A Usability Study of the Authentication Ceremony of Secure Messaging
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Symmetric Asynchronous Ratcheted Communication with Associated Data
Symmetric Asynchronous Ratcheted Communication with Associated Data B Hailun Yan( ) and Serge Vaudenay Ecole´ Polytechnique F´ed´erale de Lausanne (EPFL), Lausanne, Switzerland {hailun.yan,serge.vaudenay}@epfl.ch Abstract. Following up mass surveillance and privacy issues, modern secure communication protocols now seek strong security, such as forward secrecy and post-compromise security, in the face of state exposures. To address this problem, ratcheting was thereby introduced, widely used in real-world messaging protocols like Signal. However, ratcheting comes with a high cost. Recently, Caforio et al. proposed pragmatic construc- tions which compose a weakly secure “light” protocol and a strongly secure “heavy” protocol, in order to achieve the so-called ratcheting on demand. The light protocol they proposed has still a high complexity. In this paper, we prove the security of the lightest possible proto- col we could imagine, which essentially encrypts then hashes the secret key. We prove it without any random oracle by introducing a new secu- rity notion in the standard model. Our protocol composes well with the generic transformation techniques by Caforio et al. to offer high security and performance at the same time. 1 Introduction A classic communication model usually assumes that the endpoints are secure while the adversary is on the communication channel. However, protocols in recent messaging applications are secured with end-to-end encryption due to the prevalence of malware and system vulnerabilities. They attempt to enable secure communication services by regularly updating (ratcheting) the encryption key. One notable example of ratcheting is the Signal protocol [14] by Open Whisper Systems with its double-ratchet algorithm. -
2012 07 26 Letter to Skype
! Privacy International 46 Bedford Row London WC1R 4LR United Kingdom +44 (0) 20 7242 2836 @privacyint UK Charity No. 1147471 Friday, 27 July 2012 Dear Mr Bates, I am writing to request further information about the privacy implications of recent developments at Skype, as reported in the Washington Post.1 We were delighted to read that you believe these reports are “inaccurate” and“could mislead the Skype community”, and that you want to “clear this up”. 2 The growth of Skype since its launch in 2003 to become the world's leading VoIP provider has been driven by service that is affordable, high quality and, above all, secure. From an early stage in its development, Skype has assured its customers of the security of their communications. Press releases and product descriptions from 2005 boast of "end-to-end encryption for superior privacy" that "nobody can intercept".3 In 2008, a spokesperson reassured users that “[w]e have not received any subpoenas or court orders asking us to perform a live interception or wiretap of Skype-to-Skype communications” and “[i]n any event, because of Skype's peer-to-peer architecture and encryption techniques, Skype would not be able to comply with such a request”.4 In short, a promise was made to Skype customers that the privacy of their conversations and file transfers would be protected. As I'm sure you know, among Skype's 663 million registered users across the world are human rights defenders and pro-democracy activists living under autocratic regimes. In an environment where most channels of communication -
Secure Messaging1
SoK: Secure Messaging1 Nik Unger∗, Sergej Dechandy Joseph Bonneauzx, Sascha Fahl{, Henning Perl{ Ian Goldberg∗, Matthew Smithy ∗ University of Waterloo, y University of Bonn, z Stanford University, x Electronic Frontier Foundation, { Fraunhofer FKIE Abstract—Motivated by recent revelations of widespread state insecure ways. However, as will become clear over the course surveillance of personal communication, many products now of this paper, the academic research community is also failing claim to offer secure and private messaging. This includes both a to learn some lessons from tools in the wild. large number of new projects and many widely adopted tools that have added security features. The intense pressure in the past two Furthermore, there is a lack of coherent vision for the future years to deliver solutions quickly has resulted in varying threat of secure messaging. Most solutions focus on specific issues models, incomplete objectives, dubious security claims, and a lack and have different goals and threat models. This is com- of broad perspective on the existing cryptographic literature on pounded by differing security vocabularies and the absence of secure communication. a unified evaluation of prior work. Outside of academia, many In this paper, we evaluate and systematize current secure messaging solutions and propose an evaluation framework for products mislead users by advertising with grandiose claims their security, usability, and ease-of-adoption properties. We con- of “military grade encryption” or by promising impossible sider solutions from academia, but also identify innovative and features such as self-destructing messages [7]–[10]. The recent promising approaches used “in the wild” that are not considered EFF Secure Messaging Scorecard evaluated tools for basic by the academic literature. -
Deploy Your Chatbots Everywhere Bots Are Taking Over!
Deploy your Chatbots Everywhere Bots are taking over! By 2021, more than 50% enterprises will spend more on chatbots than traditional mobile apps Source: Gartner Top Strategic Predictions for 2018 and Beyond Every major messaging platform supports Conversational Apps and Chatbots already ➀ Build Once, Deploy to all Messaging Platforms with a Single API Businesses building conversational interfaces typically want to deploy over multiple messaging channels. B2C apps need Consumer Messengers. B2B apps need Enterprise (Team) Messengers. Integrating with each messaging Client System platform is highly resource consuming - Conversational Interface Business Autochat Omni-channel API due to different APIs and capabilities. Logic - Internal API Integrations Autochat provides one-click integrations with most popular messengers. Messages are also auto-translated to match capability of the end messenger. Consumer Messengers Business Messengers FB Messenger, Telegram, Slack, Microsoft Teams, Viber, WeChat, iMessage, Flock, Cisco Spark, Stride, Whatsapp, etc. etc. ➁ Full-featured, Native Messaging SDKs for Web, Android & iOS Many businesses like to enable conversational interfaces within their web and mobile apps as well. This requires building a custom messenger inside their apps. They also need to provide a user experience at par with leading messengers like Facebook Messenger and Slack. Users Client System expect rich messaging features like - Conversational Interface Business Autochat Omni-channel API typing indicators, images, buttons, Logic quick replies, webviews. - Internal API Integrations Autochat provides full featured real time messaging SDKs that can be integrated in no time. Consumer Messengers Business Messengers Native Messaging SDKs FB Messenger, Telegram, Slack, Microsoft Teams, - Web, Android, iOS Viber, WeChat, iMessage, - Feature rich Flock, Cisco Spark, Whatsapp, etc. -
Crypto Wars of the 1990S
Danielle Kehl, Andi Wilson, and Kevin Bankston DOOMED TO REPEAT HISTORY? LESSONS FROM THE CRYPTO WARS OF THE 1990S CYBERSECURITY June 2015 | INITIATIVE © 2015 NEW AMERICA This report carries a Creative Commons license, which permits non-commercial re-use of New America content when proper attribution is provided. This means you are free to copy, display and distribute New America’s work, or in- clude our content in derivative works, under the following conditions: ATTRIBUTION. NONCOMMERCIAL. SHARE ALIKE. You must clearly attribute the work You may not use this work for If you alter, transform, or build to New America, and provide a link commercial purposes without upon this work, you may distribute back to www.newamerica.org. explicit prior permission from the resulting work only under a New America. license identical to this one. For the full legal code of this Creative Commons license, please visit creativecommons.org. If you have any questions about citing or reusing New America content, please contact us. AUTHORS Danielle Kehl, Senior Policy Analyst, Open Technology Institute Andi Wilson, Program Associate, Open Technology Institute Kevin Bankston, Director, Open Technology Institute ABOUT THE OPEN TECHNOLOGY INSTITUTE ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS The Open Technology Institute at New America is committed to freedom The authors would like to thank and social justice in the digital age. To achieve these goals, it intervenes Hal Abelson, Steven Bellovin, Jerry in traditional policy debates, builds technology, and deploys tools with Berman, Matt Blaze, Alan David- communities. OTI brings together a unique mix of technologists, policy son, Joseph Hall, Lance Hoffman, experts, lawyers, community organizers, and urban planners to examine the Seth Schoen, and Danny Weitzner impacts of technology and policy on people, commerce, and communities. -
IM Security Documentation on Page Vi
Trend Micro Incorporated reserves the right to make changes to this document and to the product described herein without notice. Before installing and using the product, review the readme files, release notes, and/or the latest version of the applicable documentation, which are available from the Trend Micro website at: http://docs.trendmicro.com/en-us/enterprise/trend-micro-im-security.aspx Trend Micro, the Trend Micro t-ball logo, Control Manager, MacroTrap, and TrendLabs are trademarks or registered trademarks of Trend Micro Incorporated. All other product or company names may be trademarks or registered trademarks of their owners. Copyright © 2016. Trend Micro Incorporated. All rights reserved. Document Part No.: TIEM16347/140311 Release Date: September 2016 Protected by U.S. Patent No.: Pending This documentation introduces the main features of the product and/or provides installation instructions for a production environment. Read through the documentation before installing or using the product. Detailed information about how to use specific features within the product may be available at the Trend Micro Online Help Center and/or the Trend Micro Knowledge Base. Trend Micro always seeks to improve its documentation. If you have questions, comments, or suggestions about this or any Trend Micro document, please contact us at [email protected]. Evaluate this documentation on the following site: http://www.trendmicro.com/download/documentation/rating.asp Privacy and Personal Data Collection Disclosure Certain features available in Trend Micro products collect and send feedback regarding product usage and detection information to Trend Micro. Some of this data is considered personal in certain jurisdictions and under certain regulations. -
Self-Encrypting Deception: Weaknesses in the Encryption of Solid State Drives
Self-encrypting deception: weaknesses in the encryption of solid state drives Carlo Meijer Bernard van Gastel Institute for Computing and Information Sciences School of Computer Science Radboud University Nijmegen Open University of the Netherlands [email protected] and Institute for Computing and Information Sciences Radboud University Nijmegen Bernard.vanGastel@{ou.nl,ru.nl} Abstract—We have analyzed the hardware full-disk encryption full-disk encryption. Full-disk encryption software, especially of several solid state drives (SSDs) by reverse engineering their those integrated in modern operating systems, may decide to firmware. These drives were produced by three manufacturers rely solely on hardware encryption in case it detects support between 2014 and 2018, and are both internal models using the SATA and NVMe interfaces (in a M.2 or 2.5" traditional form by the storage device. In case the decision is made to rely on factor) and external models using the USB interface. hardware encryption, typically software encryption is disabled. In theory, the security guarantees offered by hardware encryp- As a primary example, BitLocker, the full-disk encryption tion are similar to or better than software implementations. In software built into Microsoft Windows, switches off software reality, we found that many models using hardware encryption encryption and completely relies on hardware encryption by have critical security weaknesses due to specification, design, and implementation issues. For many models, these security default if the drive advertises support. weaknesses allow for complete recovery of the data without Contribution. This paper evaluates both internal and external knowledge of any secret (such as the password). -
Policy Options and Regulatory Mechanisms for Managing Radicalization on the Internet
Policy options and regulatory mechanisms for managing radicalization on the Internet Paris, 30 September 2016 “[…] I firmly believe that in a free democratic society, freedom of speech and expression is one of the most prized freedoms which must be defended and upheld at any cost and this should be particularly so in the land of Voltaire. It is indeed unfortunate that in the world of today, when science and technology have advanced the frontiers of knowledge and mankind is beginning to realize that human happiness can be realized only through inter-dependence and cooperation, the threshold of tolerance should be going down. It is high time man should realize his spiritual dimension and replace bitterness and hatred by love and compassion, tolerance and forgiveness.” Justice Prafullachandra Bhagwati Dan Shefet (Individual Specialist) ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS The author wishes to thank the following for their support, valuable advice and input throughout the drafting of the Report: Dr. Indrajit Banerjee and his team in UNESCO’s Knowledge Societies Division The UNESCO Delegates and Ministries of Justice/Interior of countries that have participated in the Country Survey. Alexander Linden, Honorary advisor to the French Supreme Court Janice Duffy, Researcher, Australia Pavan Duggal, Supreme Court Lawyer, India Tom Høyem, Former Minister in Denmark under Poul Schlüter Francesca Musiani, Researcher at the CNRS Institute for Communication Sciences and Member of the French National Assembly’s Commission on the Law and Rights in the Digital Era Sami Mahbouli, Lawyer at The Tunisian Supreme Court and Columnist Sabine Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger, Former Minister of Justice under Angela Merkel Marc Randazza, First Amendment Attorney, United States Viswa Sadasivan, CEO of Strategic Moves (Consultancy agency in Singapore) and former member of the Singaporean Parliament Mr K. -
Whatsapp Acceptance: a Comparison Between Individualistic and Collectivistic Cultures
IBIMA Publishing Journal of Internet Social Networking & Virtual Communities https://ibimapublishing.com/articles/JISNVC/2020/914643/ Vol. 2020 (2020), Article ID 914643, 10 pages, ISSEN: 2166-0794 DOI: 10.5171/2020.914643 Research Article WhatsApp Acceptance: A Comparison Between Individualistic and Collectivistic Cultures Serri FAISAL and Ghassan AL-QAIMARI Emirates College of Technology. UAE Correspondence should be addressed to: Serri FAISAL; [email protected] Received date: 20 November 2019; Accepted date: 7 May 2020; published date: 16 June 2020 Copyright © 2020. Serri FAISAL and Ghassan AL-QAIMARI. Distributed under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International CC-BY 4.0 Abstract Social media applications led by WhatsApp have exhibited a great adoption rate in individualistic and collectivistic societies. To study the factors which influence the adoption of software applications across cultures, the application design was studied by researchers in both individualistic and collectivistic societies. Most of such studies concentrated on the application design from the developer's point of view. Differently, this research study empirically explores the factors that influence the adoption of smartphone apps, such as WhatsApp, from the user's perspective. Therefore, the focus in this paper is on the moderating effect of Hofstede’s cross- cultures dimension, individualism vs. collectivism (IDV), and the interconnection between the persuasive system design (PSD) and acceptance. A total of 488 responses were collected from societies which span on the spectrum of IDV to include two individualistic societies, Netherlands and Germany, and two collectivistic societies, Malaysia and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. The overall results indicate that persuasive design principles are relevant to cultures across the globe. -
Pgpfone Pretty Good Privacy Phone Owner’S Manual Version 1.0 Beta 7 -- 8 July 1996
Phil’s Pretty Good Software Presents... PGPfone Pretty Good Privacy Phone Owner’s Manual Version 1.0 beta 7 -- 8 July 1996 Philip R. Zimmermann PGPfone Owner’s Manual PGPfone Owner’s Manual is written by Philip R. Zimmermann, and is (c) Copyright 1995-1996 Pretty Good Privacy Inc. All rights reserved. Pretty Good Privacy™, PGP®, Pretty Good Privacy Phone™, and PGPfone™ are all trademarks of Pretty Good Privacy Inc. Export of this software may be restricted by the U.S. government. PGPfone software is (c) Copyright 1995-1996 Pretty Good Privacy Inc. All rights reserved. Phil’s Pretty Good engineering team: PGPfone for the Apple Macintosh and Windows written mainly by Will Price. Phil Zimmermann: Overall application design, cryptographic and key management protocols, call setup negotiation, and, of course, the manual. Will Price: Overall application design. He persuaded the rest of the team to abandon the original DOS command-line approach and designed a multithreaded event-driven GUI architecture. Also greatly improved call setup protocols. Chris Hall: Did early work on call setup protocols and cryptographic and key management protocols, and did the first port to Windows. Colin Plumb: Cryptographic and key management protocols, call setup negotiation, and the fast multiprecision integer math package. Jeff Sorensen: Speech compression. Will Kinney: Optimization of GSM speech compression code. Kelly MacInnis: Early debugging of the Win95 version. Patrick Juola: Computational linguistic research for biometric word list. -2- PGPfone Owner’s -
Dell EMC Unity: Data at Rest Encryption a Detailed Review
Technical White Paper Dell EMC Unity: Data at Rest Encryption A Detailed Review Abstract This white paper explains the Data at Rest Encryption feature, which provides controller-based encryption of data stored on Dell EMC™ Unity storage systems to protect against unauthorized access to lost or stolen drives or system. The encryption technology as well as its implementation on Dell EMC Unity storage systems are discussed. June 2021 H15090.6 Revisions Revisions Date Description May 2016 Initial release – Unity OE 4.0 July 2017 Updated for Unity OE 4.2 June 2021 Template and format updates. Updated for Unity OE 5.1 Acknowledgments Author: Ryan Poulin The information in this publication is provided “as is.” Dell Inc. makes no representations or warranties of any kind with respect to the information in this publication, and specifically disclaims implied warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose. Use, copying, and distribution of any software described in this publication requires an applicable software license. This document may contain certain words that are not consistent with Dell's current language guidelines. Dell plans to update the document over subsequent future releases to revise these words accordingly. This document may contain language from third party content that is not under Dell's control and is not consistent with Dell's current guidelines for Dell's own content. When such third party content is updated by the relevant third parties, this document will be revised accordingly. Copyright © 2016-2021 Dell Inc. or its subsidiaries. All Rights Reserved. Dell Technologies, Dell, EMC, Dell EMC and other trademarks are trademarks of Dell Inc. -
Obstacles to the Adoption of Secure Communication Tools
Obstacles to the Adoption of Secure Communication Tools Ruba Abu-Salma M. Angela Sasse Joseph Bonneau University College London, UK University College London, UK Stanford University & EFF, USA Anastasia Danilova Alena Naiakshina Matthew Smith University of Bonn, Germany University of Bonn, Germany University of Bonn, Germany Abstract—The computer security community has advocated Recent mobile phone-based secure communication tools widespread adoption of secure communication tools to counter have often been designed to hide security from the user com- mass surveillance. Several popular personal communication tools pletely (albeit at some security cost [1]). WhatsApp famously (e.g., WhatsApp, iMessage) have adopted end-to-end encryption, and many new tools (e.g., Signal, Telegram) have been launched deployed E2E encryption to approximately a billion users with security as a key selling point. However it remains unclear through a code update to its application for messages, voice if users understand what protection these tools offer, and if they calls and video communications [18], with only negligible value that protection. In this study, we interviewed 60 partici- changes to the user experience. Some other communication pants about their experience with different communication tools tools (e.g., Signal, Threema) have launched with security and their perceptions of the tools’ security properties. We found that the adoption of secure communication tools is hindered by as an explicit selling point, but they also hide nearly all fragmented user bases and incompatible tools. Furthermore, the cryptographic details. vast majority of participants did not understand the essential There are key differences in the security model of dif- concept of end-to-end encryption, limiting their motivation to ferent E2E-encrypted tools, in addition to a large gap in adopt secure tools.