[ISN] Hackers introduce colourful new players to Indonesia's elections

[R. A. Hettinga]

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Date: Mon, 19 Apr 2004 04:27:25 -0500 (CDT)
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http://www.terra.net.lb/wp/Articles/DesktopArticle.aspx?ArticleID=151342&ChannelId=16

19/04/2004

Indonesia's official elections website showed election successes for
the unlikely "Pink Grandfather Party" and the "Party of Bottled
Mineral Water" after interference by hackers at the weekend, reports
said.

Indonesia's official elections website showed election successes for
the unlikely "Pink Grandfather Party" and the "Party of Bottled
Mineral Water" after interference by hackers at the weekend, reports
said.

The Indonesian General Election Commission (KPU) had to shut down its
website for four hours Saturday after hackers changed the names of
some of the 24 political parties that contested the April 5 vote, the
Jakarta Post said.

The names of the top three political parties were unchanged.

But the fourth-placed United Development Party (PPP) of Vice President
Hamzah Haz, whose party color is Islam's green, became the "Pink
Grandfather Party".

Fifth-placed upstart the Democrats' Party became "the Party of Bottled
Mineral Water", in an apparent reference to its saleability.

The People's Mandate Party, in sixth, became the "Party that must
repair its website first", while 13 others were just changed to "Pink
Party", regardless of their party colors.

The Crescent and Star Party was named after a singing bird, the
Freedom Party took the name of a character in a popular television
series, and the New Indonesian Association Party became "Party of
Midwives", for no apparent reason.

"The hackers tried to hack our data center and recovery center, which
have seven security systems, starting from 6:30 pm. But they failed,"
said the election commission's information technology division
chairman Akhiar Oemry.

"They only succeeded in hacking our website, which is part of the
public domain," he said.

The website was back on line late Saturday after repairs.



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"... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity,
[predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to
experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'

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Financial Cryptography Update: El Qaeda substitution ciphers

[Ian Grigg]

( Financial Cryptography Update: El Qaeda substitution ciphers )

 April 19, 2004



http://www.financialcryptography.com/mt/archives/000119.html





The Smoking Gun has an alleged British translation of an El Qaeda
training manual entitled
http://www.thesmokinggun.com/archive/jihadmanual.html _Military Studies
in the Jihad Against the Tyrants_
Lesson 13, http://www.thesmokinggun.com/archive/jihad13chap1.html
_Secret Writing And Ciphers And Codes_ shows the basic coding
techniques that they use.  In short, substitution ciphers, with some
home-grown wrinkles to make it harder for the enemy.
If this were as good as it got, then claims that the terrorists use
advanced cryptography would seem to be exaggerated.  However, it's
difficult to know for sure.  How valid was the book?  Who is given the
book?
This is a basic soldier's manual, and thus includes a basic code that
could be employed in the field, under stress.  From my own military
experience, working out simple encoded messages under battle conditions
(in the dark, with freezing fingers, lying in a foxhole, and under
fire, are all various impediments to careful coding) can be quite a
fragile process, so not too much should be made of the lack of
sophistication.
Also, bear in mind that your basic soldier has a lot of other things to
worry about and one of the perennial problems is getting them to bother
with letting the command structure know what they are up to.  No
soldier cares what happens at headquarters.  Another factor that might
shock the 90's generation of Internet cryptographers is that your basic
soldiers' codes are often tactical, which means they are only secure
for a day or so.  They are not meant to hide information that would be
stale and known by tomorrow, anyway.
How far this code is employed up the chain of command is the
interesting question.  My guess would be, not far, but, there is no
reason for this being accurate.  When I was a young soldier struggling
with codes, the entire forces used a single basic code with key changes
4 times a day, presumably so that an army grunt could call in support
from a ship off shore or a circling aircraft.  If that grunt lost the
codes, the whole forces structure was compromised, until the codes
rotated outside the lost window (48 hours worth of codes might be
carried at one time).
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Re: voting

[Ed Gerck]

Yeoh Yiu wrote:
> 
> Ed Gerck <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
> 
> > The 'second law' also takes precedence: ballots are always secret, only
> > vote totals are known and are known only after the election ends.
> 
> You get totals per nation, per state, per county, per riding,
> per precinct, per polling stion and maybe per ballot box.

The lowest possible totals are per race, per ballot box. The 
'second law' allows you to have such totals -- which are 
the election results for that race in that ballot box. For 
example, if there are two candidates (X and Y) in race A ,
two candidates (Z and W) in race B, and only one vote per 
candidate is allowed in each race, the election results for 
ballot box K might be:

Vote totals for race A in ballot box K:
  Votes for candidate X:  5
  Votes for candidate Y: 60
  Blank votes:   50

Vote totals for race B in ballot box K:
  Votes for candidate Z: 45
  Votes for candidate W: 50
  Blank votes:   20

Total ballots in ballot box K:  115

Because only the vote totals are known for each race, a 
voter cannot be identified by recognizing a pre-defined, 
unlikely voting pattern in each race of a ballot. This 
exemplifies one reason why we need the 'second law' -- to 
preserve unlinkability between ballots and voters.

> So there's a need to design the system to have more voters
> than ballot boxes to conform to your second law.

No. All you need is that there should be more than one voter
per ballot box. This is a rather trivial requirement to meet.

Cheers,
Ed Gerck

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Re: voting

[Yeoh Yiu]

Ed Gerck <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:

> David Jablon wrote:
> > 

> The 'second law' also takes precedence: ballots are always secret, only
> vote totals are known and are known only after the election ends.
> 
> > What I see in serious
> > voting system research efforts are attempts to build systems that
> > provide both accountability and privacy, with minimal tradeoffs.
> 
> There is no tradeoff prossible for voter privacy and ballot secrecy.
> Take away one of them and the voting process is no longer a valid
> measure. Serious voting system research efforts do not begin by
> denying the requirements.

You get totals per nation, per state, per county, per riding,
per precinct, per polling stion and maybe per ballot box.
So there's a need to design the system to have more voters
than ballot boxes to conform to your second law.

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[Announce] Libgcrypt-1.2.0 released

[R. A. Hettinga]

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To: [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED]
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From: Moritz Schulte <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Date: Fri, 16 Apr 2004 17:26:07 +0200
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Subject: [Announce] Libgcrypt-1.2.0 released
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We are pleased to announce the availability of Libgcrypt 1.2.0, which
is the first stable release of this general purpose crypto library
based on GnuPG code.

Note, that Libgcrypt is neither a replacement for GnuPG nor does it
contain a library version of GnuPG.  It is only of interest for
developers of crypto applications with a need for crypto building
blocks available under the GNU Lesser General Public License.

Complete source packages:

  ftp://ftp.gnupg.org/gcrypt/libgcrypt/libgcrypt-1.2.0.tar.gz (927k)
  ftp://ftp.gnupg.org/gcrypt/libgcrypt/libgcrypt-1.2.0.tar.gz.sig

Patch against version 1.9.94:

  ftp://ftp.gnupg.org/gcrypt/alpha/libgcrypt/libgcrypt-1.1.94-1.2.0.diff.gz
(246k)

Mirrors are listed at http://www.gnupg.org/download/mirrors.html.

MD5 sums are:

  5c508072d8387ce17d1ab05075c2be40  libgcrypt-1.2.0.tar.gz
  a1657523beebf926ca7992cc6b9ea9b5  libgcrypt-1.1.94-1.2.0.diff.gz

Except for one bug fix this release is basically equivalent to the
last pre-release.

Thanks to all who have worked on Libgcrypt (and thanks to those who
have worked on other things as well).

Happy hacking.

-- 
Moritz Schulte g10 Code GmbHhttp://www.g10code.com
 -=- The GnuPG Experts -=-

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R. A. Hettinga 
The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation 
44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA
"... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity,
[predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to
experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'

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Speakers: Payment Systems and Security 04 - June 18/19 2004

[R. A. Hettinga]

Overview
Agenda
Presentations
Venue
Travel
Accommodation
Online Registration



Corporate Sponsor:



 Contact Details
 Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
 Telephone: +44 (0) 870 1996774


 Payments Systems and Security
 18/19th June 2004

  

Payments Systems and Security
18/19th June 2004

(Draft) Speakers
*   Geoff Chick, Product Director, Century 24 Solutions
 Integration Objects?


*   Dr Iain Saville, Head of Business Process Reform, Lloyds
 Kinnect - Taking Contracts Digital


*   Bill Millar, Head of Information Security Governance, Royal Bank
of Scotland
 Security Governance


*   Ian Grigg, Principal Architect, Systemics
 Adaptive Governance for Payments and Securities Systems


*   Dr Sally Leivesley, Managing Director, Newrisk Limited
 Extreme Risk Management


*   John Walker, Principal Consultant, SiVenture (a division of NDS
UK Ltd.)
 Unto the breach: breaking the hardware and cryptography of smart card chips


*   Alistair Dunlop, Director of the Open Middleware Infrastructure
Institute, University of Southampton
 Grid Computing based Open Source Web Services


*   Paul Guthrie, Principal, Payment Software Corporation
 Applying digital cash ideas to Commerce


*   Ir. Simon Lelieveldt, S. Lelieveldt Consultancy
 How New Entrants Change the Traditional Security Approach to Payments


*Frank Trotter, CEO, Everbank
 Blazing the Branchless Banking Trail - The Highs and Lows of Adoption  and
Security Issues


*   Graeme Burnett, Quantitative Technology Achitect, Deutsche Bank
 Future State Application Security Architecture


*   James Turk, Managing Director, Goldmoney
 Internet Gold - the new Governance


*   Avi Corfas, Managing Director EMEA, Skybox Security
 Vulnerability Management Needs A New Model: The Role of Attack Simulation
in Automation



Copyright © 2004 Enhyper Ltd.
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R. A. Hettinga 
The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation 
44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA
"... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity,
[predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to
experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'

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Payment system and security conference

[R. A. Hettinga]

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Date: Sun, 18 Apr 2004 11:07:23 -0600
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Payment system and security conference
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reminder from this month's enhyper newsletter, 2004 payment system and
security conference
http//www.enhyper.com/paysec/

also mention financial cryptography blog ... by some of the same people
http//www.financialcryptography.com/
they also have short blurb on:
http://www.bitpass.com/

enhyper also discovered norm hardy and some of his papers: ... the digital
silk road
http//www.cap-lore.com/Economics/DSR/
http//www.agorics.com/Library/dsr.html

norm's past include LLNL, 360s, vm/370, secure operating systems and secure
transactions:
http://cap-lore.com/

and secure operating systems at tymshare with gnosis and keykos:
http//www.agorics.com/Library/keykosindex.html
http//www.cis.upenn.edu/~KeyKOS/
 and there is EROS -- extremely reliable operation system (outgrowth of
keykos)
http//www.cis.upenn.edu/~eros/
... note above mentions looking at getting an EAL7+ evaluation for eros.

when MD bought tymshare they were looking at spinning off a number of
things. i was brought in to do a technical audit of gnosis as part of its
spin-off as keykos. they were also spinning off Doug Engelbart who was
working at Tymshare at the time ... tymshare was running doug's "augment"
system on pdp10 ...
http//www.superkids.com/aweb/pages/features/mouse/mouse.html
http//sloan.stanford.edu/MouseSite/dce-bio.htm
http//www.invisiblerevolution.net/engelbart/glossary/augment_nls.html
http//www.sciencedaily.com/encyclopedia/nls

and total topic drift, i've got lots of references to vm/370:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#545tech
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#fairshare
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/subtopic.html#wsclock

--
Internet trivia, 20th anv: http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/rfcietff.htm

--- end forwarded text


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R. A. Hettinga 
The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation 
44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA
"... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity,
[predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to
experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'

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Re: Cryptonomicon.Net - Key Splitting : First (and Second) Person Key Escrow

[Peter Gutmann]

"R. A. Hettinga" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> quotes:

>One of our missions here at Cryptonomicon.Net is to advocate the use of
>appropriate cryptographic technology. One technology that's sorely missed in
>a number of commercial products is key splitting. Never heard of key
>splitting? That's not surprising. 

It's not surprising because there's no demand for it.  A number of commercial
(crypto hardware) products do it, but only as a backup mechanism / to allow
key migration into new hardware units.  Every vendor has their own techniques
for this, which fit their existing key management mechanisms.  I talked to
some people about doing a standard for this a while back, but given the vast
number of implementation details you'd have to accomodate and the absence of
demand for it, it never went any further than that.

Peter.

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Re: voting

[Ed Gerck]

David Jablon wrote:
> 
> I think Ed's criticism is off-target.  Where is the "privacy problem" with
> Chaum receipts when Ed and others still have the freedom to refuse
> theirs or throw them away?

The privacy, coercion, intimidation, vote selling and election integrity
problems begin with giving away a receipt that is linkable to a ballot. 

It is not relevant to the security problem whether a voter may destroy 
his receipt, so that some receipts may disappear. What is relevant is 
that voters may HAVE to keep their receipt or... suffer retaliation...
not get paid... lose their jobs... not get a promotion... etc. Also
relevant is that voters may WANT to keep their receipts, for the same
reasons.

> It seems a legitimate priority for a voting system to be designed to
> assure voters that the system is working. 

As long as this does not go against the 'first law' for public voting 
systems: voters must not be linkable to ballots.

The 'second law' also takes precedence: ballots are always secret, only
vote totals are known and are known only after the election ends.

> What I see in serious
> voting system research efforts are attempts to build systems that
> provide both accountability and privacy, with minimal tradeoffs.

There is no tradeoff prossible for voter privacy and ballot secrecy.
Take away one of them and the voting process is no longer a valid
measure. Serious voting system research efforts do not begin by
denying the requirements.

> If some kind of tradeoff between accountability and privacy is inevitable,

There is no such principle.

> in an extreme scenario, I'd still prefer the option to make the tradeoff for
> myself, rather than have the system automatically choose for me.

You don't have this option when the public at large is considered, for
a public election. You can do it in a private election for a club,
for example, but even then only if the bylaws allow it.

Cheers,
Ed Gerck

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Re: voting

[David Jablon]

I think Ed's criticism is off-target.  Where is the "privacy problem" with
Chaum receipts when Ed and others still have the freedom to refuse
theirs or throw them away?

It seems a legitimate priority for a voting system to be designed to
assure voters that the system is working.  What I see in serious
voting system research efforts are attempts to build systems that
provide both accountability and privacy, with minimal tradeoffs.

If some kind of tradeoff between accountability and privacy is inevitable,
in an extreme scenario, I'd still prefer the option to make the tradeoff for
myself, rather than have the system automatically choose for me.

-- David


>> At 11:05 AM 4/9/04 -0400, Trei, Peter wrote:
>> 
>> >1. The use of receipts which a voter takes from the voting place to 'verify'
>> >that their vote was correctly included in the total opens the way for voter
>> >coercion.

>John Kelsey wrote:
>> I think the VoteHere scheme and David Chaum's scheme both claim to solve
>> this problem.  The voting machine gives you a receipt that convinces you
>> (based on other information you get) that your vote was counted as cast,
>> but which doesn't leak any information at all about who you voted for to
>> anyone else.  Anyone can take that receipt, and prove to themselves that
>> your vote was counted (if it was) or was not counted (if it wasn't). 

At 06:58 PM 4/15/04 -0700, Ed Gerck wrote:
>The flaw in *both* cases is that it reduces the level of privacy protection
>currently provided by paper ballots.
>
>Currently, voter privacy is absolute in the US and does not depend
>even on the will of the courts. For example,  there is no way for a
>judge to assure that a voter under oath is telling the truth about how
>they voted, or not. This effectively protects the secrecy of the ballot
>and prevents coercion and intimidation in all cases.



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