« First «...10 20 30...1,846 1,8471,8481,849 1,850...1,860 1,870 1,880...»Last »

Why Russia might let Edward Snowden go – EJ Insight

Posted on February 27, 2017 by admin

Former CIA director Michael J. Morell told the media recently that Russian President Vladimir Putin should consider turning Edward Snowden, the former CIA contractor who currently remains in exile in Russia, over to the US authorities as a token of Moscows goodwill to the Trump administration.

The suggestion is being considered by the Kremlin,NBC reports, citing Russian sources.

I doubt whether Moscow would really turn Snowden over to the US at least in the short run, because it is obviously against Russian interests to do so.

Even though President Putin had implied that his government would take the initiative and improve relations with Washington once the Trump administration assumed office, I dont think Putin is likely to repatriate Snowden, whom President Donald Trump calls a traitor, as the young American defector remains a valuable asset to Russia.

On the intelligence level, despite the fact that the spy war between the US and the former Soviet Union, and now Russia, has been going on for decades, over the years Russian spies have been largely unsuccessful in their attempts to infiltrate the National Security Agency (NSA), Americas leading government institution overseeing national security.

However, the defection of Snowden and the secret information in his possession in fact have offered Moscow an extremely rare glimpse into the heart and soul of US intelligence.

Snowden has reiterated that he hasnt handed over any US state secret to the Russian authorities but as long as he remains on Russian soil, there is always a way for the Russian authorities to make him talk.

On the other hand, as far as propaganda value is concerned, Snowden could prove even more invaluable in this sense.

Over the years, Putin has been strongly criticizing the hypocritical nature of American democracy as a way to justify his personal dictatorship in Russia.

Given that, what is a better proof of American hypocrisy than project PRISM unveiled by Snowden?

In fact, the more ferociously the US comes after Snowden, the stronger the impression both within Russia and in the international community that he is a dissident and victim of political persecution, thereby enhancing Putins image as a protector of human rights and freedom.

Perhaps one should take notice that shortly after former US president Obama had pardoned Chelsea Manning, the US soldier who had been convicted of turning over highly classified information on Washingtons mass surveillance program on its own citizens to WikiLeaks, Russia announced that it would extend Snowdens length of stay to 2020, suggesting that Moscow is desperate to keep Snowden on its soil.

However, while Snowden might still prove a valuable asset to Moscow, he might become a liability or even a source of trouble in the eyes of the Kremlin if he stays in Russia indefinitely, not least because he has been critical of Russias human rights record and Putins dictatorship.

Besides, Snowden has also been criticizing Moscows own mass surveillance program, calling it not cost-effective, not necessary, and obviously oppressive.

Given Snowdens potential for becoming a vocal critic of Moscow, perhaps the best outcome for the Kremlin is for him to leave Russia after his visa expires and seek asylum somewhere else.

Turning Snowden over to the US will not only undermine Putins international image but may also scare off US billionaires and celebrities who have sought asylum in Russia in order to dodge heavy taxes.

Losing these rich and influential foreign guests might eventually turn out to be an even bigger loss than losing Snowden.

This article appeared in the Hong Kong Economic Journal on Feb. 23

Translation by Alan Lee

[Chinese version ]

RT/RA

Continued here:
Why Russia might let Edward Snowden go - EJ Insight

The Reichstag Warning – The New York Review of Books

Posted on February 27, 2017 by admin

European/FPG/Getty Images The shell of the Reichstag after the fire, Berlin, Germany, 1933

On February 27, 1933 the German Parliament building burned, Adolf Hitler rejoiced, and the Nazi era began. Hitler, who had just been named head of a government that was legally formed after the democratic elections of the previous November, seized the opportunity to change the system. There will be no mercy now, he exulted. Anyone standing in our way will be cut down.

The next day, at Hitlers advice and urging, the German president issued a decree for the protection of the people and the state. It deprived all German citizens of basic rights such as freedom of expression and assembly and made them subject to preventative detention by the police. A week later, the Nazi party, having claimed that the fire was the beginning of a major terror campaign by the Left, won a decisive victory in parliamentary elections. Nazi paramilitaries and the police then began to arrest political enemies and place them in concentration camps. Shortly thereafter, the new parliament passed an enabling act that allowed Hitler to rule by decree.

After 1933, the Nazi regime madeuse of a supposed threat of terrorism against Germans from an imaginary international Jewish conspiracy. After five years of repressing Jews, in 1938 the German state began to deport them. On October 27 of that year, the German police arrested about 17,000 Jews from Poland and deported them across the Polish border. A young man named Herschel Grynszpan, sent to Paris by his parents, received a desperate postcard from his sister after his family was forced across the Polish border. He bought a gun, went to the German embassy, and shot a German diplomat. He called thisan act of revenge for the suffering of his family and his people. Nazi propagandists presentedit as evidence of an international Jewish conspiracy preparing a terror campaign against the entire German people. Josef Goebbels used it as the pretext to organize the events we remember as Kristallnacht, a massive national pogrom of Jews that left hundreds dead.

The Reichstag fire shows how quickly a modern republic can be transformed into an authoritarian regime. There is nothing new, to be sure, in the politics of exception. The American Founding Fathers knew that the democracy they were creating was vulnerable to an aspiring tyrant who might seize uponsome dramatic event as grounds for the suspension of our rights. As James Madison nicely put it, tyranny arises on some favorable emergency. What changed with the Reichstag fire was the use of terrorism as a catalyst for regime change. To this day, we do not know who set the Reichstag fire: the lone anarchist executed by the Nazis or, as new scholarship by Benjamin Hett suggests, the Nazis themselves. What we do know is that it created the occasion for a leader to eliminate all opposition.

In 1989, two centuries after our Constitution was promulgated, the man who is now our president wrote that civil liberties end when an attack on our safety begins. For much of the Western world, that was a momentwhen both security and liberty seemed to be expanding. 1989 was a year of liberation, as communist regimes came to an end in eastern Europe and new democracies were established. Yet that wave of democratization has since fallen under the glimmering shadow of the burning Reichstag. The aspiring tyrants of today havenot forgotten the lesson of 1933: that acts of terrorreal or fake, provoked or accidentalcan provide the occasion to deal a death blow to democracy.

The most consequential example is Russia, so admired by Donald Trump. When Vlaimir V. Putin was appointed prime minister in August 1999, the former KGB officer had an approval rating of 2 percent. Then, a month later, the bombs began to explode in apartment buildings in Moscow and several other Russian cities, killing hundreds of citizens and causing widespread fear. There were numerous indications that this was a campaign organized by the KGBs heir, now known as the FSB. Some of its officers were caught red-handed (and then released) by their peers. A Russian parliamentarian announced one of the terror attacks several days before the bomb actually exploded.

Putin blamed Muslim terrorists and began the war in Chechnya that made him popular. He thereafterexploited more terrorist attacks to consolidate his rule: three years later, Russian security forces ended up gassing to death Russian civilians in a botched response to an attack at a Moscow theater. Putin used the negative press coverage as a justification for seizing control of television. In 2004, after the Beslan massacre, in which terrorists occupied a school and killed a large number of parents and children during a violent confrontation with Russian forces, Putin abolished the position of elected regional governors. And so the current Russian regime was built.

Once an authoritarian regime is established, the threat of terrorism can be used to deepen repression, or indeed to promote it abroad. In 2013 and 2014 the Russian media spread hysterical reports about a non-existent Ukrainian terrorist threat as the Russian army prepared and then fought a war in Ukraine. In 2015, Russia hacked into a French television channel, pretended to be ISIS, and broadcast messages apparently intended to frighten the French population into voting for the National Front, the far-right party financially supported by Russia (and whose leader, Marine Le Pen, is expected to reach the second round of the French presidential elections to be held this April and May). In 2016, the Russian media and Russian diplomats engaged in a large-scale disinformation campaign in Germany, spreading a false tale about refugees raping a girl of Russian originagain with the likely aim of helping the German far right.

The use of real or imagined terrorist threats to create or consolidate authoritarian regimes has become increasingly frequent worldwide. In Syria, Russias client Bashar al-Assad used the presence of ISIS to portray any opposition to his regime as terrorists. Our president has admired the methods of rule of both Assad and Putin. In Turkey, President Recep Tayyip Erdoan has used the July 2016coup attemptwhich he has called terrorism supported by the Westto justify the arrest of tens of thousands of judges, teachers, university professors, and to call for a referendum this spring that could give him sweeping new powers over the parliament and the judiciary.

Itis aspiring tyrants who say thatcivil liberties end when an attack on our safety begins. Conversely, leaders who wish to preserve the rule of law find other ways to speak about real terrorist threats, and certainly do not invent them or deliberately make them worse.

In this respect, the Bush administrations reaction to the September 11, 2001 attacks was not as awful as it might have been. To be sure, 9/11was used to justify the vast expansion of NSA spying and the torture of foreign detainees. It also became the speciouspretext for an ill-considered invasion of Iraq that killed hundreds of thousands of people, spread terrorism throughout the Middle East, and ended the American century. But at least the Bush administration did not claim that Muslims as a whole were responsible, nor try to change the basic rules of the political game in the United States. Had it done so, and succeeded, we might already today be living in a post-democratic country.

If we know the history of terror manipulation, we can recognize the dangersigns, and be prepared to react. It is already worrying that the president speaks unfavorably of democracy, while admiring foreign manipulators of terror. It is also of concern that the administration speaks of terrorist attacks that never took place, whether in Bowling Green or Sweden, while banning citizens from seven countries that have never been tied to any attack in the United States.

It is alarming that in a series of catastrophic executive policy decisionsthe presidents Muslim travel ban, his selection of Steve Bannon as his main political adviser, his short-lived appointment of Michael Flynn as national security adviser, his proposal to move the US embassy in Israel to Jerusalemthere seems to be a single common element: the stigmatization and provocation of Muslims. In rhetoric and action, the Trump administration has aggrandized radical Islamic terror thus making what Madison called a favorable emergency more likely.

It is the governments job to promote both freedom and safety. If we face again a terrorist attackor what seems to be a terrorist attack, or what the government calls a terrorist attackwe must hold the Trump administration responsible for our security. In that moment of fear and grief, when the pulse of politics might suddenlychange, we must also be ready to mobilize for our constitutional rights. The Reichstag fire has long been an example for tyrants; it should today be a warning for citizens.It was the burning of the Reichstag that disabused Hannah Arendt of the opinion that one can simply be a bystander. Best to learn that now, rather than waiting for the flames.

Continued here:
The Reichstag Warning - The New York Review of Books

How The Media Are Using Encryption Tools To Collect Anonymous Tips – NPR

Posted on February 27, 2017 by admin

The Washington Post and other media organizations have launched Web pages outlining ways you can leak information to them confidentially. Brendan Smialowski/AFP/Getty Images hide caption

The Washington Post and other media organizations have launched Web pages outlining ways you can leak information to them confidentially.

There was a time when a whistleblower had to rely on the Postal Service, or a pay phone, or an underground parking garage to leak to the press.

This is a different time.

A renewed interest in leaks since Donald Trump's surprise election victory last fall, and a growth in the use of end-to-end encryption technology, have led news organizations across the country to highlight the multiple high-tech ways you can now send them anonymous tips.

The Washington Post, The New York Times, and ProPublica have launched Web pages outlining all the ways you can leak to them. ProPublica highlights three high-tech options on its page (in addition to the Postal Service): the encrypted messaging app Signal, an encrypted email program called PGP (or GPG), and an anonymous file sharing system for desktop computers called SecureDrop. The Washington Post goes even further, highlighting six digital options.

Jeff Larson, a reporter at ProPublica, says of all this, "We're living in almost a golden age for leaks."

Some tools like SecureDrop, created by the Freedom of the Press Foundation, were made just for newsrooms to accept anonymous tips. Others, like Signal, the premier encrypted messaging app on the market right now, were created with a different, and more universal purpose.

Moxie Marlinspike, one of the creators of Signal, says it's for everyone who might not be aware that a lot of their communication might not actually be private.

"What we're really trying to do is bring people's existing reality in line with people's expectations," Marlinspike says. "Most of the time when people send someone a message, their assumption is that that message is only visible to themselves and the intended recipient. It's always disappointing when that turns out not to be true."

SecureDrop, created by the Freedom of the Press Foundation, was designed for newsrooms to accept anonymous tips. SecureDrop/Screenshot by NPR hide caption

Trevor Timm, executive director of the Freedom of the Press Foundation, says newsrooms' and leakers' reliance on these tools also speaks to a new reality.

"We're living in a golden age of leaks but we're also living in a golden age of surveillance," Timm says. "It is very easy for the government, for example, to subpoena a Google, or a Verizon, or an AT&T to get a journalist's phone records, or email records, that tells them who they talked to, when they talked to them, and for how long. Over the past 8 or 10 years, the government has been able to prosecute a record number of journalists, and the primary way they've been able to do this is because of their increased surveillance capabilities."

That heavier scrutiny of the press and its sources has come from both sides of the aisle. This month, President Trump directed the Justice Department to investigate what he calls "criminal leaks" coming from the federal government, and in a speech Friday at the Conservative Political Action Conference, he said journalists should not be allowed to use unnamed sources.

The Obama administration used the Espionage Act multiple times to prosecute leaks (more than any other administration according to PolitiFact), as well as secretly seizing Associated Press reporters' phone records.

While many encryption apps are used to bypass such surveillance of communications between leakers and the press, some apps are being used by staffers within the government to communicate with each other. A recent Washington Post article stated that some White House staffers are relying on an encrypted messaging app called Confide to communicate with each other without using official phones or email, out of a fear of leaks.

But using an app like that to make official White House communications private raises red flags for Chris Lu, former Deputy Labor Secretary under President Barack Obama.

"At the White House and at the Department of Labor," Lu says, "we were given very clear training and guidance about the Presidential Records Acts and maintaining documents." The Washington Post story, he says, "instantly raised red flags whether it was in compliance with the Presidential Records Act. And it clearly is not." (That law is meant to ensure that communications in the White House are maintained for historical purposes.)

Confide CEO Jon Brod says his company advises all users to follow the rules of their employers, if they're using Confide to talk to coworkers.

"There are certain industries and sectors where specific people and certain types of conversations are regulated," Brod says, pointing to financial services, health care, and parts of the government. "If you are in one of those industries or sectors, it's important that you use Confide in a way that conforms to any of those regulations that may be relevant to you."

Of course, the legality and ethics of such communications between government workers, as well as between the press and government leakers, often depends on who you ask.

For Moxie Marlinspike of Signal, there is no question on one thing: whether or not apps such as his are good for society. "I think what we're seeing is things like Signal almost democratizing that ability (to leak)," he says. "So people who are not necessarily at these high-level posts, but just ordinary workers, are able to communicate what's going on to people outside of government. If you're the director of the CIA, you don't need Signal."

But with the growth of apps like Signal and encryption technology, there might not ever be a way to tell just how ubiquitous all this high-tech leaking becomes. Often the data is so secret that there are few metrics to read, if there are any at all. "We don't have any information about our users," Marlinspike says. "That's how end-to-end encryption works: Even us, we don't have that kind of information."

The rest is here:
How The Media Are Using Encryption Tools To Collect Anonymous Tips - NPR

Trump inspires encryption boom in leaky DC – Politico

Posted on February 27, 2017 by admin

Poisonous political divisions have spawned an encryption arms race across the Trump administration, as both the presidents advisers and career civil servants scramble to cover their digital tracks in a capital nervous about leaks.

The surge in the use of scrambled-communication technology enabled by free smartphone apps such as WhatsApp and Signal could skirt or violate laws that require government records to be preserved and the publics business to be conducted in official channels, several ethics experts say. It may even cloud future generations knowledge of the full history of Donald Trumps presidency.

Story Continued Below

The operative word is accountability. You cannot hold an agency or someone accountable if records are not kept and made available, said John Carlin, a former Democratic Kansas governor who served as the archivist of the National Archives from 1995 to 2005. If there is a hearing or investigation someday and no access to records, there is not much you can do.

White House press secretary Sean Spicer has pointedly warned his staff that using encrypted apps would violate a law requiring the preservation of presidential records, POLITICO reported Sunday.

Conservative advocacy groups also denounce the use of encrypted technologies by career employees, comparing it to Hillary Clintons use of a private email server when she was secretary of State. The House Science Committee has demanded an inquiry into the use of encryption by employees at the Environmental Protection Agency although it has shown no similar curiosity about use of encryption in the White House.

Its stunning that its still going on in light of the Clinton email scandal, said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton, who has been critical of the use of encrypted messaging by both civil servants and the White House. Its no different than what she was doing.

Defenders of federal workers say interest in encryption has skyrocketed as career employees ponder how to respond to an administration they fear will break the law and punish dissent in pursuit of a radical agenda. Jon Brod the co-founder of Confide, a company that offers an encrypted messaging program of the same name said the company has seen a surge in use of its app following the election.

People in the government are finding many uses for encryption, including internal conversations and leaks to the news media.

More than 70 workers from several agencies are using encrypted cellphone apps to arrange nighttime and weekend meetings at homes in the D.C. area to discuss their potential resistance to Trump, said Danielle Brian, executive director of the Project on Government Oversight.

She said the employees want to know what to do if they see something illegal happening at their agencies, how to report misdeeds to Congress or inspectors general, and what is protected under whistleblower laws. The demand is so great that POGO plans to hire a full-time employee to train workers across the country on how to report problems, keep their jobs and use encrypted messages to communicate and organize outside of work.

In addition to the EPA, employees at the State Department, the Department of Homeland Security, the Department of Transportation and other agencies are using encrypted messaging apps, POLITICO has learned.

We are responding to an increasing level of anxiety in the federal workplace about free speech rights and civil liberties, said POGO's Brian, who has attended three private sessions to offer advice on government workers legal protections. This is a whole new world for us.

Federal workers told POLITICO they've adopted encrypted apps because they fear being targeted by Trump's political allies.

"Its very scary," one career civil servant said in an interview, requesting anonymity to avoid possible retaliation. "You dont know who to trust.

Trump has made no secret of his desire to uncover the sources of the many leaks that have roiled the first month of his presidency. The spotlight has finally been put on the low-life leakers! he wrote on Twitter earlier this month. They will be caught!

The hunt for leaks has swept up the White House communications staff, where Spicer has begun quietly cracking down on the use of encrypted apps. POLITICO reported Sunday that Spicer recently checked White House staffers phones and warned them against using apps like Confide, which deletes messages as soon as theyre read, and Signal, which also has an optional setting to automatically delete messages.

The crackdown came after some political appointees in Trumps White House began using the encrypted apps so they can have covert conversations with journalists and their colleagues. But it remains unclear if top White House officials can completely halt the use of the apps. And at least some staff were still using them as of earlier this month, sources say.

"To my knowledge, no one in the [White House] is using the Confide app or any other similar app and we go to great lengths to preserve all records," a White House official told POLITICO in an email late last week.

However, a BuzzFeed reporter determined that Spicer and White House aide Hope Hicks had once downloaded the Confide app, the site reported this month after using a feature that lets users find contacts who have already signed up. Spicer told BuzzFeed he used Confide only once "months ago."

The White House official told POLITICO that Hicks "does not use the app and deleted it from her phone." The official did not respond to follow-up questions about how the White House knows other staff aren't using the app.

Trump staffers are keenly aware of the risks of their internal communications going public, having faced widespread leaking from their own ranks during the campaign and having seen the damaging fallout from last year's dumps of hacked emails from Democrats such as Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta.

Yet ethics experts argue that the use of encrypted messaging apps by White House staff for official business would be a clear violation of the law. "At a minimum, the White House ought to explain what record preservation steps it is taking," said Norm Eisen, former ethics czar under ex-President Barack Obama and co-founder of the group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington. "If they refuse to answer those questions, it is fair to assume they are at risk of violating the law."

For both the Trump team and the career employees, encrypted apps like Signal, WhatsApp, Confide and Wickr make it easier to communicate in secret by leaving would-be snoops with unreadable strings of text thwarting any hackers or government investigators who might get hold of the messages. Thats on top of the strong encryption offered by devices such as the latest iPhones, which the FBI has complained it cant crack even in drug or terrorism investigations.

Its unclear whether the career employees are breaking any laws. While it is illegal for federal employees to hold secret discussions to conduct government business, several workers insisted in interviews that they use the apps only for personal communications.

A spokeswoman at the National Archives, which maintains the governments records, said in an email that personal opinions by and between agency employees, even about senior agency officials, would not likely meet the definition of a federal record that must be preserved.

But experts say the nature of encryption technology makes it difficult to tell what the employees are discussing. Conservative groups are exploiting that fact to target federal workers who are critical of Trump.

"Any effective regulation of federal employee behavior is heavily predicated on learning that that misconduct has occurred, said Dan Metcalfe, the former director of the Justice Departments Office of Information and Privacy, who spent more than two decades guiding federal agencies on Freedom of Information Act issues. Thats the only way you can regulate it after the fact.

White House staffers are bound by the Presidential Records Act, a post-Watergate law that requires the preservation of official government records. It allows public access to those documents after a waiting period that can stretch from five to 12 years.

Other federal employees must abide by the Federal Records Act, which similarly requires the preservation of government documents. But the law allows more speedy public access to those documents through Freedom of Information Act requests.

The Federal Records Act was amended in 2014 to include all electronic messages, including text messages, voice mails and messaging apps. July 2015 guidance to federal agencies from the National Archives specifically mentions WhatsApp as an example of an application whose messages must be preserved if they pertain to government business.

But even if the technology is new, attempts to skirt federal records laws arent.

This is just another variation on the theme, Fitton said about the use of encrypted messaging apps to communicate. Its not a new issue issue. Its just a new flavor. It doesnt matter the technology because the agencies are required to maintain these records. You can delete text messages and emails too.

Staffers in Republican and Democrat administrations alike often keep sensitive information out of emails, preferring phone conversations, which largely arent subject to record keeping laws. The Reagan, George H.W. Bush and Clinton administrations strongly resisted calls to preserve their email records (the Reagan White House adopted a rudimentary form of email in the 1980s), resulting in a years-long legal battle.

George W. Bush administration officials faced criticism for using non-government email accounts. And Obama administration officials were caught using alternative email addresses that obscured their identities.

Indeed, resistance to preserving records dates back to the early days of the country. Martha Washington and Thomas Jefferson famously burned their correspondence with their spouses, for example, keeping many of their private thoughts out of reach of later generations.

But the wide availability of encrypted messaging makes secrecy easier than ever.

Its certainly easier to circumvent public records laws in a written format now than it ever has been, said Mark Rumold, a senior staff attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a nonprofit group that pushes for government transparency.

Republicans in Congress are increasingly frustrated, worrying that career employees are secretly undercutting Trumps policies.

After POLITICO reported this month that several EPA employees were using Signal, House Science Chairman Lamar Smith (R-Texas) asked the agencys inspector general to look into the issue. Several right-leaning groups have filed FOIA requests seeking EPA employees communications using Signal.

But Smith and other Republicans have not publicly committed to investigate encryption at the White House. A spokeswoman for Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah), chairman of the House Oversight Committee, declined to comment when asked whether he is looking into the issue.

Some Democrats counter that federal workers should be protected, citing whistleblower laws that shield workers from retribution if they report law-breaking or gross mismanagement.

Reps. Ted Lieu (D-Calif.) and Rep. Don Beyer (D-Va.) even released a guide that underscores federal workers rights. The guide appears to endorse the use of encrypted apps, calling them a safe bet.

In an interview, Lieu said, I just want to make clear to federal employees, Congress passed an entire law protecting whistleblowers."

Tim Starks contributed to this story.

Google End-to-End encrypted email code goes open-source – ZDNet

Posted on February 27, 2017 by admin

Google

Google has announced that E2EMail, an experimental end-to-end encryption system, has now been given to the open-source community with no strings attached.

Whether you are concerned about government surveillance and spying, man-in-the-middle (MiTM) attacks by threat actors or you are an enterprise player with the need to keep communications as secure and private as possible, end-to-end encryption is viewed as a method to prevent snooping.

Not every email service provider offers end-to-end encryption -- the best-known being PGP -- although, in the wake of former NSA contractor Edward Snowden's disclosures concerning the mass-spying efforts of the US government, more services have popped up or increased in popularity, including ProtonMail, Wire, WhatsApp, and Signal.

As we become more concerned with digital threats and surveillance, everything from email services to apps and social network chats is being locked up with cryptographic methods.

However, end-to-end encryption is yet to reach a wider audience -- and this is where Google intends to make a difference.

Last week, Google engineers KB Sriram, Eduardo Vela Nava, and Stephan Somogyi said in a blog post that as part of the tech giant's End-to-End research efforts, E2EMail is going open-source.

Built on the Javascript crypto library developed at Google, E2EMail offers a way to integrate OpenPGP into Gmail via a Chrome Extension while keeping cleartext of messages exclusively on the client.

Google is keen to emphasize that E2EMail is not a Google product, but thanks to the efforts of security engineers from across the spectrum, it is now a "fully community-driven open-source project."

The current form of E2EMail is rather bare when it comes to keyserver testing. However, Google's Key Transparency, made available earlier this year, may improve the security of the service far beyond its current incarnation.

"Key discovery and distribution lie at the heart of the usability challenges that OpenPGP implementations have faced," Google's engineers say. "Key Transparency delivers a solid, scalable, and thus practical solution, replacing the problematic web-of-trust model traditionally used with PGP."

"We look forward to working alongside the community to integrate E2EMail with the Key Transparency server, and beyond," the team added.

See also: Linus Torvalds on SHA-1 and Git: 'The sky isn't falling'

If you're interested, you can check out the e2email-org/e2email repository on GitHub.

Last week, Google gave the "Upspin" project to the open-source community. Upspin aims to reduce the fragmentation of current services such as Dropbox, Google Storage and Apple's iCloud and the amount of time wasted on "multi-step copying and repackaging" by creating a global namespace for files. Upspin is a set of protocols and standards which puts secure sharing at the forefront and is enabled with end-to-end encryption by default.

See the original post:
Google End-to-End encrypted email code goes open-source - ZDNet

Decipher your Encryption Challenges – Infosecurity Magazine

Posted on February 27, 2017 by admin

Every company I speak with is throwing the kitchen sink at protecting their network from external attackers, data breaches and mobile device loss. At the heart is the fundamental point that we all must accept: that where once corporate data sat ring-fenced on a server, it is now dispersed geographically, across many different devices, and moving all the time.

As IT and security professionals we keep battling with the need to keep the drawbridge down, but stop the baddies getting in, and ensure soldiers (data) outside the castle walls are safe.

Encryption has played a key role in protecting data for a long time. Thousands of years before the computer appeared there were Hebrew mono-alphabetic substitutions, and of course the use by the Romans of ciphers, being just a couple of examples. Yet despite its clear benefits in protecting against prying eyes, for a long time it fell out of favor.

Certainly, in early computing it was a complete pain to work with, and some might use stronger language than that! Whilst vendors eventually got their heads around making it more usable, the world moved on, and the problem is no longer simply about protecting data at point A.

Precisely because of the problems we laid out earlier the need to manage encryption across devices, locations and users have become an IT imperative. Any security professional knows that complexity leads to risk, and that spells danger for the enterprise. Not just from invaders, but risks of regulatory non-compliance, accidental data breaches, or simply the loss of a smartphone.

The challenge therefore has become to simplify the security landscape in the organization, without compromising on protection. In the case of encryption, this means being able to manage encryption across on-premise, cloud, hybrid-cloud and a myriad of devices, as well when it is with users who may not belong to your company.

Centralized encryption management solves the problem by ensuring keys are controlled from one point, and more importantly the keys themselves are stored outside the organization: after all there is no point locking your data in a box, but leaving the key in the lock!

This alone is not enough in the modern enterprise, you need to be able to manage that same encryption across cloud services, virtual machines and resources that you do not own. Its important to ensure that when you look at choosing an encryption provider that you consider this reality, otherwise you leave yourself greatly exposed.

Encryption is here to stay, it is the last line of defense when a breach occurs, whatever action caused it, invader or accident. With so much at stake for a business in terms of reputation damage, regulatory fines, and ultimately the bottom line, centralized encryption management is the route to bringing clarity to effective encryption. Remember, nobody ever got fired for implementing encryption, but they probably did for mismanaging it.

Read the original:
Decipher your Encryption Challenges - Infosecurity Magazine

Axis Bank case: To make Aadhaar safe, encryption devices coming soon, more in store – Financial Express

Posted on February 27, 2017 by admin

Even Aadhaar sceptics would do well to keep in mind that, while a criminal complaint has been filed against Axis Bank, Suvidhaa Infoserve and eMudhra for allegedly storing biometrics and using them in an unauthorised manner, it was UIDAI that discovered the irregular transactions and reported them to the Delhi Polices cyber cell and, pending a probe, all transaction requests from these organisations have been put on hold. If the UIDAI system is able to detect fraud, as the banks did when they found millions of debit/credit cards had been compromised due to a faulty switch in a payments gateway some months ago in India, presumably that would mean it was working well. Under normal circumstances, as a safety feature, every time a transaction is made like withdrawing funds from a bank and UIDAI replies to an authentication request, an SMS/email alert is sent to the subscriber.

So, why didnt UIDAI send out alerts this time around when, going by a report in The Times of India, one individual performed 397 transactions, many of which were based on biometrics that were stored locally and bunched during one week in January? Is this an example of Aadhaar being open to misuse since banks, etc, can store your biometrics and use them to illegally authorise transactions later? There have also been reports of one website publishing Aadhaar data of 500,000 minorsthis, of course, is a list of names and matching Aadhaar numbers, but does not have actual biometricsand of white-hat hackers generating iris scans from high-resolution photographs and even the possibility of data being compromised since Aadhaar registrations/verifications are typically done by several private firms.

First, as UIDAI officials point out, since the individual doing the transactions was using his own Aadhaar number, the alerts went to himto that extent, the systems first fail-safe worked. Had the stored biometrics belonged to someone else, say a reader of this newspaper, she would have got the SMS/email alerts and would have escalated matters. Two, since the authentication request, and the reply, are encrypted at a 2048-bit levelnormal encryption levels are 128 or 256UIDAI officials argue this makes the system very safe from hacking. But what of cases where the biometrics are stolen, or generated from high-resolution photographs, and then stored locally? Since security has to be an evolving feature, designed to beat threats as they occur or before they do, UIDAI plans to introduce the concept of registered devices.

You might also want to see this:

For the last few months, UIDAI has been working with vendors of biometric-capture devices to get them to install an Aadhaar-encryption key in the hardware itselfamong other things, it ensures the biometric data used is captured live and is not stored data. Last month, it was notified that, after May, no data requests will be entertained if they come from unregistered devicesexisting biometric devices, such as those in ration shops already, are to be upgraded through software right now and those bought in the future must have the necessary pre-installed keys. It is certain criminals will find smarter ways to beat the system, and UIDAI will have to keep evolving to heighten securityto the extent some beat the system, or try to, as happens in the case of bank frauds, the criminal justice system has to be used to punish them.

Please Wait while comments are loading...

Follow this link:
Axis Bank case: To make Aadhaar safe, encryption devices coming soon, more in store - Financial Express

Kerala government adopts open source software in schools, saves Rs 300 crore – BGR India

Posted on February 27, 2017 by admin

The Kerala government has made a saving of Rs 300 crore through introduction and adoption of Free & Open Source Software (FOSS) in the school education sector, said a state government official on Sunday. IT became a compulsory subject in Kerala schools from 2003, but it was in 2005 only that FOSS was introduced in a phased manner and started to replace proprietary software.

The decision made by the curriculum committee to implement it in the higher secondary sector has also been completed now. K. Anwar Sadath, executive director IT@School, said they have been entrusted the job for easy classroom transaction of chapters including customization of applications, teachers training, and video tutorials.

The proprietary version of this software would have incurred a minimum cost of Rs 150,000 per machine in terms of licence fee. Hence, the minimum savings in a year (considering 20,000 machines) is Rs 300 crore. Its not the cost saving that matters more, but the fact that the Free Software licence enables not only teachers and students but also the general public an opportunity to copy, distribute and share the contents and use it as they wish, he said.

See the article here:
Kerala government adopts open source software in schools, saves Rs 300 crore - BGR India

ESI Group: Acquisition of Scilab Enterprises, Publisher of Scilab Open Source Analytical Computational Software – Business Wire (press release)

Posted on February 27, 2017 by admin

PARIS--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Regulatory News:

ESI Group (Paris:ESI) (FR0004110310 ESI), pioneer and leader in Virtual Prototyping solutions, today announces the acquisition of Scilab Enterprises SAS, publisher of Scilab, widely regarded as the most compelling open source alternative to MATLAB1, the commercial software for analytical numerical solutions. Scilab provides a world class powerful environment for engineering computation and scientific applications.

Commenting on this acquisition, Vincent Chaillou, ESI Groups COO, said: This acquisition fits perfectly with ESI Groups technology investment strategy. It is aligned with our objective to expand our user base to include all stakeholders involved in the industrial product creation process, starting from the earliest stages of analytical modeling. It paves the way towards the more elaborate 3D-4D numerical simulations of the full Virtual Prototyping and eventually of the all-encompassing Immersive Virtual Engineering transformative solutions of Industry 4.0.

Raphal Auphan, CEO of Scilab Enterprises, said: We are very enthusiastic about joining ESI, a numerical simulation and Virtual Prototyping global leader, to bring Scilab to a wider range of industrial, academic and research players. Our shared vision will provide the engineering community with the latest generation of analytical solutions to meet current and future numerical simulation challenges."

A global community with more than a million engineering users

Scilab Enterprises was created in 2010 out of the Scilab Consortium, which was itself created in 2003 as part of an initiative backed by INRIA, the French National Institute for computer sciences and applied mathematics. Scilab (SCIentific LABoratory) is an open-source multiplatform analytical numerical computation software and scientific & engineering programming language. First introduced in 1980 it is now engaging an active community of over a million engineering users and development partners in diverse industries and in education. With its wide range of mathematical functions, graphic interfaces, graphs and algorithms, Scilab enables users to build their own applications for numerical analysis, system modeling, data analytics, optimization, signal and image processing, embedded and control systems, up to test and measurement interfaces.

Beyond publishing Scilab and offering Scilab consulting services, Scilab Enterprises offers as well Scilab Cloud for the web deployment in Software as a Service (SaaS) mode of scientific and engineering applications. This enables organizations and individuals to publish and manage the web-based use of their own Scilab applications.

A collaborative inter-connectable platform, available in PaaS mode

Thanks to its ability to interconnect with third-party codes, technologies and applications, Scilab can also serve as a single scientific and technical computing platform. Building on that capability Scilab Enterprises now offers a scientific and technological Platform as a Service (PaaS) to enable countless numbers of public and private enterprises as well as individual engineers and scientists to monetize applications written in different programming languages by facilitating their distribution, back-up and use. Importantly, applications exploiting Scilabs many computational functions can be accessed by an unlimited number of users as the software is open source.

A powerful vector for the democratization of ESI Groups Virtual Prototyping and Immersive Virtual Engineering solutions

The acquisition of Scilab will help expand ESI Groups footprint in the product pre-design stage and early analytical phase. Starting with the recent acquisition of ITI, and its SimulationX (0D-1D) system modeling software, this expansion is part of the Groups transformative and disruptive change strategy focused on front-loading the power of computer modeling to everyone involved in the product development process. Already engineers working in the frame of conventional Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) benefit from use of mathematical analytical models, built around Scilab, to quickly explore design options with simple (0D) models, before embarking into detailed (0D-1D to 3D-4D) modeling based design, certification and production. In ESIs PLM disruptive vision, the next step to Virtual Prototyping is to follow the life of the product after its development and certification phases, to cover its actual, real life in operation. Now within the new methodological approach of the Product Performance Lifecycle (PPL) innovative modeling, the as built Virtual Prototype is transformed into its Hybrid Virtual Twin, with data driven updates from sensors in actual operations. Here mathematical models of the product - along with its real or virtual life sensors and control systems - are key to provide reliable predictive prototyping. In this fully End to End vision of innovative product development and subsequent piloting in real life operational conditions, the acquisition of Scilab Enterprises equips ESI to address the full spectrum of early engineering needs, from simple, but physically realistic models, all the way to the as manufactured and as operated virtual products that customers build today and develop for tomorrow assisted or autonomous products.

Following ESIs recent successful acquisition and integration of OpenCFD, specializing in developments and services for OpenFOAM, an open source software for broad band numerical simulation in the field of Fluid Mechanics, this current operation substantiates the Groups commitment to the open source business model to foster the disruptive moves that will democratize Virtual Engineering solutions for all. It will provide beneficiaries with greater freedom to customize applications and to tailor them to their own flexible and affordable needs. In this regard, Scilabs incorporation into ESIs global eco-system is expected to be a major catalyst in easing and speeding up the digital transformation of innovative industrial product development.

Multiple technological and commercial synergies

Scilab Enterprises is naturally synergetic with ESI Group, both in technology and business opportunities. The existing ESI Cloud offering will be greatly boosted by this acquisition and by Scilabs reputation with a very large global community of users in diverse industries and academic circles. It also represents a major asset that will help to increase ESIs global visibility and eventually to unlock valuable commercial opportunities. Moreover, the dynamic presence of Scilab in the educational community worldwide will immediately expand ESIs footprint in that all important sphere.

Financial aspects of the operation

The operation is being financed mainly by the transfer of some ESI Group treasury shares to the shareholders of Scilab Enterprises. Scilabs development platform and team will be rapidly integrated into ESIs operating structure.

You can find all of our press releases at: http://www.esi-group.com/company/press

Next events:

March 14, 2017

April 19, 2017

About Scilab Enterprises

As publisher of Scilab modeling and simulation software, Scilab Enterprises has a small expert team with a unique mix of applied mathematicians and computer science engineers. Scilab is an open source software used widely in the scientific & engineering community (100 000 downloads every month worldwide). Scilab is used for modeling & simulation and scientific post-processing in industrial companies as well as in education & research. Scilab Enterprises offers on the one hand professional services in numerical computing and on the other hand provides the Scilab Cloud platform for the cloud deployment of scientific and engineering applications.

For more information, please visit http://scilab.io/

About ESI

ESI Group is a leading innovator in Virtual Prototyping software and services. Specialist in material physics, ESI has developed a unique proficiency in helping industrial manufacturers replace physical prototypes by virtually replicating the fabrication, assembly and testing of products in different environments.

Coupled with Virtual Reality, animated by systems modeling, and benefiting from data analytics, Virtual Prototyping has become immersive, shared and interactive. ESIs customers can bring their products to life, ensuring reliable as built performance, serviceability and maintainability. ESI solutions help world-leading OEMs and innovative companies anticipate and make sure that their products will pass certification tests - before any physical prototype is built - and that their new products are competitive when entering their market space.

Recently, ESI has undertaken a major transformative adaptation of its Virtual Prototyping solutions into Hybrid Virtual Twins, to enter the new paradigm of Product Performance Lifecycle (PPL), which addresses, beyond the development phase, the life of the new product in its full operational cycle from launch to retirement. Riding the new age of ubiquitous sensors connected to the Internet of Things (IoT), PPL answers the emerging needs of industrial manufacturers to relentlessly createinnovative products that are smart, assisted and autonomous.

ESIs customer base spans major industry sectors. The company employs more than 1200 high-level engineers, scientists and domain specialists worldwide, to address the needs of customers in more than 40 countries.

ESI Group is listed in compartment B of NYSE Euronext Paris and is granted Entreprise Innovante (Innovative Company) certification since 2000 by Bpifrance. ESI is eligible for inclusion in FCPI (venture capital trusts dedicated to innovation) and PEA PME.

For more information, please visit http://www.esi-group.com/

1 registered trademark of MathWorks Inc.

RSA 2017 and Google: Celebrating Cryptography | Fortune.com – Fortune

Posted on February 26, 2017 by admin

I had the pleasure of dining with a tableful of cryptographersthe true guests of honorat the RSA security conference in San Francisco last week.

As we noshed gnocchi at the Four Season's Hotel, I learned about the group's work. One researcher, Liron David, a PhD student at Tel-Aviv University, described an improved technique for recovering cryptographic keys from so-called side channel attacks. These attacks entail using weaknesses in the physical implementation of a system (like the sound, heat, and electromagnetic energy emitted by a whirring hard drive), as opposed to algorithmic flaws (like a faulty random number generator), for decipherment. Her method involved complex mathematics (which I will not attempt to muck up in the space allotted here).

Get Data Sheet , Fortune s technology newsletter, where this essay originated.

Another researcher, Peter Scholl, a cryptographer at the University of Bristol, detailed his work on "oblivious transfer." First developed in 1981, this privacy-protective mechanism allows one party, like a person or computer server, to relay information to another party without knowing exactly what has been sent. Imagine looking up a contacts phone number through a messaging service, like WhatsApp for example, without the company behind it (in this case Facebook ( fb ) ) knowing which information you sought. That extra privacy might be preferable under certain circumstances, Scholl said.

Cryptography is a vitally important, if opaque, sciencethe basis of our security in an increasingly digital world. A reminder of that arrived Thursday when researchers at Google ( goog ) and a Dutch research institute sounded what they hope to be the final death knell for a decades-old cryptographic algorithm called SHA-1. Suffice it to say that they achieved a featthe first "collision" of data supposedly secured by SHA-1which will have immediate ramifications for the way many businesses operate electronically. (The Wall Street Journal has an excellent summary of the impact here .)

For more on cybersecurity, watch:

Esoteric mathematics make the world hum, and the codebreakers deserve our praise.

« First «...10 20 30...1,846 1,8471,8481,849 1,850...1,860 1,870 1,880...»Last »