Spoofing Openpgp and S/MIME Signatures in Emails

Total Page:16

File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb

Spoofing Openpgp and S/MIME Signatures in Emails “Johnny, you are fired!” – Spoofing OpenPGP and S/MIME Signatures in Emails Jens Müller and Marcus Brinkmann, Ruhr University Bochum; Damian Poddebniak, Münster University of Applied Sciences; Hanno Böck, unaffiliated; Sebastian Schinzel, Münster University of Applied Sciences; Juraj Somorovsky and Jörg Schwenk, Ruhr University Bochum https://www.usenix.org/conference/usenixsecurity19/presentation/muller This paper is included in the Proceedings of the 28th USENIX Security Symposium. August 14–16, 2019 • Santa Clara, CA, USA 978-1-939133-06-9 Open access to the Proceedings of the 28th USENIX Security Symposium is sponsored by USENIX. “Johnny, you are fired!” – Spoofing OpenPGP and S/MIME Signatures in Emails Jens Müller1, Marcus Brinkmann1, Damian Poddebniak2, Hanno Böck, Sebastian Schinzel2, Juraj Somorovsky1, and Jörg Schwenk1 1Ruhr University Bochum 2Münster University of Applied Sciences Abstract however, do not extend to authenticating the sending person, which is necessary to provide message authenticity. OpenPGP and S/MIME are the two major standards to en- Two competing email security standards, OpenPGP [4] crypt and digitally sign emails. Digital signatures are sup- and S/MIME [5], offer end-to-end authenticity of messages posed to guarantee authenticity and integrity of messages. In by digital signatures and are supported by many email clients this work we show practical forgery attacks against various since the late 1990s. Digital signatures provide assurance implementations of OpenPGP and S/MIME email signature that a message was written by a specific person (i.e., au- verification in five attack classes: (1) We analyze edge cases thentication and non-repudiation) and that it was not changed in S/MIME’s container format. (2) We exploit in-band sig- since then (i.e., integrity of messages). Adoption is still low1 naling in the GnuPG API, the most widely used OpenPGP due to severe usability issues, but both technologies have implementation. (3) We apply MIME wrapping attacks that a large footprint either in the industry (S/MIME) or with abuse the email clients’ handling of partially signed mes- high-risk roles such as journalists, lawyers, and freedom ac- sages. (4) We analyze weaknesses in the binding of signed tivists (OpenPGP). One example: Debian (a volunteer group messages to the sender identity. (5) We systematically test with over 1000 members) relies on the authenticity of signed email clients for UI redressing attacks. emails for voting on project leaders and proposals. We thus Our attacks allow the spoofing of digital signatures for ar- ask: Is it possible to spoof a signed email such that it is in- bitrary messages in 14 out of 20 tested OpenPGP-capable distinguishable from a valid one even by an attentive user? email clients and 15 out of 22 email clients supporting S/MIME signatures. While the attacks do not target the un- derlying cryptographic primitives of digital signatures, they raise concerns about the actual security of OpenPGP and S/MIME email applications. Finally, we propose mitigation strategies to counter these attacks. 1 Introduction Email is still the most important communication medium on the Internet and predates the World Wide Web by roughly one decade. At that time, message authenticity was not a ma- jor concern, so the early SMTP and email [1, 2] standards did Figure 1: Screenshot of a spoofed PGP signature in Apple Mail, not address confidentiality or the authenticity of messages. based on wrapping a signed email published by Phil Zimmermann. Email Authenticity As the ARPANET evolved into the In- Spoofing Valid Signatures Signature verification in the ternet, email usage changed. Email is now used for sensitive context of email is complex. For example, emails can be communication in business environments, by the military, signed by an entity other than the sender or signed emails politicians and journalists. While technologies such as SPF, may be forwarded (resulting in partly signed messages). DKIM, and DMARC can be used to authenticate the domain 1We examined OpenPGP keyservers and measured over 20k key uploads of the sending SMTP server, these are merely helpful in mit- per month consistently over the last 4 years. We also found that Thunderbird igating spam and phishing attacks [3]. These technologoies, reports 150k daily users (on work days) for the PGP-plugin Enigmail. USENIX Association 28th USENIX Security Symposium 1011 Also, signatures are an optional feature of email and there- • We show that our attacks bypass signature validation in fore generally not enforced. Most importantly, the result of about 70% of the tested email clients, including Out- the verification must be presented to the user such that there look, Thunderbird, Apple Mail, and iOS Mail. is no room for misinterpretation. Any failure to do so may lead to a signature spoofing attack as shown in Figure 1. This Coordinated Disclosure We reported all our attacks and paper describes the results of our analysis of the most widely additional findings to the affected vendors and gave advice used email clients supporting PGP or S/MIME signatures. on appropriate countermeasures. Attack Classes Our attacks do not break the cryptography 2 Background in digital signatures, but rather exploit weaknesses in the way PGP and S/MIME signatures are verified by email clients, and how the verification outcome is presented to the user. 2.1 End-to-End Email Authenticity We define the following five attack classes: The digital signature parts of the OpenPGP and S/MIME standards provide end-to-end authenticity for email mes- 1. CMS attacks. Cryptographic Message Syntax (CMS) sages. First and foremost, both technologies are configured is a versatile standard for signed and encrypted mes- on the endpoints and technically-versed users can therefore sages within the X.509 public-key infrastructure. We choose to use them independently of the email server config- found flaws in the handling of emails with contradicting uration. In both standards, the keys are bound to users and or unusual data structures (such as multiple signers) and thus authenticate users independently of the transport. in the presentation of issues in the X.509 trust chain. OpenPGP Email Signing Phil Zimmerman invented PGP GPG API attacks. 2. GnuPG is the most widely used (Pretty Good Privacy) in 1991 and due to its popularity, OpenPGP implementation, but it only offers a very re- PGP was standardized as OpenPGP by the IETF [6]. The stricted command line interface for validating signa- most popular implementation is GnuPG.2 There are two tures. This interface is vulnerable to injection attacks. common ways to use OpenPGP in emails. With Inline 3. MIME attacks. The body of an email is conceptu- PGP, the email body directly contains the OpenPGP data. ally a MIME tree, but typically the tree has only one The MIME multipart standard is not used and the MIME leaf which is signed. We construct non-standard MIME type is text/plain. With PGP/MIME, the email has trees that trick clients into showing an unsigned text a multipart/signed MIME structure, where the signed while verifying an unrelated signature in another part. message is the first part and the detached signature is the second part. Some email clients support PGP natively, but 4. ID attacks. The goal of this attack class is to display a most (in particular Thunderbird, Apple Mail, and Outlook) valid signature from the identity (ID) of a trusted com- need a plugin, which provides an intermediate layer between munication partner located in the mail header, although the mail client and a PGP implementation like GnuPG. the crafted email is actually signed by the attacker. 5. UI attacks. Email clients indicate a valid signature by S/MIME Email Signing In 1999, the IETF published showing some security indicators in the user interface S/MIME (Secure/Multipurpose Internet Mail Extension) (UI), for example, a letter with a seal. However, several version 3 as an extension to the MIME standard with clients allow the mimicking of important UI elements certificate-based cryptography [5]. S/MIME is the result of by using HTML, CSS, and other embedded content. a long history of secure email protocols and can be seen as the first Internet standards-based framework to digitally sign, authenticate, or encrypt emails. S/MIME uses the Crypto- Contributions We make the following contributions: graphic Message Syntax (CMS) as its underlying container • We present the results of our structured analysis of format. The signatures themselves are always CMS encoded, OpenPGP and S/MIME signature verification in 25 but the signed message can either be included in the CMS widely used email clients. (opaque signature) or be transmitted as the first part of a multipart/signed message (detached signature). • We present three new attack classes: attacks based on CMS evaluation, on the syntax of the GnuPG machine interface, and on wrapping signed content within invis- 2.2 Trust and Validity ible subtrees of the MIME tree. Verifying the cryptographic integrity of a signature is often not sufficient. In addition to this verification, the public key • We adapt two attack classes of web security to the email context, namely UI redressing and ID spoofing. 2W. Koch, GNU Privacy Guard, https://gnupg.org/. 1012 28th USENIX Security Symposium USENIX Association that generated the signature must be connected to some ac- An overview of the attack classes and attacker models is tual person or entity, such as an email address, by a certifi- given in Table 1. Each attack class is described in section 4 cate. S/MIME certificates are issued by certificate authorities and the subscript identifies the specific attack, i.e., M1 iden- which are trusted by the email clients. It is easy for users to tifies attack 1 in the MIME attack class. order S/MIME certificates and sign messages which are ac- cepted by all clients.
Recommended publications
  • MASTERCLASS GNUPG MASTERCLASS You Wouldn’T Want Other People Opening Your Letters and BEN EVERARD Your Data Is No Different
    MASTERCLASS GNUPG MASTERCLASS You wouldn’t want other people opening your letters and BEN EVERARD your data is no different. Encrypt it today! SECURE EMAIL WITH GNUPG AND ENIGMAIL Send encrypted emails from your favourite email client. our typical email is about as secure as a The first thing that you need to do is create a key to JOHN LANE postcard, which is good news if you’re a represent your identity in the OpenPGP world. You’d Ygovernment agency. But you wouldn’t use a typically create one key per identity that you have. postcard for most things sent in the post; you’d use a Most people would have one identity, being sealed envelope. Email is no different; you just need themselves as a person. However, some may find an envelope – and it’s called “Encryption”. having separate personal and professional identities Since the early 1990s, the main way to encrypt useful. It’s a personal choice, but starting with a single email has been PGP, which stands for “Pretty Good key will help while you’re learning. Privacy”. It’s a protocol for the secure encryption of Launch Seahorse and click on the large plus-sign email that has since evolved into an open standard icon that’s just below the menu. Select ‘PGP Key’ and called OpenPGP. work your way through the screens that follow to supply your name and email address and then My lovely horse generate the key. The GNU Privacy Guard (GnuPG), is a free, GPL-licensed You can, optionally, use the Advanced Key Options implementation of the OpenPGP standard (there are to add a comment that can help others identify your other implementations, both free and commercial – key and to select the cipher, its strength and set when the PGP name now refers to a commercial product the key should expire.
    [Show full text]
  • Mesačný Prehľad Kritických Zraniteľností Máj 2018
    Mesačný prehľad kritických zraniteľností Mesačný prehľad kritických zraniteľností Máj 2018 1. Operačné systémy Microsoft Windows V máji spoločnosť Microsoft opravila 4 kritické zraniteľnosti operačného systému Microsoft Windows. Zraniteľnosti CVE-2018-0959 a CVE-2018-0961 môžu spôsobiť vykonanie škodlivého kódu na diaľku. Prvá z nich je spôsobená nesprávnym overovaním vstupu Windows Hyper-V na serveri od autentifikovaného používateľa na hostiteľskom operačnom systéme. Druhá sa týka overovania paketových dát v SMB protokole systému Windows Hyper-V. Na zneužitie týchto zraniteľností musí útočník spustiť špeciálne vytvorenú aplikáciu, ktorá umožní zneužitie týchto zraniteľností. Úspešný útočník následne môže vykonať ľubovoľný kód pomocou Windows Hyper-V. Našli sa aj zraniteľnosti CVE-2018-8120 a CVE-2018-8174 taktiež umožňujúce vzdialené vykonávanie kódu či zvýšenie privilégií, ktoré sú bližšie popísané aj v našom varovaní. Zraniteľné systémy: Windows 10 for 32-bit Systems Windows 10 for x64-based Systems Windows 10 Version 1511 for 32-bit Systems Windows 10 Version 1511 for x64-based Systems Windows 10 Version 1607 for 32-bit Systems Windows 10 Version 1607 for x64-based Systems. Windows 10 Version 1703 for 32-bit Systems Windows 10 Version 1703 for x64-based Systems Windows 10 Version 1709 for 32-bit Systems Windows 10 Version 1709 for x64-based Systems Windows 10 Version 1803 for 32-bit Systems Windows 10 Version 1803 for x64-based Systems Windows 7 for 32-bit Systems Service Pack 1 Windows 7 for x64-based Systems Service Pack 1 Windows
    [Show full text]
  • Securing Email Through Online Social Networks
    SECURING EMAIL THROUGH ONLINE SOCIAL NETWORKS Atieh Saberi Pirouz A thesis in The Department of Concordia Institute for Information Systems Engineering (CIISE) Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements For the Degree of Master of Applied Science (Information Systems Security) at Concordia University Montreal,´ Quebec,´ Canada August 2013 © Atieh Saberi Pirouz, 2013 Concordia University School of Graduate Studies This is to certify that the thesis prepared By: Atieh Saberi Pirouz Entitled: Securing Email Through Online Social Networks and submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Applied Science (Information Systems Security) complies with the regulations of this University and meets the accepted standards with respect to originality and quality. Signed by the final examining commitee: Dr. Benjamin C. M. Fung Chair Dr. Lingyu Wang Examiner Dr. Zhenhua Zhu Examiner Dr. Mohammad Mannan Supervisor Approved Chair of Department or Graduate Program Director 20 Dr. Christopher Trueman, Dean Faculty of Engineering and Computer Science Abstract Securing Email Through Online Social Networks Atieh Saberi Pirouz Despite being one of the most basic and popular Internet applications, email still largely lacks user-to-user cryptographic protections. From a research perspective, designing privacy preserving techniques for email services is complicated by the re- quirement of balancing security and ease-of-use needs of everyday users. For example, users cannot be expected to manage long-term keys (e.g., PGP key-pair), or under- stand crypto primitives. To enable intuitive email protections for a large number of users, we design Friend- lyMail by leveraging existing pre-authenticated relationships between a sender and receiver on an Online Social Networking (OSN) site, so that users can send secure emails without requiring direct key exchange with the receiver in advance.
    [Show full text]
  • Digital Security for Activists
    Training the Motivated: Digital Security for Activists Glencora Borradaile Kelsy Kretschmer Abstract School of Electrical Engineering School of Public Policy The state of global surveillance and the political and Computer Science Sociology Program environment has many activists caring more about their Oregon State University Oregon State University online security culture. We report on the initiation of a Corvallis, OR 97331, USA Corvallis, OR 97331, USA Digital Security for Activists program and a pilot study of an [email protected] [email protected] introductory seminar. Pre- and post-surveys of the seminar will form an initial assessment of what kind of intervention might increase the security practices of activists and to inform the design of program offerings. We report on the pre-surveys from three offerings of the seminar. Introduction In collaboration with the Civil Liberties Defense Center (CLDC), the first author had been offering informal digital security trainings for activists and their lawyers. After the fall elections in the U.S., requests for these trainings increased dramatically and shortly thereafter we launched a Digital Security for Activists (DSA) program. The DSA program’s intent is to align with the CLDC mission (“to defend and uphold civil liberties through education, outreach, litigation, legal support, and assistance”) and enable citizen activists to assert their constitutional rights while organizing online. Copyright is held by the author/owner. Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee. Poster In order to provide trainings that are useful and effective, we presented at the 13th Symposium on Usable Privacy and Security (SOUPS 2017).
    [Show full text]
  • PGP) and GNU Privacy Guard (GPG): Just Enough Training to Make You Dangerous
    Pre$y Good Privacy (PGP) And GNU Privacy Guard (GPG): Just Enough Training to Make You Dangerous Joe St Sauver, Ph.D. M3AAWG Senior Technical Advisor Scien<st Farsight Security, Inc. M3AAWG 36, San Francisco, California Monday, Feb 15th, 2016, 12:30-14:30 hLps://www.stsauver.com/joe/pgp-tutorial-sfo/ 0. IntroducDon Obligatory Screen: Eligibility For Strong EncrypDon • This is not legal advice (for that, please contact your aorney), however please note that some people are NOT ALLOWED to use strong encryp<on under prevailing laws. • By connuing with this training, you cerDfy that you are NOT: -- a ci<zen, naonal, or resident of a country barred from access to strong encryp<on by the U.S. or other countries, including but not limited to persons from the Crimea region of the Ukraine, Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Sudan, or Syria; -- nor are you a "Specially Designated Naonal" (see hp://www.treasury.gov/resource-center/sanc<ons/SDN-List/ Pages/default.aspx ), nor a person (or representave of a company) that is subject to any other US or other sanc<ons program or restric<on. • If you are subject to any such prohibi<on or restric<on, you must NOT par<cipate in today's encryp<on training. 3 Disclaimer • While all due care was used in preparing the content of this training, we cannot ensure that you will not inadvertently make a mistake, or encounter a vulnerability while using PGP/GPG. • Given that you cannot "unring the bell once it has been rung," and given that some poten<al "losses of confiden<ality" may have grave or even catastrophic consequences, please remember that: -- you should not use PGP/GPG for "life/safety-cri<cal" purposes -- today's training is provided on a "best efforts," as-is, where-is basis, with all evident and/or latent faults/flaws -- should you decide to use and rely on PGP/GPG, the decision to do so is your own and at your own risk; we disclaim all responsibility for any impacts associated with the use, misuse, or abuse of PGP/GPG by anyone here today or using this talk.
    [Show full text]
  • Gnu Privacy Guard (Gnupg) Mini Howto (English)
    Gnu Privacy Guard (GnuPG) Mini Howto (English) Brenno J.S.A.A.F. de Winter (English) <brenno@dew int er . com> Michael Fischer v. Mollard (German) <f i s cher @math .uni- goettingen. de> Arjen Baart <arj en@andromeda .nl> Version 0.1.4 August 10, 2004 This documents explains how to use the GNU Privacy Guard (GnuPG), an Open Source OpenPGP compatible encryption system To keep this program totally free the use of the RSA algorithm and other patented algorithm has been avoided. The document was originally written by Michael Fischer v. Mollar in German. The text has been translated and adjusted on some points and cannot be considered as a full one-on-one copy. Contents 1 Concepts 2 1.1 Public Key Encryption .............................................................................................................................................. 2 1.2 Digital Signatures ..................................................................................................................................................... 3 1.3 Web of trust .............................................................................................................................................................. 3 1.4 Boundaries to security .............................................................................................................................................. 3 2 Installation 4 2.1 Sources for GnuPG. .................................................................................................................................................
    [Show full text]
  • Online Self Defense – Black Belt Level
    Online Self Defense – Black Belt Level Review - White Belt Level 1.Do your updates 2.Use good antivirus/antimalware software 3.A long password is a strong password 4.Be suspicious of all emails, particularly those asking you to click on links, or that have attachments. Review – Yellow Belt 1.Always verify t!at you are on the we#site you mean to be 2.$et #rowser to more secure settings 3.Use privacy enhancing browser plugins 4.$can everything you download %.Only download programs from the official we#site Review - Green Belt Level ● (nformation is the currency of the internet ● )rivacy has finincial as well as ethical implications ● *a"e sure that your connection is encrypted +,--)$. ● Anonymizing we# proxies can help ● 1)Ns are better ● -or Browser is even better Review – Brown Belt Level 1.Unencrypted email is like sending a postcard instead of a letter 2.-o encrypt email use *ozilla -!under#ird with the 3nigmail plugin 3.-o encrypt chat use Pidgin with the OTR plugin Threat Modeling Decide what your most likely t!reats and plan your defense based on the following questions. 1. What is the most vulnerable/exploitable? 2. What is the most valuable? 3.How can I mitigate my vulnerabilities? 4. What can I o to limit amage i! an attac" is success!ul? Segregation of Identity ● Limit ability of a t!ird party to connect di'erent aspects of your life. 7or e0ample casual we# #rowsing and !ome #anking. ● 8roup activities wit! similar security re5uirements. ● Be self disciplined a#out t!is segregation.
    [Show full text]
  • Hot Topics in Computer Security
    Hot Topics in Computer Security Iliano Cervesato http://www.qatar.cmu.edu/iliano Andrew’s Leap June 30, 2010 Outline Let’s play a security game Cryptographic protocols Where did this guy say he’s from? 1 Here is the game Threat “Someone can break into my apartment and steal or destroy my stuff” Attacks and countermeasures I have a basic protection, but worse things can happen, help me to find what and how to mitigate them 2 My apartment’s basic protection Classic wooden door with a 3 points lock On the balcony (2nd floor), PVC windows with a single point lock 3 But … what’s in my apartment? $299 $89 4 What do we learn from the game You never prevent a threat .... you lower the risk! Performing an attack has a cost It's a balance between . the assets that you want to protect . the efforts an attacker will make Deploying a countermeasure has a cost It's a balance between . the cost of recovering from the attack . the cost of a deploying a protection mechanism 5 But keep in mind ... Security should always serves the business and not constrains it, otherwise ... nobody will invest in it or will be disable to be more efficient What is your definition of the risk analysis for computer science? 6 Now you know ... Marketing guy: “My software is totally secure!” You: “Oh really? Against what?” Your boss: “Design my information system and make it secure!” You: “tell me what you want to protect and let's talk together about ... potential threats .
    [Show full text]
  • Efail: Breaking S/MIME and Openpgp Email Encryption Using Exfiltration Channels
    Efail: Breaking S/MIME and OpenPGP Email Encryption using Exfiltration Channels Damian Poddebniak and Christian Dresen, Münster University of Applied Sciences; Jens Müller, Ruhr University Bochum; Fabian Ising and Sebastian Schinzel, Münster University of Applied Sciences; Simon Friedberger, NXP Semiconductors, Belgium; Juraj Somorovsky and Jörg Schwenk, Ruhr University Bochum https://www.usenix.org/conference/usenixsecurity18/presentation/poddebniak This paper is included in the Proceedings of the 27th USENIX Security Symposium. August 15–17, 2018 • Baltimore, MD, USA ISBN 978-1-931971-46-1 Open access to the Proceedings of the 27th USENIX Security Symposium is sponsored by USENIX. Efail: Breaking S/MIME and OpenPGP Email Encryption using Exfiltration Channels Damian Poddebniak1, Christian Dresen1, Jens Muller¨ 2, Fabian Ising1, Sebastian Schinzel1, Simon Friedberger3, Juraj Somorovsky2, and Jorg¨ Schwenk2 1Munster¨ University of Applied Sciences 2Ruhr University Bochum 3NXP Semiconductors, Belgium Abstract is designed to protect user data in such scenarios. With end-to-end encryption, the email infrastructure becomes OpenPGP and S/MIME are the two prime standards merely a transportation service for opaque email data and for providing end-to-end security for emails. We de- no compromise – aside from the endpoints of sender or scribe novel attacks built upon a technique we call mal- receiver – should affect the security of an end-to-end en- leability gadgets to reveal the plaintext of encrypted crypted email. emails. We use CBC/CFB gadgets to inject malicious plaintext snippets into encrypted emails. These snippets S/MIME and OpenPGP. The two most prominent stan- abuse existing and standard conforming backchannels to dards offering end-to-end encryption for email, S/MIME exfiltrate the full plaintext after decryption.
    [Show full text]
  • LAB :: PGP (Pretty Good Privacy)
    LAB :: PGP (Pretty Good Privacy) GnuPG : GnuPG forms the heart of Gpg4win – the actual encryption software. Kleopatra : The central certificate administration of Gpg4win, which ensures uniform user navigation for all cryptographic operations. Download Gpg4win (GNU Privacy Guard for Windows) from https://www.gpg4win.org/index.html Install GnuPG & Related application 1. The installation assistant will start and you will see this welcome dialog: 2. Close all programs that are running on your computer and click on [ Next ] 3. The next page displays the licensing agreement – it is only important if you wish to modify or forward Gpg4win. If you only want to use the software, you can do this right away – without reading the license. Click on [ Next ] 4. On the page that contains the selection of components you can decide which programs you want to install. A default selection has already been made for you. You can also install individual components at a later time. Moving your mouse cursor over a component will display a brief description. Another useful feature is the display of required hard drive space for all selected components. Bellow are the application and there fucntion: a. GnuPG: Gnu Privacy Guard b. Kleopatra: Keymanager for OpenPGP c. GPA: GNU Privacy Assistant d. GpgOL: GnuPG for Outlook e. GpgEX: GnuPG Shell Extension f. Claws-Mail: Claws Mail user client g. Gpg4win Compedium: The Gpg4Win documentation Click on [ Next ] 5. The system will suggest a folder for the installation, e.g.: C:\Programme Files (x86)\GNU\GnuPG You can accept the suggestion or select a different folder for installing Gpg4win.
    [Show full text]
  • Assessment Tasks 3 Publication Without Notice
    ITEC643 Cryptography and Information Security S2 Day 2019 Dept of Computing Contents Disclaimer General Information 2 Macquarie University has taken all reasonable measures to ensure the information in this Learning Outcomes 3 publication is accurate and up-to-date. However, the information may change or become out-dated as a result of change in University policies, General Assessment Information 3 procedures or rules. The University reserves the right to make changes to any information in this Assessment Tasks 3 publication without notice. Users of this publication are advised to check the website Delivery and Resources 6 version of this publication [or the relevant faculty or department] before acting on any information in Unit Schedule 7 this publication. Learning and Teaching Activities 8 Policies and Procedures 8 Graduate Capabilities 10 Changes from Previous Offering 15 Grading Standards 15 Changes since First Published 17 https://unitguides.mq.edu.au/unit_offerings/119161/unit_guide/print 1 Unit guide ITEC643 Cryptography and Information Security General Information Unit convenor and teaching staff Convenor Christophe Doche [email protected] Contact via By email BD building Level 2 TBA Lecturer Les Bell [email protected] TBA Lecturer Alireza Jolfaei [email protected] BD Building Level 3 Tutor Mohamadali Mehrabi [email protected] BD Building Level 2 Credit points 4 Prerequisites Admission to MInfoTech or MEng or MSc or MScInnovation or GradDipIT or MInfoTech(Cyber Sec) Corequisites Co-badged status COMP343 / ITEC643 Unit description This unit provides an introduction to modern cryptography and information security. First, some cryptographic primitives, such as private key and public key ciphers, hash functions and digital signatures, are introduced.
    [Show full text]
  • Centralized Email Encryption with Anubis
    SYSADMIN Anubis Centralized email encryption with Anubis xperts acknowledge the danger of transmitting plans, personal Edata, and confidential agree- ments in clear text across the Internet, but end users rarely heed their warnings. EGYPTIAN Users typically don’t turn to tools such as PGP, GnuPG [2], and S/ Mime by choice. CTOs can either bemoan their fate or take proactive steps: so-called PGP servers provide centralized user key ENCRYPTION management and handle the encryption and decryption processes. These services remove the need for time-consuming The Anubis mail manipulation daemon lets you centralize encryption installation and configuration of a PGP client on every user workstation. for outgoing mail. BY DANIEL S. HAISCHT Linux admins have a choice of free en- cryption programs such as GPG-Relay [3] or Kuvert [4], and there are a number of commercial applications (such as [5] and [6]), some of which are also avail- able for Windows. But if you prefer to avoid specialized applications, your best option may be the universal mail manip- ulation program, GNU Anubis [1]. Anubis, which is named after an ancient Egyptian god, is an SMTP pre-processing daemon. The Anubis daemon receives messages from a Mail User Agent (such as the Mutt client shown in Figure 2), then modifies the messages before pass- ing them to the Mail Transfer Agent (such as the Postfix server shown in Fig- ure 2). Anubis can process messages in a number of different ways, but in this case, one of Anubis’ more useful tricks is the ability to encrypt mail using GnuPG.
    [Show full text]