Security – Page 2

Tor network offline in coming days due to possible raids by law enforcement authorities

December 25, 2014 by Nasheman

by Liam Tung, CSO Online

The Tor Project said on Friday that the online anonymity network may go dark in coming days due to an attempt to incapacitate it.

The project’s leader Roger Dingledine aka “arma” drew attention to the possible outage on the project’s blog, flagging a tip-off that its directory authority servers — a handful of servers that form a consensus on which relays that Tor clients should use — may be the target of an upcoming “seizure”.

“The Tor Project has learned that there may be an attempt to incapacitate our network in the next few days through the seizure of specialized servers in the network called directory authorities,” Dingledine warned.

The wording of the alert suggests that the attacker is law enforcement rather than hackers. Should an attacker gain control of a majority of those servers, they would be able to vote in a fake Tor network.

As the project explains in its FAQ: “The directory authorities provide a signed list of all the known relays, and in that list are a set of certificates from each relay (self-signed by their identity key) specifying their keys, locations, exit policies, and so on. So unless the adversary can control a majority of the directory authorities (as of 2012 there are 8 directory authorities), he can’t trick the Tor client into using other Tor relays.”

A thread on Hacker News notes there are actually now nine directory authorities located across Europe and the US, so the attackers would need to gain control of five in order point Tor users to a phoney Tor network.

“We are taking steps now to ensure the safety of our users, and our system is already built to be redundant so that users maintain anonymity even if the network is attacked. Tor remains safe to use,” Dingledine noted.

It’s not clear what the motivation is for the possible seizure, nor which authority may be behind it. However, there is speculation it may be related to the Sony Pictures investigation due to the hackers having used Tor in the attack.

HP Security on Friday released a detailed analysis of the malware used in the Sony hack, assessing the FBI’s claim that North Korea was behind the breach.

“The attackers appear to have used TOR exit nodes and VPNs to help cover their tracks, which indicates some awareness of operational security (OPSEC),” HP noted.

But as Dingledine noted in further comments, if the FBI were to seize a majority of the nine directory authorities it would not help them identify what individual Tor users had done in the past or were doing presently.

“If they’re trying to hunt down particular Tor users, most possible attacks on directory authorities would be unproductive, since those relays don’t know anything about what particular Tor users are doing,” he noted.

Russia and China prepare to fight US internet domination

November 17, 2014 by Nasheman

There’s no physical fences in cyberspace, that doesn’t mean there’s no border controls. paolo_cuttitta, CC BY

by Eerke Boiten, The Conversation

While there is only one world power on the internet, that situation will not last forever. The internet’s underpinning technologies were mostly created in the US, the initial networks were based there – and today the US hosts the majority of the most powerful internet companies.

Although minor battles have been fought on internet sovereignty for years, the de facto power that stems from the US for a long time seemed acceptable. But with the revelations – not even all following from Snowden – about international mass surveillance by the US and its allies, it’s inevitable the gloves have had to come off.

In a replay of an imaginary Cold War nightmare scenario, Russia and China appear to have identified a common enemy. The nations are expected to sign a collaborative cyber-security treaty to “oppose the use of IT and the internet to interfere in the internal affairs of independent states”.

There has also been discussion in mainland Europe, particularly Germany, about “Schengen-routing”, which would keep internet traffic away from the parts of the network where NSA and GCHQ could easily snoop on them. Edward Snowden has claimed that establishing a “European cloud” may not be effective, however.

Generally there are two main reasons for states to want to take control of the internet: they want to defend against outsiders – and to defend against insiders.

The enemy outside

Effectively the US still claims sovereignty over large parts of the internet. This is not just de facto sovereignty based on the residence of large internet companies and most cloud servers within the US. It is not even because the Snowden files have shown us that the NSA hoovers up most internet traffic. In a recent court case it was established that US law enforcement agencies can demand data from US companies even when it is stored abroad (in this case, Microsoft servers based in Ireland).

The discrimination in NSA procedures and US law that treats US and non-US citizens differently (worse) is also irksome.

Nor are US allies, chiefly Britain, innocent in this context. Unexplained spying by GCHQ abroad is well-documented, with the claims of eavesdropping at climate change conferencesthe most recent. The explicit extension of the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000 introduced through this summer’s “emergency” DRIP Act also plays a role. The act’s clause 4allows the interception of communications even relating to activity outside the UK by persons and companies based outside the UK.

For countries such as Russia and China, the threat from outside is more acute given that both countries have problems with territorial conflicts. There have been reports of cyber attacks in both directions between Russia and Ukraine. And China has been suspected of carrying out man-in-the-middle attacks in order to spy on citizens using encrypted connections.

These countries have a greater need to take control. Russia, for example, has recently been reported to be investing US$500m to establish a cyber warfare division, for offensive and defensive operations.

The enemy within

When governments tighten their hold over the internet within their own country it’s normally a slippery slope towards the restriction of civil rights. The so-called “great firewall of China” is to restrict freedom of expression and access to information for the Chinese population – to control those within, not those without. Google played along with this by censoring search results within China until 2010, when they moved their operations to the slightly freer jurisdiction of Hong Kong.

Amnesty International has taken up cases of people persecuted for political use of the internet in countries such as Bahrain, Azerbaijan and Egypt. North Korea has even gone as far as closing down all access to Twitter and Facebook.

On the other hand, Russia is close enough to Europe to not want to be painted as a politically repressive country. Instead Russia controls its internet through more subtle means. For example, its compulsory identity verification for social networks is justified as a defence against identity theft. While many nations operate a blacklist to restrict access to child pornography sites and those distributing copyrighted material, the Russian government added some independent news sites to the list, allegedly to prevent unauthorised protests – and pages on social network VK were highlighted by public prosecutors as advocating terrorism.

However, with its recent explicit attacks on freedom of speech, it seems Russian authorities no longer feel especially restrained in exercising censorship. Putin’s claims to support online freedoms like any other democratic country sound a bit shrill taken alongside his description of the internet as “a CIA project”.

Setting an example

Not that the UK emerges as a shining example in this respect. Dubious laws have been used to arrest a peer joining a demonstration – and years of spying on eminent historians by MI5 has just come to light. Meanwhile the police feel free to spy on journalists, prison staff listen in on MPs’ phone callsand intelligence agencies breach client-lawyer privilege. So it’s hard to swallow claims made by the home secretary, Theresa May, and GCHQ that efforts to improve mobile coverage and use encryption shouldn’t be allowed because of “security threats”.

Of course with elections around the corner, the major parties are making promises about restoring civil rights and establishing safeguards and oversight. But it seems there’s been little progress towards David Cameron’s promises in 2009 to erode the “control state” his government inherited.

British spies are free to target lawyers and journalists

November 10, 2014 by Nasheman

Photo: Barry Batchelor/AP

by Ryan Gallagher, The Intercept

British spies have been granted the authority to secretly eavesdrop on legally privileged attorney-client communications, according to newly released documents.

On Thursday, a series of previously classified policies confirmed for the first time that the U.K.’s top surveillance agency Government Communications Headquarters (pictured above) has advised its employees: “You may in principle target the communications of lawyers.”

The U.K.’s other major security and intelligence agencies—MI5 and MI6—have adopted similar policies, the documents show. The guidelines also appear to permit surveillance of journalists and others deemed to work in “sensitive professions” handling confidential information.

The documents were made public as a result of a legal case brought against the British government by Libyan families who allege that they were subjected to extraordinary rendition and torture in a joint British-American operation that took place in 2004. After revelations about mass surveillance from National Security Agency whistleblower Edward Snowden last year, the families launched another case alleging that their communications with lawyers at human rights group Reprieve may have been spied on by the government, hindering their ability to receive a fair trial.

In a statement on Thursday, Reprieve’s legal director Cori Crider said that the new disclosures raised “troubling implications for the whole British justice system” and questioned how frequently the government had used its spy powers for unfair advantage in court.

“It’s now clear the intelligence agencies have been eavesdropping on lawyer-client conversations for years,” Crider said. “Today’s question is not whether, but how much, they have rigged the game in their favor in the ongoing court case over torture.”

Rachel Logan, a legal adviser at rights group Amnesty International, said that spying on lawyers affords the U.K. government an “unfair advantage akin to playing poker in a hall of mirrors.”

“It could mean, amazingly, that the government uses information they have got from snooping on you, against you, in a case you have brought,” Logan said. “This clearly violates an age-old principle of English law set down in the 16th century—that the correspondence between a person and their lawyer is confidential.”

In the U.S., the NSA has also been caught spying on lawyers. Earlier this year, the agency was forced to reassure attorneys that it “will continue to afford appropriate protection to privileged attorney-client communications acquired during its lawful foreign intelligence mission in accordance with privacy procedures required by Congress, approved by the Attorney General, and, as appropriate, reviewed by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court.”

In the U.K., the oversight of intelligence agencies is undoubtedly far more lax.

According to the documents released Thursday, in at least one case legally privileged material that was covertly intercepted by a British agency may have been used to the government’s advantage in legal cases. One passage notes that security service MI5 identified an instance in which there was potential for “tainting” a legal case after secretly intercepted privileged material apparently ended up in the hands of its lawyers.

The policies state that the targeting of lawyers “must give careful consideration to necessity and proportionality,” but the GCHQ policy document adds that each individual analyst working at the agency is “responsible for the legality” of their targeting, suggesting that a large degree of personal judgement is involved in the process. Notably, there is no judicial oversight of eavesdropping conducted by GCHQ or other British security agencies; their surveillance operations are signed off by a senior politician in government, usually the Foreign or Home Secretary.

The categories that allow the agencies to spy on lawyers or others working with “confidential” material, such as journalists, are extremely broad. One policy document from GCHQ notes:

If you wish the target the communications of a lawyer or other legal professional or other communications that are likely to result in the interception of confidential information you must:

Have reasonable grounds to believe that they are participating in or planning activity that is against the interests of national security, the economic well-being of the UK or which in itself constitutes a serious crime.

In practice, this could mean that any lawyer or an investigative journalist working on a case or story involving state secrets could be targeted on the basis that they are perceived to be working against the vaguely defined national security interests of the government. Any journalists or lawyers working on the Snowden leaks, for instance, are a prime example of potential targets under this rationale. The U.K. government has already accused anyone working to publish stories based on the Snowden documents of being engaged in terrorism—and could feasibly use this as justification to spy on their correspondence.

GCHQ declined to comment for this post, referring a request from The Intercept to the government’s Home Office. A Home Office spokesperson said: “We do not comment on ongoing legal proceedings.”

'Google grown big & bad': Julian Assange reveals company & its founder's links to U.S govt

October 25, 2014 by Nasheman

by RT

One of the world’s largest internet companies, Google ‘should be a serious concern’ internationally, WikiLeaks co-founder and Editor-in-chief Julian Assange says, revealing its connections and donations to the White House.

“Google is steadily becoming the Internet for many people. Its influence on the choices and behavior of the totality of individual human beings translates to real power to influence the course of history,” Assange writes in his article, an extract from which is published in Newsweek.

Based on Assange’s personal encounter with Google’s chairman Eric Schmidt, the story of the corporation’s connections with the US government is intertwined with Schmidt’s personality.

Graduating with a degree in engineering from Princeton, Schmidt joined Sun Microsystems, a company that sold computers and software, in 1983, and over the years had become part of its executive leadership.

“Sun had significant contracts with the US government, but it was not until he was in Utah as CEO of Novell that records show Schmidt strategically engaging Washington’s overt political class,” Assange writes.

Referring to federal campaign finance records, Assange says “two lots of $1,000” to a Utah senator in 1999 was the future Google CEO’s first donation, with “over a dozen other politicians and PACs, including Al Gore, George W. Bush, Dianne Feinstein, and Hillary Clinton…on the Schmidt’s payroll” in the following years.

Ahead of his interview with Google executive chairman in 2011, Assange was “too eager to see a politically unambitious Silicon Valley engineer, a relic of the good old days of computer science graduate culture on the West Coast,” but says Schmidt “who pays regular visits to the White House” is not the type.

When visiting Assange, who was living under house arrest in England at the time, to quiz him “on the organizational and technological underpinnings of WikiLeaks,” Eric Schmidt was accompanied by Jared Cohen, the Director of Google Ideas, who also works for the Council on Foreign Relations, a think tank specializing in US foreign policy.

While describing Schmidt’s politics as “surprisingly conventional, even banal,” Assange says the man behind Google “was at his best when he was speaking (perhaps without realizing it) as an engineer.”

Talking about Cohen, the WikiLeaks co-founder names him “Google’s director of regime change.”

According to Assange’s research, “he was trying to plant his fingerprints on some of the major historical events in the contemporary Middle East,” including his interference with US politics in Afghanistan and Lebanon.

“Nobody wants to acknowledge that Google has grown big and bad. But it has,” Assange says, providing not only data on its direct connections with the White House, but also remembering the PRISM program scandal, when the company was “caught red-handed making petabytes of personal data available to the US intelligence community.”

Google is “luring people into its services trap,” and “if the future of the Internet is to be Google, that should be of serious concern to people all over the world,” Assange concludes.

Tor network offline in coming days due to possible raids by law enforcement authorities

Russia and China prepare to fight US internet domination

British spies are free to target lawyers and journalists

'Google grown big & bad': Julian Assange reveals company & its founder's links to U.S govt

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