Re: [Cryptography] Crypto being blamed in the London riots.
On 2011-08-09, Nick wrote: However, as was pointed out then, apparently the encryption is to from RIM's servers, not the recipient. So RIM have access to all the 'secret' messages. I expect GCHQ the Met will make sure said systems are patched in to their surveillance programme in no time. Thus, why not turn the Trusted Computing idea on its head? Simply make P2P public key cryptography available to your customers, and then bind your hands behind your back in an Odysseian fasion, using hardware means? Simply make it impossible for even yourself to circumvent the best cryptographic protocol you can invent, which you embed in your device before ever unveiling it, and then just live with it? Unfortunately the present climate in England is such that I can't imagine such measures being anything but lauded. Thus the need for credible precommitment, TC-style, at the hardware level.. -- Sampo Syreeni, aka decoy - de...@iki.fi, http://decoy.iki.fi/front +358-50-5756111, 025E D175 ABE5 027C 9494 EEB0 E090 8BA9 0509 85C2 ___ The cryptography mailing list cryptography@metzdowd.com http://www.metzdowd.com/mailman/listinfo/cryptography
Re: [Cryptography] Crypto being blamed in the London riots.
On Wed, 10 Aug 2011 11:53:11 -0400 Ken Buchanan ken.bucha...@gmail.com wrote: On Tue, Aug 9, 2011 at 8:02 PM, Sampo Syreeni de...@iki.fi wrote: Thus, why not turn the Trusted Computing idea on its head? Simply make P2P public key cryptography available to your customers, and then bind your hands behind your back in an Odysseian fasion, using hardware means? Simply make it impossible for even yourself to circumvent the best cryptographic protocol you can invent, which you embed in your device before ever unveiling it, and then just live with it? Why not, indeed... Because no regulatory regime in the world would allow this. Funny, that, since Sampo's proposal is more or less how Blackberry chat actually works. (Various previous posters had the details wrong.) Also all blackberry corporate services work without RIM having any access to the content -- they only get access to email for individual users for whom they terminate the encrypted tunnel. Perry -- Perry E. Metzgerpe...@piermont.com ___ The cryptography mailing list cryptography@metzdowd.com http://www.metzdowd.com/mailman/listinfo/cryptography
Re: [Cryptography] Crypto being blamed in the London riots.
On Wed, 10 Aug 2011 11:59:53 -0400 John Ioannidis j...@tla.org wrote: On Tue, Aug 9, 2011 at 8:02 PM, Sampo Syreeni de...@iki.fi wrote: Thus, why not turn the Trusted Computing idea on its head? Simply make P2P public key cryptography available to your customers, and then bind your hands behind your back in an Odysseian fasion, using hardware means? Simply make it impossible for even yourself to circumvent the best cryptographic protocol you can invent, which you embed in your device before ever unveiling it, and then just live with it? Customers? There is no profit in any manufacturer or provider to build that kind of functionality. Blackberry already more or less has that functionality, which disproves your hypothesis. Perry -- Perry E. Metzgerpe...@piermont.com ___ The cryptography mailing list cryptography@metzdowd.com http://www.metzdowd.com/mailman/listinfo/cryptography
Re: [Cryptography] Crypto being blamed in the London riots.
On Aug 10, 2011, at 12:19 53PM, Perry E. Metzger wrote: On Wed, 10 Aug 2011 11:59:53 -0400 John Ioannidis j...@tla.org wrote: On Tue, Aug 9, 2011 at 8:02 PM, Sampo Syreeni de...@iki.fi wrote: Thus, why not turn the Trusted Computing idea on its head? Simply make P2P public key cryptography available to your customers, and then bind your hands behind your back in an Odysseian fasion, using hardware means? Simply make it impossible for even yourself to circumvent the best cryptographic protocol you can invent, which you embed in your device before ever unveiling it, and then just live with it? Customers? There is no profit in any manufacturer or provider to build that kind of functionality. Blackberry already more or less has that functionality, which disproves your hypothesis. More precisely, Blackberry email is encrypted from the recipient's Exchange server to the mobile device. The scenario is corporate email; the business case is that RIM could claim that they *couldn't* read the email; they never had it in the clear. However, that's only true for that service. For personal Blackberries, there is no corporate-owned server doing the encryption. The service in question here, though, is Blackberry Messenger. There seems to be some confusion about whether or not such messages are encrypted, and if so under what circumstances. One link (http://www.berryreview.com/2010/08/06/faq-blackberry-messenger-pin-messages-are-not-encrypted/) says that they're not, in any meaningful form. More authoritatively, http://web.archive.org/web/20101221211610/http://www.cse-cst.gc.ca/its-sti/publications/itsb-bsti/itsb57a-eng.html says that they aren't. The most authoritative source is RIM itself. P 27 of http://docs.blackberry.com/16650/ confirms the CSE document. Looking at things more abstractly, there's a very difficult key management problem for a decentralized, many-to-one encryption service. Here, you're either in CA territory or web of trust territory. In this case, are the alleged perpetrators of the riots careful enough about to which keys they're sending the organizing messages? If the pattern is anything like Facebook friending, I sincerely doubt it. --Steve Bellovin, http://www.cs.columbia.edu/~smb ___ The cryptography mailing list cryptography@metzdowd.com http://www.metzdowd.com/mailman/listinfo/cryptography
Re: [Cryptography] Crypto being blamed in the London riots.
Quoting from the New York Times: David Lammy, Britain's intellectual property minister, also called for a suspension of Blackberry's encrypted instant message service. Many rioters, exploiting that service, had been able to organize mobs and outrun the police, who were ill-equipped to monitor it. IIRC this came up last year when a Middle Eastern country (I forget which) were threatening to not let RIM operate unless they could intercept blackberry messages. However, as was pointed out then, apparently the encryption is to from RIM's servers, not the recipient. So RIM have access to all the 'secret' messages. I expect GCHQ the Met will make sure said systems are patched in to their surveillance programme in no time. Unfortunately the present climate in England is such that I can't imagine such measures being anything but lauded. pgp802VCPEo9M.pgp Description: PGP signature ___ The cryptography mailing list cryptography@metzdowd.com http://www.metzdowd.com/mailman/listinfo/cryptography
