[cryptography] why did OTR succeed in IM?
Someone on another list asked an interesting question: Why did OTR succeed in IM systems, where OpenPGP and x.509 did not? (The reason this is interesting (to me?) is that there are not so many instances in our field where there are open design competitions at this level. The results of such a competition can be illuminating as to what matters and what does not. E.g., OpenPGP v. S/MIME and SSH v. secure telnet are two such competitions.) iang ___ cryptography mailing list cryptography@randombit.net http://lists.randombit.net/mailman/listinfo/cryptography
Re: [cryptography] why did OTR succeed in IM?
On 03/23/2013 10:25 AM, ianG wrote: Someone on another list asked an interesting question: Why did OTR succeed in IM systems, where OpenPGP and x.509 did not? I find that interesting too. What list would that be? Guido. ___ cryptography mailing list cryptography@randombit.net http://lists.randombit.net/mailman/listinfo/cryptography
Re: [cryptography] why did OTR succeed in IM?
On 23 March 2013 09:25, ianG i...@iang.org wrote: Someone on another list asked an interesting question: Why did OTR succeed in IM systems, where OpenPGP and x.509 did not? Because Adium built it in? (The reason this is interesting (to me?) is that there are not so many instances in our field where there are open design competitions at this level. The results of such a competition can be illuminating as to what matters and what does not. E.g., OpenPGP v. S/MIME and SSH v. secure telnet are two such competitions.) iang ___ cryptography mailing list cryptography@randombit.net http://lists.randombit.net/mailman/listinfo/cryptography ___ cryptography mailing list cryptography@randombit.net http://lists.randombit.net/mailman/listinfo/cryptography
[cryptography] msft skype IM snooping stats PGP/X509 in IM?? (Re: why did OTR succeed in IM?)
Was there anyone trying to use OpenPGP and/or X.509 in IM? I mean I know many IM protocols support SSL which itself uses X.509, but that doesnt really meaningfully encrypt the messages in a privacy sense as they flow in the plaintext through chat server with that model. btw is anyone noticing that apparently skype is both able to eavesdrop on skype calls, now that microsoft coded themselves in a central backdoor, this was initially rumoured, then confirmed somewhat by a Russian police statement [1], then confirmed by microsoft itself in its law enforcement requests report. Now publicly disclosed law enforcement requests reports are good thing, started by google, but clearly those requests are getting info or they wouldnt be submitting them by the 10s of thousands. http://www.microsoft.com/about/corporatecitizenship/en-us/reporting/transparency/ 75,000 skype related law enforcement requests, 137,000 accounts affectd (each call involving or more parties). You have to wonder with that kind of mentality at microsoft (to intentionally insert themselves into the calls, gratuitiously when it supposedly wasnt previously architected to allow that under skype's watch), what other nasties they've put in. Eg routine keyword scanning? Remote monitoring (turn on microphone, camera?) Remote backdoor and rifling through files on the users computer. The source is more than closed, its coded like a polymorphic virus with extensive anti-reverse-engineering features it would be rather hard to tell what all it is doing, and given the apparent lack of end to end security, basically impossible to tell what they are doing in their servers. I think its past time people considered switching to another IM client, an open source one with p2p routed traffic and/or end 2 end security, preferably with some resilience to X.509 certificate authority based malfeasance. I have nothing particular to hide, but this level of aggressive, no-warrant mass-scale fishing is not cricket. They are no doubt probably hoovering it all up to store in those new massive Utah spook data centers in case they want to do some post-hoc fishing also. And clearly there are plenty of people with very legitimate reasons to hide; given the levels justice has stooped to do these days in their legal treatment of activists (even green activists, anti-financial crimes, corporate ethics activists, whistleblowers) - western countries are slipping backwards in terms of transparency and justice. Adam [1] http://www.itar-tass.com/en/c142/675600.html On Sat, Mar 23, 2013 at 01:36:34PM +, Ben Laurie wrote: On 23 March 2013 09:25, ianG i...@iang.org wrote: Someone on another list asked an interesting question: Why did OTR succeed in IM systems, where OpenPGP and x.509 did not? Because Adium built it in? (The reason this is interesting (to me?) is that there are not so many instances in our field where there are open design competitions at this level. The results of such a competition can be illuminating as to what matters and what does not. E.g., OpenPGP v. S/MIME and SSH v. secure telnet are two such competitions.) ___ cryptography mailing list cryptography@randombit.net http://lists.randombit.net/mailman/listinfo/cryptography
Re: [cryptography] Keyspace: client-side encryption for key/value stores
On 21/03/13 at 03:07am, Jeffrey Walton wrote: Linux has not warmed up to the fact that userland needs help in storing secrets from the OS. http://standards.freedesktop.org/secret-service/ but maybe I have misunderstood your statement. ___ cryptography mailing list cryptography@randombit.net http://lists.randombit.net/mailman/listinfo/cryptography
Re: [cryptography] why did OTR succeed in IM?
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 On 3/23/13 7:36 AM, Ben Laurie wrote: On 23 March 2013 09:25, ianG i...@iang.org wrote: Someone on another list asked an interesting question: Why did OTR succeed in IM systems, where OpenPGP and x.509 did not? Because Adium built it in? In the early Jabber days, we had OpenPGP support in several clients such as Gabber, Psi, and WinJab. Although such clients could have created special-purpose PGP keys, in practice the perception was that OpenPGP was hard, that people would use existing keys, that Aunt Tillie would never have a PGP key, etc. It didn't help that (IIRC) GnuPG made some breaking API changes or somesuch around 2001 that annoyed various Jabber client developers. When we standardized the core Jabber protocol as XMPP at the IETF in 2003-2004, the working group settled on using X.509 for various not-so-good reasons related to IETF politics at the time, resulting in the monstrosity known as RFC 3923. (And we all know how well client-side X.509 certificates have worked out.) IMHO, there are three main reasons why OTR succeeded: 1. It worked across all IM systems. 2. It was relatively friendly for end users, compared to OpenPGP and X.509. 3. It was built into the most popular open-source IM clients (Pidgin and Adium). Peter - -- Peter Saint-Andre https://stpeter.im/ -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: GnuPG/MacGPG2 v2.0.18 (Darwin) Comment: Using GnuPG with Thunderbird - http://www.enigmail.net/ iQIcBAEBAgAGBQJRTd12AAoJEOoGpJErxa2pdTUP/1kayFnLB44xazI0u6KjKZU+ n5TzJwa3fxV0BF1monO+LP4ySTtRMeodY3zEpA+40vgMDEVKblqZ/0RgzQPvoCW7 AJWu4YYTRZVTMohA7aK09DaDaLJyj97kao/6NgOQpdrtNbJS3syxuSeYTgmEkQH0 uqUtiAulrDt4LYpMkrAT0l+6+mb8Q+5MkIpxwaJjjMGi/MItDRa85TE1j0EQA4e0 xnzAqaVlLYDySrmJR4E8HXE8XPdGe8MiYWt5+hhjeWjg2KU2OG7b6T3gYrUxPgxH Olpox7HG8tkWviKhQM7k9h4FGgsEkJWDYoLwSW4AJej2Gt8ok4gOzLlo/DCDAUOK hIwAMVIaanTREMaWqBqK20Sqh29t/zrcQsfqXNhElJV3QfGKHTT9aFAncnJR6bEy C4OuVomY3BQsBSZ4zOgndrwlkNo6i9D1k0xywE3VAKytWNuDLUbpghAWCt7ue97U gFTuUiK1DDj39qct9+NDGp6eDon9NsNLo+R8O6XlqwkEYcN5QuyF2Csi/6hAyNCX mSj31OBDgqwD1NBenU9BIicXRCUWSW2Vtc7An8OzSg8g2DR1ZJi5XlD2S26j8HUR d+COX0LmGWgY5w4bEtp+NzRc6W0Wri+NjyMH4D6uC9FayWpXPmg+xlfQYiznl9UC 9wQx5nnvncWRdE7pcqCN =FUsJ -END PGP SIGNATURE- ___ cryptography mailing list cryptography@randombit.net http://lists.randombit.net/mailman/listinfo/cryptography
Re: [cryptography] why did OTR succeed in IM?
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 On Mar 23, 2013, at 6:36 AM, Ben Laurie b...@links.org wrote: On 23 March 2013 09:25, ianG i...@iang.org wrote: Someone on another list asked an interesting question: Why did OTR succeed in IM systems, where OpenPGP and x.509 did not? Because Adium built it in? Yeah. And it just worked. It took me two hours to find a Jabber client that actually worked (Psi) and get Psi working with OpenPGP support, and even then it was just weird, from a UX perspective. But there's also one other thing, and that is that there was no other real competitor. So: * Greenfield advantage * Better UX * Better out-of-the-box experience. Jon -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: PGP Universal 3.2.0 (Build 1672) Charset: us-ascii wj8DBQFRTeWPsTedWZOD3gYRAgcxAJ9RLtQdYAsdluIKa/+hyBLDfCIVjwCg2bIq pZT24itMJrs0CHuTSIeVm3o= =WS8Z -END PGP SIGNATURE- ___ cryptography mailing list cryptography@randombit.net http://lists.randombit.net/mailman/listinfo/cryptography
Re: [cryptography] why did OTR succeed in IM?
On 23 March 2013 16:51, Peter Saint-Andre stpe...@stpeter.im wrote: 3. It was built into the most popular open-source IM clients (Pidgin and Adium). It isn't actually built in to Pidgin. Should be, IMO. ___ cryptography mailing list cryptography@randombit.net http://lists.randombit.net/mailman/listinfo/cryptography
Re: [cryptography] why did OTR succeed in IM?
On Saturday, March 23, 2013, ianG wrote: Someone on another list asked an interesting question: Why did OTR succeed in IM systems, where OpenPGP and x.509 did not? Because it turns out that starting with anonymous key exchange is good enough in many cases. Leap of faith would have been a good addition, but would have created device sync issues, and the answer/question authentication is good enough. Imagine if we'd insisted on a PKI for IM... ___ cryptography mailing list cryptography@randombit.net http://lists.randombit.net/mailman/listinfo/cryptography
Re: [cryptography] msft skype IM snooping stats PGP/X509 in IM?? (Re: why did OTR succeed in IM?)
On 23 March 2013 18:08, Stephan Neuhaus stephan.neuh...@tik.ee.ethz.ch wrote: On Mar 23, 2013, at 15:04, Adam Back wrote: I think its past time people considered switching to another IM client, an open source one with p2p routed traffic and/or end 2 end security, preferably with some resilience to X.509 certificate authority based malfeasance. Any suggestions? Adium or Pidgin. ___ cryptography mailing list cryptography@randombit.net http://lists.randombit.net/mailman/listinfo/cryptography
Re: [cryptography] why did OTR succeed in IM?
On 2013-03-24 3:25 AM, Jon Callas wrote: -BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 On Mar 23, 2013, at 6:36 AM, Ben Laurie b...@links.org wrote: On 23 March 2013 09:25, ianG i...@iang.org wrote: Someone on another list asked an interesting question: Why did OTR succeed in IM systems, where OpenPGP and x.509 did not? Because Adium built it in? Yeah. And it just worked. The hard part of cryptography is always UI. ___ cryptography mailing list cryptography@randombit.net http://lists.randombit.net/mailman/listinfo/cryptography
Re: [cryptography] Iranian Cryptography Vendors
On 2013-03-24 6:28 AM, Ethan Heilman wrote: Does anyone know where I would be able to find information on what cryptographic hardware is currently used by Islamic Republic's military and diplomatic organizations? �What vendors they are using and what elements of the Iranian government use�foreign�produced hardware?� Presumably anyone who knows that would be located in Iran, and thus would surely die if he said that. ___ cryptography mailing list cryptography@randombit.net http://lists.randombit.net/mailman/listinfo/cryptography
[cryptography] Iranian Cryptography Vendor (backdoor reference)
Crypto AG has been accused of rigging its machines in collusion with intelligence agencies such as the German Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND) and the United States National Security Agency (NSA), enabling such organisations to read the encrypted traffic produced by the machines.[2] Suspicions of this collusion were aroused in 1986 following US president Ronald Reagan's announcement on national television that, through interception of diplomatic communications between Tripoli and the Libyan embassy in East Berlin, he had irrefutable evidence that Muammar al-Gaddafi of Libya was behind the 1986 Berlin discotheque bombing in which two US service personnel were killed and another fifty injured. President Reagan then ordered the bombing of Tripoli and Benghazi in retaliation. There is no conclusive evidence that there was an intercepted Libyan message.[citation needed] Further evidence suggesting that the Crypto AG machines were compromised was revealed after the assassination of former Iranian Prime Minister Shahpour Bakhtiar in 1991. On August 7, 1991, one day before Bakhtiar's body was discovered, the Iranian Intelligence Service transmitted a coded message to Iranian embassies, inquiring Is Bakhtiar dead? Western governments were able to decipher this transmission, causing Iranian suspicion to fall upon their Crypto AG equipment.[3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crypto_AG http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2008/01/nsa_backdoors_i.html -- =+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+ J. Oquendo SGFA, SGFE, C|EH, CNDA, CHFI, OSCP, CPT, RWSP, GREM Where ignorance is our master, there is no possibility of real peace - Dalai Lama 42B0 5A53 6505 6638 44BB 3943 2BF7 D83F 210A 95AF http://pgp.mit.edu:11371/pks/lookup?op=getsearch=0x2BF7D83F210A95AF ___ cryptography mailing list cryptography@randombit.net http://lists.randombit.net/mailman/listinfo/cryptography
[cryptography] NSA Critiques Public Key Cryptography in 1986
NSA Cryptolog, August-September 1986 reviews Ralph Merkel's book, Secrecy, Authentication,and Public Key Systems, with disdain and dismissal: No library need acquire this tract. The once Secret review cites the PKC work of James Ellis, Malcolm Williamson and Cliff Cocks at GCHQ eleven years before their role became public in 1997. http://cryptome.org/2013/03/nsa-critiques-pkc.htm ___ cryptography mailing list cryptography@randombit.net http://lists.randombit.net/mailman/listinfo/cryptography
