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Vladimir Putin reveals his views on women, gays and Edward Snowden – Zee News

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London: Russian President Vladimir Putin does not have bad days because he is "not a woman", and would rather not shower next to a gay man because he wouldn`t want to "provoke him".

The Russian President`s comments came in series of interviews with American film director Oliver Stone on topics ranging from geopolitics to gay rights and Edward Snowden.

"The Putin Interviews", a documentary comprised of conversations with the Russian president that took place between July 2015 and February 2017, show Putin musing on life and philosophy.

"Do you ever have a bad day?" Putin was asked during a tour of the Throne Room, and he said, "I`m not a woman so I don`t have bad days." He then doubles down on the misogyny, explaining that, "There are certain natural cycles which men probably have as well, just less manifested. We are all human beings.

It`s normal. But you should never lose control," the Guardian quotes Putin, as saying.On the question whether gays can serve in the military in Russia, Putin said, "If you`re taking a shower in a submarine with a man and you know he`s gay, do they have a problem with that?

"Putin even denied that there was any persecution of gay people in Russia, despite a law being passed against the "propaganda of homosexuality among minors" and recent reports of a "gay purge" in the Russian republic of Chechnya.

When asked whether he would be comfortable showering next to a gay man, he said no."I prefer not to go to the shower with him. Why provoke him? But you know, I`m a judo master," said Putin laughing.In the interview with Stone, Putin reveals that he once suggested to former U.S. president Bill Clinton that Russia may consider joining a Washington-led military alliance.

Commenting on U.S. National Security Agency whistleblower Edward Snowden, the Russian President said, "Snowden is not a traitor. He did not betray the interests of his country.

Nor did he transfer any information to any other country which would have been pernicious to his own country or to his own people. The only thing Snowden does, he does publicly."Putin also appeared to change the story of how Snowden ended up in Moscow."Our first contact with Snowden was in China.

We were told back then that this was a person who wanted to fight against violations of human rights," Putin said.At the time, however, Putin and other Russian officials gave the impression that the first Russia knew of Snowden was when he arrived in Moscow with the intention to transit to Latin America.

"Snowden arrived in Moscow, which was completely unexpected for us. He came as a transit passenger, so he didn`t need a visa or other documents," Putin said then.When asked if he was worried about assassination attempts, Putin said "They say those who are destined to be hanged are not going to drown.

"Putin, an ex- KGB Foreign Intelligence Officer for 16 years, said "I remember one of our last meetings with President Clinton, when Clinton was still in office. He visited Moscow and during a discussion I said, `So, what if [we] consider an option of Russia maybe joining NATO.

"While Clinton replied that he "didn`t mind," the rest of the American delegation became visibly nervous, Putin recalled with a smile.Putin called NATO "an instrument of America`s foreign policy," saying that the US-led alliance "has no allies, but only vassals.

"According to the Russian leader, some member states find it hard to resist Washington`s pressure, and thus, "anything can be easily placed" on their territories, including both anti-missile and offensive systems.

"And what are we supposed to do? Due to that, we have to take counter measures," Putin told his American interviewer. Promoted as "the most detailed portrait of Putin ever granted to a Western interviewer," it will feature interviews between the director and the Russian leader that were made during several encounters over two years.

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Vladimir Putin reveals his views on women, gays and Edward Snowden - Zee News

Encryption: Securing Sensitive Data in Changing Corporate …

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Data security has traditionally been seen as a matter of locking down data in a physical location, such as a data center. But as data migrates across networks, borders, mobile devices, and into the cloud and Internet of Things (IoT), focusing solely on the physical location of data is no longer relevant.

To prevent disclosure of sensitive corporate data to unauthorized people in this new corporate environment, data needs to be secured. Encryption and data masking are two primary ways for securing sensitive data, either at rest or in motion, in the enterprise. It is an important part of endpoint security.

Encryption is the process of encoding data in such a way that only authorized parties can access it. Using homomorphic encryption, sensitive data in plaintext is encrypted using an encryption algorithm, generating ciphertext that can only be read if decrypted.

In data masking, fake data replaces real data for users who should not have access to the real data, whether because of their role in the company or because they are attackers. Masking ensures sensitive data is obscured or otherwise de-identified.

Dynamic data masking can transform the data based on the user roles and privileges. It is used to secure real-time transactional systems and improve data privacy, compliance implementation, and maintenance.

With data masking, data is retained in its native form, and no decryption key is necessary. The resulting data set does not contain any references to the original information, making it useless for attackers.

Encryption scrambles data using nonreadable mathematical calculations and algorithms. An encryption system employs an encryption key generated by an algorithm. While it is possible to decrypt the data without possessing the key, significant computational resources and skills would be required if the encryption system is designed properly. An authorized recipient can easily decrypt the message with the key provided by the originator.

If the encryption key is lost or damaged, it may not be possible to recover the encrypted data from the computer. Therefore, enterprises need to set up rigorous key management processes, procedures, and technologies before implementing data encryption technologies.

Organizations should consider how key management practices can support the recovery of encrypted data if a key is lost or destroyed. Those planning on encrypting removable media need to consider how changing keys will impact access to encrypted storage on removable media, such as USB drives, and develop solutions, such as retaining the previous keys in case they are needed.

Encryption can be applied to endpoint drives, servers, email, databases, and files. The appropriate encryption depends upon the type of storage, the amount of data that needs to be protected, environments where the storage will be located, and the threats that need to be stopped.

Public key encryption is one use of public key cryptography, also known as asymmetric cryptography. Digital signature, in which a message is signed with the senders private key and can be verified by anyone who has access to the senders public key, is another well-known use of public key cryptography.

There are three primary types of encryption solutions: full disk encryption, volume/virtual disk encryption, and file/folder encryption. When selecting encryption types, enterprises should consider the range of solutions that meet their security requirements, not just the type that is most commonly used.

The top features that enterprises should consider when choosing an encryption system include centralized policy management, application and database transparency, low latency, key management interoperability, support for hardware-based cryptographic acceleration, support for compliance regulations, and monitoring capabilities.

There are many factors to consider when selecting storage encryption solutions, such as the platforms they support, the data they protect, and the threats they block. Some involve installing servers and software on the devices to be protected, while others can use existing servers, as well as software built into devices operating systems.

Unfortunately, encryption can result in loss of functionality or other issues, depending on how extensive the changes are to the infrastructure and devices. When evaluating solutions, enterprises should compare the loss of functionality with the gain in security capabilities and decide if the tradeoff is worth it. Solutions that require extensive changes to the infrastructure and end user devices should generally be used only when other options cannot meet the enterprises security needs.

An encryption protocol is a series of steps and message exchanges designed to achieve a specific security objective.

To ensure compatibility and functionality, enterprises should use standard-conforming encryption protocols such as Internet Protocol Security (IPSec), Secure Socket Layer (SSL), Transport Layer Security (TLS), Secure Shell (SSH), Secure/Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions (S/MIME), and Kerberos. Each has advantages and disadvantages. Some overlap in functionality, but each tends to be used in different areas.

IPSec provides encryption at the IP packet level and requires low-level support from the operating system and a configured server. Since IPSec can be used as a tunnel to secure packets belonging to multiple users and hosts, it is useful for building virtual private networks and connecting remote machines. The next-generation Internet Protocol, IPv6, comes with IPSec built in, but IPSec also works with IPv4.

SSL and TLS work over the Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) and link up with other protocols using TCP, adding encryption, server authentication, and authentication of the client. TLS is an upgrade to SSL that strengthens security and improves flexibility. SSL and TLS are the primary method for securing Web transactions, such as the use of https instead of http in URLs. A widely used open-source implementation of SSL is OpenSSL.

S/MIME is a standard for public key encryption and signing MIME data. With S/MIME, administrators have an e-mail option that is more secure than the previously used Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP). S/MIME brings SMTP to the next level, allowing widespread e-mail connectivity without compromising security.

SSH is the primary method of securing remote terminals over the internet and for tunneling Windows sessions. SSH has been extended to support single sign-on and general secure tunneling for TCP streams, so it is often used for securing other data streams. The most popular implementation of SSH is the open-source OpenSSH. Typical uses of SSH allows the client to authenticate the server, and then the user enters a password to authenticate the user. The password is encrypted and sent to the other system for verification. To prevent man-in-the-middle attacks, in which communication between two users is monitored and modified by an unauthorized third party, SSH records keying information about servers with which it communicates.

Kerberos is a protocol for single sign-on and user authentication against a central authentication and key distribution server. Kerberos works by giving authenticated users tickets, granting them access to various services on the network. When clients then contact servers, the servers can verify the tickets. Kerberos is a primary method for securing and supporting authentication on a local area network. To use Kerberos, both the client and server have to include code since not everyone has a Kerberos setup, complicating the use of Kerberos in some programs.

Most of the major security firms provide data encryption software for the enterprise. Here is a sampling of available enterprise data encryption software, which includes full disk encryption (for more in-depth discussions of vendors who provide full disk encryption, see eSecurity Planets articles 7 Full Disk Encryption Solutions to Check out and Full Disk Encryption Buyers Guide):

Check Point Full Disk Encryption Software Blade provides automatic security for data on endpoint hard drives, including user data, operating system files, and temporary and erased files. Multifactor pre-boot authentication ensures user identity, while encryption prevents data loss from theft.

Dell Data Protection Encryption Enterprise enables IT to enforce encryption policies, whether the data resides on the system drive or external media. Designed for mixed vendor environments, it also will not interfere with existing IT processes for patch management and authentication.

HPE SecureData Enterprise uses both encryption and data masking to secure corporate data. HPE SecureData de-identifies data, rendering it useless to attackers, while maintaining usability and referential integrity for data processes, applications, and services. It uses Hyper Format-Preserving Encryption, a high-performance format-preserving encryption.

IBM Guardium Data Encryption provides encryption capabilities to help enterprises safeguard on-premises structured and unstructured data and comply with industry and regulatory requirements. This software performs encryption and decryption operations with minimal performance impact and requires no changes to databases, applications, or networks.

McAfee (Intel Security) Complete Data Protection provides its own encryption tools and supports Apple OS X and Microsoft Windows-native encryption, system encryption drives, removable media, file shares, and cloud data. It also integrates with McAfees other enterprise security tools, such as data loss prevention.

Microsoft BitLocker Drive Encryption provides encryption for Windows operating systems only and is intended to increase the security surrounding computer drives. Having BitLocker integrated with the operating system addresses the threats of data theft or exposure from lost, stolen, or inappropriately decommissioned computers.

Sophos SafeGuard Encryption is always on, allowing for secure collaboration. Synchronized encryption protects data by continuously validating the user, application, and security integrity of a device before allowing access to encrypted data.

Symantec Endpoint Encryption provides endpoint encryption and removable media encryption with centralized management, as well as email, file share, and command-line tools. It also integrates with the companys data loss prevention technology.

Trend Micro Endpoint Encryption provides full disk encryption, folder and file encryption, and removable media encryption. It can also manage Microsoft BitLocker and Apple FileVault.

WinMagic SecureDoc Enterprise Server (SES) offers enterprises control over their data security environment, ensuring security and transparency in regular workflow. With full disk encryption and PBConnex technology, SES enables customers to streamline their IT processes.

In addition to these data encryption software solutions, enterprises could benefit from employing other encryption tools. An eSecurity Planet slideshow advises IT pros to build a portfolio of encryption tools to leverage each ones strengths. And for the DIY crowd, VeraCrypt offers an open source encryption option.

eSecurity Planet offers six tips for stronger encryption:

do not use old encryption ciphers

use longer encryption keys

encrypt in layers

store encryption keys securely

ensure that encryption implementation is done properly

consider external factors, such as digital signature compromise.

Increasingly, enterprises are adopting cloud computing and deploying Internet of Things (IoT) devices to improve efficiencies and reduce costs. However, these technologies can pose additional risks to corporate data.

Encryption could help secure the data, but not many enterprises are opting for that solution. For example, only one-third of sensitive corporate data stored in cloud apps is encrypted, according to a survey of more than 3,400 IT and IT security pros by the Ponemon Institute and Gemalto.

At the same time, close to three-quarters of respondents believe that cloud-based apps and services are important to their companys operations, and an overwhelming 81 percent expect the cloud to become more important in the near future.

Data encryption can be more challenging in the cloud because data may be spread over different geographic locations, and data is not on storage devices dedicated solely to an individual enterprise. One option is to require the cloud service provider to offer data encryption as part of a service level agreement.

Also, enterprises are increasingly using IoT devices, but few of them have security built in. One option to improve security is to encrypt the data that is transferred by IoT devices, particularly those that connect wirelessly to the network.

In sum, data encryption can be used to secure data at rest and in motion in the traditional enterprise environment, as well as the emerging environments of cloud computing and IoT deployments.

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Encryption: Securing Sensitive Data in Changing Corporate ...

ConCourt rules against e.tv in digital encryption case – Eyewitness News

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e.tv had challenged the government, saying an unencrypted system would hurt its ability to compete as encryption would allow government to offer better services to the public.

The Constitutional Court. Picture: Gia Nicolaides/EWN.

JOHANNESBURG The Constitutional Court has ruled that government did not behave unconstitutionally when it decided that it would implement a policy of unencrypted digital terrestrial television.

e.tv had challenged the decision, saying that an unencrypted system would hurt its ability to compete and that encryption would allow government to offer better services to the public.government to offer better services to the public.

The court ruled by five judges to four that government can continue to use an unencrypted system for digital terrestrial television and that e.tv's legal bid to stop the system must fail.

But judges have also criticised former communications minister Faith Muthambi for her conduct in refusing to name who she spoke to when she changed her mind from using an encrypted system to using an unencrypted system.

e.tv had said that using the unencrypted system would make it impossible for it to compete against other players over the longer term.

Writing for the majority, Chief Justice Mogoeng Mogoeng opened his ruling with the statement: Ours is a constitutional democracy - not a judiciocracy.

He then said this means that government - as the executive - must have the power to make policy, before saying that government did, in fact, conduct a proper process of consultation before deciding to use the unencrypted system.

But Mogoeng says this is not because of then Communications Minister Faith Muthambi, but because of the actions of the previous Minister Yunus Carrim.

He said that while Muthambi did not properly consult with e.tv when making her decision to use the unencrypted system, previous communications minister Carrim had fulfilled the legal obligations of the department when he had consulted with e.tv in a previous process.

Both Mogoeng's judgment and the dissenting judgement agreed that Muthambi was wrong to not explain who she spoke to when she changed her mind on this issue.

Mogoeng also castigated e.tv, saying it first argued strongly for an unencrypted system and then argued against it.

Mogoeng also said the effect of Muthambi's decision was to virtually maintain the status quo in terms of the relationships and obligations the various broadcasters have.

In their judgment, four other judges said they would have come to a different decision and that Muthambi had not explained why her conduct did not open the door to secret lobbying and influenced peddling.

(Edited by Zinhle Nkosi)

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ConCourt rules against e.tv in digital encryption case - Eyewitness News

TechNet to Hill: Query FBI Nominee on Encryption – Broadcasting & Cable

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TechNet wants Congress to grill President Donald Trump's new FBI director nominee on issues like privacy and encryption.

President Trump signaled Wednesdaythat he plans to nominate Christopher Wray, a partner at international law firm King & Spalding, as new FBI director.

That announcement came only a day before his fired FBI director, James Comey, is scheduled to testify before the Senate Intelligence Committee, which some Democrats were seeing as an attempt to distract attention from the run-up to Comey's testimony.

Reacting to the news, TechNet, representing tech CEOs and top execs, signaled because of the increasing interaction of the FBI and their industry, Congress needed to get his input on those issues.

Comey and the tech industry crossed paths, and to some degree swords, over the issue of government access to encrypted information, notably in the case of an Apple phone the FBI wanted to access in its investigation of the San Bernardino shooting.

With the nomination of Christopher Wray as Director of the FBI, the responsibility now falls on the United States Senate to ensure the nominee will do everything in his power to protect the American people and uphold the rule of law, said TechNet president Linda Moore. Because of the FBI's increasing engagement with the technology industry, this confirmation process must explore Mr. Wrays views on digital privacy rights, encryption technologies, and needed reforms to the Electronic Communications Privacy Act that account for modern advances in cloud computing"

TechNet executive council members include Microsoft President Brad Smith and Apple general Counsel Bruce Sewell.

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TechNet to Hill: Query FBI Nominee on Encryption - Broadcasting & Cable

Islamic State supporters shun Tails and Tor encryption for Telegram – ComputerWeekly.com

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Supporters of the terrorist group Islamic State (Isis) are shunning sophisticated security and encryption software, including the Tails operating system and the Tor network, which could be used to cover their tracks when viewingterrorist propaganda online, communications between jihadi sympathisers have revealed.

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The disclosures come as the UK government prepares to introduce new restrictions on encryption following the terrorist attacks that killed more than 20 people, including children, at a concert in Manchester, and killed eight andinjured 47 at London Bridge.

Isis has claimed responsibility for the Manchester and London attacks and has also been linked to atrocities in Paris, Germany and Brussels.

Confidential messages show that Isis supporters had little interest in encryption techniques to hide their web browsing activities, or to createa secureversion of propaganda websites that would be difficult for law enforcement to censor or take down.

The messages between supporters recovered by police and the FBI investigating an internet terrorist reveal that Isis supporters preferred method of communication is mobile phone apps Telegram Threema, ChatSecure and Signal, which are designed for people with little or no technical knowledge.

Internet terrorist Samata Ullah communicated with Isis supporters on a Telegram discussion group known as the Khayr group. Police also retrieved a guide to ChatSecure, another mobile phone chat app, from Ullahs computer.

Ullah, who was jailed for eight years in May 2017 after posting encryption training videos on an Islamist blogsite, sent messages to an unidentified Isis supporter raising concerns that the terror groups supporters were not using more secure communications tools.

I dont know Akhi [brother], he wrote. It seems they have some bad info. They refuse to use Wikr [a mobile phone messaging system] and tails. They say threema is the best, then signal, and in extreme case chat secure [sic].

Ullahs Isis contact replied: And they say telegram with virtual sim or open vpn is enough protection.

Another message reads: Dawla [Isis] security groups seem to be very stubborn and not very flexible.

It was only when one of Ullahscontacts inKenya was arrested on 29 April 2016 that attempts were made to persuade fellow Isis supporters to adopt stronger forms of encryption.

The Kenyan said in a letter smuggled out of prison: Tell all KN [Khalifa News] and CCA [Cyber Caliphate Army] teams to be very careful online. It is very much advisable that phones be avoided & instead use PCs with TOR and TAILS.

Many Isis supporters, who often refer to themselves as fanboys, have little technical knowledge and it is difficult to convince them to use encryption software, one counter-terrorism organisation told Computer Weekly.

They have experimented a couple of times with ZeroNet and Onion [Tor] sites on occasions, but those sites are usually very short-lived, a spokesman said, speaking on condition of anonymity. While there are some tech savvy supporters, the majority of their fan base is not very tech savvy and trying to get a newbie to not only understand ZeroNet and Tor but to actually use them consistently is a challenge.

Isiss policy is to saturate the internet with ideas and jihadi content, through social media platforms such as Twitter, according to a report by counter-terrorism think-tank Quilliam.

The terror group distributes daily videos and photographs, which are circulated as widely as possible through self-appointed distributors, often with no official connection to the organisation.

Islamic State has revolutionised jihadist messaging by jettisoning operational security in the pursuit of dynamism, Quilliam reports in a study, The Virtual Caliphate: Understanding Islamic States Propaganda Strategy.

Ullah proposed using ZeroNet which uses BitTorrent peer-to-peer networking and integrates with the Tor secure internet network to create a secure version of a pro-Islamic blogsite, Ansar al Khilafah (Supporters of the Caliphate).

The WordPress propaganda blogsite had attracted interest from the UKs media arm of Isis, according to messages recovered by investigators.

The head of English Islamic State media wants to have the right to proofread all content before it is published on the wordpress in future, one Isis supporter told Ullah. If you would agree to it, they would promote the wordpress.

Ullah replied: Sure. thats good.

But in a series of exchanges, it becomes clear that Isis had no interest in using ZeroNet to create a version of the blog that would be difficult for law enforcement to censor or take down.

An Isis supporter told Ullah: First thing is, the brother almost completely dismissed the idea of zero net. So you will either have to give up the idea or try and convince them.

David Wells, a former GCHQ intelligence officer, told Computer Weekly that mobile phone apps offered a more practical alternative to ZeroNet, Tails and Tor for Isis supporters that may not have technical expertise.

More secure technologies are rarely easy to use, and pragmatically any terrorist group would rather their networks were using something pretty secure than not communicating [at all] when needed or doing something stupid like [sending an] SMS, he said.

A forensic report revealed that Ullahs ZeroNet version of the Answar al Khilafah blog did not work in practice.

ZeroNet would have been cumbersome to use for Isis supporters who were used to exchanging news on social media. It required each user to download the blogs contents, including the Isis magazine Dabiq, onto their own computer, putting them at risk of possession of terrorist materials.

Correspondence recovered from Ullahs computer equipment revealed that he had struggled to find a way to update the ZeroNet version of the site without writing code for each update, and to find ways of displaying videos and other feature-rich content.

Isis favours the mobile app Telegram as a platform for sharing propaganda and for group discussions because it has the ability to create public channels that unlimited numbers of people can view, according to the counter-terrorism specialist.

Isis members begin by creating a private distribution channel on Telegram which is restricted to a few people. These members are responsible forcopying messages from the private channels to publicly advertised open channels, where teams of people then share them through disposable Twitter and social media accounts.

The public channels usually have multiple backups to keep the data flowing if one of them gets suspended by Telegram administrators, said the specialist. Since the private channels have no links to join, they are considered private by Telegram and therefore wont be shut down.

Telegram is said to take down an average of 100 to 200 public Isis channels a day, but Isis creates multiple back-ups of each channel to keep data flowing.

However, the messaging service does not take down private discussion groups between Isis supporters because they are not publicly accessible, said the counter-terrorism specialist.

Encrypted communications is pretty much all they [Isis] do. Id say if theyre not using a walkie-talkie or a cell phone, theyre on one of the encrypted [mobile] apps.

If Isis had taken up ZeroNet, it may have drawn the intelligence services attention to its activities, Wells told Computer Weekly.

If a terrorist group chooses a bespoke or unusual communications provider or service, then this has huge challenges for the intelligence services but it also allows them to focus their efforts, he said.

Experimenting with unproven systems is likely be a low priority for Isis commanders in Syria, who have to deal with the day-to-day realities of civil war with the Assad regime and US drone strikes, said Ross Anderson, professor of computer security at Cambridge University.

If I was running Daeshs technology and some foot soldier says why dont we use ZeroNet, I would say get lost, I have far more interesting and important things to do, said Anderson. Why should I spend weeks investigating this stuff and seeing if it works?

Isis may be avoiding Tor and Tails for similar reasons. The US National Security Agency (NSA) and the UKs GCHQ could narrow down the search for Isis supporters if the terror group started using specialist applications such as Tails and Tor.

Anderson said: They could just harvest all the Tails users in the observable universe and de-dupe them against lists of known users, look for all the new ones and go searching for those.

Isis has used a variety of techniques to avoid detection. During the attack on the Bataclan theatre in Paris in November 2015, terrorist teams used multiple pre-paid burner phones, which they instantly discarded.

Investigators found a crates worth of disposable phones, an investigation by the New York Times has revealed. They used only new phones that they would then discard, including several activated minutes before the attacks, or phones seized from their victims, it said.

Although investigators concluded that the attackers were likely to have used encryption software, no evidence of it was found.

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Islamic State supporters shun Tails and Tor encryption for Telegram - ComputerWeekly.com

Encryption leaves authorities ‘not in a good place’: Former US intelligence chief – ZDNet

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James Clapper at a Senate intelligence committee hearing in February. (Image: file photo)

James Clapper, Barack Obama's former director of National Intelligence, has said the issue of criminals and terrorists going dark by using end-to-end encrypted systems is causing issues in the United States.

"The so-called going dark phenomenon -- a situation that was dramatically accelerated by the Snowden revelations -- in our country, I don't think we're in a good place here," Clapper said at the National Press Club on Wednesday.

"I think there needs to be a very serious dialogue about giving criminals, terrorists, rapists, murderers, etcetera, a pass."

Clapper said he hopes technology giants will use the creativity and innovation that made the iPhone and turn it to a form of encryption that simultaneously protects privacy while allowing authorities to access its content, but he had no answers to offer himself.

"One of the approaches that might have promise, I don't know, would be circle back on a system of key escrow where not one party necessarily would have the keys to the kingdom from an encryption standpoint," he said.

"Where there might be three independent, separate, autonomous elements that would have to prove the provision of encryption in order to solve a crime or detect a terrorist attack, for example.

"We had some discussions about that in the waning days of the Obama Administration. I'm not a techie, but that appears to me to have some promise."

The former director of National Intelligence also said there is no single correct answer to the issues of whether intelligence agencies should disclose vulnerabilities in software to vendors, or use them to collect information.

In recent days, political leaders in the United Kingdom and Australia have called on social media companies and tech giants -- labelled by Australian opposition leader Bill Shorten as Big Internet -- to help provide access to encryption. It is an idea that Clapper is backing, particularly after a meeting with executives from Silicon Valley at the White House approximately 18 months ago.

"I was struck by the interest that the companies have in helping," he said. "I do think there is a role to play here in some screening and filtering of what appears in social media.

"I know this is a very sensitive, controversial issue, but in the same way that these companies very adroitly capitalise on the information that we make available to them and exploit it, it seems that that same ingenuity could be applied in a sensitive way to filtering out or at least identifying some of the more egregious material that appears on social media.

"I do think that as part of their social or municipal responsibility that they need to cooperate and if that means under some safeguarded way that they would have confidence in ... that law enforcement particularly, would be allowed access to encryption.

"I hear the argument about if you share once with one person and it's forever compromised -- I'm not sure I really buy into that."

Talking to ABC radio on Wednesday morning, Special Adviser to the Prime Minister on Cybersecurity Alastair MacGibbon stepped away from some of the rhetoric used by Australian politicians this week.

"The Australian government -- in fact, all governments with an interest in the safety of the public -- like encryption. End-to-end encryption helps reduce criminality against individuals, against governments and against business," MacGibbon said.

"But there's no absolutes. Clearly, encryption causes problems if you're investigating criminals or terrorists."

MacGibbon dismissed the issue of intelligence agencies using encryption backdoors to access communication content, and instead said investigations might be interested in a user's metadata and working with industry to solve crimes.

"No one is talking about back doors here," he said. "But as a police officer you'd execute search warrants. From time to time we do expect our privacy to be breached, but most of us don't ever have that privacy breached."

"And we need to take that same logic into the online space. That means, from time to time, you'd expect a law enforcement agency to break in to a private communication or to something that happens online."

MacGibbon said that regardless of whether it is a bus or an internet service, the public expects that service providers do not allow criminals or terrorists to abuse the service.

"There's nothing extreme about that. That's just what we expect offline and we should have that same philosophy online."

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Encryption leaves authorities 'not in a good place': Former US intelligence chief - ZDNet

Cryptography: The codes that got away – Nature.com

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Craig Bauer Princeton University Press: 2017. ISBN: 9780691167671

Buy this book: US UK Japan

Leemage/Corbis via Getty

The Phaistos disc, discovered in Crete in 1908, remains untranslated.

The concluding words of Unsolved! are a call to action. Craig Bauer, a US mathematician and editor-in-chief of the journal Cryptologia, ends his hefty history of cryptography by noting that even as he was compiling the book, unsolved ciphers from decades, sometimes centuries, in the past were coming to light on a regular basis, along with a plethora of new puzzles. For cryptography fiends, it's a thrown gauntlet.

Unsolved! spans a huge arc of time and space, from Julius Caesar's simple substitution cipher to composer Edward Elgar's 1897 Dorabella Cipher a still-unsolved letter to Dora Penny, a dedicatee of his Enigma Variations. Uncracked ciphers from the twentieth century are associated with the Irish Republican Army, a series of grisly murders in California and messages 'detected' from Mars.

Bauer's compelling chapter on the medieval Voynich manuscript occupies one-sixth of the book. In his 1967 The Codebreakers, cryptography historian David Kahn called the manuscript the longest, the best known, the most tantalizing, the most heavily attacked, the most resistant, and the most expensive of historical cryptograms. Its weird colour illustrations and indecipherable calligraphy attract 16% of online traffic to the library at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut, where it is held (A. Robinson Nature 539, 2829; 2016). Bauer speculates as to whether the manuscript is written in a monoalphabetic substitution cipher (MASC) each plaintext letter substituted with a letter from a single scrambled alphabet. A crackable MASCed text in English reveals the principles. But, as he shows, the Voynich manuscript has too much redundancy (order) to be MASCed English, French, German, Italian, Spanish or Japanese. (Wisely, Bauer offers no theories of his own.)

Unsolved! digs into the riches of ancient Viking, Roman, Greek and Egyptian cryptography. Egyptologists tend to avoid tackling the latter because of its sheer complexity. Bauer reveals how Caesar's cipher worked, substituting each plain-text letter with a letter a fixed number of places away in the alphabet. Inexplicably, however, he relegates to an endnote the undeciphered Phaistos disc found on Crete in 1908 the only example of its much-discussed script (A.Robinson Nature 453, 990991; 2008). Nor is there even a passing reference to Michael Ventris, celebrated for his 1952 decipherment of the script Linear B as a form of archaic Greek, or to the exciting solution of Central America's Mayan script, launched by Soviet linguist Yuri Knorozov.

Perhaps the most successful chapter centres on ciphers by the notorious, never-captured 'Zodiac Killer', who murdered at least five people in California in 196870 (dramatized in David Fincher's 2007 film Zodiac.) The murderer sent taunting letters to local newspapers, featuring four ciphers offering clues to his identity. The first was broken by husband-and-wife amateurs Donald and Bettye Harden. She guessed that a self-centred person might begin his message with 'I'; that 'KILL' might feature in it more than once; and even that the phrase 'I LIKE KILLING' might appear. This proved the key to translating the simple MASC to meaningful, if misspelt, English, although no sense could be made of the killer's signature, EBEORIETEMETHHPITI.

The Zodiac's other ciphers have proved resistant. Bauer hazards that a nine-letter 'word' with some resemblance to the ten-letter 'CALIFORNIA' may mean just that, although a letter is missing possibly due to lousy spelling. But would a killer with poor spelling, as opposed to someone like the wordplay-loving Elgar, be attracted to ciphering? Later, Bauer guesses that such misspellings were likely intentional.

The level of decoding skill needed for Unsolved! varies significantly. A willingness to grapple with plain text and cipher text is necessary, but some parts require undergraduate-level mathematics. One is the section on RSA, unveiled in the 1970s as one of the first practical public-key cryptosystems. The book's combination of convincing logic and sometimes-convincing speculation is a familiar mix to those of us interested in undeciphered writing, such as the script of the Indus civilization (A. Robinson Nature 526, 499501; 2015) and the rongorongo script used on Easter Island.

As science-fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke commented when I published Lost Languages (McGraw-Hill, 2002): Many, it seems likely, will never be deciphered which raises an interesting question. If we cannot always understand messages from our fellow humans how successful will we be when we receive the first communication from Outer Space? And Clarke was talking about ordinary writing systems. For all the clues analysed in Unsolved!, there is plenty of Earthly decoding to do before we tackle any extraterrestrial communiqus.

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Cryptography: The codes that got away - Nature.com

Flash Physics: Quantum cryptography for aircraft, AI boosts X-ray probe, cold nebula born in stellar collision – physicsworld.com

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Flash Physics is our daily pick of the latest need-to-know developments from the global physics community selected by Physics World's team of editors and reporters

The potential of using satellites for secure quantum communication has been demonstrated in a proof-of-concept study by researchers in Canada. Thomas Jennewein from the University of Waterloo and colleagues successfully sent quantum key distribution (QKD) transmissions from the ground to a moving aircraft for the first time. QKD uses the laws of quantum mechanics to guarantee complete security when two people exchange a cryptographic key using photons. If the key is read by a third party, this act of measurement will fundamentally change the nature of the key thereby alerting the two correspondents to the presence of the eavesdropper. On the ground, QKD transmissions can be sent via optical fibres but their range is limited to a few hundred kilometres because of absorption losses. While free space links have been shown to work over ground in both stationary and moving tests, they are also limited to a few hundred kilometres instead being held back by atmospheric absorption and turbulence, and the need for a clear line of sight. However, these drawbacks could be avoided by using satellites outside the Earths atmosphere. Jennewein and team therefore developed a system suitable for a satellite. Restricted to testing the system on Earth, the researchers set up a transmitter on the ground and used a Twin Otter aircraft to fly the receiver over it at angular rates similar to those of low-orbit satellites. They successfully achieved a quantum link for seven of their 14passes and were able to extract the secret key for six of them. This is an extremely important step, which took almost eight years of preparation, explains Jennewein. We have proved the concept, and our results provide a blueprint for future satellite missions to build upon. The study can be found in Quantum Science and Technology.

Machine learning has been used to improve how X-ray pulses are used to study molecular dynamics. The new technique was developed by an international team of researchers and tested using data from the Linac Coherent Light Source (LCLS-1) free electron laser (FEL) at SLAC in the US. Trains of X-ray pulses lasting just 1015fs are produced at LCLS-1 and can be used to study chemical reactions and changes in molecular structure on very short timescales. However, the processes involved in producing the pulses are inherently unstable, and the intensity and timing of the pulses can vary by as much as 100%. This means that large amounts of measurement data from molecular studies are difficult to interpret and have to be discarded. One way around this problem is to determine the properties of the pulses as they are produced. But this can interfere with the experiment and will become increasingly difficult to do with the shorter pulses that will be produced by next-generation X-ray sources. Now, Alvaro Sanchez-Gonzalez and Jon Marangos of Imperial College London and colleagues have developed a new artificial intelligence-based technique that can accurately predict the properties of the X-ray pulses based on real-time measurements of certain properties of the FEL. Crucially, these measurements can be made fast enough to match the rate at which the X-ray pulses are delivered. For current instruments, which generate about a hundred pulses per second, sometimes up to a half of the data is unusable, explains Sanchez-Gonzalez. "This problem will only be compounded in next-generation instruments, such as the European XFEL or LCLS-II, designed to generate hundreds of thousands of pulses per second. He adds, Our method effectively resolves the problem, and should work on the new instruments as well as the older ones we tested it on. This will allow useful data to be gathered up to a thousand times faster. The technique is described in Nature Communications.

Astronomers working on the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) in Chile have come up with an explanation of how the Boomerang Nebula described as the coldest object in the universe formed. Recent observations with ALMA allowed the team to make precise calculations of the nebulas extent, age, mass, and kinetic energy. The results suggest that the spectacular outflow of gas and dust was created when a small companion star plunged into the heart of a red giant, ejecting most the matter of the larger star. These new data show us that most of the stellar envelope from the massive red giant star has been blasted out into space at speeds far beyond the capabilities of a single, red giant star, said Raghvendra Sahai of NASAs Jet Propulsion Laboratory. The only way to eject so much mass and at such extreme speeds is from the gravitational energy of two interacting stars, which would explain the puzzling properties of the ultracold outflow. Wouter Vlemmings of Chalmers University of Technology in Sweden adds The extreme properties of the Boomerang challenge the conventional ideas about such interactions and provide us with one of the best opportunities to test the physics of binary systems that contain a giant star. Discovered in 1995, the nebula is an outflowing of gas and dust that is about 10times faster than could be produced by a single star. The temperature of the outflow is less than half a degree kelvin. This is much colder than deep space, which is about 2.7K. The study is reported in the Astrophysical Journal.

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Flash Physics: Quantum cryptography for aircraft, AI boosts X-ray probe, cold nebula born in stellar collision - physicsworld.com

Theresa May wants to ban crypto: here’s what that would cost, and … – Boing Boing

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/ Cory Doctorow / 8 am Sun, Jun 4 2017

Aaron Swartz once said, "It's no longer OK not to understand how the Internet works."

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He was talking to law-makers, policy-makers and power-brokers, people who were, at best, half-smart about technology -- just smart enough to understand that in a connected world, every problem society has involves computers, and just stupid enough to demand that computers be altered to solve those problems.

Paging Theresa May.

Theresa May says that last night's London terror attacks mean that the internet cannot be allowed to provide a "safe space" for terrorists and therefore working cryptography must be banned in the UK.

This is a golden oldie, a classic piece of foolish political grandstanding. May's predecessor, David Cameron, repeatedly campaigned on this one, and every time he did, I wrote a long piece rebutting him. Rather than writing a new one for May, I thought I'd just dust off a pair of my Cameron-era pieces (1, 2), since every single word still applies.

Theresa May says there should be no "means of communication" which "we cannot read" -- and no doubt many in her party will agree with her, politically. But if they understood the technology, they would be shocked to their boots.

Its impossible to overstate how bonkers the idea of sabotaging cryptography is to people who understand information security. If you want to secure your sensitive data either at rest on your hard drive, in the cloud, on that phone you left on the train last week and never saw again or on the wire, when youre sending it to your doctor or your bank or to your work colleagues, you have to use good cryptography. Use deliberately compromised cryptography, that has a back door that only the good guys are supposed to have the keys to, and you have effectively no security. You might as well skywrite it as encrypt it with pre-broken, sabotaged encryption.

There are two reasons why this is so. First, there is the question of whether encryption can be made secure while still maintaining a master key for the authorities use. As lawyer/computer scientist Jonathan Mayer explained, adding the complexity of master keys to our technology will introduce unquantifiable security risks. Its hard enough getting the security systems that protect our homes, finances, health and privacy to be airtight making them airtight except when the authorities dont want them to be is impossible.

What Theresa May thinks she's saying is, "We will command all the software creators we can reach to introduce back-doors into their tools for us." There are enormous problems with this: there's no back door that only lets good guys go through it. If your Whatsapp or Google Hangouts has a deliberately introduced flaw in it, then foreign spies, criminals, crooked police (like those who fed sensitive information to the tabloids who were implicated in the hacking scandal -- and like the high-level police who secretly worked for organised crime for years), and criminals will eventually discover this vulnerability. They -- and not just the security services -- will be able to use it to intercept all of our communications. That includes things like the pictures of your kids in your bath that you send to your parents to the trade secrets you send to your co-workers.

But this is just for starters. Theresa May doesn't understand technology very well, so she doesn't actually know what she's asking for.

For Theresa May's proposal to work, she will need to stop Britons from installing software that comes from software creators who are out of her jurisdiction. The very best in secure communications are already free/open source projects, maintained by thousands of independent programmers around the world. They are widely available, and thanks to things like cryptographic signing, it is possible to download these packages from any server in the world (not just big ones like Github) and verify, with a very high degree of confidence, that the software you've downloaded hasn't been tampered with.

May is not alone here. The regime she proposes is already in place in countries like Syria, Russia, and Iran (for the record, none of these countries have had much luck with it). There are two means by which authoritarian governments have attempted to restrict the use of secure technology: by network filtering and by technology mandates.

Theresa May has already shown that she believes she can order the nation's ISPs to block access to certain websites (again, for the record, this hasn't worked very well). The next step is to order Chinese-style filtering using deep packet inspection, to try and distinguish traffic and block forbidden programs. This is a formidable technical challenge. Intrinsic to core Internet protocols like IPv4/6, TCP and UDP is the potential to "tunnel" one protocol inside another. This makes the project of figuring out whether a given packet is on the white-list or the black-list transcendentally hard, especially if you want to minimise the number of "good" sessions you accidentally blackhole.

More ambitious is a mandate over which code operating systems in the UK are allowed to execute. This is very hard. We do have, in Apple's Ios platform and various games consoles, a regime where a single company uses countermeasures to ensure that only software it has blessed can run on the devices it sells to us. These companies could, indeed, be compelled (by an act of Parliament) to block secure software. Even there, you'd have to contend with the fact that other EU states and countries like the USA are unlikely to follow suit, and that means that anyone who bought her Iphone in Paris or New York could come to the UK with all their secure software intact and send messages "we cannot read."

But there is the problem of more open platforms, like GNU/Linux variants, BSD and other unixes, Mac OS X, and all the non-mobile versions of Windows. All of these operating systems are already designed to allow users to execute any code they want to run. The commercial operators -- Apple and Microsoft -- might conceivably be compelled by Parliament to change their operating systems to block secure software in the future, but that doesn't do anything to stop people from using all the PCs now in existence to run code that the PM wants to ban.

More difficult is the world of free/open operating systems like GNU/Linux and BSD. These operating systems are the gold standard for servers, and widely used on desktop computers (especially by the engineers and administrators who run the nation's IT). There is no legal or technical mechanism by which code that is designed to be modified by its users can co-exist with a rule that says that code must treat its users as adversaries and seek to prevent them from running prohibited code.

This, then, is what Theresa May is proposing:

* All Britons' communications must be easy for criminals, voyeurs and foreign spies to intercept

* Any firms within reach of the UK government must be banned from producing secure software

* All major code repositories, such as Github and Sourceforge, must be blocked

* Search engines must not answer queries about web-pages that carry secure software

* Virtually all academic security work in the UK must cease -- security research must only take place in proprietary research environments where there is no onus to publish one's findings, such as industry R&D and the security services

* All packets in and out of the country, and within the country, must be subject to Chinese-style deep-packet inspection and any packets that appear to originate from secure software must be dropped

* Existing walled gardens (like Ios and games consoles) must be ordered to ban their users from installing secure software

* Anyone visiting the country from abroad must have their smartphones held at the border until they leave

* Proprietary operating system vendors (Microsoft and Apple) must be ordered to redesign their operating systems as walled gardens that only allow users to run software from an app store, which will not sell or give secure software to Britons

* Free/open source operating systems -- that power the energy, banking, ecommerce, and infrastructure sectors -- must be banned outright

Theresa May will say that she doesn't want to do any of this. She'll say that she can implement weaker versions of it -- say, only blocking some "notorious" sites that carry secure software. But anything less than the programme above will have no material effect on the ability of criminals to carry on perfectly secret conversations that "we cannot read". If any commodity PC or jailbroken phone can run any of the world's most popular communications applications, then "bad guys" will just use them. Jailbreaking an OS isn't hard. Downloading an app isn't hard. Stopping people from running code they want to run is -- and what's more, it puts the whole nation -- individuals and industry -- in terrible jeopardy.

Thats a technical argument, and its a good one, but you dont have to be a cryptographer to understand the second problem with back doors: the security services are really bad at overseeing their own behaviour.

Once these same people have a back door that gives them access to everything that encryption protects, from the digital locks on your home or office to the information needed to clean out your bank account or read all your email, there will be lots more people wholl want to subvert the vast cohort that is authorised to use the back door, and the incentives for betraying our trust will be much more lavish than anything a tabloid reporter could afford.

If you want a preview of what a back door looks like, just look at the US Transportation Security Administrations master keys for the locks on our luggage. Since 2003, the TSA has required all locked baggage travelling within, or transiting through, the USA to be equipped with Travelsentry locks, which have been designed to allow anyone with a widely held master key to open them.

What happened after Travelsentry went into effect? Stuff started going missing from bags. Lots and lots of stuff. A CNN investigation into thefts from bags checked in US airports found thousands of incidents of theft committed by TSA workers and baggage handlers. And though aggressive investigation work has cut back on theft at some airports, insider thieves are still operating with impunity throughout the country, even managing to smuggle stolen goods off the airfield in airports where all employees are searched on their way in and out of their work areas.

The US system is rigged to create a halo of buck-passing unaccountability. When my family picked up our bags from our Easter holiday in the US, we discovered that the TSA had smashed the locks off my nearly new, unlocked, Travelsentry-approved bag, taping it shut after confirming it had nothing dangerous in it, and leaving it completely destroyed in the words of the official BA damage report. British Airways has sensibly declared the damage to be not their problem, as they had nothing to do with destroying the bag. The TSA directed me to a form that generated an illiterate reply from a government subcontractor, sent from a do-not-reply email address, advising that TSA is not liable for any damage to locks or bags that are required to be opened by force for security purposes (the same note had an appendix warning me that I should treat this communication as confidential). Ive yet to have any other communications from the TSA.

Making it possible for the state to open your locks in secret means that anyone who works for the state, or anyone who can bribe or coerce anyone who works for the state, can have the run of your life. Cryptographic locks dont just protect our mundane communications: cryptography is the reason why thieves cant impersonate your fob to your cars keyless ignition system; its the reason you can bank online; and its the basis for all trust and security in the 21st century.

In her Dimbleby lecture, Martha Lane Fox recalled Aaron Swartzs words: Its not OK not to understand the internet anymore. That goes double for cryptography: any politician caught spouting off about back doors is unfit for office anywhere but Hogwarts, which is also the only educational institution whose computer science department believes in golden keys that only let the right sort of people break your encryption.

(Image: Facepalm, Brandon Grasley, CC-BY))

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Theresa May wants to ban crypto: here's what that would cost, and ... - Boing Boing

What the hell is happening to cryptocurrency valuations? – TechCrunch

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The total market cap for all cryptocurrencies just surpassed $100 billion. The vast majority of these gains have come in just the last few months on April 1st the total market cap was just over $25 billion representing a 300 percent increase in value in just over 60 days.

While some of these gains are from bitcoin itself (BTC is up ~160 percent in the same two-month time frame), other digital currencies like Ethereum are also responsible for the increase, which on its own has increased ~439 percent over the last two months.

Theres perhaps no better way to show this diversity in gains than by looking at a chart of bitcoins dominance i.e. what percent of the entire cryptocurrency market cap is represented by bitcoin. For years this had always hovered around 80 percent, but in the last few months has fallen to below 50 percent with currencies like Ethereum and Ripple taking its place.

Source: coinmarketcap.com

Bubble talk?

Its hard to be an experienced investor, or even an at-home part-time trader, and not think of a massive bubble when you see that some asset has increased more than 400 percent in just a few months. Its just how history works when an asset rises that fast its a near certainty that it will come back down. Markets are irrational, after all.

So dont be surprised if theres at least some type of correction. There already was, a few weeks ago bitcoin pulled back from a high of $2,700 to around $2,000, but, as of today, has slowly climbed back up to a new all-time high of ~$2,850.

That being said, we may look back in 12 months and realize that this two-month period of insane growth was less of a bubble and more of a rebirth of cryptocurrencies as a whole.

The fact that these gains have come from currencies other than bitcoin are a good sign that this is less of a bubble and more of a resurgence of interest in crypto. It makes sense that Ethereum is on a tear the cryptocurrency has technological improvements over bitcoin, including the ability to code smart contracts directly into the blockchain, which in turn allow for things like the ability to build totally new tokens and even host ICOs (initial coin offerings).

And similarly, Ripple, a cryptocurrency based on inter-bank settlements, has signed up more than 100 banks worldwide. Even if this takes a while to implement (which anyone who works in the old-school banking industry will confirm), its still tangible news and a reason for people to get excited about the currency.

These recent developments certainly dont justify increases of 400 percent in 60 days. Both Ethereum and Ripple have been around for a lot longer than a few months. Soif these were publicly traded companies, there would be (almost) no reason for drastic rise in value. But cryptocurrencies are new most of the world has no idea what bitcoin is, let alone Ethereum and Ripple and other currencies.

The public has never been able to put their money directly into a technology that has so much potential but is still developing.

For example, a technology enthusiast in the 1990s may have foreseen the rise of the internet, but had no way to directly take a stake in the technology.The idea of applying cryptography to the storage and transmission of data is still very new. And the fact that anyone can directly buy the currency that powers these cryptographically securedblockchains is much like the public actually getting a chance to invest in the internet during its infancy.

There is one rational explanation that, if true, would totally justify this rapid increase in price across some of the major cryptocurrencies. And that is, maybe these currencies are actually worththese high prices, and maybe even worth many times more than that at which they are currently trading.

But the problem is we have no way to figure out their value. Cryptocurrencies arent public companies with earnings and expenses and EPS. For example, we can look at Apples financials and determine its book value what the companys assets would be worth if hypothetically liquidated today. Of course, stocks trade at a premium to this, because people are enthusiastic that Apple will continue to perform well and this book value will continue to rise.

But we cant do this with cryptocurrencies. We could guess and compare it to things like the total money or gold supply in the U.S. For example, if youre someone who thinks of cryptocurrencies as a store of value, the total estimated value of all gold in the world is more than $8 trillion dollars meaning if bitcoin would ever replace or supplant gold, its current value is pennies on the dollar.

If youre someone who thinks of cryptocurrencies as a genuine currency, you could compare the market cap to M2, which is the total money supply in the U.S. cash and checking accounts, as well as near-money accounts like savings, mutual funds and money-market securities. The total value of M2 is about $13.5 trillion, also meaning cryptocurrencies are just a small fraction of that.

Ive long cautioned readers (and friends) from buying cryptocurrencies because they have seen it rise and just want to make a quick buck. The past two months have led to a tremendous surge in public interest, with mainstream news like CNBC and CNN explaining how to invest in bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies.

Just make sure youre doing it for the right reasons. Buy cryptocurrency to learn about it and transact with it. Or buy it because you are betting that this new technology will change the world by:

These are just a few options, and if youre in tune with the cryptocurrency world, youll know the opportunities are endless. So if youre going to buy cryptocurrency, do it because you see the long-term vision (and sure, ostensibly the financial gains that may come from them), not because you think it will blindly appreciate and give you a good return on your investment.

The author holds bitcoin and Ethereum and other smaller cryptocurrencies.

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What the hell is happening to cryptocurrency valuations? - TechCrunch


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