NSA operation ORCHESTRA: Annual Status Report

Check out phk's fosdem talk[0]. I've linked to the the part where he talks about openSSL, but I'd suggest watching the whole thing. I'm now starting to believe the talk wasn't a joke at all... [0] ▶ this video

There's a talk that was given in Belgium / Brussels at FOSDEM2014 two months ago or so by Poul-Henning Kamp (FreeBSD) regarding the NSA and how he'd do it if he had to create holes in software: ▶ this video He's talking specifically about OpenSSL quite a lot (basically saying it's too complex to ever be secure and probably received many "security patches" from NSA employees). The entire talk is an eye opener. He explains how NSA shills are reading reddit / HN and poisoning communities / standards / protocols / etc. How everything is made, on purpose, needlessly complex to prevent honest developers from working on important things. He talks about shills submitting a few correct patches over the months / years, slowly gaining reputation among the community and then misusing that trust to submit (not so) subtle patches introducing security holes on purpose. He mentions a few of the "common mantra" repeated often (including here) by people who have an interest in the status quo. He explains why SSL/TLS is broken and says that the "SEC" part of "DNSSEC" is not going to be that secure ; ) I think that the problem is much worse than most people think and that Poul-Henning Kamp is closer to the truth than the ones constantly repeating "bug happens" as if nothing malicious was ever going on.

I think open-source software is great as well, but assuming these kind of bugs are found because you can inspect the code is very wishful thinking that doesn't always hold up. This specific example required a Google department to find it. Who would have found it if Google got restrained by the NSA?. Other notable examples include openSSL. On top of that, here is a great talk about how easy it would be to infiltrate open source projects: ▶ this video

>I have this notion that surrounding a subject with basket case conspiracy theories would be a good way to get people not to take it seriously :) Indeed, it would. A lot of clever people have discussed the issue of disinfo & FUD, you might wish to: * Watch this talk from FOSDEM '14 by Poul-Henning Kamp [Contextually, one important tidbit to keep in mind while watching it: At the time phk gave the talk, the heartbleed vulnerability in OpenSSL wasn't yet known!]: ▶ this video * and, perhaps, read these two blog posts, but tread carefully with those two, as, unlike the above video, the below edges MOST dangerously close to basket case conspiracy theory territory - arguably, it doesn't get there, but I can definitely say that if one slips while looking into the below, one'll immediately end up in basket case territory: link link However, having said this & pointed out all of the above, before going down any of the above lanes, keep something else in mind: 1. Take a look at when some of these links got first published online . Multi-decade gap vs. original date of publication. Something unfortunately still the norm for a lot of old(er) scientific/academic literature. 2. Most of Frey's original papers from the 60s are still behind a HARD paywall. Again, unfortunately still the norm for a lot of old(er) scientific/academic literature. 3. The whole classified Radar tech research aspect of it (This whole avenue of research got started out when radar techs in the 60s started complaining

This talk was an interesting thought experiment by PhK of FreeBSD on how if he were tasked by some agency to sabotage open source projects and standards how he would go about doing it ▶ this video A talk by Robert Harper at OPLSS in 2017 is really good as well, covering the basics of programming language background link "concrete syntax is where computer science meets psychology.... at the moment it's all a matter of opinion"

Hmmm… and ElGamal's signing scheme didn't qualify? I don't think that's a reason, or even an excuse: Schnorr actually did claim his patent read on DSA. (That obviously never went anywhere, and the US Government, in a show of force via the NSA, filed their own patent on DSA.) The NSA also really doesn't seem to have had much of a problem negotiating the licensing of patents with industry participants in the past! It is, after all, in an extraordinarily strong bargaining position: an awful lot of public money to throw around (openly, via on-the-book government contracts, and otherwise); the backing of a 'superpower' government and its negotiators; a remarkably good idea of what the position of those its bargaining with is (it is a signals intelligence agency…!); and is even able to classify patents and other nonsense like that. DSA was sceptically received at the time, and there was widespread suspicion about its complexity and critical dependency on random k. (Even just two or three predictable leading bits of k can cause disaster!) Sizes above 1024 bit were not specified for way too long, and I would consider a 1024-bit DSA key most definitely crackable by the computing resources available to the NSA (or perhaps anyone else with a budget and a chip fab on contract after-hours!) today. (Those with DSA PGP signing keys may wish to take note and replace them, I suggest, with 4096-bit RSA keys.) I think perhaps the only reason DSA got any popularity was because of the RSA patent,

Debian's 2006 PRNG anyone?! Maybe these are stupid dumb mistakes, but if I were NSA this is exactly how I'd implement backdoors. 2 lines of code cloned here (go to fail), 2 lines of code commented out there (Debian PRNG issue), and just like that you create huge vulnerabilities in the system. Hard to notice, and impossible to blame on anyone. Everytime they seem to be some brilliant "stupid mistakes". And as others have said, do listen to the FreeBSD developer's talk on NSA' ORCHESTRA operation (subverting open source projects): ▶ this video

Also worth watching is his FOSDEM talk where he was calling for this before news of Heartbleed broke. ▶ this video

OpenSSL source code is a disaster. It's spaghetti that doesn't do what you think it does with horrible documentation. People submit patches from people they don't even know and then you have it: An SSL library that is flawed but everyone is using it. An spying agency and hackers dream. We don't need OpenSSL, we need another library built from scratch with very clean code and documentation. Everyone who has more interest on why OpenSSL is a catastrophe should watch operation ORCHESTRA[0]. [0] ▶ this video

Speaking of OpenBSD, does anyone know what happened here and how true it is? link It would certainly jive with John Gilmore's story on how the NSA worked through the standard bodies to keep IPSEC easily exploitable by making the design too difficult to implement properly: link Their behavior around Simon & Speck and how they refused to reveal details on how exploitable they could be also seems to be similar to their previous tactics. This is why it's worrisome that Google intends to implement Speck in Android and have pushed it to the Linux kernel, too. link More details on how the NSA has been sabotaging open source projects here: ▶ this video

Why not mouth off on social media? Yes, it draws attention. But it also adds legitimacy to the operation if he is not an individual. If a PR firm is making edits to Wikipedia, they get heavily frowned on. If it appears that an individual is doing it, especially one with a long history of good edits, they will be defended. I don't have a particularly conspiratorial mind and I prefer coincidence until conspiracy becomes the simpler explanation. Just so it's clear we're not entering the unfundable fantasy realm, PR firms can easily afford a competitive salary for a Wikipedia editor just from one or two clients. As can think-tanks. I can see how I'd set up and scale up such an operation. I'd keep the one editor to one account for reasons above. I'd probably have them be more like a newspaper editor -- they keep a consistent style across the edits. I'd offload the real work to researchers who dig up sources and to write the bits they want inserted and removed. Look at the first edits by this account: they're on Jazz musicians and politics, and the political stuff isn't too biased. Eventually the cover of Jazz edits decreases. Maybe he started out as a Wikipedia editor and enjoyed writing so got picked up by one of the many many think-tanks that pay journalism money for advancing what will make their sponsors money. Maybe he's an internet sock-puppet. Snowden revealed that the UK has a unit that engages in such activities. [0] This very site has not been immune from individuals who

The "don't roll your own crypto" mantra was created by the NSA to make people afraid to develop and deploy cryptography. See here: ▶ this video