snowden

華盛頓郵報的歷史創舉：呼籲對告密者的求刑

在英國衛報與華盛頓郵報因報導 Snowden 事件而拿到 2014 年的普立茲獎後，華盛頓郵報正式公開立場，表達應該將 Snowden 弄回美國受審，而非現在大家在呼籲的特赦：「WashPost Makes History: First Paper to Call for Prosecution of Its Own Source (After Accepting Pulitzer)」。

In doing so, the Washington Post has achieved an ignominious feat in U.S. media history: the first-ever paper to explicitly editorialize for the criminal prosecution of its own source — one on whose back the paper won and eagerly accepted a Pulitzer Prize for Public Service. But even more staggering than this act of journalistic treachery against the paper’s own source are the claims made to justify it.

華盛頓郵報的說法更是無恥：

The complication is that Mr. Snowden did more than that. He also pilfered, and leaked, information about a separate overseas NSA Internet-monitoring program, PRISM, that was both clearly legal and not clearly threatening to privacy. (It was also not permanent; the law authorizing it expires next year.)

這從來就不是合法的問題，而是侵犯人權的問題，合法的事情在事後甚至被制定憲法修正案而推翻的事情多的是。美國的女性在 1920 年才擁有投票權 (透過「美國憲法第十九修正案」)。

第四權必須發揮應有的能力去推動政府往正確的方向前進。在拿到普立茲獎後以「合法」的角度來論述淪落為政府打手，墮落至此...

英國法院認為 GCHQ 偷黑別人機器是合法的

出自「Tribunal rules computer hacking by GCHQ is not illegal」這篇報導。在 Edward Snowden 爆料美國與英國政府都在幹黑的後，Privacy International 就提出訴訟控告 GCHQ，但前幾天法院認定這樣是合法的：

Campaigners Privacy International have lost a legal challenge claiming the spying post's hacking operations are too intrusive and break European law.

The case was launched after revelations by US whistleblower Edward Snowden about the extent of US and UK spying.

接下來的戰場會變成在 Investigatory Powers Bill 上面？還是會繼續有上訴？

在攻擊時總是挑最弱的一環：NSA 對 DH 的攻擊

在「How is NSA breaking so much crypto?」這邊提到了 2012 年有文章說明 NSA 有能力解開部份的加密通訊，而後來 Snowden 所提供的資料也證實了這點：

In 2012, James Bamford published an article quoting anonymous former NSA officials stating that the agency had achieved a “computing breakthrough” that gave them “the ability to crack current public encryption.” The Snowden documents also hint at some extraordinary capabilities: they show that NSA has built extensive infrastructure to intercept and decrypt VPN traffic and suggest that the agency can decrypt at least some HTTPS and SSH connections on demand.

但在這之前一直都不清楚是怎麼解出來的，直到最近才猜測應該是 Diffie-Hellman 的強度以及實作問題：「Imperfect Forward Secrecy: How Diffie-Hellman Fails in Practice」。

而成果其實非常驚人，由於強度不夠以及實作問題，有相當可觀的數量是可被攻擊的：

We go on to consider Diffie-Hellman with 768- and 1024-bit groups. We estimate that even in the 1024-bit case, the computations are plausible given nation-state resources. A small number of fixed or standardized groups are used by millions of servers; performing precomputation for a single 1024-bit group would allow passive eavesdropping on 18% of popular HTTPS sites, and a second group would allow decryption of traffic to 66% of IPsec VPNs and 26% of SSH servers. A close reading of published NSA leaks shows that the agency’s attacks on VPNs are consistent with having achieved such a break. We conclude that moving to stronger key exchange methods should be a priority for the Internet community.

作者群給的建議有三個方向，一個是把長度加長到 2048 bits，另外一個是改用 ECDH，而最差的情況 (如果還是需要使用 1024 bits DH) 則是避免使用固定的 prime number。