Ask Slashdot: Can Bruce Schneier Be Trusted?

An anonymous reader writes "Security guru Bruce Schneier is, among other things, a world renowned cryptography expert, author of several popular books, and a second-order internet meme. He is also an outspoken critic of the NSA, in particular the massive NSA surveillance programs disclosed over the summer by Edward Snowden. Schneier has been involved in reviewing the leaked documents and has put in effort to determine which cryptosystems should still be considered safe. I'm a big fan of Bruce Schneier, but just to play devil's advocate, let's say, hypothetically, that Schneier is actually in cahoots with the NSA. Who better to reinstate public trust in weakened cryptosystems? As an exercise in security that Schneier himself may find interesting, what methods are available for proving (or at least affirming) that we can trust Bruce Schneier?"

Comments

Trust no one

[Bodhammer]

Seriously... Especially the Govt. (and clowns - clowns scare me...)

Re:Trust no one

[khasim]

You have to trust someone, somewhere along the line.

Even the compiler can be compromised. Ken Thompson showed that.

Where I think "anonymous coward" is wrong is that he's implying the Bruce Schneier would NEED to be compromised by the NSA. He wouldn't.

There are two aspects to "crypto".
1. The math.
2. The implementation.

Bruce can validate that the math seems to be correct (or he can be compromised into saying that it seems to be correct) but it is the implementation that gets used.

So even if Bruce actually believed that the math was correct, the NSA could compromise the people/organisation/company that turned that math into a product that you would use.

And it is much easier to claim that a flawed implementation was an innocent mistake than to compromise EVERYONE who can understand the math behind it.

Re:Trust no one

[Moryath]

And now, folks, it's time for "Who do you trust!" Hubba, hubba, hubba! Money, money, money! Who do you trust? Me? I'm giving away free money. And where is the Batman? HE'S AT HOME WASHING HIS TIGHTS!

So do you trust the Joker, or the Batman?

Re:Trust no one

[Anonymous Coward]

and keep your blaster handy.

Re:Trust no one

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't trust these guys either.

Re:Trust no one

[optikos]

Applying the mantra of open source to the underlying mathematics: Learn the mathematics of cryptography yourself to find the bugs within the mathematics. Don't place your trust in any person other than yourself. Especially don't worship some brand-name as a god who, as diviner-intercessor, is your sole information-provider on the subject.

Re:Trust no one

[Cro Magnon]

Seriously. The mere act of trusting someone will eventually lead to that person betraying said trust. Trusting someone puts them in a position of power, and power corrupts. You can't trust anyone.

That's a very good statement. I trust you completely.

Re:Trust no one

[godrik]

"Even the compiler can be compromised. Ken Thompson showed that."

Well, double compiling techniques can be used to certify a compiler. (Though it actually assume that you have access to an other safe compiler, which is a little bit complicated, but doable)

http://arxiv.org/abs/1004.5534

Re:Trust no one

[ShanghaiBill]

the NSA could compromise the people/organisation/company that turned that math into a product that you would use.

An obvious solution to this would be two (or more) independent implementations. The implementations wouldn't even need to be done by trustworthy entities, just entities unlikely to cooperate. If the NSA does one implementation, China does another, Russia does a third, and they all produce identical output, then that would be good enough for me.

Re:Trust no one

[Garridan]

You have to trust someone, somewhere along the line.

No. No you don't. You should always remain skeptical, consider motivation as well as message, and read between the lines. Think for yourself and check facts.

It is better to trust the math community (a large body of people of varying motives, hence less corruptible by a single source) than Schneier. It is even better to learn the math yourself. It's even better to kick down the doors of the NSA and demand answers. But that last one will probably get you shot or worse.

Re:Trust no one

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, if you know your comic-book history, you'd know that Batman had a homosexual relationship with Robin and was shown in the comics in bed with him.

If there's anything one learns from applying for a security clearance or worldwide politics in general, it's that nobody trusts homosexuals. I trust the Joker. Not only is he not a homosexual, and therefore trustworthy, but a proven innovator with plenty of experience thinking outside the box. I trust the Joker. Not Batman, as Robin has too much filthy blackmail on him.

-- Ethanol-fueled

I trust Cat Woman, and if she is homosexual that would be so hot.

Re:Trust no one

[Anonymous Coward]

Trust me.

Re:Trust no one

[girlintraining]

You have to trust someone, somewhere along the line.

The open source movement (Down people! It's just an umbrella term, not an excuse to rage about the nuaned differences in licensing) recognized early on that the only way to create reasonably secure code is to publish it and let anyone look at it. Politics demands that for every group of people out there wanting power for a specific purpose, there's another group willing to sabotage them. As long as the code is a black box, the war between those groups will be won and fought or lost without anyone being the wiser -- unless the code is published.

Then, regardless of individual motive, you're on one of either two sides: Publish or don't. If you publish, there's a big risk of being identified if you try anything and in covert operations anonymity is better than bulletproof armor. Nobody's going to risk having their real identity linked to a subversion attempt. So that leaves not publishing -- keeping potential exploits to yourself. This is what the NSA and other intelligence communities are doing.

When you play that game, however, you're stuck in an arms race where every participant is fighting a war on two fronts -- they can exploit the holes in the enemy's systems, but because the enemy uses a lot of the same technology, they can turn around and do the same to you... which means every weapon is 'single use' against hard targets. But I guess that's how the NSA likes it; As long as you have tons of money to waste, those with the most gold have the most power. It's direct proportionality.

Actively maintained open source though allows people to build reasonably secure systems without a big investment -- anyone can incrementally improve it. So if you aren't the NSA (ie, second place and below)... it makes sense to contribute to projects like Linux and build your security around them. The NSA has been 'caught' (as much as anyone can be caught in cyberwarfare -- attributation is a bitch, anyone who has researched it knows this) several times trying and failing to create exploits in Linux. This tells me that the cost of finding a linux exploit is now at least equal to that of its closed-source competitors, and may even be higher -- otherwise why risk exposure?

Any once you find a linux exploit, you're still on the clock -- this isn't like closed source. New people are constantly looking at code, even old code, and could discover your hard-won exploit and close it. Basically, if you're not a "top 10" government and you want security... use open source.

Re:Trust no one

[Anonymous Coward]

OMG, and his initials are BS!

Re:Trust no one

[steelfood]

Neither. Did you not hear what GP said? Don't trust clowns.

Re:Trust no one

[bmearns]

But from whom do you learn the math? A teacher? A textbook? Unless you derive it all yourself from base axioms, you do have to trust someone at some point. Math is logic, pure and simple: that's true, but it is subtle enough and complex enough, especially at the level of cryptography, that you could be taught something which is false and yet verifiable (i.e., internally consistent, but externally incorrect). And of course, beyond outright misinformation, there is the very real possibility that the math is sound but someone has discovered a technique for busting right through it.

But I think the more important point is that our entire society breaks down instantly without trust. Specialization is the basis for all of human advancement, and trust is the basis for specialization. You don't learn to build a car yourself, you trust an auto mfr to do it for you. You don't spend time growing or hunting your own food, you trust the food industry to provide you with safe and sufficient sustenance. If you didn't trust anyone, you'd spend all your own time and resource attending to your most basic needs.

The same goes for cryptography and software: everybody uses crypto these days (TLS, for instance), but the vast majority of people don't have any where close to the expertise to verify even the algorithms, let alone the implementations. Sure, we could have a society of crypto experts and everyone could independently verify every algorithm and every piece of code that they use. But whose going to build the the cars and grow the food?

Re:Trust no one

[Idarubicin]

Applying the mantra of open source to the underlying mathematics: Learn the mathematics of cryptography yourself to find the bugs within the mathematics. Don't place your trust in any person other than yourself.

Which is why I always x-ray the concrete and perform a full metallurgical analysis on the structural steel before I drive across one of those government-built bridges. Sure, I had to do a four-year engineering degree, but it was worth it.

Seriously, "trust no one, and validate everything from first principles" breaks down very quickly if you try to apply it to any but the narrowest portion of your life. Figuring out workable and robust ways to evaluate trustworthiness of other parties is a damn useful (and equally damn difficult) problem.

Re:Trust no one

[queazocotal]

'The open source movement (Down people! It's just an umbrella term, not an excuse to rage about the nuaned differences in licensing) recognized early on that the only way to create reasonably secure code is to publish it and let anyone look at it. '

To make the claim that linux has been never been intentionally weakened in security, you need to know that every single security vulnerability in Linux (to take one example) was due to carelessness, not intended action.

Certainly - some classes of backdoor are trivially obvious 'if(sourceip==NSA)' - but others can be subtle logic errors.

Re:Trust no one

[Anonymous Coward]

No. Bodhammer has it right. Trust no one person. If you must trust because you lack skill, do not trust a single cryptographer, trust the community.

Re:Trust no one

[swillden]

Applying the mantra of open source to the underlying mathematics: Learn the mathematics of cryptography yourself to find the bugs within the mathematics. Don't place your trust in any person other than yourself. Especially don't worship some brand-name as a god who, as diviner-intercessor, is your sole information-provider on the subject.

Care to point me to the "mathematics" of AES? How about SHA-2? For that matter, will studying the mathematics of RSA make it clear why a chosen ciphertext attack renders RSA with PKCS#1 v1.5 padding vulnerable, and how using Optimal Asymmetric Encryption Padding instead addresses the issue?

Seriously, the above is laughable advice. Oh, by all means learn crypto if you're interested, it's a fascinating subject -- one which you can easily devote your entire lifetime to, though you'll have to pick a sub-specialty if you really want deep understanding of the sort that will let you meaningfully evaluate the security of some real-world elements.

The reality is that you must rely on someone else. Even serious academic cryptography researchers make no claims to be able to fully understand anything outside their narrow area of focus, and they're also quick to point out that even when the theory is great, implementations may contain subtle defects which are extremely hard to find. The "open source" mantra is indeed exactly what we need, but your average developer -- bright though he or she may be -- simply doesn't have the background needed to contribute very effectively, and it doesn't make sense for everyone to invest the time needed to acquire that much background.

Instead, what we need is what we have: An open security research community. It could be bigger, of course, and I'd encourage anyone who has an interest in this stuff to get involved. And I'd also encourage everyone else to become more informed. But expecting to be able to make a significant contribution to improving security with just a little math is misguided.

Re:Trust no one

[Garridan]

But from whom do you learn the math? A teacher? A textbook? Unless you derive it all yourself from base axioms, you do have to trust someone at some point.

A proper math education starts from basic axioms. A teacher should merely guide a math student through derivation of that mathematical knowledge which is taught, all from base axioms. In my undergrad, math majors were required to take a course on the axiomatic foundation of math (set theory). The classes that depended on that built the foundations of algebra, analysis, etc. upon those same axioms. The subsequent built upon those results, etc.

One problem with crypto is that we've never seen a hardness result of any of this shit. Until somebody proves P!=NP and builds an NP-complete cryptosystem, I won't trust any of it. The math is inherently untrustable without a proof of trustworthyness. The other problem is in implementation. All the math in the world won't save your data from a shit implementation that leaves you open to side-channel attack, etc.

Society does not break down with a lack of trust, society proceeds, as always, with constant implicit and explicit cost-benefit analysis.

Re:Trust no one

[Anonymous Coward]

Figuring out workable and robust ways to evaluate trustworthiness of other parties is a damn useful (and equally damn difficult) problem.

Or, alternatively, learn to stop worrying and love the bomb. Remember, somebody set us up it, so it must be important.

Re:Trust no one

[Nemyst]

Who's to say you don't have a sleeper program implanted into your very brain, designed to leak information in a non-obvious way when you do something bad?

TRUST NO ONE.

Re:Trust no one

[MightyYar]

Trust might be too strong of a word, but you do need to defer to authority if you interact with society at all. I don't think it is possible to be an expert in everything that you use or interact with on a daily basis and - unless you eschew medical care - you will defer to someone with a medical education at several times in your life. So no, you don't need to trust Schneier or anyone else in cryptography. But your only alternatives are to not use it at all for the purpose you were considering or become educated enough in the field to make your own judgements.

Back on topic, even if you don't trust that the encryption won't frustrate the NSA, it is probably fine for most people's business purposes.

Re:Trust no one

[hairyfeet]

I agree 100%,which is why I wonder why so many attack when I suggest that we should simply discuss whether Naomi Wolf is on to something when she suggests that Snowden may be a plant working still for the NSA. After all it DOES make sense, you can't have a chilling effect if nobody knows to be scared but at the same time there would be too much backlash (not to mention giving groups like the ACLU court standing) if they just came out and said it, so what to do? The answer is simple...disgruntled employee.

This way those that you want to be scared, the ones that read up on such things, your rabble rousers, WILL be scared and the clueless can be told "its just a disgruntled employee, nothing to see here" and they will go along, finally groups like the ACLU and FSF can't get a court case unless the gov admits they are spying on everyone (because the courts say you have to show you were targeted to have standing) so the disgruntled employee angle neatly sidesteps it. You have to admit, if he is a plant? Its WELL played. I have talked to plenty of folks at the shop and on forums that fear talking out about politicians or the gov for fear of getting a file started while at the same time most of the right wing teabagger types have parroted the disgruntled employee angle, well played.

As for TFA I'm sure if you ask Bruce Schneier he'll tell you the same, that you shouldn't trust him or anybody else. Of course the bitch is everything from SELinux to most of our crypto now needs to be looked at with an aura of mistrust because much of it ame from the NSA or won NSA contests so you have to wonder, did they choose it for a nefarious reason? Like they know how to break it? And after reading up on the Kickstarter I'm fully convinced Truecrypt is worthless thanks to the extra blob it has on Windows that nobody knows WTF it does and the fact it won't compile from source and work.

What we need now is a handful of guys like Schneier to come together and give us some basic crypto tools that can be independently compiled, tested, and retested to insure that it works. But if I were forced to choose between something that has been handled or approved by the NSA, something like Truerypt where we now know that the source and binary do NOT math and there are hidden extra bits on Windows, or something approved of by Schneier or worked on by him like twofish? I think I'd choose Schneier.

BTW does anybody know of a tool that does full disc encryption on Windows like Truecrypt that ISN'T a big question mark when it comes to sewcurity?

Re:Trust no one

[PopeRatzo]

If you were the NSA, wouldn't you plant stories in places like Slashdot suggesting that you can't trust the people who are fighting to protect you from the NSA?

Which Slashdot editor is so nearsighted that they couldn't see this obvious FUD?

Re:Trust no one

[Anonymous Coward]

That's not what Bruce Schneier says, though.
Schneier's later work has focused on how trust is required for a functioning society, and how we can encourage and enforce trustworthy behaviour.

He focuses on rational consideration of cost-benefit tradeoffs. Trusting no one is somewhere between highly impractical and impossible if you want to function in a society with other people and have access to food, shelter and companionship. It's irrational since most people you'll encounter are benign, and the benefits of cooperation will far outweigh the risk.

Re:Trust no one

[K. S. Kyosuke]

Even the compiler can be compromised. Ken Thompson showed that.

And then, he's been proven wrong by a demonstration how Thompson's hack can be mitigated to an arbitrary degree of confidence.

Re:Trust no one

[Anonymous Coward]

... Especially the Govt. (and clowns ...

Sir, you repeat yourself.

Re:Trust no one

[sneakyimp]

Agreed. Of COURSE Bruce Schneier can't be trusted. I believe he himself would say, "trust is something you must determine for yourself." That said, I don't think there are many folks better at it than he is.

Re:Trust no one

[Anonymous Coward]

I just watch to see if the bridge collapses under the guys in front of me. If not, I figure my chances are good. Not perfect, but good.

Determining if somebody else's encryption just collapsed is a little trickier.

Re:Trust no one

[Crosshair84]

Anyone who knows anything won't be scared by this. The problem the NSA has is the EXACT same problem as the STAZI or whatever secret police anywhere has had, mass surveillance doesn't work.

The fundamental problem is that as the size of your data set increases linearly, the number of false positives increases exponentially. More computers will not fix this because humans can't be reduced to a series of if/then statements, the computer will either miss gobs of important info or spit so many false positives at you to be worthless. It takes annalists to sift through data making connections and with this data deluge their scarce time and effort is wasted chasing dead ends.

How ineffective is mass surveillance? The Soviet Union and Warsaw pact nations back in the day could not stop the illegal drug trade operating within their borders despite trying as hard as they could to do so. Think about that, nations where you need to apply for a frigin passport to go to the town 10 miles over for a weekend could not interdict and stop the illegal drug trade even while monitoring a massive portion of the population.

What kept the population under control at this time was the government controlling the information the population received. Do you think the North Korean government would last 10 minutes if everyone there was suddenly made aware of living standards outside their country? Likewise in the Soviet Block, people there only had vague rumors of the living standards of the west that could easily be disregarded as exaggeration or propaganda.

Intelligence needs to be focused. Casting a bigger net doesn't do you any good when doing so gets you more bycatch than fish. Sure the intelligence agencies love it because it gets them big budgets, but it doesn't make them more effective. If anything, it makes them LESS effective.

Re:Trust no one

[Bite The Pillow]

But expecting to be able to make a significant contribution to improving security with just a little math is misguided.

That's a huge jump, and a red flag for a shitty argument. As you wrote it, yes it is misguided. You don't have to make a significant contribution, just understand what's already out there. And it's way more than "a little math".

For that matter, will studying the mathematics of RSA make it clear why a chosen ciphertext attack renders RSA with PKCS#1 v1.5 padding vulnerable, and how using Optimal Asymmetric Encryption Padding instead addresses the issue?

Yes. That was simple, wasn't it?

The MD5 collision was an algorithm based on math. The arguments about entropy right now are about some crazy math. It's all about adding and subtracting, multiplying and dividing, and maybe some higher order stuff here and there.

But the basic statistical analyses which show whether something may be vulnerable, is all math.

The math for AES can be found on the wikipedia. There are functions, inverses, matrix multiplication, bit shifting. And the choice of substitution boxes for derangement can be proven either good or bad by, you guessed it, math. The current choices for Dual ECC were proven suspect by math.

The advice is not laughable in context- trust no one. And, it's not impossible to learn this stuff, you can either choose to or choose not to. You don't have to find the bugs, but you can know enough to understand when something is right, and when it is wrong, and more importantly, when it is suspect. Don't trust the researchers - verify it yourself. That's not original research, it's just common sense (for the paranoid).

Re:Trust no one

[Anonymous Coward]

Applying the mantra of open source to the underlying mathematics: Learn the mathematics of cryptography yourself to find the bugs within the mathematics.

I see. Learn the mathematics of crypto, eh? I suppose they offer that class at my local community college?

Aw, heck with that, I'm sure there are hundreds of developers that understand highly advanced mathematics and crypto protocols that I can hire for $10/hour. All those top-level crypto guys are overrated. Anybody can do this. Just grab the latest copy of Crypto for Dummies, right? Seems easy enough...

Re:Trust no one

[Anonymous Coward]

Can't sleep, clowns will eat me.

Can't sleep, clowns will eat me.

Can't sleep, clowns will eat me.

Re:Trust no one

[killfixx]

Hrmmm... You have a great point... More computers won't make the job easier... Smarter computers will...

Look at Watson... Specifically designed to measure the value of information in both directions and use these values real time as it sorts through massive amounts of data...

Areas where humans were thought to be the only solution, here comes Watson...

Law, medical diagnostics, computer software troubleshooting, etc...

These are all areas where Watson will soon dominate...

We can only hope the Utah data center will NOT have IBM as one of the contractors...

Re:Trust no one

[HiThere]

No. You don't need a compiler you can trust to start with, merely one that you know hasn't been compromised by people colluding with those who may have compromised the first one.

E.g., you could take a C compiler written in, say, Algol and use it to compile the GCC C compiler. That would give you a full C compiler that you could trust. You can be pretty sure that whoever wrote the C compiler in Algol wasn't talking to the people who wrote GCC, so any tricks they slipped into the C compiler wouldn't be recognized. And a compiler written in Algol is unlikely to have sneaky C routine recognizers.

Actually, most Algol implementations were interpreters, so change that to Modula 2. But then you need to pick a Modula 2 compiler that wasn't written in C.

Notice that you never get truely trustable computation. E.g., all current CPU chips are microcoded, and nobody that I know of understands what those microcodes do. Even if you compiler is good, your CPU could sabotage you. Of course, the problem there is it needs to figure out what it's executing to know how and whether to sabotage it. So with every level of remove it gets trickier.

Re:Trust no one

[Crosshair84]

Watson will suffer the exact same problem, false positives increase exponentially when your data set increases at a linear rate.

Just because a computer can compete on Jeopardy and do a decent job of recommending cancer treatments, which are all double checked by humans BTW, does not mean it won't spew garbage when given terabytes of new data every day. Real intelligence is non-algorithmic, a computer will never be be to match it, only perform a crude simulation of it.

Re:Trust no one

[SleazyRidr]

Bruce probably doesn't want you to trust him implicitly. You should always keep your wits and take actions to make sure you're not being taken advantage of. I read a while ago about a guy who tricked his son into running into a mirror and was flamed for not wanting his son to trust me: but trusting someone can be dangerous. The lesson is to not let yourself get into a position where you're trusting someone else and not protecting yourself.

Re:Trust no one

[Anonymous Coward]

I would trust him with your life.

Re:Trust no one

[swillden]

But expecting to be able to make a significant contribution to improving security with just a little math is misguided.

That's a huge jump, and a red flag for a shitty argument. As you wrote it, yes it is misguided. You don't have to make a significant contribution, just understand what's already out there. And it's way more than "a little math".

For that matter, will studying the mathematics of RSA make it clear why a chosen ciphertext attack renders RSA with PKCS#1 v1.5 padding vulnerable, and how using Optimal Asymmetric Encryption Padding instead addresses the issue?

Yes. That was simple, wasn't it?

Actually, no. Simply understanding the mathematics will not make it clear. Understanding the math, then having it pointed out, or reading Bleichenbacher's paper, will make it clear. But merely learning the math will not... else it wouldn't have taken decades for someone to discover that problem.

The MD5 collision was an algorithm based on math.

No, it wasn't/isn't. MD5, like all modern hash functions, are based on repeated mixing. It can be modeled mathematically, but it's not "based" on math in any meaningful sense.

But the basic statistical analyses which show whether something may be vulnerable, is all math.

Yes, statistics is math. Do the stats for me and tell me if SHA-256 is vulnerable, would you?

The math for AES can be found on the wikipedia.

The algorithm can. Block ciphers aren't really based in any meaningful sense on mathematics either. Mathematical tools are used to model them and look for weaknesses... but there's also a healthy dose of good "intuition" that goes into cipher design.

The current choices for Dual ECC were proven suspect by math.

Partly. The concern derives as much from observation of process as from the math.

The advice is not laughable in context- trust no one. And, it's not impossible to learn this stuff, you can either choose to or choose not to.

I've spent a big part of the last 20+ years learning it (among other things; I'm not a researcher and crypto is only part of my job), and I work with a bunch of other people who've devoted their whole lives to it. And you know what? If you ask them if anything is good, they'll immediately start looking for research papers to find out... because there is no realistic option but to trust the work that others have done, and which has been peer reviewed and vetted.

Don't trust the researchers - verify it yourself. That's not original research, it's just common sense (for the paranoid).

That's not what the researchers do. But you're smarter and more paranoid than they are. Gotcha.

Re:Trust no one

[Z00L00K]

I don't even trust myself...

Re:Trust no one

[bigstrat2003]

You either didn't read or didn't read closely enough. TFS clearly states that the author is a fan of Schneier, and that this is a hypothetical exercise.

Re:Trust no one

[Jakeula]

Ok, so let's say that we do have NP-complete cryptosystems. Did you manufacture your own hardware? The point, however abstract it gets, is that trust has to be somewhere or you get no where. You simply cannot know everything about everything well enough to validate all information around you, at some point you have to give up control and trust that the people in charge of that portion of your life are doing the job they are tasked with. This is not to say that you do not verify the sources in which you place trust at all! Remain skeptical, but trust to any varying degree is a must.

Re:Trust no one

[Anonymous Coward]

You forgot the 3rd aspect of crypto and the one that is most likely to be compromised:

3. The administration.

Re:Trust no one

[mdielmann]

Seriously. The mere act of trusting someone will eventually lead to that person betraying said trust. Trusting someone puts them in a position of power, and power corrupts. You can't trust anyone.

I'm guessing you have parental issues. And lots of puppies.

Joking.

Re:Trust no one

[kimhanse]

The fundamental problem is that as the size of your data set increases linearly, the number of false positives increases exponentially.

That makes no sense, if it was true NSA would end up with more false positives than data if they just collected enough data.

Re:Trust no one

[PopeRatzo]

TFS clearly states that the author is a fan of Schneier,

That's how it's done, son. Concern trolling is all about that first phrase: "I'm a fan of X, but..." As in, "I'm a big fan of Bruce Schneier, BUT are we sure we can trust him?"

See, you start by claiming credibility, then drop the hammer, ruefully. As in, "I want to see poor people get health care as much as anyone, BUT..." or, "I'm a strong believer in personal privacy, BUT..." or, "I think open source software is a fantastic idea, BUT...". It's how FUD is done. If you just come out and say, "You can't trust Bruce Schneier," then you're required to actually give some evidence that he's not trustworthy. But if you start by saying you're a "BIG FAN" of Bruce Schneier, but..." then you've got the unsophisticated readers saying, "Wow, if he's a BIG FAN of Schneier's but thinks there are reasons we shouldn't trust him then maybe we shouldn't trust that backstabbing sonofabitch, amirite?"

If you're going to develop a good Internet BS detector (and trust me, you're going to need one to survive), you've got to learn the ropes and tropes.

Re:Trust no one

[Crosshair84]

Exactly. The more data you have, the more potential connections there are between those points of data.

Here is a link that will explain it in better detail.

http://www.wired.com/opinion/2013/02/big-data-means-big-errors-people/

Just like bankers who own a free option — where they make the profits and transfer losses to others – researchers have the ability to pick whatever statistics confirm their beliefs (or show good results) and then ditch the rest.

Big-data researchers have the option to stop doing their research once they have the right result. In options language: The researcher gets the “upside” and truth gets the “downside.” It makes him antifragile, that is, capable of benefiting from complexity and uncertainty — and at the expense of others.

But beyond that, big data means anyone can find fake statistical relationships, since the spurious rises to the surface. This is because in large data sets, large deviations are vastly more attributable to variance (or noise) than to information (or signal). It’s a property of sampling: In real life there is no cherry-picking, but on the researcher’s computer, there is. Large deviations are likely to be bogus.

Re:Trust no one

[Solandri]

This is a dangerous attitude I've been seeing increasing over the last decade. The notion that disagreement is synonymous with weakness and thus should be stomped out.

That slashdot has topics which question sacred cows and widely-held beliefs is a good thing. If the site parroted one and only one viewpoint, then I'd be worried that there was some higher force manipulating it. The fact that contrary viewpoints are presented and moderated up is what tells me it's a functioning system of free expression.

Diversity of opinion and self-questioning is a strength, not a weakness.

Re:Trust no one

[Raenex]

Do you think the North Korean government would last 10 minutes if everyone there was suddenly made aware of living standards outside their country?

It wouldn't surprise me. The population is subjugated. The military gets fed, and dissenters get killed or worse.

Re:Trust no one

[Anonymous Coward]

The fact that he's actively against the NSA is good enough for me!

Re:Trust no one

[Anonymous Coward]

And now, folks, it's time for "Who do you trust!" Hubba, hubba, hubba! Money, money, money! Who do you trust? Me? I'm giving away free money. And where is the Batman? HE'S AT HOME WASHING HIS TIGHTS!

So do you trust the Joker, or the Batman?

Trust neither, and use both. Simply put: if the NSA is Batman, and the FSB, for example, is the Joker, then base compilers in both political regions. Throw in China as the Penguin while you're at it. In this fashion, take advantage of the underlying political tension (a la Snowden) to ensure the inability of any single power to fully compromise your project.

Re:Trust no one

[moortak]

I think it is great to question Schneier, for the same reason we do security audits. You need to examine your trust anchors from time to time. So for Schneier, we ask ourselves a simple question, is the advice sound? The idea that the math is sound, but the implementations are broken has been a constant refrain from everyone for decades. There would be no benefit to paying or threatening Schneier to make him say that, as it has been his refrain for ages. Tomorrow the people in the field with the skills to attack the math will do so, just as they were doing a year ago. The people with the skills to attack the implementations will do so like they did a year ago, but with a few more obvious targets. We'll all continue to harden our security the same way we have for ages, by assuming that there is a flaw and that it must be found.

Re:Trust no one

[Anonymous Coward]

You have to trust someone, somewhere along the line.

Even the compiler can be compromised. Ken Thompson showed that.

Where I think "anonymous coward" is wrong is that he's implying the Bruce Schneier would NEED to be compromised by the NSA. He wouldn't.

There are two aspects to "crypto".
1. The math.
2. The implementation.

Bruce can validate that the math seems to be correct (or he can be compromised into saying that it seems to be correct) but it is the implementation that gets used.

So even if Bruce actually believed that the math was correct, the NSA could compromise the people/organisation/company that turned that math into a product that you would use.

And it is much easier to claim that a flawed implementation was an innocent mistake than to compromise EVERYONE who can understand the math behind it.

You comment and judging by the users that voted it up, are blatantly prejudice.. Can you really justify Bruce not cooperating with the NSA? You see what the NSA is willing to do with LavaBit and CryptoSeal to force them to give up there "users, shut down or face there wrath". What makes you think the NSA wouldn't threaten that same towards Bruce, and have a court order gagging Bruce from even mentioning the NSA or any government agencies that he is helping or being forced to help? All they need to do is say he is creating the programs, that aide in terrorism from his work, to lock him in a dark far away prison, until they (if they) decide to get around to his case.

Not saying he is involved, but your explanation is flawed. And I am not hating on you, I just want to give another side to why he could easily be on the NSA's side.
The poster of the question brings up another great point, why wouldn't the powers at be force Bruce to work for them to assure the zombie citizens of the country that not all is lost and there is a small glimmer of hope you can still have privacy from communist federal/national security eyes..

Re:Trust no one

[Garridan]

I didn't say 'trust nothing'. Trust in a large and diverse community is preferable to trusting a single entity, be it a person, government agency, or corporation. If your entire hardware and software stack is open and verified by a large number of people representing a diversity of motives, then and only does it derserve any trust. "Trust no one" does not rule out trust in humanity. Crowds can either be much smarter, or much stupider, than their constituents -- use them wisely, and trust no one.

Re:Trust no one

[antdude]

Fox Mulder, is that you?

Re:Trust no one

[fonske]

The fastest way to know if you can trust someone, is to trust someone.

Re:Trust no one

[PopeRatzo]

I think it is great to question Schneier, for the same reason we do security audits.

Yes, if that's what's happening here, then yes.

Re:Trust no one

[PopeRatzo]

If the site parroted one and only one viewpoint

Yes, but let's not assume that there are "two sides to every story".

Very often, the "question sacred cows" takes the form of contrarianism for attention or validating a view that furthers a hidden agenda.

Re:Trust no one

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, I was wondering if all the suddenly unemployed wikipedia sockpuppets had found new jobs posting here.

Re:Trust no one

[Anonymous Coward]

"Producing identical output" isn't the issue. Any crypto has to produce the expected output to be compatible with other software that implement the same algorithms, or with publically available test vectors. The far more lucrative attack vector is key generation. If you have a crypto system that uses 256-bit keys, but which in reality just generates keys from a 64 bit subspace, anyone who knows what that subspace is and has the capability to crack 64 bit cryptos can read your data. All that is needed for this is a compromised random number generator.

Re:Trust no one

[Douglas Goodall]

He can put up a $50,000 bond that he is not working with the NSA, and should it be found out that he is, he would feel the pain.

Re:Trust no one

[david_thornley]

Suppose I understand the math. (I don't, actually, but could probably remedy that with some studying.) Now, how do I know whether a cryptosystem is any good? I've not read of any proofs for anything other than the one-time pad. From a theoretical point of view, a known-plaintext attack is a problem in NP somewhere (and I could come up with restrictions on the unknown-plaintext attack to make it NP). I don't know if it's NP-complete or not; I've certainly never heard of such a proof. Even so, it's theoretically possible that P=NP, so there may be a polynomial-time solution for all decryptions, and it may even be feasible.

What I know about AES security is that I'm told that a lot of allegedly very smart people have allegedly worked hard to try to break it, and came up with some theoretical attacks that are far from practical. In order for this to be of any use to me, I have to trust all the components of it to be more or less true, with the net effect that a lot of experts have seriously tried to break it, with no practical result. I could perhaps put in years of serious work to become an expert at cracking these ciphers, but I can't become a diverse group of experts.

The extreme case of trusting no one leaves me with nothing. I don't have to take anything Schneier or CmdrTaco says as the revealed truth, but I can't do without trust.

Re:Trust no one

[Anonymous Coward]

Can you really trust them not to work together? After all, we've always been at war with Eurasia...

Re:Trust no one

[RespekMyAthorati]

I'd trust Schneier before I'd trust Timothy.

Re:Trust no one

[Bite The Pillow]

We were talking about trusting no one, not how paranoid I might be. Reading research and trusting it does not fit that model. How researchers work is unrelated.

I focused on math because we are talking about verifying the software, which is all about the math. Or at least the software implementation of the math.

We don't care if the fundamentals are wrong, so we don't need 20 years of experience. If an input should be cryptographically random, then trust requires that it be tested scientifically. There are ways to do so, which is how the Dual_EC_DRBG prng defect was found.

If there is better crypto or an attack on existing crypto, that is outside the realm of trust, so irrelevant. Does this implementation match its design and goals? Compared to evaluating crypto on its own merits, that is orders of magnitude simpler, very math heavy, and well within reason for someone with calculus experience, and reading material.

No one should be judging the merits of the crypto itself without years of experience. Trust is simpler, as long as it is an open standard. If its not open, don't trust it.

Make more sense that way?

Re:Trust no one

[Anonymous Coward]

Can we get a Venn diagram with Gov't & Clowns?

Re:Trust no one

[swillden]

The original post on this topic suggested looking for flaws in the math, which implies looking for flaws in the underlying algorithms, which is not something anyone other than a researcher is likely to be able to do.

Does this implementation match its design and goals? Compared to evaluating crypto on its own merits, that is orders of magnitude simpler, very math heavy, and well within reason for someone with calculus experience, and reading material.

Now it sounds like you're talking not about validating the crypto, but instead checking the implementations. That's a reasonable thing to do, I suppose, but with the exception of a tiny handful of public key algorithms, math isn't even relevant, and even in those cases it's not very important. What you would really be doing is looking at abstract descriptions of the algorithms and validating that the implementation does those things.

In practice, the great thing about writing crypto code is that unless it's exactly, 100% correct, it doesn't work at all; it produces garbage (ciphers and hashes, anyway; CPRNGs are a much, much harder problem). This is also the challenging thing about writing crypto code, because if your code is producing garbage you have absolutely no idea where the flaw might be. With most software, as you get closer to a correct implementation, your results get closer to what you want. With crypto code functionality is almost binary.

What that means in the current context is that if the implementation you're examining matches one or two test vectors (term of art for known input/output pairs), then the implementation is correct. That doesn't mean it's secure, though. It could leak information in any number of ways, so what you really need to do when checking an implementation is to ensure that it doesn't leak. Unfortunately, leakage can be extremely subtle, so except for checking the most obvious issues, like timing analysis, we're back in the realm of expert work. Even simple issues like timing can require deep expertise to know how the published algorithm can be modified to make it timing resistant, without compromising it in some other way.

If an input should be cryptographically random, then trust requires that it be tested scientifically. There are ways to do so, which is how the Dual_EC_DRBG prng defect was found.

Running tests for statistical randomness on intermediate and output values, with selected parameters, was how part of the Dual EC DRBG defects were found... but they were found by researchers and the randomness testing was the method used to validate the suspected weakness, after deeper knowledge pointed out the possibility. Could a lay person have made the same discovery? It's possible, but very, very unlikely.

We were talking about trusting no one, not how paranoid I might be.

And my point is that the only way to avoid trusting someone (many people, actually), is to avoid cryptography entirely. The field is too broad and deep for any one person to completely validate the tools they're using. It's a specialist field and the only way you can have any serious knowledge of whether or not the tools are secure is to trust the specialists. Or become one; and even then you'll only deeply understand one piece of the puzzle.

If you don't trust anyone, then the answer is simple: Don't put your secrets on a computer network, and perhaps you shouldn't even put them on a computer. Stick with really old technology which you can fully understand, like pencil and paper.

Re:Trust no one

[someSnarkyBastard]

OK lets say that in context your advice is sound and I now thoroughly understand the math behind modern crypto systems. How am I going to be sure the math is correctly implemented? Are you advocating that in addition to having a deep understanding of some fairly esoteric maths I now need to be an expert enough coder to judge the Underhanded C Contest as well? Because that is what you are asking and for 95% of folks on the net or event people here on /. that is asking the impossible.

Trust no one

[Anonymous Coward]

It's turtles all the way down.

Just double the encryption

[bhlowe]

I use two cyphers, just in case. In my case, I found ROT13 and XOR excellent for speed and obfuscation.

Re:Just double the encryption

[Gibgezr]

This is why we need a "+2 insightful AND funny" category, dammit.

Re:Just double the encryption

[i kan reed]

But more seriously, if you develop your own crypto system, and only share it with the people who are decoding it, it turns out to be rather hard to break. Applying a substitution cipher followed by a matrix encryption, then stick that into any old commercial encryption, no one is going to have an easy time with it.

Re:Just double the encryption

[Shienarier]

I use 2ROT13.

Re:Just double the encryption

[Empiric]

Chained-XOR (say, XOR-ing with the key byte sequence -and- the preceding file bytes in the last XOR-ing round, with an arbitrary key length) is actually quite secure.

IIRC, it is one of the techniques that automatically qualified an algorithm as an unexportable "munition".

Re:Just double the encryption

[Anonymous Coward]

Is that you, COINTEL pro? That's some baller advice.

Re:Just double the encryption

[Anonymous Coward]

If you develop your own crypto system and never share it with adverse parties that really want to show you up publicly - then

A.) Your system isn't secure
B.) You will have a false faith in the security of your system.

If you don't already understand this, that's fine, but it means you shouldn't be giving out advice about crypto systems, as either you haven't actually done any research into the history of crypto OR you want to mislead people.

Re:Just double the encryption

[TheCarp]

Whats funny about that is, I am pretty sure I suggested XOR in CBC mode to someone recently as a joke. Didn't even realize I was suggesting they use unexportable munitions :)

Re:Just double the encryption

[i kan reed]

Blah blah blah, of course I understand cryptosystems. But the fact of the matter is, you shouldn't inherently trust that the system itself is secure. If party C can't figure out how a message was encoded, they can't exploit gaps in that encoding to extract your message. There's no ifs ands or buts about that.

The fact is that people with the will and money to crack RSA can, given just a public key and a ciphertext. You can talk about the theory of interception all day, but the practice is all that matters.

Re:Just double the encryption

[Anonymous Coward]

Did you read the last half of his sentence?

Do your own crypto.. share it with trusted persons, use it, then RUN IT THROUGH A PUBLIC ENCRYPTION SUITE, then on the other side, they'll run it through a PUBLIC ENCRYPTION SUITE then your private crypto system.

Re:Just double the encryption

[Anonymous Coward]

Damn it guys, moderate down the parent ASAP. This is the absolutely WORST advice you could ever give anyone about crypto for security!

There are *large* *families* of attacks that are higly paralelizable and automated that will break any combination of, e.g. XOR+substitution. It won't even *notice* you layered two levels, it will break both at the same time as it goes because it is actually attacking the composite transformation.

Don't fucking try to cook your own cypher. Just use the correct chain mode for what you need, one of the highly studied block cyphers that were not chosen due to resource usage (e.g. serpent is likely to be stronger than AES). And don't screw up on the random numbers, variable initalization vectors, and key exchange. Really, *don't*, because if you ever repeat the IV on DH or GCM, or implement GCM incorrectly, you will most likely leak the secret key.

Re:Just double the encryption

[Anonymous Coward]

No it isn't. It's subject to a double known-plaintext attack. Two properly aligned known plaintexts will expose additional parts of the cypher-text in regions.

Re:Just double the encryption

[marcosdumay]

I do the same, I ROT13 and XOR the resulting text with itself. Completely unbreakable, and as a bonus, the encripted text compresses pretty well.

Re:Just double the encryption

[Anonymous Coward]

You can't then widely distribute this cryptosystem or let devices in it outside the tightest security. You've essentially created a private key in the form of an algorithm... except if they catch that it's a homebrewed system they can analyze it for weaknesses.

Re:Just double the encryption

[steelfood]

This assumes your adversaries only have the encrypted message. If they have your code, nothing but the math is going to save you.

Re:Just double the encryption

[Anonymous Coward]

Blah blah blah, of course I understand cryptosystems. [...] If party C can't figure out how a message was encoded, they can't exploit gaps in that encoding to extract your message.

This statement proves that you do not, in fact, understand cryptosystems.

Re:Just double the encryption

[Anonymous Coward]

It once took me two weeks to decrypt and decode a protocol, which was xor with a 32 bit key, on top of a proprietary compression algorithm which was mostly based around LZW. The messages it was compressing and encrypting was also proprietary.

Re:Just double the encryption

[Empiric]

You'll need to elaborate on that. How are you going to determine any plaintext at all in the file (presuming it even is text)? There are no repeating sequences of bytes you could mount a statistical attack on, the very purpose of "chaining" the XOR operations.

If it's that easy, you should be able to pseudocode the crack, here and now.

Re:Just double the encryption

[Anonymous Coward]

I typed out a long post of how many ways that was wrong, but right before I hit submit, I realized you're trying to be funny.

Re:Just double the encryption

[vux984]

There are *large* *families* of attacks that are higly paralelizable and automated that will break any combination of, e.g. XOR+substitution. It won't even *notice* you layered two levels, it will break both at the same time as it goes because it is actually attacking the composite transformation.

You missed the part where he ran it through the 'industry standard' encryption as well.

Don't fucking try to cook your own cypher. Just use the correct chain mode for what you need, one of the highly studied block cyphers that were not chosen due to resource usage (e.g. serpent is likely to be stronger than AES).

The encryption which we presume the NSA may have backdoored the implementation we are using?

And don't screw up on the random numbers, variable initalization vectors, and key exchange. Really, *don't*, because if you ever repeat the IV on DH or GCM, or implement GCM incorrectly, you will most likely leak the secret key.

Well that is reassuring.

This is the absolutely WORST advice you could ever give anyone about crypto for security!

His advice amounted to: use standard encryption, plus some simplistic cipher.

And you are right. The former is the real security, the latter is putting your jewelry in an ice cream container in the fridge instead of the jewelry box.

But if you assume the NSA etc can break the standard encryption with relative ease, and in an automated fashion -- then what?

Suppose the automated NSA dragnet backdoors your PGP email and they got gibberish out, now what?

So is it AES, TEA, ECC, rot/cipher/xor, 3DES... unless you are a high priority are they even going to bother flagging it to break it find out? And if you really fuck with them and 1 message in 5 actually just contains randomly generated gibberish xored with the first couple paragraphs of moby dick? How many resources are they going to work on that?

Re:Just double the encryption

[swillden]

If party C can't figure out how a message was encoded, they can't exploit gaps in that encoding to extract your message.

Nonsense.

Many amateur ciphers are easily crackable without any knowledge of the exact technique used. And amateur cipher designers can't tell the difference between those that are and those that aren't.

If you want to use your own cipher, fine. Use it. Then encrypt the result with AES.

Re:Just double the encryption

[Anonymous Coward]

...or if your adversary doesn't actually care enough about your data to waste time trying to understand code that no-one-but-you uses

Re:Just double the encryption

[Anonymous Coward]

Security through obscurity is actually gaining ground in my eyes these days.

Sure it can provide false hope if you're hiding behind bad logic.....

BUT

We have learned that a deep concerted effort to sabotage most known crypto systems has been going on for years.... Thus I'd say a new round of obfuscation is in order to artificially push the cards back in our favor.

You can only show your encryption routines full force if you think they are good enough to survive the scrutiny.... Now even with past tools, I think this is incorrect. They will be secretly subverted and no one will tell you for decades.

Thus security through obscurity is really all you have when your base toolset is weak enough that you can't be flashing it publicly anymore. Perfectly plausible to me instead of false security with that backdoored Elliptic curve cipher.

Re:Just double the encryption

[Anonymous Coward]

All the encryption in the world means fuck all if your adversary has pwn3d your machine. I was reading Stieg Larsson's The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo a few months ago and had to laugh at how Wennerström supposedly used PGP, only to have that completely thwarted when Lisbet Salander hacked into his computer and got full administrative access, installing essentially keyloggers to get his passphrases. Similarly, it is far, far easier for the NSA to pwn your machine or and read all your encrypted data that way than to break transport layer encryption.

Re:Just double the encryption

[i kan reed]

If you want to use your own cipher, fine. Use it. Then encrypt the result with AES.

Did you not read my post? I said exactly that. Last step: "then stick that into any old commercial encryption"

I mean, "How dare I not do that thing I did."

Re:Just double the encryption

[i kan reed]

Sure, but why would they know to look for my code?

Re:Just double the encryption

[i kan reed]

Your passphrases wouldn't be enough without a meaningful understanding of the encryption used, which was my original point.

Re:Just double the encryption

[Lost_In_Specs]

My thought when I wanted to play around with encryption was to use the least significant bits (or some other mutually agreed formula) from a music CD as a one-time pad. Never actually tried it, but it would give someone fits to try and figure out.

Re:Just double the encryption

[devman]

This is why we tell people to not roll there own crypto systems (particularly rolling your own cipher) if they are serious about security. http://crypto.stackexchange.com/questions/2601/is-xor-in-a-cbc-like-mode-secure

Re:Just double the encryption

[Anonymous Coward]

If it's that easy, you should be able to pseudocode the crack, here and now.

Ah, yes, the infallible "challenge a random /. commenter to produce a counterexample on the spot" method of security auditing.

Could you formally define the cipher you are describing? Are you xoring each block with the same key, or are you e.g. using a one time pad? What kind of attacks is it secure against?

Re:Just double the encryption

[Empiric]

The reason is because there's a straw-man of what I said?

...how it works out depends on the details of the key...

Indeed. And note I said the details should be -arbitrary-, for instance, "Type a passphrase of arbitrary length" for the encryptor. This is not analogous to the "XOR with the last byte also" of the question presented. At minimum one would have to determine the -length- of the passphrase to know when the next block begins. I suggest this is a much greater challenge than the suggested implementation you've linked, and further that the attacks on the Vigenere cipher are not applicable, as that cipher creates repeating sequences in the ciphertext, whereas a chained XOR would not.

Agreed, however, that using the same passphrase across multiple files would be potentially insecure. The fix to remedy that is trivially obvious, though...

Re:Just double the encryption

[swillden]

I stand corrected. That's what I get for jumping in in the middle. However, I'll still assert that all of the actual security in your frankenscheme is coming from the commercial encryption.

Re:Just double the encryption

[Anonymous Coward]

I assume you do a quadruple encryption.. do you do the RO13 4 times, then the XOR 4 times, or do you interleave them?

Re:Just double the encryption

[CODiNE]

I run them each twice for double the security.

Re:Just double the encryption

[i kan reed]

To the extent to which the commercial scheme itself is trustworthy, and given that we know they aren't really, the frankenscheme gives you some redundant protection.

Re:Just double the encryption

[swillden]

Negligible protection, assuming anyone actually cares.

And I disagree that the "commercial schemes" aren't trustworthy. I have a high degree of confidence in the openssl library, for example (horrible ugliness of the code notwithstanding). I think PGP / GnuPG are also quite excellent. Stick with widely-used, widely-reviewed open source tools, with current-generation ciphers, adequate key sizes and find good ways to protect your keys.

Re:Just double the encryption

[Anonymous Coward]

A CBC xor process reduces to an autokey variant (not the fixed key variant) of Vigenere cipher. There are applicable attacks, if you don't believe the post the GP linked or anyone here feel free to post a new question on crypto.stackexchange explaining your algorithm, there are lots of smart people on that site.

Re:Just double the encryption

[Anonymous Coward]

even better -- you can shortcut the double encryption by applying ROT13 twice

Re:Just double the encryption

[Anonymous Coward]

Isn't 2ROT13 stupid? Clever minds will notice how much better is 3ROT13

Re:Just double the encryption

[kermidge]

Or send in plain-test with a few carefully tchosen outrageous mistpellings so they'll think those are indycators for a key-sequence - a book code, perhaps, or argot. Let 'em go nuts trying to figure out what I'm really saying, or at least do a lookup of all the books in the Library of Congress. It's trivial but still takes time.

Re:Just double the encryption

[Gibgezr]

You clearly understand why his post can be viewed as funny (ROT13 and XOR is in no way a secure cryptographic function), but ask yourself this: do you understand why his post can (correctly!) be viewed as insightful? If that is the part that confused you, it's because the basic premise of doubling the encryption by re-encrypting Bruce's Blowfish (say) with someone else's (good) cryptographic function is a good thing.

And yes, the mods appear to have gone a little meta in modding me. I appreciate the humour in their appreciation of my humourous appreciation of blowhe's humourous post.

Learn math

[Anonymous Coward]

Bruce Sheneier is hardly the only cryptologist in the world.

Fucking fanboys.. Christ.

Re: Learn math

[Anonymous Coward]

Schneier isn't even a credentialed cryptographer. He's the guy who wrote the popularized book that the establishment didn't want published. He's a popular writer, and a pundit.

Re: Learn math

[Anonymous Coward]

Schneier isn't even a credentialed cryptographer.

You know he's designed several ciphers, right? Blowfish, Twofish, perhaps you've heard of them? Twofish was an AES finalist. If that doesn't give him credentials, what does?

Re: Learn math

[Anonymous Coward]

It didn't make it would be high on my list of things that would disqualify him.

Re: Learn math

[Anonymous Coward]

He isn't licensed by the NSA to do crypto work. You wouldn't trust an unlicensed lawyer, or an unlicensed doctor, now would you (well, you might, but not for very long)? Better play it safe and keep your child porn and assassination plots securely in a DES container, potential criminal.

Re: Learn math

[Anonymous Coward]

Because you're a retard.

Re: Learn math

[Anonymous Coward]

Also, Skein was one of the 5 SHA-3 finalists.

Re: Learn math

[strikethree]

You know he's designed several ciphers, right? Blowfish, Twofish, perhaps you've heard of them? Twofish was an AES finalist. If that doesn't give him credentials, what does?

Hm. A golden plaque from the NSA? ;)

Re: Learn math

[ax_42]

Schneier isn't even a credentialed cryptographer. He's the guy who wrote the popularized book that the establishment didn't want published. He's a popular writer, and a pundit.

Schneier is more then a "pundit". Before he wrote the "popular" stuff, he proved that he was heavy on the technical (http://www.amazon.com/Applied-Cryptography-Protocols-Algorithms-Source) for example, as well as the various algorithms he (co)-invented.

You, however, are an ignorant troll.

Re: Learn math

[Anonymous Coward]

Transparent personal attack is transparent. Whatever credentials you are referring to are irrelevant. Fact remains that Bruce is a cryptographer.

witch

[stormpunk]

Obviously we burn him at the stake. If he burns he was innocent.

Re:witch

[Anonymous Coward]

no drown, gah didn't you read the Salem witch trials, drowning proves innocent.

Re:witch

[smash]

Bahaha...

Re:witch

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't be such an idiot, we have much better modern methods that don't render the subject completely useless. You can start with some simple waterboarding and move up from there.

Re:witch

[GarethIwanFairclough]

I thought it was "crushing with huge boulders" that proved innocence?

Re:witch

[Anonymous Coward]

What's wrong with you? We still have trials here!

You first have to see if he weighs the same as a duck.

Re:witch

[Dracos]

I am absolutely certain that Bruce Schneier weighs the same as a duck.

Re:witch

[brianerst]

As long as they're both in salt water...

Re:witch

[Anonymous Coward]

We will confirm his innocence by putting him at the bottom of a pool of burning oil with a boulder to keep him down.

Re:witch

[cellocgw]

As long as they're both in salt water.

As long as we're arguing about encryption, shouldn't that be "salt[ed] hash" ? //rimshot

Re:witch

[Anonymous Coward]

The duck test is questionable ... did he turn you into a newt ?

Re:witch

[Anonymous Coward]

Just remember; "One White Duck / 0^{10} = Nothing At All"

Re:witch

[Anonymous Coward]

I salt all my hashes with this:

SaltedHash saltThisHash( Hash unsalted, Salt getNSABackDoor() );

Re:witch

[Anonymous Coward]

Which leads to the question: Would you rather fight one Bruce Schneier sized duck or 100 duck sizes Bruce Schneiers?

Easy

[TubeSteak]

and has put in effort to determine which cryptosystems should still be considered safe.

Have someone(s) double check his work.
We should be doing that anyway, even for someone who is 100% trusted.

Re:Easy

[Talderas]

If they're 100% trusted we should then have it notarized that they wrote every document that their name is attached to.

Re:Easy

[Anonymous Coward]

Have someone(s) double check his work.
We should be doing that anyway, even for someone who is 100% trusted.

That is precisely how that works. People make mistakes, etc. Just look at the slew of OSS libraries that were vulnerable to padding oracle attacks. Heck, even first SSL standard had it built-in and most likely cause is people do not understand encryption.

Learn some crypto. Learn what semantic security and related terms mean. Then you'll find out that the problems are not necessarily in the algorithms, but the implementations that allow side-channel attacks.

Side channel and broken RNG/PRNG are how you most likely will break crypto implementations, not attacking the algorithm.

Re:Easy

[bluefoxlucid]

He's Bruce Schneier. Bruce Schneier will flex his pecs and encrypt your brain.

Re:Easy

[JigJag]

and who do you trust to double check his work?

Re:Easy

[Anonymous Coward]

There is such a thing as "good enough."

Re:Easy

[bmearns]

Yeh, and for a long time, SSL was considered "good enough".

But honestly, getting two people to assure you that "yes, this is solid, the NSA isn't trying to trick you and certainly hasn't recruited me to play along" is hardly "good enough". A dozen experts, maybe. A hundred independent experts from different institutions around the globe is getting close to "good enough". But I hardly think two people is sufficient.

Re:Easy

[TubeSteak]

and who do you trust to double check his work?

As long as enough *potentially* trustworthy eyes do the review, does it really matter whose they are?
Not everyone can work for one of the USA's alphabet agencies.

Re:Easy

[DMUTPeregrine]

Zimmermann, Ferguson, Rivest, Knudsen, etc. If enough of them agree they're probably right, and trustworthy. Especially Zimmermann, his history of supporting privacy and his willingness to risk jail time by releasing PGP to the public speak quite a lot for his character.

I will never trust ...

[Skapare]

... Anonymous Coward. There are some very suspicious posts he makes. And besides, he seems to never sleep.

Re:I will never trust ...

[Anonymous Coward]

I sleep when I blink.

Re:I will never trust ...

[Anonymous Coward]

That's funny, I always thought users never wake up.

IMO we should never rely on trust, even with friends. We should 'depend on' each other, 'depending on each other'. Otherwise it's a business transaction. In (today's) business transactions, no one is to be trusted. Each side should see the other as trying to get as much out of the situation as they possibly can.

So no, unless you personally know this guy Bruce Schneier, then you cannot trust him. He may as well be an actor trying to make money. But so what? Who the hell cares if the community trusts him, or anyone else that's in some position of authority like him? It's not about trust. It's about those people depending on us depending on them, and visa-verse. To me, I am not depending on him, and he's not depending on me. I couldn't care less.

Re:I will never trust ...

[Anonymous Coward]

You may be on to something. I am pretty sure that I have multiple personality syndrome. I keep seeing posts that *I* did not make but by gosh! There's my name. I stay tired too so you are probably correct on the insomnia.

- Tyler D.

Re:I will never trust ...

[Anonymous Coward]

And I don't blink because of the angels.

Re:I will never trust ...

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, Sleep deprivation makes me post stupid things sometimes.

-- AC

Re:I will never trust ...

[Anonymous Coward]

... Anonymous Coward. There are some very suspicious posts he makes. And besides, he seems to never sleep.

Yea, he's kind of a jerk.

Re:I will never trust ...

[FridayBob]

Actually, since we now know that we're almost certainly giving the NSA insight into our thoughts and activities when we disclose our identities here at Slashdot and elsewhere on the web, perhaps we should start referring to this person as Anonymous Hero instead. Those who still don't have much respect for the practice could consider the new name to be ironic.

Re:I will never trust ...

[CODiNE]

Exactly! And that leads me to suspect multiple people may be sharing his account.

To what end??

He's pretty up front about...

[Assmasher]

...not trusting and simply relying upon his evaluations and pointing out that you need to think for yourself.

Not a very positive trait for the NSA irrespective of their goals.

Re:He's pretty up front about...

[Anonymous Coward]

Between these two, who do you chose to use without checking the work:

Alice who says "I am so confident that I can survive scrutiny that I'm going to suggest you check my work"

or

Bob who says "I am right, don't bother to check my work because you are too stupid to even understand my methods."

Now, if I'm Dastardly Dan The Propaganda Man - who do you think I'm going to hire/coerce to vet my Evil Machinations (R) so that The Sheeple will side with me?

You can't

[Anonymous Coward]

And by the way, you're in a virtual reality machine. Everything you know is false.

Good luck!

Re:You can't

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, we both are, and I just threw a basilisk at you. Have fun sleeping.

It's fairly easy.

[Anonymous Coward]

It's fairly easy.
You can simply walk through http://www.schneierfacts.com/

Given his general sense and intelligence

[Anonymous Coward]

He generally gives intelligent logical arguments towards any given subject and if something he said or did was believed to be wrong, the math and crypto communities would be free to point out any mistakes or errors in his words or algorithms and make their points publicly. So far, people seem to generally agree with everything he says and I guess so do I for the most part. That's just my opinion on him so far.

I don't know

[Anonymous Coward]

Can I even trust myself? I mean, how can I even conclusively prove that I'm not being used by the NSA to hide secrets from myself?

You can't

[Anonymous Coward]

He never wears a tinfoil hat, suggesting that this is a safe practice. But we all know it isn't

Trust him to do what?

[Hypotensive]

If you're talking about absolute trust, i.e. "I trust him" = "I trust him to do anything", you should probably have your head examined.

Phrase your questions better and you will get more useful answers.

Re:Trust him to do what?

[TheCarp]

Exactly.

I have a friend J. There are many things I would trust J with. I would trust him to sleep over in my house, to be there when I am not there. If I had a pile of hundred dollar bills, I would trust him to gaurd them while I went somewhere.

I have other friend's I might trust to load up that pile and bring it to me. I don't trust his judgement enough to do that because I fully expect him to leave it on the front seat with the car running while he just runs into the store real quck to grab a drink.

Different kinds of trust there.

The problem with this question is, its more what-if conspiracy than a question of trust. Can we trust that Bruce isn't working for the CIA and helping to cover up their real knowledge of crypto? What an odd thing to not trust. What would it mean to not trust that?

If I don't trust that he isn't, then I am assuming such a conspiracy must exist and they must have these capabilities? What does that mean to me? Do I start combing over his statements about trusting twofish and AES, and refuse to use anything but el-gamal?

Perhaps it means we need to look to other experts, are people saying AES and twofish are good all working for the CIA? Are some of them just parroting puppets? Or is there real opposition to his statements?

So far, if we want to assume this we must also assume that he, or he and a very select few others, have some idea of what he is covering up or at least what the party line message is. If anything he said was known to be untrue, even just to a few other experts, wouldn't we expect that they would call him out on that?

So where are we in a world where all of the experts are NSA puppets, so that nobody is left who can challenge them technically? This entire conspiracy theory gets ridiculous pretty fast.

Re:Trust him to do what?

[Anonymous Coward]

If you're talking about absolute trust, i.e. "I trust him" = "I trust him to do anything", you should probably have your head examined.

Phrase your questions better and you will get more useful answers.

Can Bruce Schneier be trusted? Answer: 42

Oh please

[weav]

If we can't trust old Bruce, we're all screwed. Though possibly we are anyway. But if he's an asset, he's pretty well disguised.

Re:Oh please

[Anonymous Coward]

Dude, Bruce Schneider doesn't even trust his own private keys. That should be a lesson to us all.

Re:Oh please

[Anonymous Coward]

Well he *says* he doesn't trust his own private keys ... but ...

Re:Oh please

[sgt_doom]

Yes, you are correct, I believe we can trust Bruce and I believe we are all screwed . . . .

I'll trust Schneier ...

[PPH]

... to point out the systems that should not be trusted. IMO, there is nobody I'll trust to tell me that a system is safe. Only time and repeated inspections will get something close to a state of trust.

Re:I'll trust Schneier ...

[Anonymous Coward]

He could be an adversary that's trying to bankrupt you by sowing doubt about your secure systems. If you can make your opponent spend themselves silly on paranoia, you win. Basically how the US won the cold war.

Re:I'll trust Schneier ...

[Anonymous Coward]

And how Al Queda won the war on terror.

Re:I'll trust Schneier ...

[PPH]

Not really. Because after the first few false claims, I would no longer trust him. Or anyone else playing that game for that matter.

Re:I'll trust Schneier ...

[Anonymous Coward]

Ah the scientific viewpoint. +1 Insightful.

Tinfoil hats over here!

[onyxruby]

I've got exactly what you need! Tinfoil hats are cheap. They are easy, to make too, it takes less than two minutes. Don't believe the MIT study that debunks the time honored tinfoil hat, it's a government conspiracy you know!

Don't worry, there are support groups for conspiracy theorists! Now I know like any number of other conspiracy theories those pesky facts might get in the way. However, learn from Joseph Goebbels and don't ever let logic, facts or reality get in your way. I know you look like a raving lunatic to any rational person, but not to worry, there is someone even crazier will soon show up to defend you, so cheer up!

Funny

[Anonymous Coward]

I can see that Schneier is trusted as a religious entity. There you need no proofs. God cannot be proven or disproven. Sorry.

Never trust a man...

[Anonymous Coward]

.. that is a full 2 feet shorter than the average American male.

I keed! I keed!

Here you are an answer, which you might not like

[trifish]

Problem: Paranoia
Solution: None

seriously? because SCIENCE!

[new death barbie]

Bruce Schnier may be the front-line spokesperson for the security community, but that should be completely separate from his body of work in cryptography. At the bottom line, he's doing mathematics, and mathematical proofs can be reproduced and confirmed -- or debated and disproven -- by anyone else in any country with sufficient background to understand them.

He is not some guru spouting unprovable wisdom from a mountaintop, he is a member of a scientific community, and if he is able to earn and keep the respect of that community, then that's a pretty good indication that he knows what he's talking about.

See if you can build a bridge out of him

[Boawk]

That's the best way to tell

There is no such thing as trust

[Anonymous Coward]

For a long time, it's been known. There is _no such thing as trust_.

Either you invent the Universe from scratch, at which point you can trust the things you create as your own god; or you _inherently_ can not trust anything in your environment ever.

http://cm.bell-labs.com/who/ken/trust.html

SubjectsInCommentsAreStupid

[lesincompetent]

Let the whitch hunt begin!
Just be sure to have enough matches!

Re:SubjectsInCommentsAreStupid

[Experiment 626]

Let the whitch hunt begin!

Whitch hunt would that be?

Re:SubjectsInCommentsAreStupid

[Anonymous Coward]

Finger Mike Hunt for more info.

Re:SubjectsInCommentsAreStupid

[lesincompetent]

I'll be fucking damned!

Logically retarded

[Ralph Spoilsport]

An assumption of bad faith is self defeating. How can we trust YOU???

Has Schneier given us bad advice? So far, so good it seems.

Has Schneier been a vocal critic of the NSA? Yes.

Has Schneier been on this file for a really long time? Yes.

Do you have any evidence that he's in cahoots with the cryptofascists? No.

So, all you have is a speculation to tear down the reputation of one of the good guys, a thought experiment, based on no evidence, but one that has real world consequences of spreading fear, uncertainty and doubt regarding someone who is fighting the good fight.

Therefore, I would humbly suggest that I could and do logically conclude that YOU are a tool of the NSA, not Schneier, and furthermore, I have more evidence than you do: Your suggestion to consider Schneier as less than reliable based on zero evidence.

Re:Logically retarded

[Anonymous Coward]

You're interpreting the original "thought experiment" as an attack. I think that's silly. I have to imagine that Schneier himself would approve of people asking, and analyzing, this question.

Re:Logically retarded

[Anonymous Coward]

I must applaud your cryptofascists pun.

Re:Logically retarded

[Anonymous Coward]

1. They are playing devil's advocate, not to tear down someone's reputation, but actually to question it in order to put it on a more solid foundation. That is not self defeating, but rather a typical method of proof by dialogue.
2. Your argument seems to be based on deflecting the claims back on the questioner. That doesn't answer the original question about Scheier. Also, your evidence against the writer of the summary is circumstantial.
3. If anyone actually has any evidence against Schneier's trustworthiness, they can present it here. I have seen other Slashdot articles produce just such informed criticism. Therefore this is not a waste of time. The original poster doesn't have to do all the work, you know.
4. One could use similar reasoning to claim that NSA is doing good work.
* Has the NSA visibly harmed America?
* Has the NSA been a vocal critic of America's enemies?
* Has the NSA been on the job for a really long time?
* Do we have any evidence that the NSA is favoring our enemies?
Conclusion: trust the NSA. Isn't that rather shallow reasoning, to put your trust in someone or something merely on the basis of appearances?

Re:Logically retarded

[Anonymous Coward]

Therefore, I would humbly suggest that I could and do logically conclude that YOU are a tool of the NSA, not Schneier, and furthermore, I have more evidence than you do: Your suggestion to consider Schneier as less than reliable based on zero evidence.

Valid point: Me and my question would be another cute way for the NSA to influence society. I can't completely discount the possibility that I'm a sleeper agent, myself.

But just to clarify, I had no intention of discrediting the man, this is strictly a thought experiment, not even conjecture or speculation. I do not mean to suggest that Schneier actually is untrustworthy or working for the NSA. If nothing else, this question has highlighted what may be a flaw in your own security model: you assume that he hasn't "given us bad advice", but you really have no way of knowing that.

Re:Logically retarded

[Anonymous Coward]

Or maybe you're really in league and are defending B.S. to make it look like we shouldn't trust him and we end up distrusting you so then we distrust him and ultimately ...

What happened? I think I blacked out.

Re:Logically retarded

[Ralph Spoilsport]

Oh, nonsense. Any system built on bad faith, which is the system you're describing *logically* leads to self contradiction. When you have proof that Schneier is a tool of the cryptofascists, get back to us. Otherwise, you might as well be talking about my uncle Dave, about whom you have as much proof as you have against Schneier.

Re:Logically retarded

[Ralph Spoilsport]

* Has the NSA visibly harmed America?

Where the fuck have you been? There's a guy named Snowden. Check him out.

* Has the NSA been a vocal critic of America's enemies?

No. The NSA isn't vocal about much of anything.

* Has the NSA been on the job for a really long time?

Spying on citizens, yes. See Snowden Reference.

* Do we have any evidence that the NSA is favoring our enemies?

Yes we do. By turning the USA into a police state, those foreign agents who wish to change the USA from a free and open society into a cryptofascist police state in order to hasten its decline have won.

Checkmate.

Yes.

[Anonymous Coward]

Even when Bruce Schneier lies, he can roundhouse kick reality into changing to suit his statements.

I don't get the meme

[Anonymous Coward]

He looks like Chuck Norris.

Trust no one

[Dunbal]

Seriously. The mere act of trusting someone will eventually lead to that person betraying said trust. Trusting someone puts them in a position of power, and power corrupts. You can't trust anyone.

Once you start mistrusting...

[Anonymous Coward]

"How do you know who your daddy is? Because your mamma told you so."

--JFK

Learn to Judge by yourself / dont just trust

[burni2]

Hi,

read his papers check the hints within, its even possible for non crypt-math geeks to get a background understanding, because
there are many more out there. Work out differences in their argumentation, dont just think because there is a citation it can be trusted, check what`s
behind a citation.

Wikipedia is the best entry point for you.

Check Argumentation on a logical level, and question the argumentation, especially if it fits the known problems till know, when it remains true, you have a good chance that its really true.

Re:Learn to Judge by yourself / dont just trust

[Anonymous Coward]

A lot of the NSA debate right now is not based in any papers but is about "known unknowns" as Rumsfeld would have said: we think we know that the NSA had some sort of major crypto breakthrough in recent years (source, dismissed by Schneier back then but taken quite seriously now) but we don't know anything more specific than that.

So the question becomes "What encryption methods are most likely to be affected by this 'enormous breakthrough'?" and that's not a question you will find answered in any scientific paper. The answers of people like Schneier are ultimately based on intuition that has been fed with hypothetical answers to fuzzy questions like "What encryption methods look the most vulnerable?", "What encryption methods are sexy targets?", "What areas of maths are sexy fields of research?", "In what areas of maths might public academia have blind spots?", "Which implementations/standards could be manipulated without being too obvious?", ....

Schneier comes to the conclusion that asymmetric encryption is more likely to be broken than symmetric encryption as (a) asymmetric encryption standards often rely on magic numbers that someone has to choose, (b) asymmetric encryption methods have become extremely widespread in past years and make for attractive targets and (c) the idea of breaking some asymmetric encryption method is sexy as hell.

But that's just a hunch of his, nothing you can ever prove or disprove. Other people will find equally convincing reasons to argue the opposite (for example, there seems to be quite a bit incremental progress in breaking symmetric encryption methods but hardly any in breaking asymmetric ones) and at the end of the day all good reasons and probabilities might be for naught if some NSA cryptanalyst just had a most unlikely brilliant idea and was somehow able to get the resources to follow up on it.

Trust cannot be proved

[aaaaaaargh!]

It's a subjective measure, based on long experience with someone and someone's writings. It's much easier to assess trust from personal contacts, but even then you can get thoroughly disappointed - just think of some types of failed marriages as an example.

The question is why would you personally have to trust Bruce Schneier? I don't have to, in order to enjoy his books and blog posts and make up my own mind. Has he recently asked you to hand over the masterpassword for you computer?

Regarding business with his company, overall reputation and a realistic assessment of threat scenarios is more important than personal trust. If you believe the NSA is your main adversary and you contemplate whether you should put all of your trust into Bruce Schneier as your sole savior, you might want to revise your "requirements".

He's just a bot...

[Anonymous Coward]

Bradley Manning, Ed Snowden, and Bruce Schneier are just bots that are engaged in misdirection to keep people from seeing the *real* backdoors in computing systems. The government TLAs have many ways of getting into our systems. If they can keep us working on the least effective backdoors, then we miss the real threats.

Or not.

...and it's come to this, hasn't it?

[StandardCell]

I guess people's paranoia with the NSA revelations have been difficult to swallow. Now everyone is slowly becoming suspicious of everyone else.

Anything is possible I suppose. To me, it was no surprise really. I do have to say that, having worked with individuals in the security community, the primary focus really is the safety of our way of life at the hands of those who would subvert it.

The problem comes when those of less character use the government apparatus for control, political or other purposes. It's the same reason police and military need to be kept separate - one enforces the rule of law, and one protects against enemies. When those lines are blurred, history has demonstrated repeatedly that individual rights suffer. The degree to which this happens is the degree of the moral compass of those at the helm of this extremely powerful surveillance apparatus.

I'm not sure how many true boy scouts are really left running the show up there, but I do know this: the more paranoid we get, the more we lose. All of this need not come to pass in this way. One of the most important things I learned in my time in this world was "trust, but verify" and it rings true today. You can still trust the message that Bruce Schneier has. We have to, for otherwise we will be consumed by our own paranoia. But to verify is probably the most important point. That's where openness and information sharing in the spirit of open source is paramount and what will lead us to the proper conclusion on this matter.

Re:...and it's come to this, hasn't it?

[sgt_doom]

Huhhhh???

...is the safety of our way of life at the hands of those who would subvert it.

Read and heed, my friend, read and heed . . . .

http://www.counterpunch.org/2013/10/22/donde-estan-where-are-the-disappeared/

Re:...and it's come to this, hasn't it?

[Anonymous Coward]

Now everyone is slowly becoming suspicious of everyone else.

Yep. If the NSA gets their way, the entire country will go schizophrenic.

Re:...and it's come to this, hasn't it?

[Anonymous Coward]

while you are mostly right, it would be better to think twice about the term "trust, but verify" before using it, considering that is exactly what could be said of what the NSA does, right?
it gets worst, the "trust" part is an immaterial thing (ie: anybody can say they trust you even if they don't), while the "verify" part is a material thing that requires external (ie: not a thought as "trust") manifestation, like an action, hence, actual trust is not required to talk about "trust, but verify", which is probably what they do, they trust nobody.

No

[Spiked_Three]

Hell no.

Personal experience; Ask Bruce to evaluate our product. His reply "The more you pay, the more I like it."

He is a crypto savvy person, who can manipulate his opinion however it needs to, to generate the most income.

Do you trust a dentist to tell you how often you need dental checkups? Or an oil change company to tell you how often to change your oil?

Oh wait, you probably do, don't you?

Why?

[oldhack]

Agree/disagree with what he writes/says, but why do you have to trust him? Is he dating your daughter?

Re:Why?

[Anonymous Coward]

I didn't even know I had a daughter! Clearly, Bruce Schneier has stolen her away from me so thoroghly I forgot all about her! What a scumbag!!1!

Re:Here you are an answer, which you might not lik

[i kan reed]

Well, you can always just trust the computer. The computer is your friend.

One-time pad

[PeterM from Berkeley]

Well, if you XOR with a good random one-time pad, I don't think that anyone can break your encryption ever, not even with a quantum computer.

The ROT13 is just unnecessary fluff.

--PM

Re:One-time pad

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh, I do! I have a large collection of zero pads stored in a zip file (they're pretty large, but they compress really well.) When I want to encrypt a message, I choose one completely at random, and I delete it after use to make sure each one is only used once.

The ROT13 is for completeness. As Schneier said, "There are two kinds of cryptography in this world: cryptography that will stop your kid sister from reading your files, and cryptography that will stop major governments from reading your files."
But what if you want to stop both? Then you have to apply both kinds of cryptography! So whatever you do, always add a layer of ROT13.

Re:One-time pad

[dkf]

Then you have to apply both kinds of cryptography! So whatever you do, always add a layer of ROT13.

I go a bit beyond that and triple-ROT13 the data. Like that, kid sisters that work for the NSA will surely be defeated!

He Would Agree

[wisnoskij]

This question is stupid. It would not matter if he was the most honest, intelligent, and experienced security expert in existence, he would tell you the same thing, do not trust him.

What about ourselves?

[Dzimas]

Forget Schneier. The critical question is actually "Can we trust ourselves?" I'd argue not. Many of us post all manner of information about ourselves, our family, friends and work acquaintances on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Four Square and other sites. Our GPS-equipped phones know where we are, where we've been, and can probably predict where we're going and when. Short of unplugging, there's little we can do to assure that we're trustworthy electronic citizens.

Re:Here you are an answer, which you might not lik

[Anonymous Coward]

problem: surveillance.
solution: paranoia.

538

[ArhcAngel]

As an exercise in security that Schneier himself may find interesting, what methods are available for proving (or at least affirming) that we can trust Bruce Schneier?

What's good for the goose is good for the gander.

Re:538

[Minwee]

So you're saying we should club Bruce with a wrench until we know that we can trust him?

Remind me not to invite you out to a dinner party any time soon.

The Schneier AI:

[Hartree]

He's really version 2.0 of a long term general intelligence project running on a supercomputer at Fort Meade.

Version 1.0 was called Henry Spencer and was developed in Canada.

(The original graphics version now used for videos of him started out as Max Headroom. This demonstrates yet again, it's much easier to improve on the presentation than the underlying system.)

Re:The Schneier AI:

[mjwalshe]

In that case Mr Finch will send in John to rescue Him as this week s POI :-)

Re:The Schneier AI:

[dkf]

Version 1.0 was called Henry Spencer and was developed in Canada.

That explains much. Except that I think that Henry was developed initially in collaboration with H P Lovecraft. (I've read Henry's code; it scares me.)

Re:The Schneier AI:

[Hartree]

Especially watch out for that bit under the comment /* Tekeli-li! */.

Re:seriously? because SCIENCE!

[Anonymous Coward]

Bruce Schnier may be the front-line spokesperson for the security community, but that should be completely separate from his body of work in cryptography. At the bottom line, he's doing mathematics, and mathematical proofs can be reproduced and confirmed -- or debated and disproven -- by anyone else in any country with sufficient background to understand them.

He is not some guru spouting unprovable wisdom from a mountaintop, he is a member of a scientific community, and if he is able to earn and keep the respect of that community, then that's a pretty good indication that he knows what he's talking about.

The same argument applies to any organization, doesn't it?

NSA retalliation against bruce

[Anonymous Coward]

This sure sounds like the start of campaign to bash Bruce for helping snowden and greenwald.

There has been no evidence direct or implied that he might be a trojan. This post, definitly smells like the U.S. gov shrills trying to plant doubt in the community about a respected authority.

Re:seriously? because SCIENCE!

[Anonymous Coward]

", and mathematical proofs can be reproduced and confirmed -- or debated and disproven -- by anyone else in any country with sufficient background to understand them."

Wrong, because the NSA seeds misinformation into textbooks and universities! If your background is based on disinformation taught to you in schools, then you are introuble...

Trust.. but Verify.

[Anonymous Coward]

Trust.. but Verify.

Hold on ...

[tgd]

There's two reasons to potentially not trust Bruce Schneier -- he's in cahoots with the NSA (and by "cahoots" I mean involved in a conspiracy to somehow impact you) or he's biased against the NSA, in which case his opinions are equally untrustworthy.

It doesn't matter why someone's opinion isn't neutral -- its just as invalid to blindly trust it if that opinion matches yours or not. In fact, its probably worse to blindly trust it if it happens to match yours because you already have a bias.

Re:Hold on ...

[dkleinsc]

That doesn't make any sense:
1. Any expert in a field is going to have opinions on the issues relevant to the field that you can't possibly hope to verify. e.g. hands up, everyone who has both the direct knowledge and expertise to definitively know the Higgs boson is real.

2. If Bruce Schneier is an NSA asset, then why would he say and do things to reduce the power of the NSA?

3. If Bruce Schneier is biased against the NSA, why would that necessarily make the bad things he says about the NSA untrue?

That's why ad hominems are not considered valid arguments in serious debate. You're supposed to attack the argument, not the person making it.

In God We Trust

[Anonymous Coward]

. . .all others we track.

Re:In God We Trust

[BigT]

Spoken like a Fire Controlman.

I had a t-shirt with that slogan on it back in FC A-school.

Here is the ultimate way...

[Anonymous Coward]

Invite all these "experts" to create a website of "secure code segments". Things like authentication, validation of input, etc., across all languages. Essentially, cut-and-paste bullet proof code that can be dropped into projects. Then we will not need to trust any single individual.

When it comes to crypto, well there is a lot of FUD out there. The push for using standard crypto systems is because it makes it easy to identify and hack. In a scenario were everyone is using self-created weak systems, it is much more difficult because of the time to analyse and the inability to reuse code (read expensive). Just because it is easy to crack something, or reverse a function, does not mean the NSA know what function they need to reverse. So, I would combine them both.

Security through obscurity therefore does have its place.

Everyone needs to focus on the practical implementation of a crack, not the theoretical aspect.

What this all proves

[Anonymous Coward]

Is that "Ask Slashdot" needs to just go away permanently, and the Slashdork editors whipped.

Re:Here you are an answer, which you might not lik

[Anonymous Coward]

You are not paranoid, if they really do want to get you. So, all you got to do to cure your paranoia, is give them a reason to come after you.

The test

[mjwalshe]

The BT security directorate will obviously administer the test at Martelsham/BT Labs/Disatral Park - in the time honored suffolk fashion by throwing him into the lake at the labs if he sinks we can trust him if not hes a witch :-)

though Bruce's lack of a proper martleman beard will probably count against him.

Re:The test

[Anonymous Coward]

Most of martlesham is clean shaven and speaks with an indian accent. Its Adastral park too btw not Distral.

When all hats are tinfoil

[mdsolar]

No one will be nuts.

Tinfoil hat time

[EmperorOfCanada]

Now that tinfoil hats are in fashion the answer is quite simple. If he proves a weakness then the crypto system is crap. If he doesn't then regardless of his motives the system still can't be trusted.

Here is where we can even add a layer of lead to our tinfoil hats. What is to say that the NSA doesn't have working quantum computers? Thus almost any system that is susceptible to any sort of quantum math such as factoring is quite simply dead as far as the NSA is concerned.

This last is an important consideration. Because most of us have no data that the NSA could be even slightly interested in. Let's say a forum discussing shoe repair techniques. So in that case all we are concerned with would be that our cryptographic system will protect password hashes, CC encryption, and keep SSH server access secure. So most of the old systems are probably still quite nice.

But there is an edge case where the NSA couldn't give a crap but a large politically connected corporation would like to have a peek into your systems and then the NSA might give them access. So if you were say a huge conglomerate bidding on a massive infrastructure project, those who were bidding against you might be given access to your data due to "national interests". A simple reason why organizations like the NSA might want to help large corporations is that then those corporations will lobby on the NSA's behalf in times like the present. Can you imagine how many senators/congressmen are in districts where GE is a large employer? In that light it would be stupid for the NSA not to hand them interesting data.

Even here in Canada I could see our spy bunch giving stolen data from Canadian companies that weren't politically connected to those that are politically connected.

How did this drivel

[Presto Vivace]

make it to the front page of Slashdot?

Messenger vs Message

[j_l_cgull]

If the focus is on the message, the messenger is irrelevant. The message should be scrutinized (which sounds like "Trust, but verify").

Bruce Schneier = Double Agent / Mind=Blown

[Anonymous Coward]

eom

Can we trust an anonymous reader

[moonwatcher2001]

Why does someone who won't give a username get to the front page?

Re:Can we trust an anonymous reader

[Anonymous Coward]

Because I work for the NSA. You're not actually reading slashdot, you're reading a QUANTUM server.

Simple

[NotFamous]

He has kind eyes.

Can Bruce Schneier Be Trusted?

[Jeremiah Cornelius]

Why not? I have his SHA256 hash, right here, on this USB stick.

But wait! Am I sure I spelled "Schneierer" correctly?!?

Re:Can Bruce Schneier Be Trusted?

[NatasRevol]

Your fine and you're speeling is greate!

Re:Can Bruce Schneier Be Trusted?

[gmanterry]

This could become a circus. If the NSA can get you to not trust Bruce, Then you couldn't trust any encryption system. If you trust none then you are just where the NSA want's you. Sometime we are going to have to pick someone we trust. Until proven otherwise, I trust Bruce.

Re:seriously? because SCIENCE!

[godrik]

There is something else. Bruce Schneier is a public figure in the cryptography area. Scientist need to fight for money and a large part of it comes from reputation and fame. If Bruce said something that appear wrong to security researchers, they would speak up, just to be "the one that knows better".

As a practicle matter 'yes' until he can't

[DarkOx]

You can't verify everything independently. Yes it should be possible to prove a cryptographic system is secure with math, but most don't have the know how, and those that do don't have the time. So you do have to trust someone somewhere down the line.

Which leaves you with needed to make some choices about trust. First you have the transitive property, you can use the personal opinions of people you already do trust to help reach trust judgements about others.

Next you got to go with experience, has this person proven dependable before? After than you have to move to agenda analysis.

We might say that Bruce's lively hood depends on him being perceived as a reliable expert. He would at least appear to have more to lose by knowing misleading people and eventually being exposed than he has to gain doing otherwise. We can also say we are not aware have having been deceived by Bruce before; at least to the degree what he is saying makes sense and the risk to me is low enough to not feel the need to go into deep analysis of the software and protocols on my own; I'll take Bruce at his word if he says something is broken, it probably is.

Conversely we think we have been knowingly deceived by the government intelligence agencies over and over again and have pretty solid evidence of that. With that in mind my default position is distrust anything they have to say. If they say something is secure, I must assume its not unless I can get some degree of independent verification. If they something is broken I have to assume that may be the case or they may be trying to steer me and others away from something that is useful. Again needs to be checked out independently.

have a Bruce Battle Royale

[cellocgw]

Put Schneier in a ring with Bruce Wayne, Bruce Willis, and Bruce Lee. See who survives.

Re:have a Bruce Battle Royale

[Arker]

"Put Schneier in a ring with Bruce Wayne, Bruce Willis, and Bruce Lee. See who survives."

Obviously the answer is no one. Lee is already dead, and he will still kill all the others before they can make it over the rope.

Re:Here you are an answer, which you might not lik

[Anonymous Coward]

Problem: Paranoia
Solution: None

That is because in the security field you do not try to solve critical job skills.

Diverse Double-Compiling (trust but verify)

[dwheeler]

Thanks for pointing out my Diverse Double-Compiling (DDC) paper!

My page on Fully Countering Trusting Trust through Diverse Double-Compiling (DDC) has more details, including detailed material so you can duplicate the experiments and re-verify the proofs. Note that you do not have to take my word for it.

You have to trust some things. But you can work to independently verify those things, to determine if they're trustworthy. I don't always agree with Bruce Schneier, but after watching what's he's done for years, I've determined that he's quite trustworthy. This is the same way we decide if we should trust anyone or any thing. In short: "trust, but verify".

Re:Diverse Double-Compiling (trust but verify)

[hydrofix]

My page on Fully Countering Trusting Trust through Diverse Double-Compiling (DDC) has more details, including detailed material so you can duplicate the experiments and re-verify the proofs. Note that you do not have to take my word for it.

Sounds very interesting. And I am apparently not even the only one to think so, since you seem to have been Slashdotted. :)

Re:Diverse Double-Compiling (trust but verify)

[Anonymous Coward]

it all seemed so serious until i read this howler

This was the presentation “Fine-Grained Taint Analysis using Regular Expressions,”

i don't know about you guys, but that's not how i do it.

captcha: buckskin

Re:Diverse Double-Compiling (trust but verify)

[Anonymous Coward]

Fully Countering Trusting Trust [...]with a second (trusted) compiler

That's a nice stack of turtles you've got there...
The Trusting Trust attack was always somewhat impractical due to the existence of alternative compilers, all of which would have to be compromised, in compatible ways. I don't really see what you are formalising here that wasn't clear from the original paper.

Re:Diverse Double-Compiling (trust but verify)

[dwheeler]

I've gotten a lot of hits, and that's a good thing. As I noted in another post, I got hit by reddit earlier this year. In general people are becoming more interested in protecting and verifying build environments, as this post about Tor demonstrates.

So please take a look at my Fully Countering Trusting Trust through Diverse Double-Compiling (DDC) page!

Re:seriously? because SCIENCE!

[guruevi]

I think misinformation in mathematics can be easily detected. Not only is math universal, it's also impossible to launch satellites or go to the moon without it. We would've noticed AND corrected any deliberate diversion of the sciences.

love and hate

[Anonymous Coward]

Simple. Encrypt twice. Use one cipher he loves and one he hates. It is unlikely both are compromised in any usable way when combined. Also be sure to encrypt lots of content from /dev/random to make sorting legitimate content from garbage difficult. Bonus: split your important content into chunks such as rar files, strip out the header so knowing the mimetype isn't possible and encode the different sections using various ciphers. They will need to have compromised all the ciphers to put it back together and without a header knowing the reassembly order will be more difficult.

We should just ask

[Anonymous Coward]

I think it would be useful for people who participate in creating and vetting standards to sign some sort of a standard affidavit about their not being affiliated with NSA or similar government entities. It is a simple thing to do, but you'd think twice before jeopardizing your good name.

Encryption is MATHS

[Anonymous Coward]

Why are the sheeple being told by Slashdot and others to look at the personalities, and NOT the maths? The maths behind encryption is not so hard to understand- certainly not the correlation between DEEPER (bigger) keys and better encryption.

The NSA uses FUD as its number one tactic against best security practices. These are some of the current NSA propaganda programs.
- spreading the nonsense that properly deleted data can be recovered from hard-drive platters using 'advanced technology'. This discourages people from using proper deletion protocols, and instead relying on branded software products from companies in the pocket of the NSA.

-spreading nonsense that the NSA has 'secret technology' that can break any encryption. This discourages people from using the best encryption methods, instead using the completely compromised encryption products sold by NSA partners.

-spreading the nonsense that 'security through obscurity' doesn't work. The NSA relies on people using standard methods to secure their data, and CANNOT afford to assign people to 'crack' unique solutions, except in vanishing rare cases.

-spreading the nonsense that end-point encryption is INSECURE. The worst nightmare for the NSA is end-point encryption becoming common-place on the Internet. Companies can be targeted in ways that individuals never can be. Rely on a man-in-the-middle company for your Internet security, and you have no security at all. Encrypt your data yourself, and rely on the recipient to decrypt it, and you have the best possible general security protocol.

Here's a question for you all. Why do Instant Message services NOT use peer-to-peer methods for moving your messages, once you have made contact with your communication partner? Why do IM services DEMAND that all your messages pass through their servers, which is a much more expensive solution for them? None of these companies were mining your messages for targeted ads in the early years, so THAT excuse doesn't explain anything.

The answer is that, from the beginning, IM services were designed and created for the benefit of the NSA and equivalent agencies in Israel. Unlike VOIP, end-point encryption of text messages has no downside or technology issues. But it never happened.

If your HDD fails, you have to send it back to get a replacement. Since that HDD is likely loaded with your data, and since the HDD company won't accept a HDD given the sledge-hammer treatment, you are a fool if your first act with the new drive wasn't giving it a giant Truecrypt container. Your data should NOT be viewable by a third-party without your permission, REGARDLESS of what that data is. Judgements about how innocuous it is shouldn't even come into it. You should NEVER have to think "what might be the consequences of some stranger looking at my data".

Otherwise the situation INVERTS. Bad people will ALWAYS be thinking of new ways of turning such data against you, regardless of what nature that data has. History PROVES that anything UNIQUE or COMMON about you can trigger a "burn the witch" effect, whether you are a specific target, or an amusing distraction for the mob.

Why do schools and induction training for the military attack the concept of individual privacy? Why do apologists for the worst monsters in power always spout "if you've nothing to hide, you've nothing to fear". You either have a society that puts personal space FIRST, and only seeks to punish OVERT criminality that DIRECTLY hurts others through clear intention or inexcusable negligence, or you have a society of mob-based justice, with thought-crimes, and 'burning' of 'witches' (by which we mean the 'other').

Easy answer

[Anonymous Coward]

You trust math, and your knowledge of it. So maybe you don't understand it now and then use humans as proxies. Well, learn math/crypto yourself.

Trust But Verify

[LifesABeach]

No secret last longer than 6 years, 5 years on average. Planning on it could save one from some, um, uncomfortable outcomes. If one is looking at Crypto, look at those who are successful. The Banking Industry. Why? How many Bankers have gone to jail, damn few. Also, who's making the money in Banking? That's who Crypto as superior. If one plans on being ratted out, then one can move forward with more confidence, by not creating an naive enviornment.

No

[Imagix]

Reminds me of a scene from Andromeda when Tyr was advising a prince:
Tyr: Trust no one
Prince: Can I trust you?
Tyr (incredulous): No!

We can trust Bruce...to say perfectly safe things

[jofny]

It's been awhile since Bruce really has said anything that hadn't already been thought through, discussed, and agreed on by a large part of the industry. Bruce leads from the middle of the pack these days - so who cares if the NSA has compromised him?

Why should you trust me?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why should you trust anyone at Slashdot to give a trustworthy answer about Bruce Schneier's trustworthiness?

Texas Legislature

[DeathToBill]

From TFA: "The Texas legislature adjourned in June, and it will not reconvene until 2015."

Now that's my sort of holiday! Yee-haw!

Re:Texas Legislature

[Anonymous Coward]

Is this a bug in slashcode where posts for the Tesla article are showing up in this Schneir witchhunt article, or did you just post into the wrong article?

Re:Texas Legislature

[DeathToBill]

Er, posted in the wrong article. Hoped no-one would notice.

We can trust Moxie

[Anonymous Coward]

This tells us all we need to know about him: http://www.thoughtcrime.org/blog/saudi-surveillance/

I doubt Bruce would want you to...not entirely

[CFD339]

His whole set of ideals and processes is about not having to trust an individual person to make you secure. What he publishes is open, as are the software and techniques he espouses. The point is that if he's not trustworthy there should be people out there that will spot it. Personally, I'm not qualified but I do have some level of trust that there are plenty of people who are and who do check. If not, we're all screwed but there's no point in going down that path.

Re:Here you are an answer, which you might not lik

[bmearns]

Quite possibly, but a lot of what would have sounded like paranoia last winter no longer does.

Semantics

[jbmartin6]

Well, you *can* trust anyone. But should you? Usually we use past behavior as a judge of whether it is likely the person is being deceptive, especially where proof is impossible or too expensive. Sadly, past behavior is no guarantee of future behavior. Anyone can be compromised. So we make a guess and balance cost of verification against cost of deception. After all, I can't prove the Africa exists. But I am choosing to trust that it does.

Trust No One

[EmagGeek]

They really are out to get you.

Schneier Facts

[otaku244]

"Bruce Schneier intercepts all your internal monologues by a man-in-the-middle attack."
^Seems legit to me

Valid

[Anonymous Coward]

Ask his Mother.

meh i think comment subjects are stupid

[Anonymous Coward]

I dont trust Bruce since he took the shilling and went to work for BT, who are the most scummy backdoor roll over for the max corporate offshore fuelled dollar company in the UK.
I was genuinely shocked, knowing how the company works and is set up paying the merest lipservice to security and human factors and quality, and bruces stance.
The only explanation I have is money. That counterpane deal must have been super sweet to taint his name over.

It's Personal

[RedLeg]

If you've been in the security community for a while (oh, 15+ years in my case), you meet and work with people, and develop personal friendships and trust, based on personal interactions with colleagues, competitors, and other professionals.

I have competed with Bruce's companies (Counterpane, BT), met Bruce several times in professional settings. I've never worked with him personally, but I have plenty of other colleagues who have.

I trust Bruce.

-Red

Rediculous

[interval1066]

This is a rediculous post. Bruce Schneier can be trusted as much as anyone can be "trusted" until he shows otherwise. What a waste of bandwidth.

Controlled Opposition

[Anonymous Coward]

Probably he is controlled opposition.

You misunderstand trust.

[Anonymous Coward]

Trust cannot be built from parts or verified or logically deduced. It's a gift that you give to someone. Anyone can be trusted.

Should I trust Bruce?
That's a question more about yourself than Bruce.

Trust _what_, exactly?

[Anonymous Coward]

Look at it this way: has He-Whose-Hashed-Password-Is-0000000000000000 asked (even implicitly) for any dogmatic trust?

It's one thing to suggest that scientist X may be lying about his experimental evidence. It's another thing to say Karl Popper might be lying about how science can be used to learn. You're either persuaded by Popper's arguments or not; there's never any question about him giving you misleading facts, though, because facts aren't what he offers. Intellectual strategy is what he offers.

Overall, Schnieir's "face" is doing the same. It's just complicated a bit by the fact that he's also done some "Real Work" too. ;-)

The closest thing I can remember to ever seeing some Schnieir dogma, is that he came out with an opinion (I won't tell you whether it was for or against, because it doesn't matter) about Eliptic Curve Crypto. A lot of people who don't understand EC probably copied his opinion. In that respect, he could be subversive. Most of Schnieir's writings aren't really like that, though.

What about BT and Phorm Bruce?

[Anonymous Coward]

I have great admiration for Bruce Schneier. But there is one issue he has to resolve.

In 2006 Bruce joined BT (British Telecom) as their Chief Security Technology Officer. During this time Phorm installed DPI boxes in BT exchanges. This was illegal and yet no one got prosecuted.

Bruce implies that the gamekeeper did not know poachers, in cahoots with senior management, had breached the fence and were doing something they should not have. All Bruce will say is "So I'm sorry that I can't write about Phorm"

I do hope one day he reverses his decision on that and says what really went on.

He does not need to be trusted

[gweihir]

He gives explanations and evidence for the things he advises (where they are not obvious). Sure, you need to be a security expert yourself to evaluate his advice, but if it were bad, most of the world's security experts would either need to be silenced or need to be in on it. That would be rather unlikely. It makes it also extremely hard for him to do anything _for_ the NSA, in the hypothetical case that he was working for them.

Hence the correct answer is that there is no need for him to be trusted, and in fact if you are reduced to trusting him, then you are doing it wrong.

There is only one method required

[msobkow]

The math.

If you're into cryptography, you can do the math. You don't have to take Bruce's word for it.

Gosh, what a stupid story.

[PopeRatzo]

"If Ghandi wasn't such a nice guy, he could have like totally messed up India. Just a thought experiment, but still...you can't just trust a guy because he's got a perfect record of being trustworthy, you know? Seriously, trust me on this."

Linux backdoor of 2003 & Underhanded C Contest

[Valdrax]

To make the claim that linux has been never been intentionally weakened in security, you need to know that every single security vulnerability in Linux (to take one example) was due to carelessness, not intended action.

Certainly - some classes of backdoor are trivially obvious 'if(sourceip==NSA)' - but others can be subtle logic errors.

You mean like this attempt in 2003?

Personally, I'm not longer all that impressed by the IOCCC. Don't get me wrong, some of the code submitted there shows utterly insane levels of skill. However, the above is an excellent example of a good submission for the Underhanded C Contest, which is an excellent teaching tool for discovering exploits as well as for learning about subtle bugs that may drive you utterly mad trying to find.

Trusting US Persons?

[cpghost]

Since Bruce Schneier himself said that you can't trust US-based cryptography companies, because such companies can be compelled by law to cooperate with the CIA... doesn't it also mean that NO US Person who is under the jurisdiction of the NSA can be trusted w.r.t. crypto advice? Is there a law of some kind in the US that muzzles US crypto researchers and forces them not to disclose certain facts that could harm the NSA's ability to operate? I'm just curious.

Bruce Schneier

[david_a_eaves]

I am sitting next (or at least across) from Bruce right now. He is definitely interested (and humoured) in this conversation. As he notes, he's written a book on it. I'd say that a conversation about Bruce's trustworthiness is definitely worthwhile. One should have it about everybody. Of course, it means we should also have it about the people who are most interested in trying to attack Bruce's trustworthiness.

Re:Bruce Schneier

[Qubit]

If he's not too busy, it would be great if he could log-in and provide a helpful comment on this story (I suggest a single-word reply such as "Yes" or "No" :-)

Danke,
--Q

Re:Bruce Schneier

[Anonymous Coward]

Zimmerman's recommendation to switch to Twofish is a +1 for Bruce

Re:Bruce Schneier

[Anonymous Coward]

And how can we trust YOU? Give us some proof, that you're really sitting across from Bruce Schneier! Perhaps some unforgeable biometric marker like Bruce's eyeball held in front of a webcam so we can validate his retina...! And if it doesn't check out, then what have you done with the real Bruce Schneier, Buster??!

Just asking questions...

[maeltor]

Did Bruce Schneier rape and murder a prostitute in 1990? I don't know i'm just asking questions...

The answer.

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't trust me. Don't trust anybody.
-Bruce

Bruce Schneier connection

[dwheeler]

Oh, and a Bruce Schneier connection: In 2006 Bruce wrote a summary of my ACSAC paper on diverse double-compiling (DDC). Bruce's article is simply titled Countering "Trusting Trust".

Bruce completely understood the approach. He explained it very well in his blog, and he also did a nice job explaining its larger ramifications. His conclusions are still true: the "trusting trust" attack has actually gotten easier over time, because compilers have gotten increasingly complex, giving attackers more places to hide their attacks. Here's how you can use a simpler compiler -- that you can trust more -- to act as a watchdog on the more sophisticated and more complex compiler.

Re:Bruce Schneier connection

[godrik]

I picked up your paper on slashdot actually (and probably from one of your posts). But I had never realized that you (as in the author of the paper) was posting on slashdot. That's pretty cool.

What is interesting about diverse double compiling is that it is feasible by a large technically savvy entity (but difficult in practice).

I must say that the trusting trust problem has become huge in the recent years. We pretty much have to rely on somebody for compiling our software and not just compilers. Compiling your own firefox or chromium or vlc is close to being impossible. There are too many dependences or the build chain is too complicated. (A friend of mine run out of disk space compiling chromium...) But assuming that you trust debian (or anyother large entity with technical expertise), you can rely on debian to make sure trusting trust problems do not appear. (And provided writing a C compiler is a standard student project, it should be easy to get multiple compilers to make sure none is backdoored.)

Missing the point

[dwheeler]

But how, exactly, were going to use those alternative compilers? If you just use an alternative compiler executable, maybe the original executable was okay and the alternative was subverted - so now you have introduced corruption into the compiler executable you cared about. Just using a different compiler in the obvious way simply moves the problem somewhere else, it doesn't actually solve anything. In DDC, you have to subvert both compiler executables, which is significantly harder.

Ken Thompson's trusting trust paper didn't describe how to solve the problem. The only proposed approach is to rewrite everything yourself, which is impractical.

Doublethink

[Anonymous Coward]

Is OP posting from Ft Meade??

Great and logical points

[sgt_doom]

I believe Schneier is honest and credible, my only beef with him is that, like too many in the IT industry in general, with superior talents and skills and intelligence, he is somewhat gullible or less than informed of the underlying agendas of they who rule. (An example: his taking seriously the TSA stuff --- when obviously it has nothing to do with keeping Americans safe, just at the American intelligence establishment has never had anything to do with national security, simply garnering financial intelligence for their super-rich founders, and command and control of the populace by various and sundry means.

I trust . . . .

[sgt_doom]

I trust Bruce Schneier, I trust Julian Assange, I trust Jacob Appelbaum, and I trust that hooker down the street who only charges me $20 for a blo.....

sgt_doom (actually a precocious 13-year-old with a monster-sized dick]

In God We Trust?

[Anonymous Coward]

Just because you feel paranoid doesn't mean that they're not out to get you...

Reverse Engineering

[The Other White Meat]

Clearly, the only way we can be sure is to disassemble Bruce Schneier. Glove up.

Request Denied

[Anonymous Coward]

Your request to play Devil's Advocate has been denied: the-toast.net/2013/10/02/no-more-devils-advocate/

I've tried and failed to find the blog entry where he says that he was asked to sign an NDA to review TSA/DHS guidelines, which would have granted him access to classified information. Bruce declined because it would forever bind him from releasing any classified, something he is clearly glad that he can do now in clear conscience.

Re:Here you are an answer, which you might not lik

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not paranoia if they really are out to get you. Spending billions of dollars on it, secret laws, secret courts, national security letters, and gag orders: these are the signs that you're NOT paranoid.

Re:seriously? because SCIENCE!

[DerekLyons]

Bruce Schnier may be the front-line spokesperson for the security community, but that should be completely separate from his body of work in cryptography. At the bottom line, he's doing mathematics, and mathematical proofs can be reproduced and confirmed -- or debated and disproven -- by anyone else in any country with sufficient background to understand them.

True, but irrelevant. His reputation on the 'net doesn't depends on his skill and experience as a cryptographer - but on his position as a columnist and pundit saying things that they (the netizens) agree with. His reputation (and ability) as a scientist have nothing to do with his ability and trustworthiness as a pundit. (Or at least they shouldn't to any thoughtful and intelligent person.)

A little history here...

[cstacy]

Is it reasonable to ask if Bruce Schneier can be trusted? WWBSD? A little history might inform your thinking on this question.

One of the early projects that Schneier lead, precipitated by the Y2K date crisis, was a security evaluation of old COBOL system (code-named "ZEBRA") that was still being used by a certain un-named U.S. Government agency.

This mainframe software had not been maintained for some years, except by patching the binary image; no online version of the source code was available. It would be too hard to audit that way, so they decided to upload the original code (from paper), recompile, diff against the binaries, and eventually reconstruct accurate source code for the Y2K bugs and security issues.

Schneier's group decided to use OCR. The source code had been "line printed" on "greenbar" paper, where alternate lines have a light green background stripes for contrast. The problem was that OCR scanners of the day were designed only for black-and-white, and would get confused by the green stripes, and sometimes mis-scan some letters and numbers, making this source code unreliable. This required them to manually read and type in corrections, to about half the code!

Bruce Schneier is an outspoken critic of agencies like the DHS and the TSA, but he has been a consultant for the Government in the past. And as you can see from the above story, he was originally an early proponent of scanners, and only in more recent years has spoken out against them. So it is quite reasonable to ask if Bruce Schneier has ever changed his stripes.

Can Bruce Schneier be trusted?

[codeusirae]

Of course Bruce Schneier can't be trusted his criticism of the NSA obviously means he's in cahoots with the albino shape-shifting lizard Ilumaniti ..

Does he have a clearance?

[Anonymous Coward]

What I want to know, what I've always wanted to know, is whether Schneier has a govt. security clearance. If so, his clearance can be yanked (or nonrenewed) at the whim of anonymous bureaucrats, and he's completely dependent on NSA et al. for his livelihood.

Similarly, if you read that there is going to be some blue-ribbon commission "investigating" the NSA, and the people named to the commission all have clearances, hold onto your wallet.

Do not trust anyone! Only your own eyes & hear

[Anonymous Coward]

We don't trust software, or people, or machines, or anything. We make a compromise everytime we use or believe something we do not know fully.

When I use web, email, etc. I make the basic assumption that anything on it can, and probably is snooped, and I just make the compromise, let it be that way this time, I don't have the time to fix this now.

Also, what good is use of crypto, if your girlfriend can not use it? I mean, while there exist so many algorithms and all, so what? She can't understand and deploy them herself, and anyway, she is busy and that is way too much work. Same thing goes, if you use crypto, then you have to know there is no keylogger, etc. etc. and you'll be using tinfoilhat linux in a faraday cage. But the receiver of your message, does he see the same great effort because of your super-secret PGP message? I don't think so.
The security must be water & gas -tight in both ends, otherwise it's useless. And a thought about VPN: well, if you use one, you trust the VPN provider, be it your friend or a company, that their system, that outputs your connections to the web, isn't compromised. And if you do your super secret hacking, the VPN provider is in the radar, not you. Well, make the terrorism argument, and your provider is caught, and then just look up from the logs, who is the actual endpoint of this dataflow. Eh?

You trust what someone else says he says?

[Marrow]

Perhaps somebody controls his connection to the internet. Then they post things in his name, but prevents him from reading them. Or they alter something he publishes, but he is prevented from seeing the alteration.
People are all concerned about the NSA siphoning data off of the internet. But what happens when they can put/alter any data they want. Then they have total information control. And hell on earth begins....

If I were an enemy of the Slashdot community...

[GPS Pilot]

If I were an enemy of the Slashdot community, I'd make posts suggesting that Slashdot editors can't see obvious FUD.

Re:Here you are an answer, which you might not lik

[Anonymous Coward]

Problem: Paranoia
Solution: Tinfoil hat

FTFY.

Also you must be new here.

Re:Here you are an answer, which you might not lik

[Anonymous Coward]

You are not paranoid, if they really do want to get you.

No, you're still paranoid. But at least you're justified in thinking so.

Paranoia strikes twice...

[niftymitch]

Paranoia strikes twice...

The only answer is to trust but verify.

It is moderately safe to expect that Bruce is not an NSA shill.
That does not eliminate the ability of a large organization to convince
or coerce any individual to have a view that they would like you to have.

Businesses, developers and others should look hard at Bruces comments
on an airgap in his most recent news letter. Legal organizations should
also take a hint here.

Paranoia does strike deep, just do not be buffaloed by the
quagmire out in the fields this spring.

Article Author is a @#$%ing Idiot

[Anonymous Coward]

TSIA.

Tsk

[Anonymous Coward]

There's a difference between devil's advocate and asshole that you are not grasping.

Re:...and it's come to this. Consider:

[Anonymous Coward]

"He who fights with monsters should look to it that he himself does not become a monster. And when you gaze long into an abyss the abyss also gazes into you." -Friedrich Nietzsche

This hypothetical post is hypothetical

[kriston]

This hypothetical post is hypothetical.

Discuss.

if he weighs as much as a duck...

[Anonymous Coward]

... then he's made of wood...

Uh oh

[Krigl]

Those Bruce Schneier facts don't bode well for you.

Quantum Computers

[psb777]

For a number of years it was a secret that programmable digital computers existed and worked. If it happens that (proper) quantum computers exist and work then don't reckon they'll be in any hurry to tell the likes of us. Everything could be being depicted now, real time, without access to any compromised routers, without needing to get secret court orders for the disclosure of keys, all that could be nothing but a smokescreen. No, don't trust Bruce Schneier, because no one has told him there are working quantum computers either.

Re:Quantum Computers

[psb777]

Everything could be being depicted now

Aaargh! Not depicted, decrypted!

The Bruce Cube

[Joe Branya]

Finally we have an objective unit to measure paranoia, the Bruce.

The theoretical relationship between a truth function and the belief in the truth of the truth function has never previously been established.

My hypotheses is that each truth table has a paranoia variable located on the Z axis, measured in Bruce Units, which measures the belief in the reliability of the truth table. A positive Bruce value means you are paranoid and probably an idiot; a negative Bruce value means you are not paranoid and everybody else is an idiot.

I propose that the combination of a truth table and an array of associated Bruce values be called the Bruce Cube. Other proposed names such as the Nixon Cube and the Tom/Friedman Cube lead to the incorrect belief that the paranoia vector is associated exclusively with either the left or right spin. The name “Nixon-Friedman Cube” was just too damn long to use.

I'll leave it to other to work out the details of Bruce calculus. I'm too tired

.

Signs

[Anonymous Coward]

The main thing in my opinion is upon seeing anything fishy with a person or organization, then it is time to recognize that it should never again be trusted. Governments can never be trusted. Some people have stated on SD that NIST should be trusted. However, NIST is making unnecessary mods to the new SHA3 (I think that is the one) hash that are not necessary. There have been reports of NSA types visiting NIST. NIST will never have my trust again.

Byzantive General's problem

[Anonymous Coward]

Isn't this just like the Byzantine General's problem (first proposed by Marshall Pease, Robert Shostak, and Leslie Lamport in 1980 : http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?doid=322186.322188 ) : you cannot trust a person only on its declaration , but if having enough sources, you can have fault tolerance, and get an answer to questions like "can this algorithm/implementation be trusted or not ?".