From sirius.imperium.net!f402.n3666!not-for-mail Fri Aug 16 00:08:14 1996
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From: Don Allen
Date: Tue, 06 Aug 96 20:43:21 -0400
Subject: securing the internet against wiretapping
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Organization: A bad day at the beach beats a good day at work
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* Forwarded from ALT.CONSPIRACY
* Originally By: an366601@anon.penet.fi
* Originally To: All
* Originally Re: securing the internet against wiretapping
* Originally Dated: Saturday August 03 1996 09:47
__________________________________________________________________
Newsgroups:
talk.politics.crypto,alt.politics.org.covert,alt.politics.org.nsa,alt.politics.
datahighway,alt.culture.internet,alt.culture.usenet,alt.cyberspace,alt.society.
anarchy,alt.conspiracy
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Organization: Anonymous forwarding service
Date: Sat, 3 Aug 1996 13:47:36 UTC
Subject: securing the internet against wiretapping
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SECURING 5% OF THE INTERNET AGAINST WIRETAPPING IN 1996
Support encryption freedom!
My project for 1996 is to secure 5% of the Internet traffic against
passive wiretapping. If we get 5% this year, we can secure 20% next
year, against both active and passive attacks; and 80% in 1998. Soon
the whole Internet will be private and secure. Want to help?
The idea is to deploy boxes that will sit between your local area
network and the Internet (near your firewall or router) which
opportunistically encrypt your Internet packets. Whenever you talk to
a machine (like a Web site) that doesn't support encryption, your
traffic goes out "in the clear" as usual. Whenever you connect to a
machine that does support this kind of encryption, this box
automatically encrypts all your packets, and decrypts the ones that
come in. In effect, each packet gets put into an "envelope" on one
side of the net, and removed from the envelope when it reaches its
destination. This works for all kinds of Internet traffic, including
Web access, Telnet, FTP, IRC, Usenet, etc.
This wasn't just my idea; lots of people have been working on it for
years. The encryption protocols for these boxes are called IPSEC (IP
Security). They have been developed by the IP Security Working Group
of the Internet Engineering Task Force, and will be a standard part of
the next major version of the Internet protocols (IPv6). For today's
(IP version 4) Internet, they are an option. The Internet Architecture
Board and Internet Engineering Steering Group have taken a strong
stand that the Internet should use powerful encryption to provide
security and privacy. I think these protocols are the best chance to
do that, because they can be deployed very easily, without changing
your hardware or software or retraining your users. They offer the
best security we know how to build, using the Triple-DES, RSA, and
Diffie-Hellman algorithms.
This "opportunistic encryption box" offers the "fax effect". As each
person installs one for their own use, it becomes more valuable for
their neighbors to install one too, because there's one more person to
use it with. The software automatically notices each newly installed
box, and doesn't require a network administrator to reconfigure it.
Instead of "virtual private networks" we have a "REAL private
network"; we add privacy to the real network instead of layering a
manually-maintained virtual network on top of an insecure Internet.
Deployment
The US government would like to control the deployment of IP Security
with the crypto export laws. This isn't a problem for my effort,
because the cryptographic work is happening outside the United States.
A foreign philanthroper has donated the resources required to add
these protocols to the Linux operating system. Linux is a complete,
freely available operating system for IBM PC's and several kinds of
workstation, which is compatible with Unix. It was written by Linus
Torvalds, and is still maintained from Finland, by a talented team of
expert programmers working all over the world and coordinating over
the Internet. Linux is distributed under the GNU Public License, which
gives everyone the right to copy it, improve it, give it to their
friends, sell it commercially, or do just about anything else with it,
without paying anyone for the privilege.
Organizations that want to secure their network will be able to put
two Ethernet cards into an IBM PC, install Linux on it from a $10
CDROM or by downloading it over the net, and plug it in between their
Ethernet and their Internet link or firewall. That's all they'll have
to do to encrypt their Internet traffic everywhere outside their own
local area network.
Travelers will be able to run Linux on their laptops, to secure their
connection back to their home network (and to everywhere else that
they connect to, such as customer sites). Anyone who runs Linux on a
standalone PC will also be able to secure their network connections,
without changing their application software or how they operate their
computer from day to day.
There will also be numerous commercially available firewalls that use
this technology. RSA Data Security is coordinating the S/Wan (Secure
Wide Area Network) project among more than a dozen vendors who use
these protocols. There's a compatability chart that shows which
vendors have tested their boxes against which other vendors to
guarantee interoperatility.
Eventually this technology will also move into the operating systems
and networking protocol stacks of major vendors. This will probably
take longer because those vendors will have to figure out what they
want to do about the export controls.
Current status
Protocols
The low-level encrypted packet formats are defined. The system
for publishing keys and providing secure domain name service is
defined. There are three competing protocols for session key
management, and a small team is working to combine them into a
single protocol.
Linux Implementation
The Linux implementation of the low-level packets has had about
a month of work done, and is progressing. Check back here for
updates as alpha-test versions start to come out.
Domain Name System Security
The first prototype implementation of Domain Name System
Security was funded by DARPA as part of their Information
Survivability program. Trusted Information Systems wrote a
modified version of BIND, the widely-used Berkeley
implementation of the Domain Name System, and it is available
for FTP by US citizens. I am merging the prototype into the
standard version of BIND. The first alpha-test version that
supports KEY and SIG records will be available about August 1,
1996 from the Internet Software Consortium FTP site. It is not
export-controlled since it does not contain any cryptography.
Future releases with more and more DNS Security features will
also appear there through the summer.
Why?
Because I can. I'm independently wealthy from several successful
startup companies, so I don't have to work for a living. I spend my
energies and money creating the kind of world that I'd like to live in
and that I'd like my (future) kids to live in. Keeping and improving
on the civil rights we have in the United States, as we move more of
our lives into cyberspace, is a particular goal of mine.
To offer to help, send me email at gnu@toad.com. I can use people who
are willing to write documentation, install early releases for
testing, write cryptographic code outside the United States, and teach
classes for network administrators who want to install this
technology.
Misc notes
I've also collected a small bit of information about network
encryption history and patents.
_________________________________________________________________
gnu@toad.com, gnu@eff.org, my home page
Last updated Fri Jul 26 16:01:41 PDT 1996
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