By Stewart Baker August 3 at 9:39 PM

The evidence is mounting that Edward Snowden and his journalist allies have helped al Qaeda improve their security against NSA surveillance. In May, Recorded Future, a predictive analytics firm, publisheda persuasive timelineshowing that Snowdens revelations about NSAs capabilities were followed quickly by a burst of new, robust encryption tools from al-Qaeda and its affiliates:

This is hardly a surprise for those who live in the real world. But it was an affront to Snowdens defenders, whove long insisted that journalists handled the NSA leaks so responsibly that no one can identify any damage that they have caused.

In damage control mode, Snowdens defenders first responded to the Recorded Future analysis by pooh-poohing the terrorists push fornew encryption tools. Bruce Schneierdeclared that the change might actually hurt al Qaeda: I think this will help US intelligence efforts. Cryptography is hard, and the odds that a home-brew encryption product is better than a well-studied open-source tool is slight.

Schneier is usually smarter than this. In fact, the product al Qaeda had been recommending until the leaks, Mujahidin Secrets,probably didqualify ashome-brew encryption.Indeed, Bruce Schneier dissedMujahidin Secretsin 2008 on precisely that ground, saying No one has explained why a terrorist would use this instead ofPGP.

But as a secondRecorded Future postshowed,the products that replacedMujahidin Secretsrelied heavily on open-source and proven encryption software.Indeed, one of them uses Schneiers own, well-tested encryption algorithm, Twofish.

Faced with facts thatcontradicted his original defense of Snowden, Schneier was quick tooffer a new reason why Snowdensleaks and al Qaedas response to them still wouldnt make any difference:

Whatever the reason, Schneier says, al-Qaidas new encryption program wont necessarily keep communications secret, and the only way to ensure that nothing gets picked up is to not send anything electronically. Osama bin Laden understood that. Thats why he ended up resorting to couriers.

Upgrading encryption software might mask communications for al-Qaida temporarily, but probably not for long, Schneier said.It is relatively easy to find vulnerabilities in software, he added. This is why cybercriminals do so well stealing our credit cards. And it is also going to be why intelligence agencies are going to be able to break whatever software these al-Qaida operatives are using.

So, if you were starting to think that Snowden and his band of journalist allies might actually be helping the terrorists, theres no need to worry, according to Schneier, becauseall encryption software is so bad that NSA will still be able to break the terrorists communications and protect us. Oddly, though, thats not what he says when he isnt on the front lines with the Snowden Defense Corps. Ina 2013 Guardian articleentitled NSA surveillance: A guide to staying secure, for example, he offers very different advice, quoting Snowden:

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Volokh Conspiracy: As evidence mounts, it’s getting harder to defend Edward Snowden

IEEE Projects 2013 | IMAGE COMPRESSION WITH SHORT-TERM VISUAL ENCRYPTION USING
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A new program that encrypts files to extort money from users highlights that attackers dont need advanced programming skills to create dangerous and effective ransomware threats, especially when strong encryption technology is freely available.

Researchers from antivirus vendor Symantec recently came across a Russian-languagefor nowransomware program of which the core component is a simple batch filea command-line script file.

This development choice allows the attacker to easily control and update the malware, said Symantec researcher Kazumasa Itabashi in a blog post Thursday. The batch file downloads a 1024-bit RSA public key from a server and imports it into GnuPG, a free encryption program that also runs from the command line. GnuPG, which is an open-source implementation of the OpenPGP encryption standard, is used to encrypt the victims files with the downloaded key. If the user wants to decrypt the affected files, they need the private key, which the malware author owns, Itabashi said. In public-key cryptography, which OpenPGP is based on, users generate a pair of associated keys, one that is made public and one that is kept private. Content encrypted with a public key can only be decrypted with its corresponding private key. The new ransomware threat that Symantec calls Trojan.Ransomcrypt.L encrypts files with the following extensions: .xls, .xlsx, .doc, .docx, .pdf, .jpg, .cd, .jpeg, .1cd, .rar, .mdb and .zip. Victims are asked to pay a ransom of 150 (around US$200) to recover them. What sets Trojan.Ransomcrypt.L apart is not its use of public-key cryptography for encryptionother threats do the samebut its simplicity and the fact that the author chose to use a legitimate and open-source encryption program instead of creating his own implementation, which malware authors often do. There are some complex ransomware programs with advanced features that are developed with the primary goal of being sold to other cybercriminals who lack the skills to create their own.

However, Trojan.Ransomcrypt.L is proof that developing ransomware can be done for little cost and without advanced programming knowledge, which could lead to an increase in the number of such threats in the future.

Lucian Constantin writes about information security, privacy and data protection. More by Lucian Constantin

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Attackers can easily create dangerous file-encrypting malware, new threat suggests

IEEE Projects 2014 | Encryption for High Ef ficiency Video Coding
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tutorial Tunneling and Encryption

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Hands-on with Secusmart voice encryption on BlackBerry 10
During the BlackBerry Security Summit in NYC, we got a quick demo of Secusmart in action using a BlackBerry Z30 and BlackBerry Q10. Inside the devices is a s...

By: CrackBerry.com

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Hands-on with Secusmart voice encryption on BlackBerry 10 - Video

BlackBerry has acquired the encryption service that manages German Chancellor Angela Merkel's secrets.

In the wake of the Snowden leaks, security has been top of mind for consumers and businesses alike, and BlackBerry is hoping to take advantage of that with the acquisition of high-security voice and data encryption service Secusmart.

Terms of the deal were not immediately revealed.

The companies have previously partnered to bring Secusmart's technology to BlackBerry; SecuSUITE for BlackBerry 10 was selected last year by Germany's Federal Office for Information Security for the government's classified communications.

"We are always improving our security solutions to keep up with the growing complexity of enterprise mobility, with devices being used for more critical tasks and to store more critical information, and security attacks becoming more sophisticated," BlackBerry CEO John Chen said in a statement.

This acquisition "underscores our focus on addressing growing security costs and threats," Chen said. It also demonstrates the company's commitment to international agencies, counting among its customers all G7 governments, 16 of the G20 ministries, and a number of global enterprises. That includes German Chancellor Angela Merkel, BlackBerry said, who reportedly had her cell phone bugged by U.S. intelligence last year.

According to the company, BlackBerry carries more security certifications than any other mobile vendor, and is the only organization with official approval to run on U.S. Department of Defense networks.

"Secusmart and BlackBerry's solution already meets the highest security requirements of the German federal authorities and NATO for restricted communications," said Dr. Hans-Christoph Quelle, managing director of Secusmart. "We see significant opportunities to introduce Secusmart's solutions to more of BlackBerry's government and enterprise customers around the world."

BlackBerry recently updated its BBM messaging service to add Protected: the first solution in the recently announced eBBM Suite for "secure enterprise-class messaging."

BBM Protected provides separate encryption keys for each message sent, rather than one for an entire conversation, meaning a hacker would have to crack each individual code and then string them together to see the whole chat.

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BlackBerry Acquires Encryption Service Secusmart

Summary: Rackspace plans to utilize encryption and key management services from Vormetric's Transparent Encryption solution.

By Natalie Gagliordi for Between the Lines | July 29, 2014 -- 14:06 GMT (07:06 PDT)

Web-hosting company Rackspace is joining the Vormetric Cloud Partner Program, with plans to utilize encryption and key management services from Vormetric's Transparent Encryption solution.

More specifically, Rackspace customers will be able to secure data-at-rest environments within Rackspace's managed cloud. That extra level of security is needed for Rackspace customers with heavy compliance requirements, such as government or healthcare organizations.

Rackspace customers will also enjoy a boost in encryption speed within their managed cloud environments. The Vormetric Transparent Encryption tool touts a high speed, hardware-based encryption method using Intel AES-NI and Secure Key technologies.

Vormetric's VP of cloud C.J. Radford reiterated the security benefit the collaboration brings to Rackspaces managed cloud:

"Given that security is the No. 1 concern of enterprises looking to embrace cloud and hosting solutions, Vormetric gives Rackspace's customers the ability to use Vormetric's Transparent Encryption solution within Rackspace environments. By using Vormetric Transparent Encryption, Rackspace customers can seamlessly protect data with encryption and access controls, keep control of encryption keys within the enterprise, and gather the security intelligence that can identify when an attack is in progress."

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Topics: Cloud, Data Management

Natalie is a ZDNet staff writer based in Louisville, Kentucky.

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Rackspace joins Vormetric Cloud Partner Program

Vormetric on Tuesday announced that Rackspace Hosting has joined the Cloud Partner program, and will be offering encryption and key management services to customers via Vormetric's Transparent Encryption solution. Vormetric's Transparent Encryption combines the performance, flexibility, simplicity and scalability needed to safeguard data-at-rest within Rackspace's managed cloud environments, enabling customers to address their compliance requirements, and to help protect sensitive information.

"Organizations have increasingly adopted Rackspace as their provider of choice for enterprise class cloud and hosting solutions," said John Engates, CTO at Rackspace. "With Vormetric, we've added new capabilities to extend data security practices to our customer implementations across our managed cloud platform."

Rackspace customers can use Vormetric's Transparent Encryption solution within Rackspace environments.

A top concern that organizations have with encryption is performance. Vormetric Transparent Encryption addresses this concern with high speed, hardware-based encryption using Intel AES-NI and Secure Key technologies. The result is strong protection and great performance within Rackspace environments.

"Given that security is the #1 concern of enterprises looking to embrace cloud and hosting solutions, Vormetric gives Rackspace's customers the ability to use Vormetric's Transparent Encryption solution within Rackspace environments," explained Vormetric's vice president of cloud, C.J. Radford. "By using Vormetric Transparent Encryption, Rackspace customers can seamlessly protect data with encryption and access controls, keep control of encryption keys within the enterprise, and gather the security intelligence that can identify when an attack is in progress."

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Rackspace Joins the Vormetric Cloud Partner Program

IEEE Projects 2014 | A Lightweight Encryption Scheme for Network-Coded
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