Encrochat "Bites the Dust"? Think Twice

Since when does law enforcement attacking a commercial encryption phone and software company constitute news? Keep reading.

It appears that for a while the news was a buzz with law enforcement managing to obtain access to the primary domain that used to control the entire Enrochat franchise and actually eavesdropped on its communications which led to arrests.

The bad news? It appears that someone got it all wrong in the context of attacking a commercial encryption software and device which basically means that anyone can attack any service or a vendor that appears to be using encryption for the purpose of catching "ordes of cybercriminals".

Sample network reconnaissance for Encrochat's network:

hxxp://encrotalk.encrochat.ch - 216.187.86.233 - Email: encrochatnetwork@protonmail.com

hxxp://encrotalk2.encrochat.ch - 124.217.254.93

hxxp://encrotalk3.encrochat.ch - 185.55.53.173

hxxp://chat.encrochat.ch - 91.134.188.27

hxxp://status.encrochat.ch - 145.239.192.20

hxxp://jasper.encrochat.ch - 54.38.250.133

hxxp://update.encrochat.ch - 51.38.255.43 - 51.38.255.42 - 137.74.125.228

hxxp://sims.encrochat.ch - 54.38.250.133

hxxp://marvin.encrochat.ch - 145.239.192.63 - 149.56.23.134

hxxp://stargate.encrochat.ch - 91.134.128.107 - 149.56.23.134

hxxp://connect.encrochat.ch - 145.239.192.32 - 145.239.192.28 - 5.254.102.251

hxxp://currency.encrochat.ch - 54.38.250.21

hxxp://notes.encrochat.ch - 147.135.143.142 - 216.187.80.153

hxxp://dmo.portal.encrochat.ch - 91.134.128.98 - 51.38.21.251

hxxp://nexus.encrochat.ch - 149.56.251.50

hxxp://vanc.encrochat.ch - 216.187.86.36

hxxp://portal.encrochat.ch - 216.187.117.207

hxxp://media.im.encrochat.ch - 145.239.192.60 - 147.135.143.151

hxxp://connect.talk.encrochat.ch - 145.239.192.49 - 37.59.24.100

hxxp://encrotalk2.encrochat.ch - 91.134.188.24

hxxp://test.encrochat.ch - 149.202.201.156

hxxp://encrotalk3.encrochat.ch - 91.134.188.23 - 91.134.188.24 - 91.134.188.25

Believe it or not but the Encrochat entire bust history is currently available online for sale meaning a bad OPSEC (Operational Security) is taking place or that someone's playing dirty and is on purposely sharing the entire database to the public.

Talk to me about public accountability? Someone should be definitely looking forward to obtaining access to the database and look for criminal sentiments in the context of justifying the law enforcement operation.

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All Your Confidentiality Are Belong To Us

The proof that commercial and open source encryption has surpassed the technologies to police it, or the idea that privacy and business growth as top priorities would ruin the whole initiative?

"The Government has launched a public consultation into a draft code of practice for a controversial UK law that critics have said could alienate big business and IT professionals. Part III of the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000 (RIPA) will, as it stands, give police the authority to force organisations and individuals to disclose encryption keys. The Government issued the public consultation on the code of practice for Part III, which will regulate how police and the courts use powers under the legislation, on Wednesday."

It would be interesting to see how they would initiate the response from individuals, without raising the the eyebrows on the majority of civil liberties watch dogs out there and, of course, businessess. That's of course, assuming they use encryption at the first place. Could be much more "wiser" to take advantage of covert practices to obtain the necessary information, instead of "forcing" this measure -- detecting encrypted/covert communication channels is another topic. Moreover, compared to the Australian police whose capabilities of obtaining information on criminals include the use of spyware is a bit contraversial, but adaptave approach.

If national infrastructure security matters, have individuals and enterprises personally take care of their security and encryption keys, promote data encryption, instead of dictating the vibrations by slowing down the basics through such laws. Continue reading →

Distributed cracking of a utopian mystery code

If you have missed the opportunity to buy yourself a portable Enigma encryption machine, or didn't know you could devote some of your CPU power while trying to crack unbroken Nazi Enigma ciphers, now is the time to consider another distributed computing cracking initiative I just came across to - "Assault on the Thirteenth Labour", part of the utopian Perplex City alternate reality game.


More on the story itself :



"The story centers on a fictional metropolis known as Perplex City. The Receda Cube, a priceless scientific and spiritual artefact, has been stolen and buried somewhere on Earth, and the game offers a real-life $200,000 reward to whoever can find it."



As a matter of fact, ever heard of Hive7? This is where the future is going, as I think virtual worlds intrigues result in a more quality real life, don't they? Still, it can also result in security problems with stolen virtual goods. The trend, given the popularity of these, will continue to emerge -- people, both rich and poor are putting hard cash into virtual properties and DoS attacks and phishing practices are already gaining popularity as well.



Technorati tags:
Security, Cryptography, Perplex City, Virtual Worlds, Distributed, New Media Continue reading →

Wanna get yourself a portable Enigma encryption machine?

Hurry up, you still have 5 hours to participate in the sale at Ebay as the BetaNews reported "eBay has long been a purveyor of the unusual and the unique, but it's not often an authentic piece of tech history captures as much attention as the Enigma 3 portable cipher machine that has racked up bids of almost 16,000 euros. The Enigma device was used extensively by Nazi Germany during World War II."



The Enigma machine was a key success factor for the Germans during WWII, until of course its messages started getting deciphered, it's great someone managed to preserve and resell one. Today's situation is entirely different, namely an average Internet user can easily encrypt data achieving military standards with the use of public tools, where Phil Zimmerman's PGP has been cause troubles for governments across the world since its release.


However, what the majority of end users don't realize is the how the keys lenght and the passphrase's quality means totally nothing when law enforcement is sometimes empowered to use spyware, and that quantum cryptography is also subject to attacks. Client side attacks and social engineering ones don't take into consideration any key lenght -- just naivety. In one of my previous posts "Get the chance to crack unbroken Nazi Enigma ciphers"


I mentioned about the existence of a distributed project to crack unroken nazi ciphers you can freely participate into. Being a total paranoid in respect to my favorite SetiATHome, you should also consider the possibility of a SETI Hacker -- which partly happened in Contact in case you reckon.



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Cryptography, Encryption, Enigma Continue reading →

Get the chance to crack unbroken Nazi Enigma ciphers

Nice initiative I just came across to. From the "M4 Message Breaking Project" :



The M4 Project is an effort to break 3 original Enigma messages with the help of distributed computing. The signals were intercepted in the North Atlantic in 1942 and are believed to be unbroken. Ralph Erskine has presented the intercepts in a letter to the journal Cryptologia. The signals were presumably enciphered with the four rotor Enigma M4 - hence the name of the project.


This project has officially started as of January 9th, 2006. You can help out by donating idle time of your computer to the project. If you want to participate, please follow the client install instructions for your operating system:

Unix Client Install
Win98 Client Install
Win2000 Client Install
WinXP Home Client Install
WinXP Pro Client Install



The first message is already broken as a matter of fact, and looks like that :



Ciphertext :

nczwvusxpnyminhzxmqxsfwxwlkjahshnmcoccakuqpmkcsmhkseinjus
blkiosxckubhmllxcsjusrrdvkohulxwccbgvliyxeoahxrhkkfvdrewezlx
obafgyujqukgrtvukameurbveksuhhvoyhabcjwmaklfklmyfvnrizr
vvrtkofdanjmolbgffleoprgtflvrhowopbekvwmuqfmpwparmfha
gkxiibg



Deciphered and in plain text :

From Looks:Radio signal 1132/19 contents:Forced to submerge during attack, depth charges. Last enemy location08:30h, Marqu AJ 9863, 220 degrees, 8 nautical miles, (I am) following(the enemy). (Barometer) falls (by) 14 Millibar, NNO 4, visibility 10.



You no longer need the NSA to assist in here, still they sure have contributed a lot while "Eavesdropping on Hell", didn't they?



Distributed Computing is a powerful way to solve complex tasks, or at least put the PC power of the masses in use. It's no longer required to hire processing power on demand from any of these jewels, but download a client, start participating, or find a way to motivate your future participants. In my previous post "The current state of IP spoofing" I commented on the ANA Spoofer Project and featured a great deal of other distributed projects. Meanwhile, the StartdustAThome project also started gaining grounds, so is it ETs, Space dust, global IP spoofing susceptibility, or unbroken Nazi's ciphers - you have the choice where to participate!



Technorati tags :
Security, Cryptography, Enigma, Distributed Continue reading →

Would we ever witness the end of plain text communications?

Last week, a report released by the research firm In-Sat estimated that revenues for IP VPNs will double between 2004 and 2009 to $658 million.

Estimates should also be questioned, though the trend is very relevant these days. VPNs as a concept are the natural shift from avoiding plain text data exchange over the insecure by default Internet. Yet, secure communication channel doesn't mean actual attacks on the both, the channel and the host itself cannot be executed. Though, I think that avoiding plain text communications at all is a strategic step of a great important.

How you can take advantage of this trend?
Given the market is actively growing, namely a lot of new entrants, it would mean a lot of product/service choice and very competitive pricing schemes. Keep track of them, and ensure your TOC is as low as possible,think in the long-term.

What to keep in mind?
Do your homework, and while a newly established company offers might seem attractive compared to an established vendor's one in respect to pricing, don't ignore expertise and quality for a short-term deal. On the other hand, make sure you are aware of the fact, that vendors will rush into offering many other cross-sale services. We are already witnessing such vendors being as confident as to launch their own anti-virus solutions. That's exactly the type of companies whose product extension services you should avoid, as they are basically reinventing the wheel, with the idea to cut paying any royalties to the established anti virus vendors. TOC, experise, value oriented and flexible vendorare the things to keep in mind, given you don't have something else in mind?

Technorati tags :
VPN, security, information security, secure communications

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