Category Archives: Cryptography

U-Boats, Spies, and White Magic: The Invention of Wireless Cryptography

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The wireless telegraph station in Sayville, New York was one of the most powerful in the world. Constructed by the German company Telefunken in 1912, it served as a transatlantic relay point for diplomatic messages and business communications. It was a beacon among amateur wireless enthusiasts around the United States who could tune their home-made sets to the station's nightly press dispatches. All of this changed when one of those amateurs uncovered the station's true purpose.

The Navy seized the station in 1915 on suspicion of relaying covert commands from the German Empire to U-Boats in the Atlantic, and a congressional bill was introduced to ban all civilian wireless activities from the airwaves. The interruptions to the story that follows consist of excerpts from Hugo Gernsback's serial novel The Scientific Adventures of Baron Mnchausen, which ran in Electrical Experimenter magazine right as news of the wireless cryptography scandal unfolded.

Static was always a problem as the summer heat rolled in.

Situated on a hundred-acre plot along the Long Island coastline and dropped in a mosquito-infested field, the Sayville wireless plant began experiencing the seasonal interference that comes with longer days and warmer weather in May 1915. At that point little older than the twentieth century itself, wireless telegraphy (a precursor to radio) was not an entirely reliable medium. Debates over the precise cause of this seasonal static soon broke out among the tinkerers and oddballs of the early wireless community. Some said that radio waves experience more interference as they propagate through denser, more humid air. (There was still talk at this time of the existence of a luminiferous aether.) Others speculated that because messages came in clearer at night, the heat of the summer sun on the station's aerials was affecting their transmitting capabilities.

By late summer, Sayville operators announced that interference from so-called equinoctial storms was forcing them to restrict messages to official government communications. Some commenters quipped that wireless buffs were getting cause and effect mixed up: "they said the electrical effects [of the station] absorbed all the moisture and made Sayville dry as a Saratoga chip," referring to the potato chip first invented in Saratoga Springs, NY in the 1850s. Perhaps the station itself was altering its surrounding atmospheric conditions.

When one contemplates the marvel of sculptured sound on a graphophonic record, and realizes that from the cold vorticity of line there may magically spring the golden lilt of the greatest song voice that the world has ever heard, then comes the conviction that we are living in the days of white magic.

At the rate of a dollar per word, civilians and government officials alike could relay messages from Sayville to its sister station at Nauen, Germany. In addition to commercial and diplomatic communications, Sayville sent out press dispatches every night at 9:00 that amateurs around the country tuned in to using their hand-built crystal detector sets. Receiving transmissions from the Sayville station was the gold standard for both wireless sets and their owners (who referred to themselves as 'muckers'), and electronics manufacturers regularly promised easy reception of Sayville transmissions in advertisements for their products. The static that came with summer weather was nothing new for these wireless professionals and amateurs. Seasonal disturbances were simply a part of the natural rhythms of a new medium.

A 1907 crystal radio receiver housed in mahogany, designed by Harry Shoemaker in 1907. History San Jos, Perham Collection.

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U-Boats, Spies, and White Magic: The Invention of Wireless Cryptography

Kristov Atlas, pt2 : Anonymous Bitcoin, Cryptography and Online Safety – #204 – Video

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Kristov Atlas, pt2 : Anonymous Bitcoin, Cryptography and Online Safety - #204
This episode is part 2 about Bitcoin, cryptography and online security and safety and is called Anonymous Bitcoin, Cryptography and Online Safety: It #39;s being...

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Kristov Atlas, pt2 : Anonymous Bitcoin, Cryptography and Online Safety - #204 - Video

OWASP AppSec EU 2013: Keynote: Cryptography in Web Security: Stupid, Broken, and maybe Wor – Video

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OWASP AppSec EU 2013: Keynote: Cryptography in Web Security: Stupid, Broken, and maybe Wor
For more information and to download the video visit: Playlist OWASP AppSec EU 2013: Speaker: Thomas Roes. For more information and to download the video vis...

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OWASP AppSec EU 2013: Keynote: Cryptography in Web Security: Stupid, Broken, and maybe Wor - Video

Crypto thwarts TINY MINORITY of Feds’ snooping efforts

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The Essential Guide to IT Transformation

US government court-sanctioned wiretaps were sometimes defeated by encryption, according to official figures on law enforcement eavesdropping released this week.

State police were unable to circumvent the encryption used by criminal suspects in nine cases last year, while plain text was recovered in 32 of 41 cases where use of cryptography was a factor last year. By comparison, law enforcement was stymied by crypto in four cases during 2012.

Prior to two years ago, crypto had never prevented cops from snooping on a criminal suspect, Wired reports. Crypto had been used by criminal suspects in cases dating back as early as 2004 but its use had never been successful until much more recently.

Federal and state police snooped on US suspects phone calls, text messages, and other communications 3,576 times in 2013, an increase of five per cent from 2012. This means that crypto was a factor in just one in 100 cases. The vast majority of investigations (87 per cent) involved drugs.

Only one wiretap application in a domestic criminal case was denied during the whole of 2013.

Most court orders covered the interception of mobile phone or pager traffic. The average length of an order was 40 days.

US and British intel agencies and the FBI have warned that the internet was liable to "going dark" because of the wider use of cryptography by criminal and terrorist suspects in the wake of the Snowden leaks. This dystopian scenario has failed to play out as predicted, at least on the basis of these figures.

This report omits data on interceptions regulated by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978, so it doesn't cover the work of the NSA. That also means that the figures are skewed towards the use of wiretaps in investigating conventional crimes rather than national security or terrorism-related investigations, where the use of crypto might be expected to figure as a factor more frequently.

The cost of surveillance is falling, possibly due to advances in technology as much as anything else. The average cost of intercept devices in 2013 was $41,119, down 18 per cent from the average cost in 2012. For federal wiretaps the average cost in reported cases was $43,361, a 25 per cent decrease from 2012.

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Crypto thwarts TINY MINORITY of Feds' snooping efforts

MegaCryption 6.4.1 Excels With Additions to Utilities, Algorithms, Key Management, and PGP Encryption Options

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Naples, FL (PRWEB) July 01, 2014

Advanced Software Products Group (ASPG) has announced the latest release of MegaCryption, its robust encryption solution for z/OS, UNIX, LINUX, and Windows platforms. MegaCryption 6.4.1 developments include increased key storage and creation options, accelerated speed for OpenPGP decryption, enhancements to ISPF, as well as additional JCL procedures. With these enhancements, data centers are presented with an array of dynamic features to increase encryption/decryption speed, key management options, and accessibility of cryptographic approaches.

MegaCryption offers a comprehensive, easy-to-use key management structure to allow for a complete life cycle management of keys. With the release of 6.4.1, MegaCryption provides greater flexibility for sites storing their cryptographic keys in the RACF database through the ability to specify a CLASS other than FACILITY in MegaCryptions key management started task. MegaCryption 6.4.1 also allows users the option to generate up to 3072-bit DSA keys, supporting the largest proposed key size for DSA/DSS digital signatures.

An additional key management feature now available is MegaCryptions CSA symmetric algorithm abbreviation. CSA implements AES encryption and decryption when the symmetric key is stored securely in ICSFs CKDS. Similar to MegaCryptions existing CSF algorithm support (for DES/TripleDES), users may now use ICSF-managed AES-128 and AES-256 keys securely with MegaCryptions batch utilities.

With respect to the goal of ensuring MegaCryption programs are both secure and easy to use, a new sample JCL procedure library has been introduced in v6.4.1. These examples have been created with the goal of providing a familiar PGP-style JCL procedure for experienced operators of PGP command-syntax products on z/OS or distributed platforms. The new sample JCLs provide users flexibility in the complexity level of encryption processes they choose to utilize within MegaCryption, benefitting novice and experienced cryptographers alike.

Also featured in the release are enhancements to MegaCryption's OpenPGP encryption and decryption utilities. MegaCryption 6.4.1 provides a significant performance improvement when using algorithms AES, AES2, 3EDE, DES, and AUTO in conjunction with OpenPGP encryption and decryption. Further cryptography enhancements include additional algorithms and options via MegaCryptions Cryptography Wizard.

Another beneficial feature of MegaCryption 6.4.1 is the signature-validation utility. When signature validation is as important to your cryptography policy as the confidentiality of data, you may now escalate signature validation failures from the default "warning" status to become an "error" by including this new DD statement in your job step.

Aside from the improved cryptography algorithm support, and enhanced interoperability with other key management systems, MegaCryption also features a robust API for users to write their own subroutines; the direct implementation of cryptographic functions into databases, online transactions, applications and batch programs; the creation of self-decrypting archives for Windows users; VSAM and flat-file encryption; DB2 field-level encryption; and many other tools designed to meet all of an enterprises cryptography needs. Interested parties may read more about MegaCryption on the ASPG web site. Free trials of the software are also available.

ABOUT ADVANCED SOFTWARE PRODUCTS GROUP ASPG is an industry-leading software development company with IBM partnerships and Microsoft certifications, and for over 25 years has been producing award-winning software for data centers and mainframes, specializing in data security, storage administration, and systems productivity, providing solutions for a majority of the GLOBAL 1000 data centers.

For more information about ASPG, please contact our Sales Team by phone at 800-662-6090 (Toll-Free) or 239-649-1548 (US/International), 239-649-6391 (fax) or email at aspgsales@aspg.com. You can also visit the ASPG website at http://www.aspg.com.

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MegaCryption 6.4.1 Excels With Additions to Utilities, Algorithms, Key Management, and PGP Encryption Options