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Kiss Encryption Goodbye... :*

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Renegade:
ORIGINAL POST


I saw a relatively innocuous line in a news story, but it's implications are serious.

http://www.thestar.com/news/world/2013/08/30/uk_asks_new_york_times_to_destroy_edward_snowden_documents.html

She said that she had been advised that the hard drive contains “approximately 58,000 U.K. documents which are highly classified in nature, to the highest level.”

Goode said the process to decode the material was complex and that “so far only 75 documents have been reconstructed since the property was initially received.”
--- End quote ---

It's odd that they used the word "reconstructed", but not surprising as simply using the correct terminology, "cracked" or "decrypted", would just be, well, too truthful. (Never mind "received" being substituted for "stolen"...)

Now, given that Edward Snowden knows what he's doing, this should be very frightening for a lot of people, if anyone is paying attention, which I doubt.


UPDATES & SUMMARIES FOR LINKS

ProPublica
 - NSA undermines most used & common cryptographic standards - TLS/SSL, HTTPS, VPN, SSH, IPSec, encrypted chat/VoIP all threatened.
http://www.propublica.org/article/the-nsas-secret-campaign-to-crack-undermine-internet-encryption
https://www.donationcoder.com/forum/index.php?topic=35970.msg336930#msg336930

ProPublica
 - BULLRUN docs.
http://www.propublica.org/documents/item/784284-bullrun-briefing-sheet-from-gchq.html

Techdirt
 - YOU are the enemy.
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20130905/15531224420/nsa-gchq-admit-that-enemy-is-public.shtml
https://www.donationcoder.com/forum/index.php?topic=35970.msg336971#msg336971

Popehat
 - "I am the other" - An essay/commentary.
http://www.popehat.com/2013/09/06/nsa-codebreaking-i-am-the-other/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Popehat+%28Popehat%29

Dilbert
 - Cartoon commentary.
http://www.dilbert.com/2013-09-06/
https://www.donationcoder.com/forum/index.php?topic=35970.msg337025#msg337025

Matthew Green (Cryptographer)
 - Commentary on the situation being worse than bad.
http://blog.cryptographyengineering.com/2013/09/on-nsa.html
https://www.donationcoder.com/forum/index.php?topic=35970.msg337532#msg337532

Boiling Frogs Post
 - ProPublica funding sources and salaries are fishy.
http://www.boilingfrogspost.com/2013/09/08/propublica-exposed-a-pseudo-alternative-with-26-million-dollars-in-secret-mega-donors-funding/
http://www.boilingfrogspost.com/2013/09/08/updated-bfp-report-propublica-threatens-bfp-demands-retraction-provides-names-partners-exposes-itself-further/
http://www.boilingfrogspost.com/2013/09/09/propublica-expose-part-3-wall-street-men-set-up-alternative-news-shop-collect-wall-street-salaries/
http://www.boilingfrogspost.com/2013/09/10/bfp-propublica-report-part-4-an-alternative-media-shop-with-mainstream-media-advisors/
https://www.donationcoder.com/forum/index.php?topic=35970.msg337538#msg337538

National Public Radio
- Interview with Barton Geller (Washington Post reporter). (MP3 with show highlights in text)
http://www.npr.org/2013/09/11/221359323/reporter-had-to-decide-if-snowden-leaks-were-the-real-thing
https://www.donationcoder.com/forum/index.php?topic=35970.msg337754#msg337754

Falkvinge
- Certificate based security is dead - goodbye SSL
http://falkvinge.net/2013/09/12/the-nsa-and-u-s-congress-has-destroyed-ssl-we-must-rebuild-web-security-from-the-ground-up/
https://www.donationcoder.com/forum/index.php?topic=35970.msg337960#msg337960

Techdirt
- NSA running MITM attacks against Google servers
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20130910/10470024468/flying-pig-nsa-is-running-man-middle-attacks-imitating-googles-servers.shtml

IETF
- Kleptography: weakening security on purpose
http://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-hallambaker-prismproof-req/?include_text=1


More nightmares to follow...

kyrathaba:
There can be no realistic expectation of privacy in today's world. A longing for it, perhaps, but not a reasonable expectation of it.

barney:
There can be no realistic expectation of privacy in today's world. A longing for it, perhaps, but not a reasonable expectation of it.
-kyrathaba (August 31, 2013, 03:31 PM)
--- End quote ---

In truth, there's been no reasonable expectation of privacy since the sixties.  At least, not to my mind.  (Yeah, I'm paranoid ... my concern is whether I'm paranoid enough.)

TaoPhoenix:

But up until 9-11 at least as a pasty white guy the feds stayed out of my way. You know if you did anything seriously stupid of course you risked getting in trouble, but the silly stuff was viewed as silly and treated as such, maybe with a warning from a cop that "hey, ya know, putting chewing gum in a guy's exhaust pipe could cause some nasty problems, so don't do it, mmkay?"

But now if you teach someone to beat a polygraph they want to send you to *jail*!!???

Never mind that several TV episodes go into it! I think I can recall at least three shows - Chuck, Lie To Me, and Alias that had scenes about that!

Renegade:
TLS/SSL, HTTPS, VPN, SSH, IPSec encrypted chat/VoIP...

Aaaannnd, it's gone!



http://www.propublica.org/article/the-nsas-secret-campaign-to-crack-undermine-internet-encryption

The National Security Agency is winning its long-running secret war on encryption, using supercomputers, technical trickery, court orders and behind-the-scenes persuasion to undermine the major tools protecting the privacy of everyday communications in the Internet age, according to newly disclosed documents.

The agency has circumvented or cracked much of the encryption, or digital scrambling, that guards global commerce and banking systems, protects sensitive data like trade secrets and medical records, and automatically secures the e-mails, Web searches, Internet chats and phone calls of Americans and others around the world, the documents show.
--- End quote ---

More at the link.

BULLRUN docs:

http://www.propublica.org/documents/item/784284-bullrun-briefing-sheet-from-gchq.html

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