Informations about SSL certificates and networks security
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The password-manager 1Password has just implemented a travel mode that tries to protect users while crossing borders. It doesn’t make much sense. To enable it, you have to create a list of passwords you feel safe traveling with, and then you can turn on the mode that only gives you access to those passwords. But … Read More “Passwords at the Border” »
The Intercept published a story about a dedicated NSA brute-force keysearch machine being built with the help of New York University and IBM. It’s based on a document that was accidentally shared on the Internet by NYU. The article is frustratingly short on details: The WindsorGreen documents are mostly inscrutable to anyone without a Ph.D. … Read More “NSA Brute-Force Keysearch Machine” »
Last August, an unknown group called the Shadow Brokers released a bunch of NSA tools to the public. The common guesses were that the tools were discovered on an external staging server, and that the hack and release was the work of the Russians (back then, that wasn’t controversial). This was me: Okay, so let’s … Read More “Shadow Brokers Releases the Rest of Their NSA Hacking Tools” »
Interesting law journal article: “Encryption and the Press Clause,” by D. Victoria Barantetsky. Abstract: Almost twenty years ago, a hostile debate over whether government could regulate encryption — later named the Crypto Wars — seized the country. At the center of this debate stirred one simple question: is encryption protected speech? This issue touched all … Read More “Encryption Policy and Freedom of the Press” »
Kalyna is a block cipher that became a Ukrainian national standard in 2015. It supports block and key sizes of 128, 256, and 512 bits. Its structure looks like AES but optimized for 64-bit CPUs, and it has a complicated key schedule. Rounds range from 10-18, depending on block and key sizes. There is some … Read More “Kalyna Block Cipher” »
I have written a paper with Orin Kerr on encryption workarounds. Our goal wasn’t to make any policy recommendations. (That was a good thing, since we probably don’t agree on any.) Our goal was to present a taxonomy of different workarounds, and discuss their technical and legal characteristics and complications. Abstract: The widespread use of … Read More “New Paper on Encryption Workarounds” »
Useful best practices for malware writers, courtesy of the CIA. Seems like a lot of good advice. General: DO obfuscate or encrypt all strings and configuration data that directly relate to tool functionality. Consideration should be made to also only de-obfuscating strings in-memory at the moment the data is needed. When a previously de-obfuscated value … Read More “The CIA's “Development Tradecraft DOs and DON'Ts”” »
The Linux encryption app Cryptkeeper has a rather stunning security bug: the single-character decryption key “p” decrypts everything: The flawed version is in Debian 9 (Stretch), currently in testing, but not in Debian 8 (Jessie). The bug appears to be a result of a bad interaction with the encfs encrypted filesystem’s command line interface: Cryptkeeper … Read More “Cryptkeeper Bug” »
Back in March, Rolf Weber wrote about a potential vulnerability in the WhatsApp protocol that would allow Facebook to defeat perfect forward secrecy by forcibly change users’ keys, allowing it — or more likely, the government — to eavesdrop on encrypted messages. It seems that this vulnerability is real: WhatsApp has the ability to force … Read More “WhatsApp Security Vulnerability” »
New paper: “A Simple Power Analysis Attack on the Twofish Key Schedule.” This shouldn’t be a surprise; these attacks are devastating if you don’t take steps to mitigate them. The general issue is if an attacker has physical control of the computer performing the encryption, it is very hard to secure the encryption inside the … Read More “Twofish Power Analysis Attack” »