Monthly Archives: March 2014

Edward Snowden tells European Parliament how local spies aid NSA surveillance

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14 hours ago Mar. 7, 2014 - 4:06 AM PST

NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden has sent testimony (PDF) to a European Parliament inquiry about the mass surveillance activities he exposed particularly as they relate to the monitoring of Europeans and his motives for doing so.

In the long-awaited testimony, Snowden said he had raised his concerns about bulk surveillance to more than ten distinct officials, none of whom took any action to address them, before he approached journalists. He also insisted he had no relationship with either the Russian or Chinese governments, but confirmed he had been approached by the secret service in Russia, where he has temporary asylum.

Even the secret service of Andorra would have approached me, if they had had the chance: thats their job, Snowden wrote. But I didnt take any documents with me from Hong Kong, and while Im sure they were disappointed, it doesnt take long for an intelligence service to realize when theyre out of luck.

None of the testimony was new information as such, because Snowden was loath to pre-empt the stories of the journalists to whom he has given NSA and GCHQ documents. Much of it was a restatement of his belief that mass surveillance programs are entirely unjustified and a waste of resources that could be spent running down real leads.

That said, Snowden did provide a useful summation of the stories that have come out about the NSA network of partnerships with European intelligence agencies. He said the NSA helped these agencies find and exploit loopholes in their national privacy laws, or repeal restrictions. Combined with the NSAs deals with the companies that run major telecommunications cables, this ultimately lets the NSA spy on everyone:

The result is a European bazaar, where an EU member state like Denmark may give the NSA access to a tapping center on the (unenforceable) condition that NSA doesnt search it for Danes, and Germany may give the NSA access to another on the condition that it doesnt search for Germans. Yet the two tapping sites may be two points on the same cable, so the NSA simply captures the communications of the German citizens as they transit Denmark, and the Danish citizens as they transit Germany, all the while considering it entirely in accordance with their agreements. Ultimately, each EU national governments spy services are independently hawking domestic accesses to the NSA, GCHQ, FRA, and the like without having any awareness of how their individual contribution is enabling the greater patchwork of mass surveillance against ordinary citizens as a whole.

The former analyst said there were many other undisclosed programs that would impact EU citizens rights, but he would leave decisions over their potential disclosure to responsible journalists in coordination with government stakeholders.

Snowden added that he does seek asylum in the EU, but no member state has agreed to take him. Parliamentarians in the national governments have told me that the U.S., and I quote, will not allow EU partners to offer political asylum to me, which is why the previous resolution on asylum ran into such mysterious opposition. I would welcome any offer of safe passage or permanent asylum, but I recognize that would require an act of extraordinary political courage.

I know the good and the bad of these systems, and what they can and cannot do, and I am telling you that without getting out of my chair, I could have read the private communications of any member of this committee, as well as any ordinary citizen, Snowden wrote. I swear under penalty of perjury that this is true.

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Edward Snowden tells European Parliament how local spies aid NSA surveillance

RIT launches nation’s first minor in free and open source software and free culture

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Rochester, N.Y. (PRWEB) March 07, 2014

Responding to student interest and a growing industry demand for workers with such skills, Rochester Institute of Technology is launching the nations first interdisciplinary minor in free and open source software and free culture.

Starting in Fall 2014, RITs School of Interactive Games and Media will offer the minor in free and open source software (FOSS) and free culture for students who want to develop a deep understanding of the processes, practices, technologies, and financial, legal and societal impacts of the FOSS and free culture movements.

As students progress through the minor, they acquire domain knowledge, hands-on experience and community interaction skills, said Stephen Jacobs, professor of interactive games and media and associate director of RITs Center for Media, Arts, Games, Interaction and Creativity (MAGIC). Students can use their new skills to become leaders, as well as contributors.

While propriety softwaresuch as Microsoft Officeis developed, controlled and restricted by organizations, free open source softwaresuch as Libre Officegives users the right and ability to freely use, modify and share the software itself. The free culture movement, exemplified by Creative Commons, allows for the same type of flexible use rights for creative works, such as music or graphics. When companies want to take advantage of the opportunities to modify and/or redistribute FOSS software, which is often more reliable, secure and less expensive, they turn to experts in FOSS culture, process and licenses.

Jacobs designed RITs first FOSS course around student-created games for the One Laptop per Child program in 2008. As their software ran on the laptops, Red Hat Inc., a leading provider of open source software solutions, donated 25 XO laptops for student use in the class. Red Hat has continued to collaborate with FOSS programs at RIT, including sponsoring the humanitarian program in Jacobs FOSSBox Lab.

RIT has long been a strong proponent of open source, not just in technology but also in the free sharing of ideas and knowledge, both of which are key factors in Red Hats involvement with RIT, said Tom Callaway, in charge of University Outreach at Red Hat.

RITs FOSS minor, driven by Professor Jacobs, helps address the role that free and open source software plays in todays world. Nearly every form of technology innovation, from gaming consoles to cloud computing, relies on open source code as a fundamental building block. Open source is helping define the way forward for digital society at large, Callaway said.

RITs 15-credit-hour minor, open to undergraduates across the university, includes three core courses from the B. Thomas Golisano College of Computing and Information Sciences and the College of Liberal Arts. Students also select two elective courses that can be chosen from a list of computing and liberal arts courses. Electives from additional disciplines will likely be added over time.

Someone who doesnt know how to code can go all the way through this minor, said Jacobs. In required technical classes, students with different skills will work in teams to build a common project.

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RIT launches nation’s first minor in free and open source software and free culture

Broadcom Announces Open Switch Pipeline Specification Targeting Growing SDN Application Ecosystem

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OpenFlow 1.3.1 Compliant Reference Platform Enables Scalable, High Performance Applications on Widely Deployed Switch Architecture

SANTA CLARA, Calif. - Open Networking Summit, 2014 - Broadcom Corporation (NASDAQ: BRCM), a global innovation leader in semiconductor solutions for wired and wireless communications, today announced the OpenFlow Data Plane Abstraction (OF-DPA) v1.0 specification, software and API, the industry's first openly published implementation of physical switch hardware pipeline abstraction for the Open Networking Foundation's (ONF) OpenFlow 1.3.1 Switch. For more news, visit Broadcom's Newsroom.

OpenFlow, one of the methods for implementing software-defined networking (SDN), enables a standardized way of delivering a centralized, programmable network that can dynamically address changing application requirements. The OF-DPA v1.0 specification, software and API can be used to implement popular use cases such as network virtualization, multi-tenant networks and traffic engineering with higher scale and performance. For more details, view Broadcom's white paper, "Engineered Elephant Flows for Boosting Application Performance in Large Scale CLOS Networks."

"The openly published OF-DPA specification, software and API exposes OpenFlow compliant programming constructs over Broadcom's StrataXGS Ethernet Switch Series," said Ram Velaga, Broadcom Senior Vice President & General Manager, Network Switch."By mapping the OpenFlow 1.3.1 pipeline to high bandwidth and high density switch silicon like the StrataXGS Trident Series, we are enabling SDN applications to achieve high performance and scale."

The OpenFlow Switch in the ONF 1.3.1 specification defines a pipeline that contains multiple tables, each table containing multiple flow entries. The OpenFlow pipeline processing defines how packets interact with these tables. The OF-DPA v1.0 physical switch hardware pipeline abstraction is an implementation of the OpenFlow 1.3.1 Switch optimized for Broadcom StrataXGS Ethernet Switch devices. The OF-DPA v1.0 software and API enables OpenFlow 1.3.1 agents and controllers to access multiple tables implemented in Broadcom switch devices. The intent is to facilitate general availability of production-quality OpenFlow 1.3.1 switches from OEM and ODM vendors as well as provide a reference platform for use by end users and in academic and industrial research networks.

"OpenFlow multi-table-based programming of the switch hardware can enable implementation of important dynamic provisioning use cases at scale and help lower OPEX," said Akio Iijima NEC Corporation's Chief Product Architect, Converged Network Division. "The open nature of the Broadcom OF-DPA solution and implementation on open switch hardware designs can foster a rich ecosystem of multi-vendor switches. Such switches can be managed by advanced OpenFlow Controllers such as the NEC ProgrammableFlow Controller."

"Big Switch Networks is excited to support Broadcom's OF-DPA initiative because we believe it energizes both the bare metal and open SDN ecosystems," said Rob Sherwood, BigSwitch Networks Chief Technology Officer, "OF-DPA provides open programmable access to 'fast-path' packet-forwarding hardware and is the perfect complement to our Open Network Linux and Indigo SDN agent open source software stack."

Broadcom's OF-DPA v1.0 reference platform includes a comprehensive OpenFlow 1.3.1compliant specification, software and API for the Broadcom physical switch hardware pipeline abstraction, and an application development kit. The OF-DPA v1.0 software and API can be used with any OpenFlow 1.3.1 agent and controller and is layered over Broadcom's currently available switch software development kit (SDK). The reference platform also includes a turnkey package with an open source reference agent (based on Indigo 2.0) on ODM platforms and hardware systems based on Broadcom-contributed OCP Open Switch Specification. The turnkey package is integrated with the open source RYU OpenFlow 1.3.1 Controller.

OF-DPA Version 1.0 Key Features

- Provides an ONF OpenFlow 1.3.1 compliant switch pipeline and APIs for modifying and querying flow table (e.g., Layer 2 table, Layer 3 table, access control list table) and group table entries, as well as for configuring ports, queues, and VXLAN overlay logical ports. - Includes OF-DPA v1.0 specification, API library, application development kit, and programmer's guide, all released under the Apache 2.0 license. - Supports SDN use cases including virtual tenant networks (VTNs), network virtualization using overlays, and traffic engineering. - Future OF-DPA versions are slated to support additional Broadcom switch features required in service provider and carrier class applications.

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Broadcom Announces Open Switch Pipeline Specification Targeting Growing SDN Application Ecosystem

Quantum Cryptography Conquers Noise Problem

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Encoded photons sent a record distance along busy optical fibers

N. Gregory/Alamy

Its hard to stand out from the crowd particularly if you are a single photon in a sea of millions in an optical fiber. Because of that, ultra-secure quantum-encryption systems that encode signals into a series of single photons have so far been unable to piggyback on existing telecommunications lines. But now, physicists using a technique for detecting dim light signals have transmitted a quantum key along 90 kilometers of noisy optical fiber. The feat could see quantum cryptography finally enter the mainstream.

You cannot measure a quantum system without noticeably disrupting it. That means that two people can encode an encryption key for bank transfers, for instance into a series of photons and share it, safe in the knowledge that any eavesdropper will trip the systems alarms. But such systems have not been able to transmit keys along telecommunications lines, because other data traffic swamps the encoded signal. As a result, quantum cryptography has had only niche applications, such as connecting offices to nearby back-up sites using expensive 'dark' fibers that carry no other signals. This is really the bottleneck for quantum cryptography, says physicist Nicolas Gisin, a scientific adviser at quantum-cryptography company ID Quantique in Geneva, Switzerland.

Physicists have attempted to solve the problem by sending photons through a shared fiber along a 'quantum channel' at one characteristic wavelength. The trouble is that the fiber scatters light from the normal data traffic into that wavelength, polluting the quantum channel with stray photons. Andrew Shields, a physicist at the Toshiba Cambridge Research Laboratory, UK, and his colleagues have now developed a detector that picks out photons from this channel only if they strike it at a precise instant, calculated on the basis of when the encoded photons were sent. The team publishes its results in Physics Review X.

Just in time Designing a detector with such a sharp time focus was tough, explains Shields. Standard detectors use semiconducting devices that create an avalanche of electrical charge when struck by a single photon. But it usually takes more than one nanosecond (109 seconds) for the avalanche to grow large enough to stand out against the detectors internal electrical hiss much longer than the narrow window of 100 picoseconds (1010 seconds) needed to filter a single photon from a crowd.

The teams self-differentiating detector activates for 100 picoseconds, every nanosecond. The weak charge triggered by a photon strike in this short interval would not normally stand out, but the detector measures the difference between the signal recorded during one operational cycle and the signal from the preceding cycle when no matching photon was likely to be detected. This cancels out the background hum. Using this device, the team has transmitted a quantum key along a 90-kilometer fiber, which also carried noisy data at 1 billion bits per second in both directions a rate typical of a telecommunications fiber. The team now intends to test the technique on a real telecommunications line.

Gisins team has independently developed a photon detector with a similar time window, which they presented at the QCrypt 2012 meeting at the Center for Quantum Technologies in Singapore in September. However, Gisin has calculated that such a technique cannot be used to transmit quantum signals beyond the range of a large city of 100 kilometers. Scattering accumulates over distance, so there would eventually be so many stray photons that it would be impossible to filter them out, even with a precisely timed detector.

Still, 90 kilometers is a world record that is a big step forward in demonstrating the applicability of quantum cryptography in real-world telecommunications infrastructures, says Vicente Martn, a physicist at the Technical University of Madrid.

This article is reproduced with permission from the magazine Nature. The article was first published on November 20, 2012.

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Quantum Cryptography Conquers Noise Problem

Classical Computing Embraces Quantum Ideas

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"Thinking quantumly" can lead to new insights into long-standing problems in classical computer science, mathematics and cryptography, regardless of whether quantum computers ever materialize

Courtesy of IBM Research

FromSimons Science News(find original story here).

Someday, quantum computers may be able to solve complex optimization problems, quickly mine huge data sets, simulate the kind of physics experiments that currently require billion-dollar particle accelerators, and accomplish many other tasks beyond the scope of present-day computers. That is, if they are ever built. But even as daunting technical challenges keep the dream at bay, theorists are increasingly putting the ideas and techniques of quantum computing to work solving deep, long-standing problems in classical computer science, mathematics and cryptography.

There are quite vigorous debates about whether quantum computers will ever actually be built, said Chris Peikert, a cryptographer and computer scientist at Georgia Institute of Technology. But thats a separate question from whether quantum techniques or quantum algorithms can help you solve problems in new ways.

In recent years, quantum ideas have helped researchersprove the securityof promising data encryption schemes called lattice-based cryptosystems, some applications of which can shroud users sensitive information, such as DNA, even from the companies that process it. A quantum computing proof also led toa formula for the minimum length of error-correcting codes, which are safeguards against data corruption.

Quantum ideas have also inspired a number of important theoretical results, such asa refutation of an old, erroneous algorithmthat claimed to efficiently solve the famously difficult traveling salesman problem, which asks how to find the fastest route through multiple cities.

If it only happened once it would be a coincidence, but there are so many instances when we think quantumly and come up with a proof, said Oded Regev, a computer scientist at New York University.

This recurring theme has led some researchers to argue that quantum computing is not an esoteric subfield of computer science, but rather a generalization of classical computing, in much the same way that polygons are a generalization of triangles. Just as polygons can have any number of sides while triangles only have three, quantum computers can perform operations represented by any numbers (positive or negative, real or imaginary), while operations on classical computers use only nonnegative real numbers.

As the more general case, quantum ideas are a powerful tool in developing more specific classical computing proofs. There area number of classical problemsthat have nothing to do with quantum, but that are most easily analyzed by generalizing to the quantum level, proving something using quantum information theory, and scaling back the result to the classical level, said Ronald de Wolf, a theoretical computer scientist at the Dutch Centre for Mathematics and Computer Science.

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Japan: ‘Bitcoin isn’t a currency’

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Without any regulatory or government oversight, the government forbids commercial banks to provide customers with the cryptocurrency.

The popular virtual currency Bitcoin isn't actually a currency, according to the Japanese government.

The country's cabinet approved an official document on Thursday that stated, "Bitcoin isn't a currency" and therefore won't be regulated as such, according to The Wall Street Journal. Additionally, commercial banks are forbidden from providing the digital currency to customers.

The main rub for the Japanese government is that Bitcoin isn't regulated by any official body. And, it's unclear which ministry would provide oversight of the cryptocurrency and how that ministry would go about putting regulations in place.

The government didn't rule out the idea of creating regulatory framework for virtual currencies but did say if this were to be done it'd have to be in conjunction with other countries.

The prominent Tokyo-based Bitcoin exchange Mt. Gox went offline last month and then filed for bankruptcy after it was revealed that hackers stole nearly $500 million in bitcoins through a weakness in the company's system. Bitcoin bank Flexcoin also announced this week that it was shutting down after being hacked.

Despite these hurdles, Bitcoin is still trading on several other exchanges and coin prices currently range from $400 to more than $4,000.

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Japan: 'Bitcoin isn't a currency'

Third cryptocurrency exchange becomes hacking victim, loses Bitcoin

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Summary: Following Mt. Gox and Flexcoin, Poloniex has admitted to losing over 10 percent of customer funds due to cyberattacks.

Yet another cryptocurrency has come forward and admitted that security and system problems have led to customer funds being pinched by hackers.

Poloniex, a Bitcoin trading post similar to Mt. Gox, has lost 12.3 percent of the Bitcoin stored in hot wallets on the website. However, in stark contrast to how Mt. Gox CEO Mark Karpeles handled his company's Bitcoin losses, the owner of Poloniex, Tristan D'Agosta -- a.k.a. Busoni -- admitted to the loss and asked users how they would like to be compensated.

In a forum post, Busoni said that a hacker took advantage of a processing flaw in the Bitcoin exchange post. When users submit a withdrawal request, the input is checked against your balance, deducted, and the new amount recorded within a database. However, it was discovered that placing several withdrawals all in practically the same instant meant each request was processed at more-or-less the same time, resulting in a negative balance but "valid insertions into the database, which then get picked up by the withdrawal daemon."

According to the Poloniex chief, auditing and security features were not explicitly looking for negative balances, and so the transactions were allowed to proceed. Busoni admitted that another "design flaw" contributed to the theft, as "this could not have happened if withdrawals requests were processed sequentially instead of simultaneously."

Trading was frozen following the discovery of unusual activity, and Busoni says he takes "full responsibility" for the missing 12.3 percent of Bitcoin -- believed to be worth roughly $50,000.

"If I had the money to cover the entire debt right now, I would cover it in a heartbeat." Busoni admitted. "I simply don't, and I can't just pull it out of thin air."

So, to keep everyone from withdrawing their BTC in order to not be left with picking up the debt, everyone's wallet on the trading post has been "temporarily be deducted by 12.3 percent."

"Please understand that this is an absolute necessity -- if I did not make this adjustment, people would most likely withdraw all their BTC as soon as possible in order to make sure they weren't left in that remaining 12.3 percent," Busoni said. "Aside from the obvious drawback of most of the BTC being taken out of the exchange, this would not be fair -- some people would get all of their money right away, and a few would get none right away."

The amounts deducted have been recorded, and the Poloniex chief says that funds will be raised from exchange fees -- and his own pocket -- to try and cover the debt and redistribute funds to users who have had Bitcoin deducted.

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Third cryptocurrency exchange becomes hacking victim, loses Bitcoin