MS & Big Brother hand in hand

[Trooper110]

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/htm...msftlaw29.html

Awfully darn nice of them... Now what happens when some hacker gets his hands on one of these and reverse engineers some code for a pretty new virus? And why is MS making easier for law enforcement to get in to computers anyway? I support this for the cases where it's warranted, but with a tool like this, how many times are laws going to be overlooked to get access to "proof" quickly?

[mapes]

Alls it is is a thumb drive with various tools. You can find tools like cain and able for brute forcing passwords and put it on your own thumb drive. It's really not that big of a deal.

[Trooper110]

Alls it is is a thumb drive with various tools. You can find tools like cain and able for brute forcing passwords and put it on your own thumb drive. It's really not that big of a deal.

Yes, you could, but I got the impression from the article that the thumbdrive more or less just turns off any passwords or security enabled through Windows. This wouldn't affect something with, say, PGP Full Disk Encryption running, but it's an awful neat little trick without having to brute force your way in. Course, I could just be reading things incorrectly which has happened before. But what if it is something that more or less just makes Windows security feature "see through"? I'd think there would be some things that malicious programmers could get out of that.

[mapes]

This leads me to believe that it is a NTLM hash cracker

The device contains 150 commands that can dramatically cut the time it takes to gather digital evidence, which is becoming more important in real-world crime, as well as cybercrime. It can decrypt passwords and analyze a computer's Internet activity, as well as data stored in the computer.

You have to understand...Most Law Enforcment don't really understand computers. MS did this as sort of a precanned hacking thumb drive for them...I think. Well if youyr really worried about it switch to linux

[DougBob]

I don't think you have anything to worry about!
Like mapes said it's just various tools some probably not available to the public.
Just FYI, most encryption standards have back doors built in for the certain agencies.
Years ago The Z man, if you know who I mean, had a battle with the gov over PGP and not wanting to put that back door in.
I don't know what the outcome was, last I saw he was still telling them to FO.
I figured you would want to know about this PUBLIC KNOWLEDGE, so if theres an encrypted email they want to know whats in it, unless your using PGP, they can read it.
This was not intended for all authorities and other national authorities, but I haven't followed up on this in a long time. The original purpose for this, which I might add has been released in public articles {to cover my ass}, was for national security reasons, which I agree with.

Cheers
DougBob

DISCLAIMER: Information in this email was obtained thru the use of public information available on the Internet approx. 10 years ago. No information was obtained through my company or illegal means and I shall not be held responsible.

[mapes]

Just FYI, most encryption standards have back doors built in for the certain agencies.

That is not true.

When the DES standard was proposed the NSA insisted on some minor changes to the Diffie Helman prime groups. They wouldn't say why. After exhaustive research by academia it was determined that the changes the NSA wanted made the DES cipher more secure.

A few years back NIST put forth the process for a new goverment standard cipher. Many many people from academia submitted various cipher algorithms. The one that won was called Rijndael.

The cipher was developed by two Belgian cryptographers, Joan Daemen and Vincent Rijmen, and submitted to the AES selection process under the name "Rijndael", a portmanteau of the names of the inventors. (Rijndael is pronounced [rɛindaːl], which sounds almost like "rain dahl").[4]


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advance...ption_Standard

[DougBob]

That is not true.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advance...ption_Standard

Remember, I did say most, not all

the NSA wanted made the DES cipher more secure

There was a reason for that

[mapes]

Remember, I did say most, not all



There was a reason for that

Yes the reason is that the DES standard was used by our government. The NSA has many divisions. One is in charge of vetting ciphers for government use and gave us stuff like SELinux.

Generally ciphers that have back doors are extremely weak or broken from the get go. So I would say that most ciphers do not have back doors.... Unless they're makers want to be laughed at by the cryptographic community

The only two times the the government serious tried to install back door or something like a back door is when it restricted 128 bit key SSL via ITAR and Key Escrow.