Secure Messaging1
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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 -
2017 the Human the JOURNAL of POETRY, Touch PROSE and VISUAL ART
VOLUME 10 2017 The Human THE JOURNAL OF POETRY, Touch PROSE AND VISUAL ART UNIVERSITY OF COLORADO ANSCHUTZ MEDICAL CAMPUS THE HUMAN TOUCH Volume 10 2017 GRAPHIC DESIGN EDITORS IN CHIEF Scott Allison Laura Kahn [email protected] Michael Berger ScottAllison.org James Yarovoy PRINTING EDITORIAL BOARD Bill Daley Amanda Glickman Citizen Printing, Fort Collins Carolyn Ho 970.545.0699 Diana Ir [email protected] Meha Semwal Shayer Chowdhury Nicholas Arlas This journal and all of its contents with no exceptions are covered Anjali Durandhar under the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Nick Arlas Derivative Works 3.0 License. To view a summary of this license, please see SUPERVISING EDITORS http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/us/. Therese Jones To review the license in full, please see http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/us/legalcode. Fair use and other rights are not affected by this license. To learn more about this and other Creative Commons licenses, please see http://creativecommons.org/about/licenses/meet-the-licenses. To honor the creative expression of the journal’s contributors, the unique and deliberate formats of their work have been preserved. © All Authors/Artists Hold Their Own Copyright CONTENTS CONTENTS PREFACE Regarding Henry Tess Jones .......................................................10 Relative Inadequacy Bonnie Stanard .........................................................61 Lines in Elegy (For Henry Claman) Bruce Ducker ...........................................12 -
Somebody Told Me You Died
University of Montana ScholarWorks at University of Montana Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers Graduate School 2020 Somebody Told Me You Died Barry E. Maxwell Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.umt.edu/etd Part of the Nonfiction Commons Let us know how access to this document benefits ou.y Recommended Citation Maxwell, Barry E., "Somebody Told Me You Died" (2020). Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers. 11606. https://scholarworks.umt.edu/etd/11606 This Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by the Graduate School at ScholarWorks at University of Montana. It has been accepted for inclusion in Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers by an authorized administrator of ScholarWorks at University of Montana. For more information, please contact [email protected]. SOMEBODY TOLD ME YOU DIED By BARRY EUGENE MAXWELL Associate of Arts in Creative Writing, Austin Community College, Austin, TX, 2015 Bachelor of Arts with Honors, The University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX, 2017 Thesis presented in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Fine Arts in Nonfiction The University of Montana Missoula, MT May 2020 Approved by: Scott Whittenburg Dean of The Graduate School Judy Blunt Director, Creative Writing Department of English Kathleen Kane Department of English Mary-Ann Bowman Department of Social Work Maxwell, Barry, Master of Fine Arts, Spring 2020 Creative Writing, Nonfiction Somebody Told Me You Died Chairperson: Judy Blunt Somebody Told Me You Died is a sampling of works exploring the author’s transition from “normal” life to homelessness, his adaptations to that world and its ways, and his eventual efforts to return from it. -
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. -
Investigating Mobile Messaging Security
Technische Universitat¨ Munchen¨ Department of Informatics Interdisciplinary Project in Electrical Engineering Investigating Mobile Messaging Security Elias Hazboun Technische Universitat¨ Munchen¨ Department of Informatics Interdisciplinary Project in Electrical Engineering Investigating Mobile Messaging Security Untersuchung von Mobile Messaging Sicherheit Author Elias Hazboun Supervisor Prof. Dr.-Ing. Georg Carle Advisor Dr. Matthias Wachs, Quirin Scheitle Date April 27, 2016 Informatik VIII Chair for Network Architectures and Services Abstract In this report we document our work in analyzing the security of a selection of mobile messaging apps. Focusing on network based security, we studied traffic generated by the apps to gain an understanding of the current state of applying encryption and authentication protocols. Our findings show a positive trend in security with developers steadily improving security with newer app updates partly due to the increased scrutiny from the community and academia. Although not all apps analyzed had perfect state of the art security properties, none have shown any major vulnerabilities exploited by normal adversaries. It was also evident that only one app - namely TextSecure - is using the industry standard TLS for server-client authentication and security while others have opted for custom made protocols and algorithms. I Contents 1 Introduction 1 1.1 Research Question . .2 1.2 Outline . .2 2 Background and Related Work 3 2.1 Methodology . .3 2.1.1 App Selection . .3 2.1.2 Approach . .3 2.2 Definition of Security Concepts . .4 2.2.1 Layers of Encryption . .4 2.2.2 Transport Layer Security Protocol (TLS) . .5 2.2.3 Perfect Forward Secrecy (PFS) . .5 2.2.4 Asynchronous Messaging Security . -
Zfone: a New Approach for Securing Voip Communication
Zfone: A New Approach for Securing VoIP Communication Samuel Sotillo [email protected] ICTN 4040 Spring 2006 Abstract This paper reviews some security challenges currently faced by VoIP systems as well as their potential solutions. Particularly, it focuses on Zfone, a vendor-neutral security solution developed by PGP’s creator, Phil Zimmermann. Zfone is based on the Z Real-time Transport Protocol (ZRTP), which is an extension of the Real-time Transport Protocol (RTP). ZRTP offers a very simple and robust approach to providing protection against the most common type of VoIP threats. Basically, the protocol offers a mechanism to guarantee high entropy in a Diffie- Hellman key exchange by using a session key that is computed through the hashing several secrets, including a short authentication string that is read aloud by callers. The common shared secret is calculated and used only for one session at a time. However, the protocol allows for a part of the shared secret to be cached for future sessions. The mechanism provides for protection for man-in-the-middle, call hijack, spoofing, and other common types of attacks. Also, this paper explores the fact that VoIP security is a very complicated issue and that the technology is far from being inherently insecure as many people usually claim. Introduction Voice over IP (VoIP) is transforming the telecommunication industry. It offers multiple opportunities such as lower call fees, convergence of voice and data networks, simplification of deployment, and greater integration with multiple applications that offer enhanced multimedia functionality [1]. However, notwithstanding all these technological and economic opportunities, VoIP also brings up new challenges. -
Cryptographic Control Standard, Version
Nuclear Regulatory Commission Office of the Chief Information Officer Computer Security Standard Office Instruction: OCIO-CS-STD-2009 Office Instruction Title: Cryptographic Control Standard Revision Number: 2.0 Issuance: Date of last signature below Effective Date: October 1, 2017 Primary Contacts: Kathy Lyons-Burke, Senior Level Advisor for Information Security Responsible Organization: OCIO Summary of Changes: OCIO-CS-STD-2009, “Cryptographic Control Standard,” provides the minimum security requirements that must be applied to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) systems which utilize cryptographic algorithms, protocols, and cryptographic modules to provide secure communication services. This update is based on the latest versions of the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) Guidance and Federal Information Processing Standards (FIPS) publications, Committee on National Security System (CNSS) issuances, and National Security Agency (NSA) requirements. Training: Upon request ADAMS Accession No.: ML17024A095 Approvals Primary Office Owner Office of the Chief Information Officer Signature Date Enterprise Security Kathy Lyons-Burke 09/26/17 Architecture Working Group Chair CIO David Nelson /RA/ 09/26/17 CISO Jonathan Feibus 09/26/17 OCIO-CS-STD-2009 Page i TABLE OF CONTENTS 1 PURPOSE ............................................................................................................................. 1 2 INTRODUCTION .................................................................................................................. -
Improving Signal's Sealed Sender
Improving Signal’s Sealed Sender Ian Martiny∗, Gabriel Kaptchuky, Adam Avivz, Dan Rochex, Eric Wustrow∗ ∗University of Colorado Boulder, fian.martiny, [email protected] yBoston University, [email protected] zGeorge Washington University, [email protected] xU.S. Naval Avademy, [email protected] Abstract—The Signal messaging service recently deployed a confidential support [25]. In these cases, merely knowing to sealed sender feature that provides sender anonymity by crypto- whom Alice is communicating combined with other contextual graphically hiding a message’s sender from the service provider. information is often enough to infer conversation content with- We demonstrate, both theoretically and empirically, that this out reading the messages themselves. Former NSA and CIA one-sided anonymity is broken when two parties send multiple director Michael Hayden succinctly illustrated this importance messages back and forth; that is, the promise of sealed sender of metadata when he said the US government “kill[s] people does not compose over a conversation of messages. Our attack is in the family of Statistical Disclosure Attacks (SDAs), and is made based on metadata” [29]. particularly effective by delivery receipts that inform the sender Signal’s recent sealed sender feature aims to conceal this that a message has been successfully delivered, which are enabled metadata by hiding the message sender’s identity. Instead of by default on Signal. We show using theoretical and simulation- based models that Signal could link sealed sender users in as seeing a message from Alice to Bob, Signal instead observes few as 5 messages. Our attack goes beyond tracking users via a message to Bob from an anonymous sender. -
Exploring User Mental Models of End-To-End Encrypted Communication Tools
Exploring User Mental Models of End-to-End Encrypted Communication Tools Ruba Abu-Salma Elissa M. Redmiles Blase Ur, Miranda Wei University College London University of Maryland University of Chicago Abstract a key obstacle to the adoption of secure communication tools and other privacy-enhancing technologies [1, 26]. End-to-end (E2E) encrypted communication tools can Prior qualitative work has explored users’ familiarity help users keep their communications secure from gov- with secure communication tools and gaps in their men- ernment or corporate surveillance. In this work, we con- tal models [1]. In our work, we seek to quantitatively duct a quantitative survey (n=125) to assess general men- validate and expand on these findings. We do so by tal models and understandings of a hypothetical E2E en- studying both users and non-users via a quantitative sur- crypted communication tool. We find that the vast ma- vey through which we assess high-level mental models jority of respondents had adopted E2E encrypted tools of E2E encryption and its security properties. We fo- in the real world, but lacked confidence and accuracy in cus specifically on one type of secure communication, their mental models of E2E encryption. Two key mis- E2E encrypted communication, abstracted away from conceptions include (1) three-quarters of respondents be- detailed predispositions of any specific tool created by lieving that their E2E encrypted communications could any particular brand. be accessed by unauthorized entities, and (2) one-half of To this end, we surveyed 125 respondents about a hy- respondents feeling that SMS and landline phone calls pothetical E2E encrypted communication tool. -
Issue 4 October 1, 2019
WELCOME! Issue 4 October 1, 2019 Welcome to Fleas on the Dog! We’re a no frills brown bag BYOW(eed) online lit rag. (We like to think we’re underground with our heads sticking out.). We don’t care about pretty pictures or fancy layouts. We’re interested in one thing and one thing only: GOOD WRITING. Our sole mandate is quality which means if your mother likes your writing we probably won’t. With this issue we are introducing 2 new categories. The first is Poetry. We were deluged with it even though we only call for short fiction and nonfiction. Apart from the obscene sonnets we carved into washroom walls, we don’t know a heck of a lot about it. (The Wasteland is an album by U2, right?) So we coerced, no, invited, bardo-bard Hezekiah Scretch to abase himself as our Poetry Editor. The fact that he despises verse of any kind is only important if you’re a nitpicker. And so the dude quintet has become the dude sextet. The other new category is Plays (Drama). Since all six of us agreed that Shakespeare’s Death of a Salesman is our all-time favourite comedy, we knew we were on the right track. Besides, what Streetcar wouldn’t Desire such a category? So if your name’s Sam Shepard or David Mamet (and even if it isn’t) you’re welcome to submit your play, previously performed or perennially rejected. We’re proud to announce two writers are making their publishing debut in Issue 4. -
Developing Secure Communication Systems Using the TMS320C50 DSP
Disclaimer: This document was part of the First European DSP Education and Research Conference. It may have been written by someone whose native language is not English. TI assumes no liability for the quality of writing and/or the accuracy of the information contained herein. Developing Secure Communication Systems Using the TMS320C50 DSP Authors: F. Sousa, P. Felix ESIEE, Paris September 1996 SPRA318 IMPORTANT NOTICE Texas Instruments (TITM) reserves the right to make changes to its products or to discontinue any semiconductor product or service without notice, and advises its customers to obtain the latest version of relevant information to verify, before placing orders, that the information being relied on is current. TI warrants performance of its semiconductor products and related software to the specifications applicable at the time of sale in accordance with TI’s standard warranty. Testing and other quality control techniques are utilized to the extent TI deems necessary to support this warranty. Specific testing of all parameters of each device is not necessarily performed, except those mandated by government requirements. Certain application using semiconductor products may involve potential risks of death, personal injury, or severe property or environmental damage (“Critical Applications”). TI SEMICONDUCTOR PRODUCTS ARE NOT DESIGNED, INTENDED, AUTHORIZED, OR WARRANTED TO BE SUITABLE FOR USE IN LIFE-SUPPORT APPLICATIONS, DEVICES OR SYSTEMS OR OTHER CRITICAL APPLICATIONS. Inclusion of TI products in such applications is understood to be fully at the risk of the customer. Use of TI products in such applications requires the written approval of an appropriate TI officer. Questions concerning potential risk applications should be directed to TI through a local SC sales office.