get around this weakness. From what I see, the benefit of quantum crypto is the ability to make message tampering evident.
Mrs Thatcher was distinctly anti-Euro, apart from free trade and good relations which follows the last referendum the UK had. It was the Major years (Maastricht treaty and in then out of the ERM) followed by Blair who pursued the closer ties.
Despite being promised a referendum on the EU constitution (which is a woeful hack of previous revisions), the British public hasn't been given a date on it... and the trust (read as 'lack of') I have in Blair is as such that he would do the referendum after the point of no return (sorry people if you voted 'no', it's too late now!).
I for one would like the closer ties with Europe (i.e. what we have now), but what is proposed I think is too much too soon... and there are too many problems which really need sorting first (red tape, beaurocracy, politicians voting in new laws when they have no clue as to what they are, etc etc). Added to that the majority of the British public need to know exactly what is going on, and what will happen before we're even semi happy with it.
I've always been of liberal views and what you would call a floating voter, but I wouldn't trust the Lib Dems (almost wanting to powershare with Labour, no real manifesto), I definately don't trust Blair.... but despite his previous convictions I think the Conservatives are in a much stronger position with Howard (especially regarding party unity).
Maybe the biggest problem that'll hit us in a couple of years is the national debt (where the conservatives saved a crap load of money by taxing the country half to death - mind Labour were happy to add to that) and the housing prices/issues, add to that the amount of money being literally thrown at the NHS is a nice little ticking time bomb that I'm not looking forward to going off.
Anyway, most opinion/info in this post is AFAIK and is open to correction/counter viewpoints... as they say (damn this zippy led US keyboard), just my 0.02 UK Sterling (yes I do know about character map, I just can't be arsed!).T-Kir
Are you local? There's nothing for you here!
Well, I won't say you're a troll, but probably missinformed.
Quantum cryptography has a cool name, but in practice, it sucks, at least its current implementations.
Ok, that's right. But it sucks not because it's flawed, but because it's too slow to communicate with yet(well, to create the key actually).
It's not end-to-end by design (you can't have a direct fiber to everyone you want to communicate with these days, after all), and so it's easily regulated.
More current implementations use 'wireless' quantum channels in open air, so it isn't restricted to fiber only. I agree that you won't have consumer implementation before at least 8-10 years, but if a big corporation or government wants to use it, they will be able to in the near future.
It's expensive.
Sure. Is there a new technology that isn't expensive? Is that incentive enough to stop developing new ideas and such? No.
It doesn't solve key management problems, and the installations that have been publicly described so far are extremely vulnerable to man-in-the-middle attacks.
WOAH! Until then it was ok, just some argumentation problems, but this is pure outright missinformation. I don't know where you read that, I'd like to know.
First, Quantum Key Distribution is there to SOLVE key management problems related to one-time pad methods. The first and foremost goal of quantum encryption is to remove the logistic problems of one-time pad. So, you are wayyy off on this one.
Second, QKD is unconditionally secure, and that includes man-in-the-middle. I doubt current implementation are "extremely vulnerable" against that attack, unless you have some proof to show, I'd be interested to know.
If I believed in conspiracy theories, I'd say that the NSA is luring the EU towards unavailable and untested quantum cryptography, and away from commercially available, tested, reliable and rather secure conventional crypto products. Actually, the quantum crypto recommendation (whether it's contained in some EU documents or not) is the result of a pretty slick PR (and lobbying) campaign.
Well, I can't argue about tin-foiled hat arguments, hehe. The problem with conventional crypto methods is that they are breakable in the absolute, and the Echelon program is certainly the one who is able to achieve this feat. QKD isn't. This is the main point in favor of QKD, especially when you want to protect yourself against Echelon.
There are two fantastic well-researched books that anyone who wishes to truely understand Echelon needs to read:
Body of Secrets: Anatomy of the Ultra-Secret National Security Agency" by James Bamford is a fantastic history of the NSA from the end of WWII to the present. If you read this book you will see that the idea that the NSA is spying on UN delegations is really a given...in fact one of the primary reasons the US wanted the UN to locate in NYC is to allow easy interception of diplomatic communications. This author uncovered many amazing Cold War programs and anticdotes and presents them in fascinating form.
The second book is "Blind Mans Bluff: The Untold Story of American Submarine Espionage"
by Sherry Sontag, another fantastic book of solid research and good story telling, a large amount of it revolving around underwater communication wiretap activities. The special mission nuclear submarine SSN-21 USS Jimmy Carter is out there specially equipped for undersea cable tapping operations and receiving commendations in the tradition of the Cold War era USS Halibut.
Whatever you think of the ethics of these issues, the technology and history is amazing, and the capabilities do exist and are fairly well documented. If you read these two books, and have the technological understanding to extrapolate a bit, you can get a pretty good picture of current capabilities and the culture of how these collection assets are being used. One thing you will find that they are not being used without limits and elements of responsibility, although there are cases (like the Boeing/Airbus bidding incident) where they have been abused.
-braddock gaskill
If I remember the story correctly, Navajo demands very precise pronunciation and accents. getting the nuances just right is supposed to be next to impossible right for a non-native speaker.
So, even if a few Japanese operators did learn Navajo, they wouldn't be able to spoof their way onto the network. Kinda like trying to read the state of a photon without blowing the secret, maybe.
Throw in the fact that the Japanese probably didn't care at all about the various tribes, even if they did know what a Navajo was, and you have a tough nut to crack. The war didn't last long enough for them to adapt.
I remember watching some TV special about the code talkers, and one of the old guys was practically laughing when he was telling his story. Good stuff.
Why do I have this? I don't smoke.
Remember, there are two major systems for doing public key crypto. The idea is to take a problem that is incredibly easy to do one way (make the public key from the private), but very difficult to do the reverse of. Factoring large numbers is a great example (and is what RSA uses). It's easy to multiply two large primes, but much more difficult to factor the product back into the original two primes. If there were a computer which could do this quickly, RSA would be effectively useless.
There is also the discrete log problem, which is what DSA uses. I don't pretend to be a cryptographer, or even know really what the discrete log problem involves (no google links please, I have all the info I need on it if I were really interested), but I do know that it is very easy to do one way, but very hard to do the other! Exactly what you need for public key crypto. Now, if we have a theoretical computer which can break this in reasonable time, DSA becomes worthless. However, there are definately other ways of doing public key crypto than the factoring problem.
Also, another interesting things about quantum crypto (of course, quantum crypto is largely theoretical at this point, so this is not guaranteed in real world implementations) is that both ends KNOW if the datastream has been intercepted. Not just if it's been modified (we can be reasonably sure of that right now using good hashing algorithms for signatures), but if it has mearly been intercepted. This is quite handy because now you know immediately if you need to somehow change things since your data is even POSSIBLY compromised. Really cool stuff.
I must reiterate, IANAC (cryptographer).
"And yet you look at the employment rates within the UK and the rest of Europe (3% vs 12% approx)"
Where did you get those numbers? According to this week's Economist, the rate is 4.7% in Britain and 8.8% in the Euro area. The UK rate is still extremely low, but not as exaggerated as you stated.