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The Telecom Digest for September 9, 2013
Volume 32 : Issue 191 : "text" Format
====== 32 years of TELECOM Digest -- Founded August 21, 1981 ======
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Telecom and VOIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) Digest for the
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Date: Sat, 7 Sep 2013 10:58:37 -0400
From: Monty Solomon <monty@roscom.com>
To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org.
Subject: Revealed: how US and UK spy agencies defeat internet privacy and security
Message-ID: <p0624084bce50ef268780@[10.0.1.11]>
Revealed: how US and UK spy agencies defeat internet privacy and security
* NSA and GCHQ unlock encryption used to protect emails, banking and
medical records
* $250m-a-year US program works covertly with tech companies to
insert weaknesses into products
* Security experts say programs 'undermine the fabric of the internet'
James Ball, Julian Borger and Glenn Greenwald
Guardian Weekly
5 September 2013
US and British intelligence agencies have successfully cracked much
of the online encryption relied upon by hundreds of millions of
people to protect the privacy of their personal data, online
transactions and emails, according to top-secret documents revealed
by former contractor Edward Snowden.
The files show that the National Security Agency and its UK
counterpart GCHQ have broadly compromised the guarantees that
internet companies have given consumers to reassure them that their
communications, online banking and medical records would be
indecipherable to criminals or governments.
The agencies, the documents reveal, have adopted a battery of methods
in their systematic and ongoing assault on what they see as one of
the biggest threats to their ability to access huge swathes of
internet traffic - "the use of ubiquitous encryption across the
internet".
Those methods include covert measures to ensure NSA control over
setting of international encryption standards, the use of
supercomputers to break encryption with "brute force", and - the most
closely guarded secret of all - collaboration with technology
companies and internet service providers themselves.
Through these covert partnerships, the agencies have inserted secret
vulnerabilities - known as backdoors or trapdoors - into commercial
encryption software.
The files, from both the NSA and GCHQ, were obtained by the Guardian,
and the details are being published today in partnership with the New
York Times and ProPublica. They reveal:
...
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/sep/05/nsa-gchq-encryption-codes-security
Date: Sat, 7 Sep 2013 14:56:42 -0400
From: Monty Solomon <monty@roscom.com>
To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org.
Subject: Matthew Green: On the NSA
Message-ID: <p06240854ce5125934931@[10.0.1.11]>
A Few Thoughts on Cryptographic Engineering
Some random thoughts about crypto. Notes from a course I teach.
Pictures of my dachshunds.
Matthew Green
September 5, 2013
On the NSA
Let me tell you the story of my tiny brush with the biggest crypto
story of the year.
A few weeks ago I received a call from a reporter at ProPublica,
asking me background questions about encryption. Right off the bat I
knew this was going to be an odd conversation, since this gentleman
seemed convinced that the NSA had vast capabilities to defeat
encryption. And not in a 'hey, d'ya think the NSA has vast
capabilities to defeat encryption?' kind of way. No, he'd already
established the defeating. We were just haggling over the details.
Oddness aside it was a fun (if brief) set of conversations, mostly
involving hypotheticals. If the NSA could do this, how might they do
it? What would the impact be? I admit that at this point one of my
biggest concerns was to avoid coming off like a crank. After all, if
I got quoted sounding too much like an NSA conspiracy nut, my
colleagues would laugh at me. Then I might not get invited to the
cool security parties.
All of this is a long way of saying that I was totally unprepared for
today's bombshell revelations describing the NSA's efforts to defeat
encryption. Not only does the worst possible hypothetical I discussed
appear to be true, but it's true on a scale I couldn't even imagine.
I'm no longer the crank. I wasn't even close to cranky enough.
And since I never got a chance to see the documents that sourced the
NYT/ProPublica story -- and I would give my right arm to see them --
I'm determined to make up for this deficit with sheer speculation.
Which is exactly what this blog post will be.
...
http://blog.cryptographyengineering.com/2013/09/on-nsa.html?m=1
Date: Sat, 7 Sep 2013 14:48:21 -0400
From: Monty Solomon <monty@roscom.com>
To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org.
Subject: Mayoral Candidates Wedded to Smartphones While Campaigning
Message-ID: <p06240853ce5125112ab6@[10.0.1.11]>
Kiss Baby, Smile, Check Phone (Over and Over)
Mayoral Candidates Wedded to Smartphones While Campaigning
By SARAH MASLIN NIR
September 6, 2013
John C. Liu clutched his cellphone in both hands, tapping with his
thumbs, while John A. Catsimatidis hammered out a message on his own
phone.
Farther down a long table, Joseph J. Lhota shuffled two phones before
him like a deck of cards. William C. Thompson Jr. squinted at the
BlackBerry in his palm.
Bill de Blasio did not seem to notice their behavior - he was looking
toward his knee, where one of his own phones was balanced.
New York City's race for mayor this year has featured a number of
conspicuous novelties: a white front-runner who has won considerable
black support, in part by highlighting his biracial family; a
contender with two beloved shelter dogs who is routinely harangued by
animal rights activists; a candidate whose habit of sending sexually
explicit messages to women he never met led this week to a screaming
match with a heckler in a bakery.
Less conspicuous, perhaps only because voters are too busy staring at
their own smartphones to notice, is the way the ubiquity of mobile
devices has introduced a new peril into candidate-voter interactions:
distracted campaigning.
At a forum last month, typical of the scores of such events around
the city over the course of the campaign, candidates fiddled
ceaselessly with their phones, though they were onstage before an
audience of over 1,500 and the event was televised.
The phenomenon is in part a fact of contemporary life - people
everywhere check their cellphones constantly - and in part a tacit
acknowledgment of a reality of campaigning: It can be boring to
listen to the same rival candidates saying the same things day after
day, night after night.
...
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/07/nyregion/mayoral-candidates-wedded-to-smartphones-while-campaigning.html
Date: Sat, 7 Sep 2013 11:07:28 -0400
From: Monty Solomon <monty@roscom.com>
To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org.
Subject: Revealed: The NSA's Secret Campaign to Crack, Undermine Internet Security
Message-ID: <p0624084cce50f0e4f01b@[10.0.1.11]>
Revealed: The NSA's Secret Campaign to Crack, Undermine Internet Security
by Jeff Larson, ProPublica, Nicole Perlroth, The New York Times, and Scott Shane, The New York Times, Sep. 5, 2013
http://www.propublica.org/article/the-nsas-secret-campaign-to-crack-undermine-internet-encryption
Why We Published the Decryption Story
by Stephen Engelberg and Richard Tofel
ProPublica, Sep. 5, 2013
http://www.propublica.org/article/why-we-published-the-decryption-story
Date: Sat, 7 Sep 2013 12:42:02 -0400
From: Monty Solomon <monty@roscom.com>
To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org.
Subject: With privacy battle brewing, Facebook won't update policy right away
Message-ID: <p06240852ce50fc79a72c@[10.0.1.11]>
With privacy battle brewing, Facebook won't update policy right away
By Jessica Guynn
September 5, 2013
SAN FRANCISCO -- Facebook will not roll out controversial changes to
its policies until next week, the giant social network said Thursday.
Six consumer watchdog groups have asked the Federal Trade Commission
to block the changes that they say would make it far easier for the
company to use the names, images and personal information of its
nearly 1.2 billion users -- including teens -- to endorse products in
ads without their consent.
...
http://www.latimes.com/business/technology/la-fi-tn-facebook-privacy-policy-update-20130905,0,6797157.story
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