RFC 6189: ZRTP es finalmente un estándar!

Finalmente ZRTP se ha asignado una misión oficial RFC, RFC6189 ZRTP: Medios Sendero Acuerdo clave para Unicast Secure RTP.

Tenía como una dependencia del SRTP con AES tamaño de clave de 256 bits que ahora ha sido definido como RFC6188 .

Es emocionante ver el RFC finalmente puesto en libertad, ya que es un hito importante para establecer ZRTP como el estándar oficial para el cifrado de extremo a extremo tanto como PGP ha sido para los correos electrónicos.

Ahora cualquier organización en el mundo será capaz de poner en práctica oficialmente ZRTP para el cifrado de voz protocolo de extremo a extremo

Actualmente 3 implementaciones públicas diferentes de protocolo ZRTP existe:

Cada uno de ellos ofrecen diferentes características del protocolo, pero lo más importante son conocidos por ser interoperables.

Una nueva ola está llegando al mundo de encriptación de voz, irrumpiendo en una zona gris donde la mayoría de las empresas que hacen los sistemas de encriptación de teléfono ha estado implementando el cifrado personalizado.

Ahora un estándar se ha configurado y hay pocas razones que quedan para la aplicación de algo diferente.

Hurra Sr. Zimmermann y toda la comunidad de las empresas (como PrivateWave ) e individuos (como Werner Dittmann ) que trabajó en él!

Hoy en día es un gran día, este tipo de tecnología es ahora oficial y también con aplicación múltiple existente!

Felipe, lo hizo de nuevo, mis felicitaciones a su espíritu puro y determinación:-)

Progreso para GSM agrietamiento en Friburgo universidad

El apasionante mundo de los protocolos móviles (GSM, GSM-R, TETRA, UMTS, etc) la piratería está consiguiendo las actividades oficiales de investigación de las universidades.

La inversión a realizar lanzamientos de código opensource de craqueo de software está dando la oportunidad a los estudiantes de la universidad para trabajar en él, mejorarlo y hacer una investigación fuerte.

La Universidad de Friburgo acaba de publicar el documento de Práctica de GSM cifrado A5 / 1 , junto con una gsmframencoder herramienta de apoyo para mejorar la inhalación, la descodificación y el proceso de formación de grietas.

Hardware de apertura, abrir el software, el protocolo de apertura demostrar la debilidad de cualquier tipo de método o proceso patentado para la acumulación de las tecnologías de comunicación y de seguridad.

Debe ser la meta de cualquier científico para tratar de abrir-up y el crack de cualquier tipo de tecnología propietaria y cerrada para forzar a la industria a continúa sólo con enfoque interoperable y abierta, mientras que el diseño de protocolos de telecomunicaciones.

Mi experiencia nodo de salida TOR tratando de filtrar el tráfico ruidoso

A principios de este año que decidí que es hora de ejecutar un nodo de salida TOR así que me traje un VPS en hetzner.de (porque están listados como una buena TOR ISP ) y la configuración de la salida-nodo con apodo privacyresearch.infosecurity.ch con 100 Mbit / s para la primera conexión de 1 TB de datos mensuales, a continuación, 10 MBit / s plana.

También ejecuta TOR2WEB software en http://tor.infosecurity.ch .

I fijó la salida política como se sugiere mediante la ejecución de la salida-nodo con el acoso mínimo y preparó una plantilla de respuesta abuso .

En el primer día que he estado corriendo el nodo que recibí inmediatamente DMCA quejan debido a tráfico de igual a igual.

Así que me decidí a filtrar fuera algo de tráfico P2P utilizando OpenDPI módulo de iptables y de DMCA quejan desaparecido de forma automática:

iptables -A OUTPUT -m opendpi -edonkey -gadugadu -fasttrack -gnutella -directconnect -bittorrent -winmx -soulseek -j REJECT

Entonces, porque soy italiano, me decidí a evitar mi nodo TOR para conectar con el espacio de direcciones de Internet italiano con el fin de reducir la posibilidad de que un fiscal estúpido me despertaba en la mañana porque no entiendo que estoy corriendo un nodo TOR.

He intentado, con la ayuda de hellais que escribieron un guión para hacer política Salir rechazan declaración para rechazar todos los bloques de red italiano basado en la IOError blockfinder pero nos pareció que los de configuración torrc archivos con 1.000 líneas estaba haciendo accidente TOR.

Fuimos a abrir un ticket para reportar el accidente de nuestro intento de bloquear política de salida TOR por país y encontramos un intento similar , donde contribuimos, pero todavía parece ser un-tema abierto.

La conclusión es que no es posible hacer una política de salida del país para el nodo de salida TOR de una manera limpia y cortés, así que decidí ir por el camino sucio usando iptables / geoip . Después de luchar para que se compile correctamente, era una línea de iptables para bloquear el tráfico que va a Italia:

iptables -A OUTPUT -p tcp -m state -estado NUEVO geoip -m -dst-cc TI -j REJECT

Ahora, desde mi salida de nodo se hará ninguna conexión a las redes italianas y estoy segura contra los fiscales posiblemente estúpidas no entender TOR (tengo una excepción para todas las direcciones IP del nodo TOR aplicado antes).

Después de algunos otros días empecé a recibir las protestas debido a las actividades PortScan originó a partir de mis nodos Tor.

Desde mi propio punto de vista quiero apoyar a la red anonimato, intento de hacking no anónima y así que quiero filtrar de salida portscan y ataques de origen de mi node.That de una cuestión compleja que requiere un poco de estudio, así que mientras tanto he instalado scanlogd y esnifar porque quiero evaluar cuántos ataques, que tipo de ataques se están saliendo de mi nodo de salida TOR.
Más adelante voy a tratar de organizar algún tipo de filtrado para estar seguro de ser capaz de filtrar grandes ataques.
Por lo que está relacionado con barridos de puertos, parece que no existen herramientas públicas para detectar y filtrar saliente portscan pero sólo para filtrar entrante portscan por lo que probablemente tendrá que escribir algo ad-hoc.
Me voy a referir cómo van las cosas y si habrá alguna buena manera de poner en práctica de forma de onda de luz snort-inline para filtrar selectivamente de salida importante intento de ataque procedente de mi salida de nodo.

Mi objetivo es mantener un nodo de salida que se ejecuta en largo plazo (al menos 1 TB de tráfico cada mes donados a TOR), lo que reduce el esfuerzo relacionado con la ISP quejarse y tratar de hacerlo lo mejor posible para ejecutar la salida de nodos con un pasivo razonable.

TETRA piratería está llegando: OsmocomTETRA

Es muy emocionante ver la liberación de OsmocomTETRA , la primera DEG opensource ( Software Defined Radio ) la implementación de demodulador TETRA, PHY y MAC capas inferiores.

Es la versión TETRA de airprobe GSM que desbloquear el acceso a los datos y el marco de protocolo de comunicaciones TETRA, dando así una gran oportunidad de hacking!

Ahora que también la tecnología TETRA se ha abierto debemos esperar, durante este 2011, para ver opensource sniffers TETRA y muy probablemente también el cifrado TEA (el algoritmo de cifrado Tetra) agrietado!

TETRA es utilizado por la policía, servicios de emergencia y militares como una red de comunicación móvil alternativo que puede trabajar incluso sin la disponibilidad de cobertura de la red (sólo de móvil a móvil, sin una estación base) y proporcionar algunos servicios de alta disponibilidad especiales.

Escribí sobre TETRA en mi diapositiva Major Voz Protocolo de Seguridad de la opinión .

En las listas de correo OsmocomBB hubo ya discusión sobre algunos estado de la red TETRA:

  • Bélgica TETRA ASTRID Policía de red: sin cifrar
  • Prueba de la red TETRA de la Policía alemana en Aachen: sin cifrar
  • Algunos ex-jugoslawia red TETRA: sin cifrar
  • Netherland C200 TETRA red: TEA2 cifrado con claves estáticas
  • Red británica Airwave TETRA: TEA2 cifra con TEA2

Va a ser muy divertido ver que los nuevos policía y servicio de rescate de hacking al volver de edades analógicas antiguas a las nuevas radios digitales:-)

Gobierno 2.0, WikiLeaks y Open Data

Los conceptos detrás de WikiLeaks, OpenLeaks, GlobalLeaks, BalkanLeaks es mucho más que revelar secretos al público.

Es parte de una revolución que se avecina en el gobierno de la organización, la transparencia y la cooperación con los llamados '2.0 / wiki web de los sistemas de colaboración.

Echa un vistazo a los Gobierno 2.0 - Introducción Anke Domscheit Berg, Programa de Gobierno Innovador Conductores de Microsoft Alemania y la esposa de Daniel Berg, co-fundador de WikiLeaks y ahora fundador de OpenLeaks .

Echa un vistazo a Open Data gobierno 2.0 iniciativa para hacer cumplir la transparencia del gobierno, reducir la corrupción y mejorar el desempeño de la organización del gobierno.

Esa revolución es sólo más que un grupo de chicos de funky-anarco libertario que quieren crear el caos mediante la difusión de secretos, es sólo el comienzo de la carrera para lograr nuevo modelo de organización de los gobiernos mediante el aprovechamiento de una completa transparencia y una estrecha cooperación con los ciudadanos.

ZORG, nuevo C ++ y Java ZRTP implementación lanzamiento público

Hola a todos, hoy en PrivateWave Italia SpA, sociedad italiana que ejerce en el desarrollo de tecnologías para la protección de la privacidad y seguridad de la información en materia de telecomunicaciones de voz donde estoy CTO, liberamos ZORG, una nueva implementación del protocolo ZRTP de código abierto disponible para descargar en http: // www. zrtp.org .

ZRTP [1] proporciona el intercambio de claves de extremo a extremo con curva elíptica Diffie-Hellmann 384bit y encriptación SRTP AES-256.

ZORG se ha desarrollado y aplicado en productos de cifrado de voz PrivateGSM de PrivateWave disponibles para las siguientes plataformas: originalmente Blackberry, Nokia y iOS (iPhone).

Zorg C ++ se ha integrado con PJSIP código abierto SDK VoIP [2] y ha proporcionado como parche de integración contra PJSIP 1.8.5. Se ha probado en el iPhone, Symbian, Windows, Linux y Mac OS X.

Zorg Java se ha integrado dentro de una versión personalizada de MJSIP [3] SDK de código abierto en la plataforma de Blackberry e incluye optimizaciones de uso de memoria necesarias para reducir al mínimo la actividad de recolector de basura.

Ambas plataformas se han separado y back-ends criptográficas modulares por lo que la aplicación de algoritmos de cifrado podría ser fácilmente intercambiados con otros.

. ZORG es bajo licencia GNU AGPL y el código fuente está disponible en GitHub en https://github.com/privatewave/ZORG .

Estamos lanzando en los términos de código abierto y de forma coherente con nuestro enfoque de la seguridad [4], ya que realmente esperamos que pueda ser útil para el ecosistema de código abierto para la creación de nuevos sistemas de encriptación de voz en apoyo de la libertad de expresión.

Más de 20 de código abierto de software de cifrado de VoIP basado en PJSIP y varios escritos en Java podrían beneficiarse directamente de liberación ZORG.

Estaremos encantados de recibir la propuesta de cooperación, la nueva integración, los nuevos back-ends criptográficas, scouting de errores y lo que sea útil para mejorar y dejar ZRTP afirmar como estándar de cifrado de voz.

Zorg es disponible en http://www.zrtp.org .

[1] ZRTP: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ZRTP
[2] PJSIP: http://www.pjsip.org
[3] MJSIP: http://www.mjsip.org
[4] enfoque de seguridad: http://www.privatewave.com/security/approch.html

Móvil encriptado a las llamadas telefónicas de línea fija con Asterisk 1.8

Acabamos de publicar un howto técnica sobre cómo construir móvil seguro a la infraestructura de VoIP de teléfono fijo con:

En próximas semanas otros howto como éste va a salir por el uso de otras plataformas de servidor como FreeSWITCH, todo en aras de la transparencia y el apalancamiento de las tecnologías de seguridad de código abierto.

Ocho fracaso épico de Criptografía Regulador

Un artículo muy esclarecedor sobre Ocho fracaso épico de regulación de la criptografía y la incomprensión común por los reguladores del gobierno que no tiene una visión amplia de cómo funciona la tecnología.

Los reguladores del gobierno ignorante no entiende que la regulación estricta tendría los siguientes inconvenientes:

  1. Se va a crear riesgo de seguridad
  2. No va a dejar a los chicos malos
  3. Se dañará la innovación
  4. Se dañará los negocios de Estados Unidos
  5. Le costará a los consumidores
  6. Será inconstitucional
  7. Será un gran desembolso de dinero de los impuestos

PrivateGSM: encriptación de voz Blackberry / iPhone / Nokia móvil con ZRTP o SRTP / SDES

Estoy totalmente de evitar usar mi propio blog personal para hacer la promoción de cualquier tipo de producto.

Ese tiempo no es diferente, pero yo quiero decirte hechos acerca de los productos que trabajo sin el marketing de lujo, pero permaneciendo técnica.

Hoy en día, en PrivateWave donde estoy CTO y co-fundador , que liberan productos de cifrado de VoIP móviles público para Blackberry, iPhone y Nokia:

logo-privatewave-colore.png

En PrivateWave utilizamos un enfoque diferente respecto a la mayoría de empresa de encriptación de voz por ahí, lea nuestro enfoque de la seguridad .

La relevancia de estos productos en la industria de la tecnología y el paisaje se puede resumir de la siguiente manera:

  • Es la primera empresa de encriptación de voz utilizando sólo protocolos de seguridad estándares (y esperamos que el mercado va a reaccionar, ya que es claro que la tecnología patentada que viene de la herencia de la CDS no puede proporcionar mismo valor)
  • Es la primera aproximación en el cifrado de voz para usar sólo software libre y motor de cifrado estándar
  • Es el primer método de encriptación de voz para proporcionar diferente modelo de seguridad utilizando diferentes tecnologías (de extremo a extremo para ZRTP y final a sitio para SRTP )

Aquellos conjunto de clientes seguros móviles, diseñados para el uso profesional de seguridad solamente, utilizando las mejores tecnologías de las telecomunicaciones y de seguridad, proporcionan un alto grado de protección, junto con un buen rendimiento incluso en condiciones malas de red:

Las aplicaciones son:

icona-pgsm.png

Los dispositivos móviles compatibles son:

En cuanto a ZRTP decidimos enfatizar y estirar toda la seguridad y función paranoica del protocolo con alguna pequeña adición:

Nuestra integración estricta libreta de direcciones, va más allá de RFC ZRTP especificación, que podría ser vulnerable a ciertos ataques cuando se utiliza en los teléfonos móviles debido a la conducta de los usuarios de no mirar a la pantalla del móvil.

Nuestra forma de utilizar paranoy ZRTP mitigar tales condiciones, vamos a escribir sobre esto más adelante y / o agregará detalles específicos para su inclusión RFC.

Algunas palabras sobre PrivateGSM Profesional con cifrado de extremo a extremo con ZRTP

Leer la ficha técnica no!

Para descargarlo haga clic aquí y sólo hay que poner su número de teléfono

Esos son los resultados de un trabajo duro de todo mi personal muy cualificado (16 personas trabajaron en este 6 proyectos por 3 plataformas diferentes) sobre tecnologías de encriptación desafiantes (voz) en un difícil entorno operativo (redes móviles sucias y sistemas operativos móviles sucias) para obtener más de 2 años.

Estoy muy orgulloso de nuestro equipo!

¿Y ahora qué?

En próximas semanas verá la liberación de la mayor serie de documentaciones, como la integración con asteriscos, FreeSWITCH y otra de Seguridad Habilitado PBX, junto con algunas otras noticias emocionante tecnología de seguridad que estoy seguro va a ser notado;)

Ha sido un trabajo duro y más tienes que estar hecho, pero estoy seguro de que la comunidad de la seguridad y de código abierto le va a gustar este tipo de productos y nuestro enfoque transparente también en las liberaciones importantes abiertos y la integración de código abierto que hacen que una tecnología muy políticamente neutral (backdoor gratis) .

Un par de proveedor de VPN agradable

Hay un montón de razones por las que uno puede necesitar para acceder a Internet a través de una VPN.

Por ejemplo, si usted vive en un país en el bloqueo de ciertos contenidos (like anti-locales-gobierno, pornografía, etc.) y / o protocolos (como Skype, VoIP) que probablemente querría mover su conectividad a Internet fuera del país bloqueo desagradable utilizando túneles VPN encriptados.

Evalué varios servidor VPN organizado y un par de ellos suena bastante bien entre la oferta generalizada de este tipo de servicios:

SwissVPN

Salida a la Internet desde Suiza.

Costo 6 CHF / mes

Opcional dirección IP fija pública

Útil si usted necesita:

  • Sólo eludir los filtros de los países locales con buena gran ancho de banda
  • Expose servicios públicos Trough la VPN con la dirección IP pública fija opcional.

Exagerar

Salida a la Internet mediante la elección entre 20 países diferentes (cada vez que se conecte).

Útil si usted necesita hacer:

  • inteligencia de negocios en competidor (que aparece por venir de un país X cuando los conecta)
  • ver película / telefilme permitido sólo de espacios web nacionales de PI
  • ver los resultados de Google entre los diferentes países

No todos curva elíptica es el mismo: a través de la seguridad ECC

 Mi propio análisis de seguridad curva ECC y selección

vn9jna1BdgrzDCYNBJHi09q09q.jpg

La mayor utilización de criptografía de curva elíptica moderna criptográfico (ECC) que, con un tamaño de clave más pequeño y reducir el poder de la computación, dan fuerza de seguridad equivalente de sistema de criptografía tradicional conocido como DH (Diffie-Hellman) o RSA (Rivest, Shamir y Adleman).

No todo el mundo sabe que se ha seleccionado cifrado ECC para todas las aplicaciones de cifrado futuras y que incluso TLS / SSL (encriptación usado para asegurar la web) se está moviendo a la ECC.

He encontrado un montón de los llamados "productos de cifrado de propiedad", que abandonaron RSA y DH para va con alternativas de ECC, que tienden a un uso arbitrario de bits ECC tamaño de la clave sin siquiera especificar qué tipo de ECC Crypto acostumbrarse.

Sin embargo hay una gran confusión en torno a las curvas elípticas, con un montón de nombres diferentes y tamaño de clave haciendo difícil para un experimentado usuario no criptográficamente para hacer su propia figura en la evaluación de algunas cosas cripto.

Debido a la confusión tan difundida que decidí hacer mi propio análisis para averiguar cuáles son las mejores curvas de cifrado ECC y ECC derecho tamaño de la clave a utilizar.

Este análisis le gustaría ofrecer una elección basada industria de la seguridad entre las diferentes curvas y longitudes de clave, dejando las consideraciones analíticas matemáticos y criptográficos que ya se haya hecho durante los años, que resume las distintas opciones tomadas en varias normas y protocolos de seguridad.

En primer lugar la conclusión.

Desde mi análisis únicamente las siguientes curvas de ECC deben ser considerados para su uso en sistemas de cifrado, porque son el único seleccionado entre diferentes autoridades (ANSI, NSA, SAG, del NIST, ECC Brainpool), diferentes normas de protocolo de seguridad (IPSec, OpenPGP, ZRTP, Kerberos, SSL / TLS) y el único juego los requisitos de seguridad de la NSA Suite B (estándar de-facto también para el ambiente militar de la OTAN):

  • Elíptico Primer Curva de 256 bits - P-256
  • Elíptico Primer Curve 384 bits - P-384

con opcional, sólo para realmente paranoico que quieren obtener más paletón tamaño, todavía no se considera útil:

  • Elíptico Primer Curve 521 bits - P-521

Me gustaría decir que las curvas Köblitz deben evitarse, en cualquier tamaño de la clave (163/283/409/571), ya que no tiene suficiente garantía sobre la actividad analítica cripto y eficaz son:

  • No forma parte de la selección de la criptografía NSA Suite-B
  • No forma parte de la selección ECC Brainpool
  • No forma parte de la selección ANSI X9.62
  • No forma parte de la selección de extensión OpenPGP ECC
  • No es parte de la extensión de Kerberos para la selección de curva de ECC

Invito al lector a seguir Trough mi análisis para comprender los fundamentos que podrían ser entendidas incluso sin profunda formación técnica pero por lo menos con una buena base tecnológica un poco de poco básico de la criptografía.

 Aquí vamos con el análisis
 

Mi objetivo es hacer un análisis sobre qué / cómo la comunidad científica y de seguridad abierta elegir sistema de cifrado ECC para el uso en los protocolos de seguridad y los estándares definidos por IETF RFC (los que definen estándares de Internet de una manera abierta y revisada por pares).

A continuación un conjunto de RFC introducir ECC en el sistema existente que consiguen analizados para entender lo que es mejor usar y lo que es mejor para excluir:

  • RFC5639 : Curvas ECC Brainpool Standard & Curva Generación
  • RFC4869 : NSA Suite B Suites criptográfica para IPsec
  • RFC5430 : perfil NSA Suite B para Transport Layer Security (TLS)
  • RFC5008 : NSA Suite B en en Secure / Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions (S / MIME)
  • RFC3766 : Determinación de Fortalezas para las claves públicas utilizadas para el intercambio de claves simétricas
  • RFC5349 : criptografía de curva (ECC) Apoyo elíptica para criptografía de clave pública para la autenticación inicial en Kerberos (PKINIT)
  • RFC4492 : criptografía de curva elíptica (ECC) de cifrado Suites para Transport Layer Security (TLS)
  • ZRTP encriptación de voz por Philip Zimmermann curva ECC
  • ECC en OpenPGP (proyecto d balsa-jivsov-openpgp-ECC-06 )
  • Curvas ECC seleccionados por Microsoft para la tarjeta inteligente de Kerberos de inicio de sesión

Usaremos la elección hecha por el científico que define a Internet Protocolos de Seguridad a hacer parte de nuestra evaluación.
Además hay que entender que la selección de la curva viene de diferentes autoridades que hicieron su propia selección de curvas con el fin de decirle a la industria qué usar y qué omitir:

Vamos a utilizar la opción elegida por la definición de los requisitos de seguridad científico en las agencias de normalización a hacer parte de nuestra evaluación.
Además, algo que la mayoría de la gente no lo sabe, pero que es muy relevante para nuestro análisis, es que hay diferentes tipos de criptografía de curva ECC y su "tamaño" es diferente dependiendo del tipo de curva:

  • Curvas ECC más de Primer campo (a menudo se hace referencia como de curva elíptica y representados por P-tamaño de clave)
  • Curvas ECC más de Binary campo (a menudo se hace referencia como Koblitz Curva y representados por K-tamaño de clave)

Dada una fuerza de seguridad de equivalencia la curva elíptica y la Kobliz Curva tener diferente tamaño de la clave, por ejemplo, cuando leemos ECC 571 nos estamos refiriendo a Koblitz Curve con una fuerza equivalente a la ECC 521 Primer curva.

Una comparación de la fuerza entre curvas elípticas y Curvas Kotbliz se informa a continuación (de Mikey ECC Proyecto de Internet ):

 | Koblitz | ECC | DH / DSA / RSA
 | 163 | 192 | 1024
 | 283 | 256 | 3072
 | 409 | 384 | 7680
 | 571 | 521 ​​| 15360

A continuación hay una lista comparativa de las curvas seleccionadas por todas las diversas entidades y sus respectivos nombres (de IETF RFC4492 para el uso de ECC para TLS ):

 Nombres Curve elegidos por diferentes organismos de normalización
 ------------ + --------------- + -------------
 SECG | ANSI X9.62 | NIST
 ------------ + --------------- + -------------
 sect163k1 | | NIST K-163
 sect163r1 | |
 sect163r2 | | NIST B-163
 sect193r1 | |
 sect193r2 | |
 sect233k1 | | NIST K-233
 sect233r1 | | NIST B-233
 sect239k1 | |
 sect283k1 | | NIST K-283
 sect283r1 | | NIST B-283
 sect409k1 | | NIST K-409
 sect409r1 | | NIST B-409
 sect571k1 | | NIST K-571
 sect571r1 | | NIST B-571
 secp160k1 | |
 secp160r1 | |
 secp160r2 | |
 secp192k1 | |
 secp192r1 | prime192v1 | NIST P-192
 secp224k1 | |
 secp224r1 |​​ | NIST P-224
 secp256k1 | |
 secp256r1 | prime256v1 | NIST P-256
 secp384r1 | | NIST P-384
 secp521r1 | | NIST P-521
 ------------ + --------------- + -------------

¿Qué aparecerá inmediatamente es que sólo hay dos curvas seleccionadas por todas las autoridades, y que no es un general vertido de curvas Köblitz por ANSI.The sólo de común acuerdo entre las autoridades 3 son los siguientes dos curva ECC:

  • secp192r1 / prime192v1 / NIST P-192
  • secp256r1 / prime256v1 / NIST P-256

De ellos la selección de curva de ECC para TLS el RFC5430 saltó curvas completamente Köblitz y seleccionado para el uso solamente:

  • P-256, P-384, P-521

La ECC Brainpool saltado completamente curvas Köblitz y seleccionado para el uso de las siguientes curvas de ECC:

  • P-160, P-192, P-224, P-256, P-320, P-384, P-512 (que es el único particular, porque no es P-521, pero P-512, el único tamaño de la clave a que se refiere por ECC Brainpool. TNX Ian Simons de Athena SCS )

El proyecto de Internet OpenPGP para uso ECC en PGP d balsa-jivsov-openpgp-ECC-06 se saltó completamente curvas Köblitz y selecciona las siguientes curvas de ECC

  • P-256, P-384, P-521

La extensión del protocolo Kerberos para el uso de ECC, que se define en RFC5349 y definido por Microsoft para inicio de sesión de tarjeta inteligente se saltó completamente curvas Köblitz y selecciona las siguientes curvas de ECC:

  • P-256, P-384, P-521

Por lo tanto, suena claro que la selección correcta de ECC es para P-256, P-384 y P-521, mientras que la curva de Koblitz se han saltado para Top Secret usar y sensible para cualquier protocolo de seguridad (IPSec, OpenPGP, ZRTP, Kerberos, SSL / TLS).

¿Por qué hice este análisis?

He hecho este análisis después de una discusión que tuve con respecto a determinados productos de cifrado de voz, todo ello basado en protocolos personalizados y de propiedad, que son todas ellas con curva elíptica Diffie Hellman 571 bit / ECDH 571/571 bits ECDH / Koblitz 571 bits.
All them are using the K-571 that, as described before, has been removed from all security sensitive environment and protocols and being myself a designer of voice encryption stuff i think that their cryptographic choice is absolutely not the best security choice.
Probably it has been done just for marketing purpose, because K-571 (Koblitz curve) seems stronger than P-521 (Elliptic curve based on Prime number). If you have “more bit” your marketing guys can claim to be “more secure”. Koblitz elliptic curve are faster than the top secret enabled prime elliptic curve and so give the product manager a chance to provide “more bit” in it's own product while keeping the key exchange fast.

It's a matter of philosophical choice.

I prefer to follow the trend of scientific community with the humility of not to considering myself a cryptographic expert, knowledgable more than the overall security and scientific community itself.

I prefer instead to use only algorithms that are approved for use in highly sensitive environments (top secret classification), that have been selected by all the authorities and working group analyzing encryption algorithms existing out-there and that represent the choice of almost all standard security protocols (IPSec, OpenPGP, ZRTP, Kerberos, SSL/TLS, etc).
I prefer to count the amount of brains working on the crypto i use, that check that's really secure, that evaluate whether there's some weakness.

The number of brais working on Crypto widely diffused are of order of magnitude more than the number of brains working on crypto used by just few people (like Koblitz curve).
So i am not demonizing who use ECDH 571 using Koblitz Curve, but for sure i can affirm that they did not taken the best choice in terms of security and that any security professionals doing a security benchmarking would consider the fact that Elliptic Curve Diffie Hellman 571 bit done with Koblitz Curve is not widely diffused, it's dumped from standard security protocols and it's not certified for top secret use.

ESSOR, Secure Software Defined Radio Europea (DEG)

I had a look at European Defense Agency website and found the ESSOR project, a working project funded for 106mln EUR to develop strategic defense communication products based on new Software Defined Radio approach.

SDR approach is a revolutionary system that's completely changing the way scientist and industry is approach any kind of wireless technology.

Basically instead of burning hardware chip that implement most of the radio frequency protocols and techniques, they are pushed in “software” to specialized radio hardware that can work on a lot of different frequency, acting as radio interface for a lot of different radio protocols.

For example the USRP (Universal Software Radio Peripheral) from Ettus Research that cost 1000-2000USD fully loaded, trough the opensource GnuRadio framework, have seen opensource implementation of:

And a lot more protocols and transmission technologies.

That kind of new approach to Radio Transmission System is destinated to change the way radio system are implemented, giving new capability such as to upgrade the “radio protocol itself” in software in order to provide “radio protocol” improvements.

In the short terms we have also seen very strong security research using SDR technologies such as the GSM cracking and the Bluetooth Sniffing .

We can expect that other technologies, weak by design but protected by the restriction to hardware devices to hack the low level protocols, will be soon get hacked. In the first list i would really like to see the hacking of TETRA, a technology born with closed mindset and secret encryption algorithms, something i really dislike ;-)

Gestión de productos y organización

I had to better understand the concepts, roles and duties related to Product management and Product marketing management in software companies, why are needed, which are the differences and how they fit inside an organization structure.

Most person i know never interested into this specific area of work, but when you want to be a product company (and not a consulting or solution company), you start having different products on different platforms for different target customers sold trough different channels with different pricing with a installation/different delivery process and that complexity must be managed in the proper way.

You realize that in order to let the product company grow in the right direction you need to organize product management activities formally, not closing your mind in rigid organization roles such as Marketing, Sales, R&D.

When we speak about Product Management i recommend the reading of the illuminating The strategic role of Product Management (How a market-driven focus leads companies to build products people want to buy) that clarify a lot of things, even if it outlook net separation of roles in product management, something t hat’s too heavy for a small company like a startup .

Still it provide a differentiation of duties between Product Management and Product Marketing .

A good understanding of the product management related to startup i s given in the article Creating Product Management at Startup showing up different case related to the roles of the product visionary into the company.

It introduce the terms ceo of the product in the sense that the product management duties jump around into the various organization function by providing focus and effort where it's needed, independently from the fact that the internal function requiring more effort is Development, Marketing, Sales or Communication. That's means practically enhancing the product vision as it's needed across all major product-related functions making the vision corporate-wide coherent.

A good representation of product management and product marketing activities is well described with the differentiation of between Strategical, Technical and Marketing sector and is not clearly separated between Management, Marketing(and Sales) and R&D :

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I read that product manager background and knowledge are different depending on the company focus ( where does product management belong in the organization? ):

  • B2C -> Marketing experience
  • B2B -> Technical experience

An illuminating (for me) and very important differentiation regarding product management duties is the differentiation between:

  • Gestión de Producto
  • Product Marketing

The specific duties belonging to Product Marketing vs Management are greatly explained in Role Definitions For Product Management and Product Marketing that i suggest to read, letting you to better define tasks and responsibilities across your organization. It also provide a good definition of job requirements if you need to look for that figure!

At the same time it's important to understand what's NOT product management, effectively Product management is not just feature prioritization .

At the same time it's important to understand which professional figure is NOT itself a product manager:

  • Product manager is not a marketing manager – while product management is usually seen as a marketing discipline, marketers are focused on the marketing plan and are usually not driving the overall product direction. In that context could however be found Product marketing manager that's the arms of the marketing of the product, especially in small organization.
  • Product manager is not a sales manager – sales manager are about finding out how to sell a product, following which sales methodology, technique and channels and they could drive the company from a market oriented company ( product) to a customer oriented company (solution and consulting)
  • Product manager is not a developer – Developers are focused on the technology and not the overall product. Some great product managers are former developers, but it is difficult to do both at once. There is a natural tension between developers and product managers that should be maintained to create a balanced product.
  • Product manager is not a software manager – the software manager is a functional manager and usually not focused on the product or the customers.
  • Product manager is not a project manager – project managers are about how and when, while the product manager is about what. Project managers work closely with product managers to ensure successful completion of different phases in the product life cycle.

The typical product management activities could be in extreme synthesis summarized as follow:

  • Strategy: Planning a product strategy
  • Technical: leading product developments
  • Marketing: providing product and technical content
  • Sales: provide pre sales support and work effectively with sales

Product management so it's not precisely development, is not precisely marketing, it's not precisely sales, so typically it's difficult to identify “where it should stay” inside the organization structure (it's even difficult to understand that's needed)?

The Silicon Valley Product Group provide a nice insight on Product Organization Structure by pointing out which are the advantages and risks of several choices. Still the Cranky Product Manager say that It doesn't matter where the product manager live in the organization .

It's relevant to be careful not to have persons that are too much technical or too much sales oriented in order to fill the gap among different organization. Too much fragmentation of assigned duties across the organization may lead to bureaucracy, too much duties on one person may lead to ineffective implementation of needed tasks in some area and to a internal competition perception respect to the traditional roles.

Check there a very nice Resume of a professional with practical experience in product management (it's an half techie/half marketing guys).

¡Ah! Another very common misunderstanding is to confuse marketing with communication where ai found a so good definition of Marketing that i really like and understand for strict relationship with Product Management:

Marketing is know the market so well that the product sell itself

But what happen when you don't handle a product management and product marketing management process in a defined way?

A nice story is shown as example in The strategic role of Product Management :

Your founder, a brilliant technician, started the company years ago when he quit his day job to market his idea full time. He created a product that he just knew other people needed. Y tenía razón. Pretty soon he delivered enough of the product and hired his best friend from college as VP of Sales. And the company grew. But before long, the VP of Sales complained, “We're an engineering-led company. We need to become customer-driven.” And that sounded fine. Except… every new contract seemed to require custom work. You signed a dozen clients in a dozen market segments and the latest customer's voice always dominated the product plans. You concluded that “customer-driven” meant “driven by the latest customer” and that couldn't be right.

If you want to be a product company it's relevant to precisely follow a strategy driven by product marketing and management and not by sales.

Confusion between duties of product management/marketing and sales could lead to unsuccessful product company that are not able to proceed within their strategy, simply because they getting opportunities that drive the business out-of-scope.

A product company must invest in it's own product development and marketing in order to let sales activity stay focused and guarantee that the organization is every day more effective on the market.

After this reading, my understanding is that it's relevant to identify how to create a set of flexible business process on how to handle various product management and product marketing duties separating them from sales.

Remotely intercepting snom VoIP phones

I suggest reading remotely tapping VoIp phones ” on VoIP Security Alliance Blog by Shawn Merdinger .

A concrete example on how current telephony infrastructure are getting more vulnerable to cyber attacks.

Voice communication security workshop

Hola,

i made a talk about voice communication security technologies at University of Trento following an interesting information exchange with Crypto Lab managed Professor Massimiliano Sala .

I suggest interested people to read it, especially the second part, as there is an innovative categorization of the various voice encryption technologies that get used in several sectors.

I tried to explain and get out from this widely fragmented technological sector by providing a wide overview on technologies that usually are absolutely unrelated one-each-other but practically they all apply to voice encryption following that categorization:

  • Mobile TLC Industry voice encryption standards
  • Government and Military voice encryption standards
  • Public safety voice encryption standards
  • IETF voice encryption standards
  • Misc proprietary voice encryption technologies

It's a huge slideware, 122 slides, i suggest to go reading the 2nd part skipping interception technologies overview already covered by my presentation of 2009.

Voice communication security


View more presentations from Fabio Pietrosanti .

Especially i like the concept of Chocolate grade encryption that want to provide some innovation on the Snake Oil Encryption concept.

But i need to get more in depth about the Chocolate grade encryption context, will probably do before end-of-year by providing an applied course on understanding and evaluating practically the real security context of various voice encryption technologies.

27C3 – CCC Congress CFP: We come in peace

Venimos en paz

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We come in peace, said the conquerers of the New World.

We come in peace, says the government, when it comes to colonise, regulate, and militarise the new digital world.

We come in peace, say the nation-state sized companies that have set out to monetise the net and chain the users to their shiny new devices.

We come in peace, we say as hackers, geeks and nerds, when we set out towards the real world and try to change it, because it has intruded into our natural habitat, the cyberspace…

Call for paper for participation to 27C3 CCC congress is open, and i never saw a so exciting payoff :-)

See you on 30 December 2010 in Berlin!

GSM cracking in penetration test methodologies (OSSTMM) ?

As most of this blog reader already know, in past years there was a lot of activities related to public research for GSM auditing and cracking.

However when there was huge media coverage to GSM cracking research results, the tools to make the cracking was really early stage and still very inefficient.

Now Frank Stevenson , norwegian cryptanalyst that already broke the Content Scrambling System of DVD video disc, participating to the A51 cracking project started by Karsten Nohl , released Kraken , a new improved version of the A51 cracking system.

It's interesting to notice that WiFi cracking had a similar story, as the first WiFi wep cracking discovery was quite slow in earlier techniques but later Korek, an hacker working on cracking code, improve the attack system drammatically.

That's the story of security research cooperation, you start a research, someone follow it and improve it, some other follow it and improved it and at the end you get the result.

Read more on the Kraken GSM Cracking software release .

And stay tuned as next week at Blackhat Conference Karsten Nohl will explain the details of the required hardware setup and detailed instructions on how to do it :-)

I would really like to see those tools incorporated into Penetration Testing Linux Distribution BackTrack with OSSTMM methodology enforcing the testing of GSM interception and man in the middle :-)

If things proceed that way and Ettus Research (The producer of USRP2 software radio used for low cost GSM signal receiving) will not be taken down, we can still see this.

Reclamos de seguridad de la serpiente-aceite en productos de seguridad de cifrado

Security market grow, more companies goes to the market, but how many of them are taking seriously what they do?

You know, doing security technology mean that you are personally responsible for the protection of the user's information. You must make them aware of what they need, exactly what your are doing and which kind of threat model your product protect.

A typical problem of product's security features is represented by the inability of the user to evaluate the security claims of the product itself.

So there's a lot companies doing a not-so-ethical marketing of security features, based on the facts that no user will be able to evaluate it.

The previously explained situation reside in the security topic of Snake Oil Encryption , an evolution in the scientific cryptographic environment that let us today use best of breed information protection technologies without having to worry too much about backdoors or insecurities.

Let's speak about Snake Oil Encryption

Snake Oil Criptografía : En criptografía , el aceite de serpiente es un término usado para describir los métodos y productos que se consideran falsa o fraudulenta criptográficos comerciales. Distinguir la criptografía segura de criptografía inseguro puede ser difícil desde el punto de vista de un usuario. Muchos criptógrafos, como Bruce Schneier y Phil Zimmermann , se comprometen a educar al público en la forma en que se hace la criptografía segura, así como destacar la comercialización engañosa de algunos productos criptográficos.

El gurú de la seguridad de cifrado más referenciado, Philip Zimmermann y Bruce Schneier, fue el primero para hablar de Cifrado de aceite de la serpiente:

Aceite de la serpiente por Philip Zimmermann

Aceite de la serpiente por Bruce Schneier

El Michigan Telecomunicaciones y la revisión de la ley también hizo un muy buen análisis en relación con las características de seguridad de productos de seguridad, RECLAMOS DE SEGURIDAD de aceite de serpiente "LA FALSEDAD SISTEMÁTICA DE SEGURIDAD DEL PRODUCTO . Explican acerca de los trucos de marketing desagradables utilizados para modificar los usuarios incapacidad para evaluar la características de seguridad, incluyendo la implicación responsabilidad jurídica y económica.

Very famous is the sentence of Russ Nelson : . Varias compañías de productos de seguridad de aceite de serpiente no explica, no tienen claro el modelo de amenazas a las que se aplica el producto Muy famosa es la frase de Russ Nelson :

"Recuerde, cripto sin un modelo de amenazas es como galletas sin leche. ... .. La criptografía sin un modelo de amenazas es como la maternidad sin el pastel de manzana. No se puede decir que las suficientes veces. Más en general, la seguridad sin un modelo de amenazas es, por definición, va a fallar ".

Así que, cómo detectar los productos de seguridad de aceite de serpiente?

Disponibilidad de una directriz de detectar aceite de la serpiente de cifrado productos: aceite de la serpiente Señales de advertencia, software de cifrado que se deben evitar por Matt Curtin .

Usted puede ver este muy buen criptográfico Snake Oil Ejemplos de Emility Ratliff (Arquitecto de IBM en Linux de Seguridad), que trató de hacer claro ejemplo sobre cómo detectar criptográfico aceite de la serpiente.

Aquí representado la directriz básica de Matt Curtin papel:


By checking that points it's possible to evaluate how serious an encryption technology or product is.

But all in all how to fix that unethical security approach?

It's very significative and it would be really useful for each kind of security product category to make some strongly and independent evaluation guideline (like OSSTMM for Penetration testing) , to make this security evaluation process really in the hands of the user.

It would be also very nice to have someone making analysis and evaluation of security product companies, publishing reports about Snake Oil signs.

Fuga Web2.0 privacidad en aplicaciones móviles

You know that web2.0 world it's plenty of leak of any kind (profiling, profiling, profiling) related to Privacy and users starts being concerned about it.

Users continuously download applications without knowing the details of what they do, for example iFart just because are cool, are fun and sometime are useful.

On mobile phones users install from 1000% up to 10.000% more applications than on a PC, and those apps may contain malware or other unexpected functionalities.

Recently infobyte analyzed ubertwitter client and discovered that the client was leaking and sending to their server many personal and sensitive data such as:

- Blackberry PIN

- Phone Number

- Dirección de correo electrónico

- Geographic positioning information

Read about UbertTwitter 'spyware' features discovery here by infoByte .

It's plenty of applications leaking private and sensitive information but just nobody have a look at it.

Should mandatory data retention and privacy policies became part of application development and submission guideline for mobile application?

Imho a users must not only be warned about the application capabilities and API usage but also what will do with which kind of information it's going to handle inside the mobile phone.

Capabilities means authorizing the application to use a certain functionalities, for example to use GeoLocation API, but what the application will do and to who will provide such information once the user have authorized it?

That's a security profiling level that mobile phone manufacturer does not provide and they should, because it focus on the information and not on the application authorization/permission respect to the usage of device capabilities.

ps yes! Okay! Estoy de acuerdo! This kind of post would require 3-4 pages long discussion as the topic is hot and quite articulated but it's saturday morning and i gotta go!

El algoritmo AES seleccionado para su uso en el espacio

I encountered a nice paper regarding analysis and consideration on which encryption algorithm it's best suited for use in the space by space ship and equipments.

The paper has been done by the Consultative Committee for Space Data Systems that's a consortium of all space agency around that cumulatively handled more than 400 mission to space .

topban.jpg

Read the paper Encryption Algorithm Trade Survey as it gives interesting consideration and comparison between different encryption algorithms.

Obviously the finally selected algorithm is AES , while KASUMI (used in UMTS networks) was avoided.

Blackberry Security and Encryption: Devil or Angel?

Blackberry have good and bad reputation regarding his security capability, depending from which angle you look at it.

This post it's a summarized set of information to let the reader the get picture, without taking much a position as RIM and Blackberry can be considered, depending on the point of view, an extremely secure platform or an extremely dangerous one .

bblock.jpg

Let's goes on.

On one side Blackberry it's a platform plenty of encryption features, security features everywhere, device encrypted (with custom crypto), communication encrypted (with custom proprietary protocols such as IPPP), very good Advanced Security Settings, Encryption framework from Certicom ( now owned by RIM ).

On the other side they does not provide only a device but an overlay access network, called BIS ( Blackberry Internet Service ), that's a global worldwide wide area network where your blackberry enter while you browse or checkmail using blackberry.net AP.

When you, or an application, use the blackberry.net APN you are not just connecting to the internet with the carrier internet connection, but you are entering inside the RIM network that will proxy and act as a gateway to reach the internet.

The very same happen when you have a corporate use: Both the BB device and the corporate BES connect to the RIM network that act as a sort of vpn concentration network .

So basically all the communications cross trough RIM service infrastructure in encrypted format with a set proprietary encryption and communication protocols.

Just as a notice, think that google to provide gtalk over blackberry.net APN, made an agreement in order to offer service inside the BB network to the BB users. When you install gtalk you get added 3 service books that point to GTALKNA01 that's the name of GTALK gateway inside the RIM network to allow intra-BIS communication and act as a GTALK gateway to the internet.

The mobile operators usually are not even allowed to inspect the traffic between the Blackberry device and the Blackberry Network.

So RIM and Blackberry are somehow unique for their approach as they provide a platform, a network and a service all bundled together and you cannot just “get the device and the software” but the user and the corporate are always bound and connected to the service network.

That's good and that's bad, because it means that RIM provide extremely good security features and capabilities to protect information, device and access to information at various level against third party .

But it's always difficult to estimate the threat and risk related to RIM itself and who could make political pressure against RIM.

Please consider that i am not saying “RIM is looking at your data” but making an objective risk analysis: for how the platform is done RIM have authority on the device, on the information on-the-device and on the information that cross the network. (Read my Mobile Security Slides ).

For example let's consider the very same context for Nokia phones.

Once the Nokia device is sold, Nokia does not have authority on the device, nor on the information on-the-device nor on the information that cross the network. But it's also true that Nokia just provide the device and does not provide the value added services such as the Enterprise integration (The RIM VPN tunnel), the BIS access network and all the local and remote security provisioned features that Blackberry provide.

So it's a matter of considering the risk context in the proper way when choosing the platform, with an example very similar to choosing Microsoft Exchange Server (on your own service) or whether getting a SaaS service like Google Apps.

In both case you need to trust the provider, but in first example you need to trust Microsoft that does not put a backdoor on the software while in the 2nd example you need to trust Google, as a platform and service provider, that does not access your information.

So it's a different paradigm to be evaluated depending on your threat model.

If your threat model let you consider RIM as a trusted third party service provider (much like google) than it's ok. If you have a very high risk context, like top-secret one, then let's consider and evaluate carefully whether it's not better to keep the Blackberry services fully isolated from the device or use another system without interaction with manufacturer servers and services.

Now, let's get back to some research and some facts about blackberry and blackberry security itself.

First of all several governments had to deal with RIM in order to force them to provide access to the information that cross their service networks while other decided to directly ban Blackberry usage for high officials because of servers located in UK and USA, while other decided to install their own backdoors.

There's a lot of discussion when the topics are RIM Blackberry and Governments for various reasons.

Below a set of official Security related information on RIM blackberry platform:

And here a set of unofficial Security and Hacking related information on RIM Blackberry platform:

Because it's 23.32 (GMT+1), i am tired, i think that this post will end up here.

I hope to have provided the reader a set of useful information and consideration to go more in depth in analyzing and considering the overall blackberry security (in the good and in the bad, it always depends on your threat model!).

¡Salud

Fabio Pietrosanti (naif)

ps i am managing security technology development (voice encryption tech) on Blackberry platform, and i can tell you that from the development point of view it's absolutely better than Nokia in terms of compatibility and speed of development, but use only RIMOS 5.0+ !

Celebrating “Hackers” after 25 years

A cult book , ever green since 25 years.

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It's been 25 years since “Hackers” was published. Author Steven Levy reflects on the book and the movement.

http://radar.oreilly.com/2010/06/hackers-at-25.html 
Steven Levy wrote a book in the mid-1980s that introduced the term "hacker" -- the positive connotation -- to a wide audience. In the ensuing 25 years, that word and its accompanying community have gone through tremendous change. The book itself became a mainstay in tech libraries.
O'Reilly recently released an updated 25th anniversary edition of "Hackers," so I checked in with Levy to discuss the book's development, its influence, and the role hackers continue to play.

Botnet for RSA cracking?

I read an interesting article about putting 1.000.000 computers, given the chance for a serious botnet owner to get it, to crack RSA.

The result is that in such context attacking an RSA 1024bit key would take only 28 years, compared to theoretical 19 billion of years.

Reading of this article , is extremely interesting because it gives our very important consideration on the cryptography strength respect to the computation power required to carry on cracking attempt, along with industry approach to “default security level”.

I would say a must read .

Patent rights and opensource: can they co-exist?

How many of you had to deal with patented technologies?

How many of the patented technologies you dealed with was also “secrets” in their implementation?

Well, there's a set of technologies whose implementation is open source ( copyright) but that are patented ( intellectual property right) .

A very nice paper about the topic opensource & patents that i suggest to read is from Fenwick & West and can be downloaded here (pdf) .

China Encryption Regulations

Hola a todos,

i found this very interesting paper on China Encryption Import/Export/Domestic Regulations done by Baker&Mckenzie in the US.

It's strongly business and regulatory oriented giving a very well done view on how china regulations works and how it may behave in future.

Read here Decrypting China Encryption's Regulations (form Bakernet website) .

IOScat – a Port of Netcat to Cisco IOS

A porting of famous netcat to Cisco IOS router operating system: IOSCat

The only main limit is that it does not support UDP, but that's a very cool tool!

A very good txt to read is Netcat hacker Manual .

The (old) Crypto AG case and some thinking about it

In the '90, closed source and proprietary cryptography was ruling the world.

That's before open source and scientifically approved encrypted technologies went out as a best practice to do crypto stuff.

I would like to remind when, in 1992, USA along with Israel was, together with switzerland, providing backdoored (proprietary and secret) technologies to Iranian government to tap their communications, cheating them to think that the used solution was secure , making also some consideration on this today in 2010.

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That's called The Crypto AG case , an historical fact involving the United States National Security Agency along with Signal Intelligence Division of Israel Ministry of Defense that are strongly suspected to had made an agreement with the Swiss cryptography producer company Crypto AG .

Basically those entities placed a backdoor in the secure crypto equipment that they provided to Iran to intercept Iranian communications.

Their crypto was based on secret and proprietary encryption algorithms developed by Crypto AG and eventually customized for Iranian government.

You can read some other facts about Crypto AG backdoor related issues:

The demise of global telecommunication security

The NSA-Crypto AG sting

Breaking codes: an impossible task? By BBC

Der Spiegel Crypto AG (german) article

Now, in 2010, we all know and understand that secret and proprietary crypto does not work.

Just some reference by top worldwide cryptographic experts below:

Secrecy, Security, Obscurity by Bruce Schneier

Just say No to Proprietary cryptographic Algorithms by Network Computing (Mike Fratto)

Security Through Obscurity by Ceria Purdue University

Unlocking the Secrets of Crypto: Cryptography, Encryption and Cryptology explained by Symantec

Time change the way things are approached.

I like very much the famous Philip Zimmermann assertion:

“Cryptography used to be an obscure science, of little relevance to everyday life. Historically, it always had a special role in military and diplomatic communications. But in the Information Age, cryptography is about political power, and in particular, about the power relationship between a government and its people. It is about the right to privacy, freedom of speech, freedom of political association, freedom of the press, freedom from unreasonable search and seizure, freedom to be left alone.”

Any scientist today accept and approve the Kerckhoffs' Principle that in 1883 in the Cryptographie Militaire paper stated:

The security of a cryptosystem should not depend on keeping the algorithm secret, but only on keeping the numeric key secret.

It's absolutely clear that the best practice for doing cryptography today obbly any serious person to do open cryptography, subject to public review and that follow the Kerckhoff principle.

So, what we should think about closed source, proprietary cryptography that's based on security trough obscurity concepts?

I was EXTREMELY astonished when TODAY, in 2010, in the age of information society i read some paper on Crypto AG website.

I invite all to read the Crypto AG security paper called Sophisticated Security Architecture designed by Crypto AG of which you can get a significant excerpt below:

The design of this architecture allows Crypto AG to provide a secret proprietary algorithm that can be specified for each customer to assure the perfect degree of cryptographic security and optimum support for the customer's security policy. In turn, the Security Architecture gives you the influence you need to be fully independent in respect of your encryption solution. You can determine all areas that are covered by cryptography and verify how the algorithm works. The original secret proprietary algorithm of Crypto AG is the foundation of the Security Architecture .

I have to say that their architecture is absolutely good from TLC point of view. Also they have done a very good job in making the design of the overall architecture in order to make a tamper-proof resistant crypto system by using dedicated crypto processor .
However there is still something missing:

T he overall cryptographic concept is misleading, based on wrong encryption concepts .

You may think that i am a troll telling this, but given the history of Crypto AG and given the fact that all the scientific and security community does not approve security trough obscurity concepts , it would legitimate to ask ourself:

Why they are still doing security trough obscurity cryptography with secret and proprietary algorithms ?



Hey, i think that they have very depth knowledge on telecommunication and security, but given that the science tell us not to follow the secrecy of algorithms, i really have serious doubt on why they are still providing proprietary encryption and does not move to standard solutions (eventually with some kind of custom enhancement).

Missiles against cyber attacks?

The cyber conflicts are really reaching a point where war and cyberwar merge together.

NATO countries have the right to use the force against attacks on computer networks .

Mobile Security talk at WHYMCA conference

I want to share some slides i used to talk about mobile security at whymca mobile conference in Milan.

Read here my slides on mobile security .

The slides provide a wide an in-depth overview of mobile security related matters, i should be doing some slidecast about it putting also audio. Maybe will do, maybe not, it depends on time that's always a insufficient resource.

iPhone PIN: useless encryption

I recently switched one of my multiple mobile phones with which i go around to iPhone.

I am particularly concerned about data protection in case of theft and so started having a look around about the iPhone provided protection system.

There is an interesting set of iPhone Business Security Features that make me think that iPhone is moving in the right path for security protection of the phone, but still a lot of things has to be done, especially for serious Enterprise and Government users.

201006011551.jpg

For example it turned out that the iPhone PIN protection is useless and it can be broken just plugging the iPhone to a Linux machine and accessing the device like a USB stick.

That's something disturbing my paranoid mindset that make me think not to use sensitive data on my iPhone if i cannot protect my data.

Probably an iPhone independent disk encryption product would be very useful in order to let the market create protection schemas that fit the different risk contexts that different users may have.

Probably a general consumer is not worried about this PIN vulnerability but for me, working within highly confidential envirnonment such as intelligence, finance and military, it's something that i cannot accept.

I need strong disk encryption on my mobile phone.

I do strong voice encryption for it , but it would be really nice to have also something to protect the whole iPhone data and not just phone calls.

Who extract Oil in Iran? Business and UN sanction together

I like geopolitic and i am following carefully iran issues.

I went to National Iranian Oil Company website and have seen “ Exploration & Production ” section where are listed all the companies and their country of origin that are allowed to make Exploration of oil in Iran.

On that list we find the list of countries along with the data of signing of exploration agreement:

  • Norway/Russia (2000)
  • Australia / España / Chile (2001)
  • India (2002)
  • China (2001)
  • Brazil (2004)
  • Spain (2004)
  • Thailand (2005)
  • China x 2 (2005)
  • Norway (2006)
  • Italy (2008)
  • Vietnam (2008)

Those countries's oil companies are allowed to do oil extraction in Iran and i would like to point out that Iran is the 2nd world Oil Reserve just after Saudi Arabia.

As you can see there's NO USA company doing extraction.

Of European Countries the only one doing business with IRAN are:

IRAN Norway Relationship

IRAN ITALY Relationship

IRAN SPAIN Relationship

While of the well known non-US-simpatizing countries, the one doing Oil business with Iran are:

IRAN RUSSIA Relationship

IRAN BRAZIL Relationship

IRAN China Relationship

Don't missing some Asian involvement.

IRAN India Relationship

IRAN Vietnam Relationship

As you can see Iran is doing Oil business with most big south America and Far Asia countries, with some little exception in Europe for what apply to Norway, Italy and Spain.

To me it sounds that those European countries are going to face serious trouble whether they will accept and subscribe UN sanction against Iran.

Or some of them, like Italy, are protected by the strenghtening cooperation they are doing with Russia on Energy matters?

Well, i don't know how things will end up, but it's possible the most hypocrit countries like the European ones doing business in Iran while applying Sanctions will be the only European winning in the international competition for Iran Oil (Unless France did not drop a nuclear bomb on theran ;) ).

Exploit code against SecurStar DriveCrypt published

It seems that the hacking community somehow like to target securstar products, maybe because hacking community doesn't like the often revealed unethical approach already previously described in this blog by articles and user's comments.

Rumors say that also PhoneCrypt binaries are getting analyzed and the proprietary encryption system could reveal something fun…

Quantum cryptography broken

Quantum cryptography it's something very challenging, encryption methods that leverage the law of phisycs to secure communications over fiber lines.

To oversimplify the system is based on the fact that if someone cut the fiber, put a tap in the middle, and joint together the other side of the fiber, the amount of “errors” that will be on the communications path will be higher than 20% .

So if QBER (Quantum Bit Error Rate) goes above 20% then it's assumed that the system is intercepted.

Researcher at university of toronto was able to cheat the system with a staying below the 20%, at 19.7% , thus tweaking the threshold used by the system to consider the communication channel secure vs compromised.

The product found vulnerable is called Cerberis Layer2 and produced by the Swiss ID Quantique .

Some possibile approach to detect the attack has been provided but probably, imho, such kind of systems does not have to be considered 100% reliable until the technology will be mature enough.

Traditional encryption has to be used together till several years, eventually bundled with quantum encryption whether applicable.

When we will see a quantum encryption systems on an RFC like we have seen for ZRTP , PGP and SSL ?

-naif

DIVERSIÓN! Infosecurity consideration on some well known films

Please read it carefully Film that needed better infosec .

One the the review, imho the most fun one on film Star Wars :

The scene

Death star getting blown up

Infosec Analysis

Darth Vader must be heralded as the prime example of a chief executive who really didn't care about information security. The entire board was unapproachable and clearly no system testing was undertaken. The network security was so poor that it was hacked into and the designs for the death star were stolen without anyone knowing.

Even worse than that, the death star had a major design flaw where by dropping a bomb thingy into a big hole on the outside, it actually blew up the entire thing!

Darth Vader needed to employ a good Security Consultant to sit on the executive board and promise not to force choke him. Should have commissioned a full risk assessment of the death star followed by a full penetration test. Only then should the death star have been released into the production environment.

great point of view

Because security of a cryptographic system it's not a matter of “how many bits do i use” but using the right approach to do the right thing to mitigate the defined security risk in the most balanced way.

security.png

Encryption is not scrambling: be aware of scrambler!

Most of us know about voice scrambler that can be used across almost any kind of voice based communication technology.

Extremely flexible approach: works everything

Extreme performance: very low latency

but unfortunately…

Extremely weak: Scrambling cannot be considered secure.

Only encryption can be considered secure under the Kerckoff's principle .

So please don't even consider any kind of analog scrambler if you need real security.

Read deeply the paper Implementation of a real-time voice encryption system ” by Markus Brandau, especially the cryptoanalysis paragraph.

SecurStar GmbH Phonecrypt answers on the Infosecurityguard/Notrax case: absolutely unreasonable! :-)

UPDATE 20.04.2010: http://infosecurityguard.com has been disabled. Notrax identity became known to several guys in the voice security environments (cannot tell, but you can imagine, i was right!) and so our friends decided to trow away the website because of legal responsibility under UK and USA laws.

UPDATE: Nice summary of the whole story (i know, it's long and complicated to read at 1st time) on SIPVicious VoIP security blog by Sandro Gauci .

Following my discoveries, Mr. Hafner, SecurStar chief exec, tried to ultimately defend their actions, citing absolutely unreasonable excuses to The Reg instead of publicly apologizing for what they have done: creating a fake independent security research to promote their PhoneCrypt product .

He tried to convince us that the person behind IP 217.7.213.59, used by the author of infosecurityguard.com and pointing to their office DSL line, was this hacker Notrax, using their anonymous surfing service and not one of their employees at their office:

“SecurStar chief exec Wilfried Hafner denied any contact with Notrax. Notrax, he said, must have been using his firm's anonymous browsing service, SurfSolo, to produce the results reported by Pietrosanti”

Let's reflect a moment on this sentence… Would really an hacker looking for anonymity spend 64 EUR to buy their anonymity surfing service called surfsolo instead of using the free and much more secure TOR (the onion router) ?Then let's reflect on this other piece of information:

  • The IP 217.7.213.59 is SecurStar GmbH's office DSL line
  • On 217.7.213.59 they have installed their VoIP/Asterisk PBX and internet gateway
  • They promote their anonymous proxy service for “Anonymous p2p use” ( http://www.securstar.com/products_ssolo.php ). Who would let users do p2p from the office dsl line where they have installed their corporate VoIP PBX ? If you do VoIP you can't let third party flood your line w/ p2p traffic, your phone calls would became obviously unreliable (yes, yes, you can do QoS, but you would not place an anonymous navigation proxy on your company office DSL line…).
  • Which company providing an anonymous navigation service would ever use their own office IP address? Just think how many times you would have the police knocking at your door and your employees as the prime suspects. (In past i used to run a TOR node, i know the risks…). Also think how many times you would find yourself blacklisted on google as a spyware bot.
  • Mr. Hafner also says “We have two million people using this product. Or he may have been an old customer of ours”. 2M users on a DSL line, really?
  • I don't use Surfsolo service, however their proxies are probably these ones:

surfsolo.securstar.net – 67.225.141.74

surfsolo.securstar.com – 69.16.211.133

Frankly speaking I can easily understand that Mr. Hafner is going do whatever he can to protect his company from the scandal, but the “anonymous proxy” excuse is at the very least suspicious.

How does the fact that the “independent research” was semantically a product review of PhoneCrypt, along with the discovery that the author come from the SecurStar GmbH IP address offices, along with the anonymity of this Notrax guy (SecurStar calls him a “well known it security professional” in their press release..) sound to you?

It's possible that earth will get an attack from outer space that's going to destroy our life?

Statistically extremely difficult, but yes, possible. More or less like the “anonymous proxy” story told by Mr. Hafner to cover the fact that they are the ones behind the infosecurityguard.com fake “independent security review”.

Hey, I don't need anything else to convince myself or to let the smart person have his own thoughts on this.

I just think that the best way for SecurStar to get out of this mess would probably be to provide public excuses to the hacking community for abusing the name and reputation of real independent security researches, for the sake of a marketing stunt.

Saludos,

Fabio Pietrosanti

ps I am currently waiting for some other infos that will more precisely confirm that what Mr. Hafner is saying is not properly true. Manténganse al tanto.

Evidence that infosecurityguard.com/notrax is SecurStar GmbH Phonecrypt – A fake independent research on voice crypto

Below evidence that the security review made by an anonymous hacker on http://infosecurityguard.com is in facts a dishonest marketing plan by the SecurStar GmbH to promote their voice crypto product.

I already wrote about that voice crypto analysis that appeared to me very suspicious.

Now it's confirmed, it's a fake independent hacker security research by SecurStar GmbH, its just a marketing trick!

How do we know that Infosecurityguard.com, the fake independent security research, is a marketing trick from SecurStar GmbH?

1) I posted on http://infosecurityguard.com a comments to a post with a link to my blog to that article on israelian ministry of defense certification

2) The author of http://infosecurityguard.com went to approve the comment and read the link on my own blog http://infosecurity.ch

3) Reaching my blog he leaked the IP address from which he was coming 217.7.213.59 (where i just clicked on from wordpress statistic interface)

4) On http:// 217.7.213.59/panel there is the IP PBX interface of the SecurStar GmbH corporate PBX (openly reachable trough the internet!)

5) The names of the internal PBX confirm 100% that it's the SecurStar GmbH:

6) There is 100% evidence that the anonymous hacker of http://infosecurityguard.com is from SecurStar GmbH

Below the data and reference that let us discover that it's all but a dishonest marketing tips and not an independent security research.

Kudos to Matteo Flora for it's support and for his article in Debunking Infosecurityguard identity !

The http referral tricks

When you read a link going from a website to another one there is an HTTP protocol header, the “Referral”, that tell you from which page someone is going to another webpage.

The referral demonstrated that the authors of http://infosecurityguard.com read my post, because it was coming from http://infosecurityguard.com/wp-admin/edit-comments.php that's the webpage you use as a wordpress author/editor to approve/refuse comments. And here there was the link.

That's the log entry:

217.7.213.59 – - [30/Jan/2010:02:56:37 -0700] “GET /20100129/licensed-by-israel-ministry-of-defense-how-things-really-works/ HTTP/1.0″ 200 5795 “ http://infosecurityguard.com/wp-admin/edit-comments.php ” “Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 8.0; Windows NT 5.1; Trident/4.0; GTB6.3; .NET CLR 1.1.4322; .NET CLR 2.0.50727; .NET CLR 3.0.4506.2152; .NET CLR 3.5.30729; InfoPath.2)”

The PBX open on the internet tell us that's SecurStar GmbH

The SecurStar GmbH PBX is open on the internet, it contains all the names of their employee and confirm us that the author of http:/infosecurityguard.com is that company and is the anonymous hacker called Notrax.

Here there is their forum post where the SecurStar GmbH guys are debugging IPCOPfirewall & Asterisk together (so we see also details of what they use) where there is the ip 217.7.213.59 .

SecurStarproof.png

That's also really fun!

They sell secure telephony but their company telephony system is openly vulnerable on the internet . :-)

I was thinking to call the CEO, Hafner, via SIP on his internal desktop PBX to announce we discovered him tricks.. :->

They measured their marketing activity

Looking at the logs of my website i found that they was sensing the google distribution of information for the following keywords, in order to understand how effectively they was able to attack competing products. It's reasonable, if you invest money in a marketing campaign you want to see the results :-)

They reached my blog and i logged their search:

infosecurityguard+cryptophone

infosecurityguard+gold-lock

217.7.213.59 – - [30/Jan/2010:02:22:42 -0700] “GET / HTTP/1.0″ 200 31057 “http://www.google.de/search?sourceid=navclient&ie=UTF-8&rlz=1T4SKPB_enDE350DE350&q=infosecurityguard+cryptophone” “Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 8.0; Windows NT 5.1; Trident/4.0; GTB6.3; .NET CLR 1.1.4322; .NET CLR 2.0.50727; .NET CLR 3.0.4506.2152; .NET CLR 3.5.30729; InfoPath.2)”

217.7.213.59 – - [30/Jan/2010:04:15:07 -0700] “GET /20100130/about-the-voice-encryption-analysis-phonecrypt-can-be-intercepted-serious-security-evaluation-criteria/ HTTP/1.0″ 200 15774 “http://www.google.de/search?sourceid=navclient&ie=UTF-8&rlz=1T4SKPB_enDE350DE350&q=gold-lock+infosecurityguard” “Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 8.0; Windows NT 5.1; Trident/4.0; GTB6.3; .NET CLR 1.1.4322; .NET CLR 2.0.50727; .NET CLR 3.0.4506.2152; .NET CLR 3.5.30729; InfoPath.2)”


The domain registration data

The domain have been registered on 1st December 2009, just two months to start preparing the dishonest marketing campaign:

Domain Name: INFOSECURITYGUARD.COM

Registrar: GODADDY.COM, INC.

Updated Date: 01-dec-2009

Creation Date: 01-dec-2009

The domain is anonymously privacy protected trough a whois privacy service:

Administrative Contact: Private, Registration INFOSECURITYGUARD.COM@domainsbyproxy.com , Domains by Proxy, Inc. DomainsByProxy.com

Notrax hacker does not exist on google
As you know any hacker that get public usually have presence of it's activity on google, attending mailinglists, forum, homepage, past research, participation to conferences, etc, etc.
The fake hacker that they wanted us to to think was writing an independent blog does NOT have any trace on google. Only some hit about an anonymous browser called Notrax but nothing about that hacker.
Maybe when SecurStar provided the anonymity tool to their marketing agency, to help them protecting anonymity for the fake research, their provided them the anonymous browser notrax.So the marketing guy thinking about the nickname of this fake hackers used what? Notrax! :-)

The “independent review”completely oriented in publicizing PhoneCrypt

Of the various review don the phonecrypt review is only positive and amazing good feedback, while the other are only bad feedback and no single good point.

As you can imagine, in any kind of independent product evaluation, for all products there are goods and bad points. No. In this one there are only product that are good and product that are bad.

They missed to consider the security of the technology used by the products

They completely avoided to speak about cryptography and security of the products.

They do not evaluated basic security features that must be in that kind of products.That's in order not to let anyone see that they did not followed basic security rules in building up their PhoneCrypt.
The technology is closed source, no transparency on algorithms and protocols, no peer review.Read my new comparison (from the basic cryptographic requirement point of view) About the voice encryption analysis (criteria, errors and different results) .
The results are somehow different than their one .

UPDATE: Who's Wilfried Hafner (SecurStar founder) ?

I got a notice from a reader regarding Wilfred Hafner, SecurStar founder, CEO and security expert.

He was arrested in 1997 for telephony related fraud (check 2nd article on Phrack) earning from telephony fraud 254.000 USD causing damages to local telcos trough blueboxing for 1.15 Million USD.

He was not doing “Blueboxing” for the pleasure of phreaking and connecting with other hackers, but to earn money.

Hacking for profit (and not for fun) in 1997… brrr…. No hacker's ethic at all!

All in all, is that lawful?

Badmouthing a competitor amounts to an unfair competition practice in most jurisdictions, so it is arguable (to say the least) that SecurStar is right on a legally sound ground here.
Moreover, there are some specific statutes in certain jurisdictions which provide for a straightforward ban on the practice we are talking about. For example in the UK the British Institute of Practitioners in Advertising - in compliance with the Consumer protection from Unfair Trading regulation – ruled that:

”falsely claiming or creating the impression that the trader is not acting for the purposes relating to his trade, business, craft or profession, or falsely representing oneself as a consumer” is a criminal offense .

We have no doubt that PRPR (which is the UK-based *PR company for SecurStar GmbH, led by Peter Rennison and Allie Andrews as stated in SecurStar Press Release ) did provide their client with this information. Heck, they *are* in the UK, they simply cannot ignore that!

IANAL, but I would not be surpised if someone filed a criminal complaint or start civil litigation for unfair competition against SecurStar GmbH.
Whether this is going to be a matter for criminal and/or civil Courts or not is not that important. However, it is clear enough that SecurStar GmbH appears to be at least ethically questionable and not really worth of trust.

Nice try, gentlemen… however, next time just do it right (whether “right” for them means “in a honest manner” or “in a fashion not to be caught” I will let them choose)”

Fabio Pietrosanti (naif)

Dishonest security: The SecurStart GmbH Phonecrypt case

I would like to provide considerations on the concept of ethics that a security company should have respect to the users, the media and the security environment.

SecurStar GmbH made very bad things making that infosecuriguard.com fake independent research.

It's unfair approach respect to hacking community.

It's unfair marketing to end user. They should not be tricking by creating fake independent review.

It's unfair competition in the security market.

Let's make some more important consideration on this.

Must be serious on cryptographic products. They are not toys

When you do cryptographic tools you should be really aware of what you are doing, you must be really serious.

If you do bad crypto people could die.

If you don't follow basic security rules for transparency and security for cryptography you are putting people life at risk.

You are taking the responsibility of this. (I want to sleep at night, don't think SecurStar CEO/CTO care about this…)

Security research need reference and transparency

Security research have to be public, well done, always subject to public discussion and cooperation.
Security research should not be instrumentally used for marketing purpose.Security research should be done for awareness and grow of the knowledge of the worldwide security environment.

Hacking environment is neutral, should not be used instrumentally

Hackers are considered neutral, nerds, doing what they do for their pleasure and passion.

If you work in the security market you work with hackers.

If you use hackers and hacking environment for your own marketing purposes you are making something very nasty.

Hackers give you the technology and knowledge and you use them for your own commercial purpose.

Consideration on the authority of the information online

That's something that pose serious consideration on the authority of information online.An anonymous hacker, with no reference online, made a product security review that appear like an independent one. I have to say that the fake review was very well prepared, it always posed good/bad things in an indirect way. It did not appeared to me at 1st time like a fake. But going deeply i found what's going on.

However Journalists, news media and blogger went to the TRAP and reviewed their fake research. TheRegister, NetworkWorld and a lot of blogs reported it. Even if the author was completely anonymous.

What they have done is already illegal in UK

SecurStar GmbH is lucky that they are not in the UK, where doing this kind of things is illegal .

Fabio Pietrosanti (naif)

About the SecurStar GmbH Phonecrypt voice encryption analysis (criteria, errors and different results)

This article want to clarify and better explain the finding at infosecurityguard.com regaring voice encryption product evaluation.
This article want to tell you a different point of view other than infosecurityguard.com and explaining which are the rational with extensive explaination from security point of view.
Today i read news saying: “PhoneCrypt: Basic Vulnerability Found in 12 out of 15 Voice Encryption Products and went to read the website infosecurityguard .

Initially it appeared to my like a great research activity but then i started reading deeply the read about it.I found that it's not properly a security research but there is are concrete elements that's a marketing campaign well done in order to attract public media and publicize a product.
Imho they was able to cheat journalists and users because the marketing campaign was absolutely well done not to be discovered on 1st read attempt. I personally considered it like a valid one on 1st ready (they cheated me initially!).

But if you go deeply… you will understand that:
- it's a camouflage marketing initiative arranged by SecurStar GmbH and not a independent security research
- they consider a only security context where local device has been compromised (no software can be secured in that case, like saying SSL can be compromised if you have a trojan!)
- they do not consider any basic security and cryptographic security criteria

However a lot of important website reported it:

This article is quite long, if you read it you will understand better what's going on around infosecurityguard.com research and research result.

I want to to tell you why and how (imho) they are wrong.

The research missed to consider Security, Cryptography and Transparency!

Well, all this research sound much like being focused on the marketing goal to say that their PhoneCrypt product is the “super” product best of all the other ones.
Any security expert that would have as duty the “software evaluation” in order to protect the confidentiality of phone calls will evaluate other different characteristics of the product and the technology.

Yes, it's true that most of the product described by SecurStar in their anonymous marketing website called http://infosecurityguard.com have some weakness.
But the relevant weakness are others and PhoneCrypt unfortunately, like most of the described products suffer from this.
Let's review which characteristics are needed basic cryptography and security requirement (the best practice, the foundation and the basics!)

a – Security Trough Obscurity does not work

A basic rule in cryptography cames from 1883 by Auguste Kerckhoffs:

In a well-designed cryptographic system, only the key needs to be secret; there should be no secrecy in the algorithm.
Modern cryptographers have embraced this principle, calling anything else “security by obscurity.”
Read what Bruce Schneir, recognized expert and cryptographer in the world say about this
Any security expert will tell you that's true. Even a novice university student will tell you that's true. Simply because that's the only way to do cryptography.
Almost all product described in the review by SecurStar GmbH, include PhoneCrypt, does not provide precise details about their cryptographic technologies.
Precise details are:
  • Detailed specification of cryptographic algorithm (that's not just saying “we use AES “)
  • Detailed specification of cryptographic protocol (that's not just saying “we use Diffie Hellman ” )
  • Detailed specification of measuring the cryptographic strenght (that's not just saying “we have 10000000 bit key size “)

Providing precise details means having extensive documentation with theoretical and practical implications documenting ANY single way of how the algorithm works, how the protocol works with precise specification to replicate it for interoperability testing.
It means that scientific community should be able to play with the technology, audit it, hack it.
If we don't know anything about the cryptographic system in details, how can we know which are the weakness and strength points?

Mike Fratto, Site editor of Network Computing, made a great article on “Saying NO to proprietary cryptographic systems” .
Cerias Purdue University tell this .

b – NON peer reviewed and NON scientifically approved Cryptography does not work

In any case and in any condition you do cryptography you need to be sure that someone else will check, review, analyze, distruct and reconstract from scratch your technology and provide those information free to the public for open discussion.
That's exactly how AES was born and like US National Institute of Standard make crypto does (with public contest with public peer review where only the best evaluated win).
A public discussion with a public contest where the a lot of review by most famous and expert cryptographer in the world, hackers (with their name,surname and face, not like Notrax) provide their contribution, tell what they thinks.
That's called “peer review”.

If a cryptographic technology has an extended and important peer review, distributed in the world coming from universities, private security companies, military institutions, hackers and all coming from different part of the world (from USA to Europe to Russia to South America to Middle east to China) and all of them agree that a specific technology it's secure…
Well, in that case we can consider the technology secure because a lot of entities with good reputation and authority coming from a lot of different place in the world have publicly reviewed, analyzed and confirmed that a technology it's secure.

How a private company can even think to invent on it's own a secure communication protocol when it's scientifically stated that it's not possible to do it in a “proprietary and closed way” ?
IBM tell you that peer review it's required for cryptography .
Bruce Schneier tell you that “Good cryptographers know that nothing substitutes for extensive peer review and years of analysis.”
Philip Zimmermann will tell you to beware of Snake Oil where the story is: “Every software engineer fancies himself a cryptographer, which has led to the proliferation of really bad crypto software.”

c – Closed source cryptography does not work

As you know any kind of “serious” and with “good reputation” cryptographic technology is implemented in opensource.
There are usually multiple implementation of the same cryptographic algorithm and cryptographic protocol to be able to review all the way it works and certify the interoperability.
Supposing to use a standard with precise and extended details on “how it works”, that has been “peer reviewed” by the scientific community BUT that has been re-implemented from scratch by a not so smart programmer and the implementation it's plenty of bugs.

Well, if the implementation is “opensource” this means that it can be reviewed, improved, tested, audited and the end user will certaintly have in it's own had a piece of technology “that works safely” .

Google release opensource crypto toolkit
Mozilla release opensource crypto toolkit
Bruce Schneier tell you that Cryptography must be opensource .

Another cryptographic point of view

I don't want to convince anyone but just provide facts related to science, related to cryptography and security in order to reduce the effect of misinformation done by security companies whose only goes is to sell you something and not to do something that make the world a better.

When you do secure products, if they are not done following the proper approach people could die.
It's absolutely something irresponsible not to use best practice to do crypto stuff.

To summarize let's review the infosecurityguard.com review from a security best pratice point of view.

Nombre del producto Security Trough Obscurity Public peer review Open Source Compromise locally?
Caspertec Obscurity No public review Closed
CellCrypt Obscurity
No public review
Closed
Cryptophone Transparencia Limited public review Público
Gold-Lock Obscurity
No public review
Closed
Illix Obscurity
No public review
Closed
No1.BC Obscurity No public review
Closed
PhoneCrypt Obscurity
No public review
Closed
Rode&Swarz Obscurity
No public review
Closed
Secure-Voice Obscurity
No public review
Closed
SecuSmart Obscurity
No public review
Closed
SecVoice Obscurity
No public review
Closed
SegureGSM Obscurity
No public review
Closed
SnapCell Obscurity
No public review
Closed
Tripleton Obscurity
No public review
Closed
Zfone Transparencia Public review
Open
ZRTP Transparencia Public review
Open

*Green means that it match basic requirement for a cryptographic secure system

* Red / Broken means that it does not match basic requirement for a cryptographic secure system
That's my analysis using a evaluation method based on cryptographic and security parameters not including the local compromise context that i consider useless.

However, to be clear, those are only basic parameters to be used when considering a voice encryption product (just to avoid being in a situation that appears like i am promoting other products). So it may absolutely possible that a product with good crypto ( transparency, peer reviewed and opensource) is absolutely a not secure product because of whatever reason (badly written, not usable causing user not to use it and use cleartext calls, politically compromised, etc, etc).
I think i will prepare a broader criteria for voice crypto technologies and voice crypto products, so it would be much easier and much practical to have a full transparent set of criterias to evaluate it.

But those are really the basis of security to be matched for a good voice encryption system!
Read some useful past slides on security protocols used in voice encryption systems (2nd part).

Now read below some more practical doubt about their research.

The security concept of the review is misleading: any hacked device can be always intercepted!

I think that the guys completely missed the point: ANY KIND OF SOFTWARE RUNNING ON A COMPROMISED OPERATING SYSTEM CAN BE INTERCEPTED

Now they are pointing out that also Zfone from Philip Zimmermann is broken (a pc software), just because they install a trojan on a PC like in a mobile phone?
Any security software rely on the fact that the underlying operating system is somehow trusted and preserve the integrity of the environment where the software run.

  • If you have a disk encryption system but your PC if infected by a trojan, the computer is already compromised.
  • If you have a voice encryption system but your PC is infected by a trojan, the computer is already compromised.
  • If you have a voice encryption system but your mobile phone is infected by a trojan, the mobile phone is already compromised.

No matter which software you are running, in such case the security of your operating environment is compromised and in one way or another way all the information integrity and confidentiality is compromised.

Like i explained above how to intercept PhoneCrypt.

The only things that can protect you from this threat is running in a closed operating system with Trust Computing capability, implementing it properly.
For sure on any “Open” operating system such us Windows, Windows Mobile, Linux, iPhone or Android there's no chance to really protect a software.
On difficult operating system such as Symbian OS or RimOS maybe the running software can be protected (at least partially)

That's the reason for which the security concept that guys are leveraging to carry on their marketing campaign has no clue.
It's just because they control the environment, they know Flexispy software and so they adjusted their software not to be interceptable when Flexispy is installed.
If you develop a trojan with the other techniques i described above you will 100% intercept PhoneCrypt.

On that subject also Dustin Tamme l, Security researcher of BreakPoint Systems , pointed on on VoIP Security Alliance mailing lists that the security analysis is based on wrong concepts .

The PhoneCrypt can be intercepted: it's just that they don't wanted to tell you!

PhoneCrypt can be intercepted with “on device spyware”.
¿Por qué?
Because Windows Mobile is an unsecure operating environment and PhoneCrypt runs on Windows Mobile.
Windows Mobile does not use Trusted Computing and so any software can do anything.
The platform choice for a secure telephony system is important.
¿Cómo?
I quickly discussed with some knowledgeable windows mobile hackers about 2 different way to intercept PhoneCrypt with an on-device spyware (given the unsecure Windows Mobile Platform).

a) Inject a malicious DLL into the software and intercept from within the Phonecrypt itself.
In Windows Mobile any software can be subject to DLL code injection.
What an attacker can do is to inject into the PhoneCrypt software (or any software running on the phone), hooking the Audio related functions acting as a “function proxy” between the PhoneCrypt and the real API to record/play audio.
It's a matter of “hooking” only 2 functions, the one that record and the one that play audio.
Read the official Microsoft documentation on how to do DLL injection on Windows Mobile processes. or forum discussing the technique of injecting DLL on windows mobile processes.
That's simple, any programmer will tell you to do so.
They simply decided that's better not to make any notice about this.
b) Create a new audio driver that simply act as a proxy to the real one and intercept PhoneCrypt
In Windows Mobile you can create new Audio Drivers and new Audio Filters.
What an attacker can do is to load a new audio driver that does not do anything else than passing the real audio driver function TO/FROM the realone. In the meantime intercept everything recorded and everything played :-)
Here there is an example on how to do Audio driver for Windows Mobile .
Here a software that implement what i explain here for Windows “Virtual Audio Cable” .
The very same concept apply to Windows Mobile. Check the book “Mobile Malware Attack and Defense” at that link explaining techniques to play with those techniques.
They simply decided that's better not to make any notice to that way of intercepting phone call on PhoneCrypt .
Those are just 2 quick ideas, more can be probably done.

Sounds much like a marketing activity – Not a security research.

I have to tell you. I analyzed the issue very carefully and on most aspects. All this things about the voice encryption analisys sounds to me like a marketing campaign of SecurStar GmbH to sell PhoneCrypt and gain reputation. A well articulated and well prepared campaign to attract the media saying, in an indirect way cheating the media, that PhoneCrypt is the only one secure. You see the press releases of SecurStar and of the “Security researcher Notrax telling that PhoneCrypt is the only secure product” . SecurStar PhoneCrypt is the only product the anonymous hacker “Notrax” consider secure of the “software solutions”.
The only “software version” in competition with:

SnapCell – No one can buy it. A security company that does not even had anymore a webpage. The company does not almost exist anymore.
rohde-schawarz – A company that have in his list price and old outdated hardware secure phone . No one would buy it, it's not good for genera use.

Does it sounds strange that only those other products are considered secure along with PhoneCrypt .

Also… let's check the kind of multimedia content in the different reviews available of Gold-Lock, Cellcrypt and Phonecrypt in order to understand how much the marketing guys pressed to make the PhoneCrypt review the most attractive:

Aplicación Screenshots of application Video with demonstration of interception Network demonstration
PhoneCrypt 5 0 1
CellCrypt 0 2 0
GoldLock 1 2 0

It's clear that PhoneCrypt is reviewed showing more features explicitly shown and major security features product description than the other.

Too much difference between them, should we suspect it's a marketing tips?

But again other strange things analyzing the way it was done…
If it was “an impartial and neutral review” we should see good and bad things on all the products right?

Ok, see the table below regarding the opinion indicated in each paragraph of the different reviews available of Gold-Lock, CellCrypt and Phonecrypt (are the only available) to see if are positive or negative.

Aplicación Number of paragraphs Positive paragraphs Negative paragraphs Neutral paragraphs
PhoneCrypt 9 9 0 0
CellCrypt 12 0 10 2
GoldLock 9 0 8 1

Detailed paragraphs opinion analysis of Phonecrypt
Paragraph of review Opinion expressed
From their website Positive Marketing feedback
Apple iPhone Positive Marketing feedback
Disk Encryption or voice Encryption Positive Marketing feedback
PBX Compatibility? Really Positive Marketing feedback
Cracking <10. No. Positive Marketing feedback
Good thinking! Positive Marketing feedback
A little network action Positive Marketing feedback
IU Positive Marketing feedback
Good Taste Positive Marketing feedback
Detailed paragraphs opinion analysis of Gold-Lock 3G
Paragraph of review Opinion expressed
From their website Negative Marketing feedback
Licensed by The israeli Ministry of Denfese Negative Marketing feedback
Real Company or Part Time hobby Negative Marketing feedback
16.000 bit authentication Negative Marketing feedback
DH 256 Negative Marketing feedback
Downad & Installation! Neutral Marketing feedback
Cracking it <10 Negative Marketing feedback
Marketing BS101 Negative Marketing feedback
Cool video stuff Negative Marketing feedback
Detailed paragraphs opinion analysis of CellCrypt
Paragraph of review Opinion expressed
From their website Neutral Marketing feedback
A little background about cellcrypt Negative Marketing feedback
Master of Marketing Negative Marketing feedback
Secure Voice calling Negative Marketing feedback
Who's buying their wares Negative Marketing feedback
Downad & Installation! Neutral Marketing feedback
My Demo environment Negative Marketing feedback
Did they forget some code Negative Marketing feedback
Cracking it <5 Negative Marketing feedback
Room Monitoring w/ FlexiSpy Negative Marketing feedback
Cellcrypt unique features.. Negative Marketing feedback
Plain old interception Negative Marketing feedback
The Haters out there Negative Marketing feedback

Now it's clear that from their point of view on PhoneCrypt there is no single bad point while the other are always described in a negative way.
No single good point. Extraño?
All those considerations along with the next ones really let me think that's very probably a marketing review and not an independent review.

Other similar marketing attempt from SecurStar

SecurStar GmbH is known to have used in past marketing activity leveraging this kind of “technical speculations”, abusing of partial information and fake unconfirmed hacking stuff to make marketing/media coverage.
Imho a rare mix of unfairness in leveraging the difficult for people to really understand the complexity of security and cryptography.

They already used in past Marketing activities like the one about creating a trojan for Windows Mobile and saying that their software is secure from the trojan that they wrote.
Read about their marketing tricks of 2007

They developed a Trojan (RexSpy) for Windows Mobile, made a demonstration capability of the trojan and later on told that they included “Anti-Trojan” capability to their PhoneCrypt software.They never released informations on that trojan, not even proved that it exists.

The researcher Collin Mulliner told at that time that it sounds like a marketing tips (also because he was not able to get from SecurStar CEO Hafner any information about that trojan):

“This makes you wonder if this is just a marketing thing.”

Now, let's try to make some logical reassignment.
It's part of the way they do marketing, an very unfriendly and unpolite approach with customers, journalist and users trying to provide wrong security concepts for a market advantage. Being sure that who read don't have all the skills to do in depth security evaluation and find the truth behind their marketing trips.

Who is the hacker notrax?

It sounds like a camouflage of a fake identity required to have an “independent hacker” that make an “independent review” that is more strong on reputation building.
Read about his bio:

¾ Human, ¼ Android (Well that would be cool at least.) I am just an enthusiast of pretty much anything that talks binary and if it has a RS232 port even better. During the day I masquerade as an engineer working on some pretty cool projects at times, but mostly I do the fun stuff at night. I have been thinking of starting an official blog for about 4.5 years to share some of the things I come across, can't figure out, or just cross my mind. Due to my day job and my nighttime meddling, I will update this when I can. I hope some find it useful, if you don't, well you don't.

There are no information about this guy on google.
Almost any hacker that get public have articles online, post in mailing archive and/or forum or some result of their activity.
For notrax, nothing is available.

Additionally let's look at the domain…
The domain infosecurityguard.com is privacy protected by domainsbyproxy to prevent understanding who is the owner.
The domain has been created 2 months ago on 01-Dec-09 on godaddy.com registrar.

What's also very interesting to notice that this “unknown hacker with no trace on google about him that appeared on December 2009 on the net” is referred on SecurStar GmbH Press Release as a “An IT security expert”.

Maybe they “know personally” who's this anonymous notrax? :)

Am i following my own conspiracy thinking or maybe there's some reasonable doubt that everything was arrange in that funny way just for a marketing activity?

Social consideration

If you are a security company you job have also a social aspects, you should also work to make the world a better place (sure to make business but “not being evil”). You cannot cheat the skills of the end users in evaluating security making fake misleading information.

You should do awareness on end users, to make them more conscious of security issues, giving them the tools to understand and decide themselves.

Hope you had fun reading this article and you made your own consideration about this.

Fabio Pietrosanti (naif)

ps Those are my personal professional opinion, let's speak about technology and security, not marketing.
pps i am not that smart in web writing, so sorry for how the text is formatted and how the flow of the article is unstructured!