Re: [gentoo-user] loop-aes + extra-ciphers...

Re: [gentoo-user] loop-aes + extra-ciphers...

[Dirk Heinrichs]

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Am Mittwoch, 25. Juni 2008 schrieb Chris Walters:

> | Rumor has it that the three-letter agencies (CIA, KGB, M.A.V.O. [2],
> | etc) can break those algorithms relatively easy. On the other hand even
> | weaker algorithms can protect your data against laptop thieves.
>
> That's more than a rumor.  Another three letter agency (NSA) has networks
> of supercomputers that can brute force a passphrase is little time.  I am
> majoring in mathematics, and plan to specialize in cryptology.

If it is so easy for them to crack our ciphers (and the one they use 
themselves, btw.), why doesn't Kasperky ask them to crack the key of the 
GPCode virus which, according to Kaspersky's assumptions, would keep 15 
million modern PCs busy for a year. 

And, if it is so easy for them, it is as easy for other governments too, 
right? That would mean they use a cipher that's easily crackable by other 
governments. Do you really think they do?

Bye...

	Dirk

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Re: [gentoo-user] loop-aes + extra-ciphers...

[Alan McKinnon]

On Wednesday 25 June 2008, Dirk Heinrichs wrote:

> If it is so easy for them to crack our ciphers (and the one they use
> themselves, btw.), why doesn't Kasperky ask them to crack the key of
> the GPCode virus which, according to Kaspersky's assumptions, would
> keep 15 million modern PCs busy for a year.

There's an interesting side possibility to that one. It's entirely 
plausible that the key used to encrypt all those poor sucker Windows 
user's files isn't just any old key, but rather a very important public 
key that matches a private key the bad guys would like to have - like a 
CA's private key.

Maybe cracking that key isn't such a good idea after all. I think this 
is a case for hose-pipe decryption.

-- 
Alan McKinnon
alan dot mckinnon at gmail dot com

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Re: [gentoo-user] loop-aes + extra-ciphers...

[Chris Walters]

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Dirk Heinrichs wrote:
| If it is so easy for them to crack our ciphers (and the one they use
| themselves, btw.), why doesn't Kasperky ask them to crack the key of the
| GPCode virus which, according to Kaspersky's assumptions, would keep 15
| million modern PCs busy for a year.
|
| And, if it is so easy for them, it is as easy for other governments too,
| right? That would mean they use a cipher that's easily crackable by other
| governments. Do you really think they do?

I didn't say it was "easy".  All I said is that it is possible, with enough
resources, to crack keys.  I very much doubt that the NSA would be interested
in cracking the key of the GPCode virus, since they are more directed to the
National Security of the US.

As for other governments, if they have large networks of supercomputers, and
cryptanalysis experts, then it would probably be just as probable that they
could crack any key from any publicly used cipher algorithm.

Regards,
Chris
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Re: [gentoo-user] loop-aes + extra-ciphers...

[Alan McKinnon]

On Wednesday 25 June 2008, Chris Walters wrote:
> Dirk Heinrichs wrote:
> | If it is so easy for them to crack our ciphers (and the one they
> | use themselves, btw.), why doesn't Kasperky ask them to crack the
> | key of the GPCode virus which, according to Kaspersky's
> | assumptions, would keep 15 million modern PCs busy for a year.
> |
> | And, if it is so easy for them, it is as easy for other governments
> | too, right? That would mean they use a cipher that's easily
> | crackable by other governments. Do you really think they do?
>
> I didn't say it was "easy".  All I said is that it is possible, with
> enough resources, to crack keys.  I very much doubt that the NSA
> would be interested in cracking the key of the GPCode virus, since
> they are more directed to the National Security of the US.
>
> As for other governments, if they have large networks of
> supercomputers, and cryptanalysis experts, then it would probably be
> just as probable that they could crack any key from any publicly used
> cipher algorithm.

This is the point where I start to ask for a citation and stop listening 
to theoretical possibilities and things that might possibly could be. 
Unless of course the exact meaning of phrases like "three hundred 
thousand million years" has a different meaning in your universe than 
it does in mine.



-- 
Alan McKinnon
alan dot mckinnon at gmail dot com

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Re: [gentoo-user] loop-aes + extra-ciphers...

[Chris Walters]

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Alan McKinnon wrote:
| On Wednesday 25 June 2008, Chris Walters wrote:
|> Dirk Heinrichs wrote:
|> | If it is so easy for them to crack our ciphers (and the one they
|> | use themselves, btw.), why doesn't Kasperky ask them to crack the
|> | key of the GPCode virus which, according to Kaspersky's
|> | assumptions, would keep 15 million modern PCs busy for a year.
|> |
|> | And, if it is so easy for them, it is as easy for other governments
|> | too, right? That would mean they use a cipher that's easily
|> | crackable by other governments. Do you really think they do?
|>
|> I didn't say it was "easy".  All I said is that it is possible, with
|> enough resources, to crack keys.  I very much doubt that the NSA
|> would be interested in cracking the key of the GPCode virus, since
|> they are more directed to the National Security of the US.
|>
|> As for other governments, if they have large networks of
|> supercomputers, and cryptanalysis experts, then it would probably be
|> just as probable that they could crack any key from any publicly used
|> cipher algorithm.
|
| This is the point where I start to ask for a citation and stop listening
| to theoretical possibilities and things that might possibly could be.
| Unless of course the exact meaning of phrases like "three hundred
| thousand million years" has a different meaning in your universe than
| it does in mine.

Whom are you asking for a citation from?  For which particular facts?  Do you
really doubt that the US NSA has a *lot* of supercomputers?  Do you really
doubt that they have experts in mathematics, cryptology, cryptanalysis, and
cryptography experts on staff?  Or perhaps you doubt that they can crack any
keys at all...

Chris
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Re: [gentoo-user] loop-aes + extra-ciphers...

[Alan McKinnon]

On Wednesday 25 June 2008, Chris Walters wrote:
> | This is the point where I start to ask for a citation and stop
> | listening to theoretical possibilities and things that might
> | possibly could be. Unless of course the exact meaning of phrases
> | like "three hundred thousand million years" has a different meaning
> | in your universe than it does in mine.
>
> Whom are you asking for a citation from?

I'm asking you to back up your totally unsubstantiated assertions that 
the NSA et al can rapidly crack decent cryptography

> For which particular facts? 

Pick any one you like from your contribution to this thread. My 
favourite would be this one:

"A final thought:  It is a fact that both the US Navy and the NSA are 
*very*
interested in cryptology and data security.  The NSA also does have 
large
networks of supercomputers that, using parallel, distributed or 
concurrent
computing principles can crack keys more quickly than you may think."

Now that's a pretty definite statement you made there. So, how quickly 
do you think I think they can do it? And how quickly can they actually 
do it?

>  Do you really doubt that the US NSA has a *lot* of supercomputers?

Not at all, in fact I would hazard an educated guess that the NSA is the 
largest consumer of supercomputers in the world, and also that they are 
very reluctant to advertise the fact. I doubt any of their machines 
appear on the Top500 list.

I say this as a natural deduction from knowing what they are mandated to 
do and how they would realistically go about doing it.

>  Do you really doubt that they have experts in mathematics,
> cryptology, cryptanalysis, and cryptography experts on staff?

Not at all, I would be stupid indeed to doubt that. As evidence, one 
only has to look at the vast amount of technical literature the NSA has 
published on the subject.

> Or 
> perhaps you doubt that they can crack any keys at all...

Don't get smart with me, jackass.

Everyone here who knows a bit about cryptography knows that give enough 
time and resources any key can be cracked.

I asked you to do a perfectly reasonable thing. You are asserting that 
the NSA can crack keys quickly, much quicker than the average geek 
thinks they can do it, but you provide no evidence of this other than 
your own assertion of it. You didn't even give any evidence of why I 
should consider you a credible and knowledgeable person in the field. 
Extraordinary assertions require extraordinary evidence and all that.

I see 4 scenarios here:

1. You are perfectly correct and can back it up. In which case I'd like 
to read the evidence.
2. You are perfectly correct and have the evidence but cannot show it to 
me due to national security or NDA. That's fine, but do say so.
3. You are presenting your knowledgeable hunch/gut feel/opinion/hearsay 
evidence as fact. that's also fine, but do say so.
4. You are simply making stuff up in varying degrees.

-- 
Alan McKinnon
alan dot mckinnon at gmail dot com

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Re: [gentoo-user] loop-aes + extra-ciphers...

[Chris Walters]

Alan McKinnon wrote:
>> Or 
>> perhaps you doubt that they can crack any keys at all...
> 
> Don't get smart with me, jackass.

Fuck off, shitehead.  Call me a jackass, when I simply state facts you admitted 
to?  You're a fucking idiot.  Welcome to my ignore list.

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Re: [gentoo-user] loop-aes + extra-ciphers...

[Jason Rivard]

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On Wed, Jun 25, 2008 at 9:51 PM, Chris Walters <cjw2004d@comcast.net> wrote:

> Alan McKinnon wrote:
>
>> Or perhaps you doubt that they can crack any keys at all...
>>>
>>
>> Don't get smart with me, jackass.
>>
>
> Fuck off, shitehead.  Call me a jackass, when I simply state facts you
> admitted to?  You're a fucking idiot.  Welcome to my ignore list.
>
> Now that was TOTALLY UNCALLED FOR! All he asked you to do is prove your
ludicrous statements about the NSA being able to crack any key in a "short"
amount of time. Wait for my private mail, Mr. Walters.

Jase

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Re: [gentoo-user] loop-aes + extra-ciphers...

[Alan McKinnon]

On Wednesday 25 June 2008, Jason Rivard wrote:

> Wait for my private mail, Mr. Walters.

I wouldn't bother with a private mail Jason. Tomorrow Chris will calm 
down, take a deep breath and probably contribute to the list again. It 
pretty much always works that way.

Maybe he's quick to anger. Well, so am I sometimes. But he certainly 
does not belong in that class of people who have nothing useful to 
contribute.

-- 
Alan McKinnon
alan dot mckinnon at gmail dot com

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Re: [gentoo-user] PEACE!!!

[Daniel Iliev]

On Wed, 25 Jun 2008 17:51:53 -0400
Chris Walters <cjw2004d@comcast.net> wrote:

> Alan McKinnon wrote:
> >> Or 
> >> perhaps you doubt that they can crack any keys at all...
> > 
> > Don't get smart with me, jackass.
> 
> Fuck off, shitehead.  Call me a jackass, when I simply state facts
> you admitted to?  You're a fucking idiot.  Welcome to my ignore list.
> 


WOW! Both of you! Come on, guys! What is this? I've never seen such
thing here for all the years I'm on the list.

Please calm down, we are supposed to be friends here, right?


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Daniel
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Re: [gentoo-user] PEACE!!!

[Chris Walters]

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Daniel Iliev wrote:
| On Wed, 25 Jun 2008 17:51:53 -0400
| Chris Walters <cjw2004d@comcast.net> wrote:
|> Alan McKinnon wrote:
[snip]
| WOW! Both of you! Come on, guys! What is this? I've never seen such
| thing here for all the years I'm on the list.
|
| Please calm down, we are supposed to be friends here, right?

Sorry for the outburst.  It just gets my dander up when someone calls me
childish names on a discussion group like this.  I thought we were all friends
here - we have all chosen the same distribution (Gentoo), and we all often come
here first when we have problems.

I asked a simple question that grew into so much more.  Never did get an answer
to my simple question.  For the record, I agree that AES256 is an extremely
secure cipher, which is why I am using it.

My original question was:  Does anyone know how to compile the "extra-ciphers"
package that you can find on the loop-aes SourceForge site.

Regards,
Chris
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Re: [gentoo-user] loop-aes

[Daniel Iliev]

On Wed, 25 Jun 2008 18:40:08 -0400
Chris Walters <cjw2004d@comcast.net> wrote:

 
> My original question was:  Does anyone know how to compile the
> "extra-ciphers" package that you can find on the loop-aes SourceForge
> site.

The following works here:

1) ebuild `equery w loop-aes` unpack

2) cd $PORTDIR/sys-fs/loop-aes-<version>/work/loop-AES-<version>/

3) make EXTRA_CIPHERS=y

4) cd ../../

5) touch .compiled

6) cd

7) ebuild `equery w loop-aes` merge


(I actually stopped only up to step 3, but it finished w/o error)


Since you said something about lack of documentation about loop-aes,
have you already found this?

http://loop-aes.sourceforge.net/loop-AES.README


NOTE: "In order to support AES and other ciphers, mount, umount,
losetup, swapon and swapoff need to be patched and
recompiled."

There's a hope - Gentoo may provide a patched version of util-linux.
In case those tools are not already patched I wouldn't go that far on
a system which is not especially dedicated for this encryption test of
yours.


HTH

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Daniel
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Re: [gentoo-user] loop-aes

[Chris Walters]

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Hash: SHA512

Daniel Iliev wrote:
| On Wed, 25 Jun 2008 18:40:08 -0400
| Chris Walters <cjw2004d@comcast.net> wrote:
|
|
|> My original question was:  Does anyone know how to compile the
|> "extra-ciphers" package that you can find on the loop-aes SourceForge
|> site.
|
| The following works here:
|
| 1) ebuild `equery w loop-aes` unpack
|
| 2) cd $PORTDIR/sys-fs/loop-aes-<version>/work/loop-AES-<version>/
|
| 3) make EXTRA_CIPHERS=y
|
| 4) cd ../../
|
| 5) touch .compiled
|
| 6) cd
|
| 7) ebuild `equery w loop-aes` merge
|
|
| (I actually stopped only up to step 3, but it finished w/o error)
|
|
| Since you said something about lack of documentation about loop-aes,
| have you already found this?
|
| http://loop-aes.sourceforge.net/loop-AES.README
|
|
| NOTE: "In order to support AES and other ciphers, mount, umount,
| losetup, swapon and swapoff need to be patched and
| recompiled."
|
| There's a hope - Gentoo may provide a patched version of util-linux.
| In case those tools are not already patched I wouldn't go that far on
| a system which is not especially dedicated for this encryption test of
| yours.

Thanks for this.  I will give it a try, when I get a chance.  It is not really
an encryption test, as you put it, so much as it is frustration at not being
able to get the extra ciphers to compile.

Oh, and Gentoo already patches util-linux with the patch from loop-aes.  One
big problem that people are experiencing right now it that since the testing
version of util-linux got bumped up, the old patch will not work anymore - this
has to be fixed upstream, but I doubt they will do so until the new version of
util-linux is proven stable.  For some reason, the 2.6.24 kernel patch works
with the 2.6.25 version of the kernel, probably because the files it changes
have not yet changed.

Regards,
Chris
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Re: [gentoo-user] loop-aes

[Daniel Iliev]

On Wed, 25 Jun 2008 22:30:25 -0400
Chris Walters <cjw2004d@comcast.net> wrote:


> | The following works here:
> |
> | 1) ebuild `equery w loop-aes` unpack
> |
> | 2) cd $PORTDIR/sys-fs/loop-aes-<version>/work/loop-AES-<version>/
> |
> | 3) make EXTRA_CIPHERS=y
> |
> | 4) cd ../../
> |
> | 5) touch .compiled
> |
> | 6) cd
> |
> | 7) ebuild `equery w loop-aes` merge
> |
> |
> | (I actually stopped only up to step 3, but it finished w/o error)
> |
> |
> | Since you said something about lack of documentation about loop-aes,
> | have you already found this?
> |
> | http://loop-aes.sourceforge.net/loop-AES.README
> |
> |
> | NOTE: "In order to support AES and other ciphers, mount, umount,
> | losetup, swapon and swapoff need to be patched and
> | recompiled."
> |
> | There's a hope - Gentoo may provide a patched version of util-linux.
> | In case those tools are not already patched I wouldn't go that far
> | on a system which is not especially dedicated for this encryption
> | test of yours.
> 
> Thanks for this.  I will give it a try, when I get a chance. 


Sorry, from your reply I saw there's an error in my message:

Step 2 should read: "$PORTAGE_TMPDIR/portage" instead of "$PORTDIR"

Anyways you'll see the correct directory for your system from the output
of "ebuild unpack". My apologies and good luck.


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Daniel
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