The Real Story of Lavabit's Founder [OT]
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"…So when the feds said they wanted to monitor the email of the target(s) in real time, and when they asked for Lavabit’s private SSL master key to do so, Ladar deduced that they’d come up with a way to figure out those third keys, the session keys. Until now, uncovering a session key was thought to be theoretically possible but also so difficult that it would be impractical. Ladar realized the FBI had been able to “reduce” the problem such that it had the ability to uncover session keys in real time. This meant that once they had access to the private SSL keys, they would be able to monitor everyone who was accessing Lavabit and examine everything being sent to and from its servers.
“Nobody knows that capability exists,” Ladar says. He admits he’s just guessing, but then, he would be in a better position than anyone on the planet to guess about such a thing. “That’s why they were trying to keep it secret. They have figured out how to listen to a large number of encrypted conversations in real time. They’ve probably uncovered a weakness in the SSL algorithm. The feeling I got is that they can do it with a single device that has specialized hardware inside it.”
NEWS FLASH - If someone has the private key they can decrypt communications. Surprise!
I don't know much about the details... But, I remember reading, some years ago, that the SSL type of communications used, at the time, could be (relatively) easily hacked.
And, also that such type of communications could be subverted.
http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2010/03/packet-forensics/
(And, this is what was /publicly/ known... And, that doesn't involve /real/ supercomputers.)
I, most certainly, don't trust this type of communications as being secure...
I mean, I only consider them secure against the regular type of criminals. But, being governments and their agencies the worst type of criminals that I know of - and, the ones that I should watch out for, more... I know that such type of communications offer me "near zero" privacy protection.
MitM attacks using e.g. such boxen need "fake" certificates and can be
protected against by users and browser vendors (e.g. certificate
pinning: require bribing/forcing a specific CA instead of any; non-CA
ways of trusting certificates). This needs some work, new methods like
DANE (using DNSSEC) protect against "regular criminals" (and ISPs) only,
not governments that can control top-level domain or root keys. (I do
consider this issue completely solved for e.g. SSH communication with
the servers that my computers already know.)
There is a possibility of protecting against the NSA getting the private
key after the communication is done: forward security, using TLS
ciphersuites having Diffie-Hellman (or EC Diffie-Hellman) key exchange
with ephemeral keys. (The private key of the certificate is used to
sign the public key of the ephemeral key which is quickly erased after
the key exchange.) (Ellipic curve cryptography patents and low prime DH
performance might have contributed to this not being popular until
recent past.) (Do we know what backdoors the NSA has in the EC curves
that they designed and we use?)
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NSA and FBI don't always work well together. I'm not sure "who" has "what" capability. NSA may have the toys but FBI wanted the keys.
Bothers me that Lavabit/Levison suggested "even we can't access your email" on their website but later admits how easy it would be to do just that with the keys he was required to hand over!
Then he takes this noble stand and shuts down his business "I feel you deserve to know what's going on..." And it took until just a few days ago for GoDaddy to revoke the Lavabit certificate. http://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2013/10/09/godaddy-pulls-lavabits-security-creds-because-the-government-got-ahold-of-its-encryption-keys/
Is it lies, people sleeping on the job, foul ups, or strategic kahoots? Something just isn't "real" enough.