So The FBI Can Just Take A Copy Of All Instapaper User Data With No Recourse?
from the that-doesn't-seem-right dept
We recently wrote about the FBI's server seizures in the hunt for LulzSec, noting the collateral damage that took down servers of a few different popular websites. One of the seized servers was a backup server for the very popular service Instapaper, which many people use to save web pages and other info. While Instapaper's Marco Arment notes that the FBI did return the server relatively quickly, it's possible that the FBI now has a copy of pretty much everyone's Instapaper data, which could reveal a lot about some people.Possibly most importantly, though, the FBI is now presumably in possession of a complete copy of the Instapaper database as it stood on Tuesday morning, including the complete list of users and any non-deleted bookmarks. (“Archived” bookmarks are not deleted. “Deleted” bookmarks are hard-deleted out of the database immediately.)Marco is quite reasonably pissed off at the hosting company, DigitalOne, who never contacted him about this (before or after the raid, including up until the blog post, days later). Frankly, that's unconscionable. For an ISP to simply not tell their customer that a server has been seized? Marco is also upset that DigitalOne didn't do anything to stop the seizure. Now, on both of those accounts, it's possible that DigitalOne's hands were tied. There's not much they can realistically do if the FBI shows up with a seizure warrant, even if it's super broad. And we have seen the FBI use gag orders barring ISPs from talking about what was seized.
Instapaper stores only salted SHA-1 hashes of passwords, so those are relatively safe. But email addresses are stored in the clear, as is the saved content of each bookmark saved by the bookmarklet.
The server also contained a complete copy of the Instapaper website codebase, but not the codebase of the iOS app.
Linked Facebook, Twitter, or Tumblr accounts only store their respective OAuth keys. Linked Evernote accounts only store the Evernote email-in address. Linked Pinboard accounts, however, store plaintext usernames and encrypted passwords, and the encryption keys are present in the website source code on the server.
So the FBI now has illegal possession of nearly all of Instapaper’s data and a moderate portion of its codebase, and as far as I know, this is completely out of my control.
But, really, that just goes to show, yet again, the problems of such government seizures with no prior adversarial hearings. I recognize that they're looking for evidence that might disappear, but the chance for serious collateral damage, including potentially serious privacy violations, seems pretty high. I'm not sure there's anything he could do, but it certainly would make for an interesting lawsuit if either Marco or an Instapaper customer decided to sue the federal government over these seizures.
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Filed Under: datacenter, fbi, privacy, seizures
Companies: instapaper
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Frak that!
Ignore it.
Gorram it, we have to start exercising free speech if we expect to keep it.
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Re: Frak that!
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So don't use online storage!
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Encrypt Your Data People
Key security and management is your problem, which you need to solve locally. If you use the world's least secure operating system, namely Windows, on any server or your management console, it is game over, you lose. Be careful. The only person looking after your interests is you. Never forget that.
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Tell me
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Re: Tell me
Lulsec used the security failings of others.
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Re: Tell me
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So The FBI Can Just Take A Copy Of All Instapaper User Data With No Recourse?
what did I win? hey, where are you going w/ my server?
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Re: Tell me
I guess there isn't much difference between the two. The FBI is no better than Lulz Security. That's the moral of this story.
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Lulz
And if you are going to blame anyone, blame Lulzsec for this. And you can mark my words, things will just get far worse, all thanks to "Lulzsec". We are going to lose most rights that we have now.
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Re: Lulz
There is this funny little thing called the Second Amendment. I strongly advise you to use it before you lose it.
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Re: Lulz
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Re: Lulz
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Re:
haha.
ha.
Current encryption technology would require the entire universe acting as a computer with each atom as a transistor, for the entirety of time so far to crack only (on average) 10,000 256-bit encryptions.
I haven't done that calc in a while, (it's somewhere in the comments on a past story here), but I believe that calc also assumed the universe was solidly packed instead of mostly 'empty'. If that's the case, then the real calc would be somewhere closer to 10^-18 256-bit encryptions could've been broken.
Anyways, I don't think you mean 'brute-force', but I will allow the possibility that current algorithms might possibly be cracked in twenty years. I doubt it, but I won't deny the possibility.
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You was saying?
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For a system like AES, every possible 128 (or 192 or 256) bit combination is a valid key. The strength of the system (against a brute force attack!) can be read directly off the number of bits. No conceivable computer will ever be able to attack a 256-bit key, and personally I cannot imagine a situation where a 128-bit key could be brute-forced.
For a system like RSA, only very special combinations of bits correspond to valid keys. An AES key is just a bunch of bits, while an RSA key, as a number, has to be product of exactly two prime numbers in a particular range, with special properties to boot. Even then, there would be too many values to try in a pure brute force fashion- but because of the necessary mathematical properties of an RSA key, no one does that. Instead, they use more efficient techniques that rely on those mathematical properties. A 1024 bit RSA key requires about as much computational effort as an 80-bit AES-like key. That's why the current recommendation is for at least 2048 bits (roughly the equivalent of 112 AES-like bits), though that's considered pushing it a bit. To get to the equivalent of a 128-bit AES key, you need a 3072-bit RSA key; to match AES-256, you need a 15360-bit RSA key! Such keys actually get used today. In 2005, if you combine published estimates, experts were predicting that 1024-bit RSA should be phased out by 2010 (though high-value uses should move faster). OK, so half way through that period, *one* 1024-bit RSA key was broken ... though in fact even that isn't true. (Breaking an RSA key amounts to factoring a large number into its two constituent primes. What the link points to was a successful factorization of a very specially chosen number - 2^1039-1 - for which even better mathematical techniques are known. Even so, it took the equivalent of 100 years of computer time. An indication that it was time to move on from 1024-bit keys? Absolutely. A practical "break" for massive numbers of RSA keys? Not quite.
An alternative to RSA is elliptic curve crypto (ECC), which has the same public-key properties but can use many more possible combinations of bits in a key, so can get by with dramatically shorter keys. In fact, to get the ECC equivalent of n-bit AES, you need 2n-bit ECC.
-- Jerry
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Still in the 90's I believe the most used encryption was still DES not AES.
If you get something with a DES or RSA one probably can decode it.
http://www.sciengines.com/copacobana/
Also even AES have some shortcomings like if people use passwords that are less than 32 characters in length rainbow tables could make it easy to find the correct one, in that case you are attacking the encryption by its sides and who knows how it was implemented there could be problems in the implementation even if the theory is flawless like the Debian/Ubuntu OpenSSL Random Number Generator Vulnerability
Now I read somewhere that even the government is considering use of ECC because they don't see AES being secure for long, but that is from memory and I could be wrong.
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Can anyone here guarantee that AES and ECC will endure the test of time?
Wikipedia also explain the problems in their page about brute-force.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brute-force_attack
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There is an incredibly lack of information here for anyone to be making claims against the FBI.
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That of course would also depend if instapaper was used for less than honest purposes. At that point, yes, the FBI might have a copy of it all pending investigation by their experts.
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When?
Is not only likely, but most certainly the agents copied everything before giving it back, even if it was to take a look at the contents later to find something they could use as leverage if those people sue.
What is unlikely is that they didn't copy it.
Now I ask you again, what part of "It's possible" you don't understand?
The post didn't accused the FBI of anything, but it was concerned about those possible and most probable scenarios and why there is no means to address those issues.
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This is the brothers allele problem
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But thanks for playing...
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You could easily fit a few of these up your enormous keister
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then you could have billions in you :D
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Where in this title does it say "its possible"?
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That would in the use of the word "can" rather than the word "did".
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Re:
That doesnt matter to the "followers of Mike". You are supposed to just say Moo and follow the herd.
Like this: My rights are at stake here. The government is trying to do away with the constitution. We need more transparancy. The law enforcers shouldnt be allowed to do anything without getting permission from the supreme court first.
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Re: Re:
You apparently, and quite foolishly, appear to believe that Mike simply tells his readers what to think.
--->You don't happen to work in the old-media Broadcast business do you?
There are many people who have opinions similar to Mike, and they choose to express themselves in the comment sections here. In case you haven't noticed, they also express themselves in the comment sections of many major newspapers around the country. Mike's ideas are not rare or unusual. Unfortunately editors around the country don't seem to be paying much attention.
Everywhere I go, I hear people of all economic positions are talking about the government's assault on civil liberties. The political parties had better watch out because this isn't a liberal thing, and it's not a conservative thing, it's a fed-up American thing. It's high time that both Repubs. and Dems. stopped telling us that meekly surrendering our liberty is the Patriotic thing to do.
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Re: Re: Re:
Me: You don't think so? Re-read the site with an unbiased eye, and you will see plenty of attemptd to tell people what to think. Many of the posts in the last couple of weeks have involved trying to re-frame discussions, but trying to significantly expand defintions, to ignore basic court rulings, and generally to try to paint a picture that isn't entirely realistic.
Much of it is done by parroting anti-copyright sites like Torrent Freak, which has some truly biased "reporting" on their site.
The rest is typically done by mocking reports that he doesn't agree with, or carefully playing with quotes and reports to draw conclusions that are just not clearly supported by the data, or that have other way more plausible answers.
There are many people with a similar opinion as Mike. They ignore the laws unless they favour their cause, they always say "the judge got it right" when they block some action, and "the *AA's paid off another judge" when the results aren't in their favor.
It's fun to watch them go, fun to watch them post comments here. It's even funnier when you find one or two of them actually working in the mass media, and making their living from companies that use and apply copyright to their work.
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I happen to think it more interesting (and alarming) to watch the media apologists here blithely promote any new proposal which makes copyright more onerous and rigid regardless of what the consequences are for civil liberties in this country.
Constitution...schmonstitution seems to be the attitude.
The perfect case in point is Mr. Dark Gray Snowflake above in this thread.
If you happen to know anything about the circumstances which brought our country into existence, and if you know anything about the circumstances through which other countries who have had freedom lost theirs, you just can't help but be concerned by the 'damn the consequences' attitudes displayed by media company defenders here. The restrictions of freedom that are being proposed may have consequences that could extend far beyond the sphere of the media in years to come. Remember the proposals being made aren't just theoretical. They involve laws and establish precedents that would give government the legal right to do things which it has never had either the right nor the technical capability to do in the past.
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Typical is their TAM comments "The Anti-Mike" which has to mean they to consider Mike to be some form of God or dieaty for there to be possible an "anti-Mike".
Sure if Mike is your Christ, and you feel that people who do not follow the church of Mike would be considered TAM (THE ANTI-MIKE) or the Anti-Christ.
I am glad all your Mike followers have such faith in this surmons, and preaching at you.
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'Anti' simply means 'against'. Yes there is a construction "anti-Christ" meaning "opposed to Christ". However, using "Anti-Mike" to mean "against Mike" (on everything and everything, without logic) does not somehow mean we are expanding Mike to god-like proportions. No-one here feels any need to deify Mike - if anything, it's the trolls who seem to feel the need to turn him into a baddie of Satanic proportions!
Honestly darryl, try and stay in the shade more ;)
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I think he's the one with religious delusions, not us.
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http://www.techdirt.com/profile.php?u=tam
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Re:
Apart from all their previous such behaviour in the past, you mean?
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I am sure that they made a full forensic clone of the hard drives on that server and are going through that data right now.
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Re: Encryption
Remember how hissy various pollies got about not being able to read Blackberry messages? Have you noticed the slow progress on cleaning up botnets? The botmasters are protecting themselves with encryption. It's working just fine for those guys, and they have plenty of very determined opposition.
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Re: Re: Encryption
I bet any computer today can brute force that baby in seconds.
Since computers double processing power every year or so, even those thousand bit long encryption keys will not be that secure in 20 years.
Not to mention unknown vulnerabilities that could be uncovered in the future.
So unless you have encrypted content that can re-encrypt itself every year with the latest encryption and patch itself against vulnerabilities or use some type of death algorithim that depends on pieces from others places that go away with time rendering completely useless sooner or later people will be able to open that file.
I like to think of static encrypted files as time-capsules.
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Re: Re: Re: Encryption
can someone correct me if this is wrong?
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Encryption
What part did Assange play, I can find no references for that.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Encryption
http://arstechnica.com/old/content/2007/05/researchers-307-digit-key-crack-endangers-1024-bit -rsa.ar s
As to the changes in how they were cryptographed you are correct it didn't change that much, some bugs were found that I read about it and people started using longer keys, in the 90 the best people were commonly using I believe was 124 bit encryption, today we can have supercomputers in our homes that can achieve the necessary raw power to factor those numbers so I don't believe they are secure anymore, if people are really interested they would be able to open the file, also most people don't use really secure passwords so rainbow tables are an option that can open a file in minutes given a large enough table.
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I'd sue.
SUE THE FUCKERS! SET A PRECEDENT!
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Re: I'd sue.
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Re: I'd sue.
Edmund Burke said "all that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing".
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I'm with Marco...
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Re: But mike says you cannot 'steal' data, and that copying it is ok, because you dont take away from the original.
NO they would not have done that (copy a server) they would have simply taken a complete image of the entire contents of the hard drives. No biggie, they get their server back.
and according to Mike, you cannot 'steal' data, therefore FBI did NOTHING that Mike should be able to disagree with,,,, Right Mike ???
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Re: Re: But mike says you cannot 'steal' data, and that copying it is ok, because you dont take away from the original.
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Re: Re: But mike says you cannot 'steal' data, and that copying it is ok, because you dont take away from the original.
This is people's personal data we're talking about, not a movie or song that's out there for the purpose of public viewing/listening.
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Re: Re: But mike says you cannot 'steal' data, and that copying it is ok, because you dont take away from the original.
... shouldn't ICE be taking down the FBI website in 3...2...1...? ;)
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Welcome to Corporatocracy
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Re: Welcome to Corporatocracy
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SHA-1 (salted) hashes - Trivial to crack with GP/GPU (Graphics processors)
Yes, 'relatively safe' means at least 10 seconds or less to crack. Probably sub 1 second....
Post 1002 on TD..
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Bye Bye Cloud Computing
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Re: Bye Bye Cloud Computing
Once again, it failed in the 50's it will fail again in 2011.
Lolwut?
My guess is that a stab at "cloud computing" in the 50's would have failed mainly because there were only about 6 "computers" at the time and they filled warehouse sized rooms with their vacuum tubes. Just sayin'.
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Answer to your question --- easy...
Judging by the rest of the comments you made after that question, and by you posing that question in the first place.
I feel you are seeking an answer for something you lack understanding in, so for you I will make it simple.
apparently
capable of being easily perceived or understood; plain or clear; obvious:
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Lessons learnt?
SHA-1? No encryption of user data? Come on!
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its as simple as "good" and "evil" !!!! LOL
"all that is necessary for good to triumph is that evil men do nothing"
(or "a good man doing nothing in the face of evil, is evil, and therefore no longer Good").
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Re: its as simple as "good" and "evil" !!!! LOL
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Re: Re: its as simple as "good" and "evil" !!!! LOL
there is a difference.
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Re: Re: its as simple as "good" and "evil" !!!! LOL
say a "good man" is walking on the street, and he sees a crime being committed against someone.
if that good man "does nothing" he is allowing evil to trimph.
A good man doing nothing in the face of evil is therefore not a good man, but is in fact evil.
So then a "good man" would NEVER DO NOTHING in the face of evil!
So to say 'for evil to prevail good men do nothing' is incorrect. because the act of 'doing nothing' means in this situation they are in fact NOT 'good men' and if the choice is either Good or evil. and they are no 'good' therefore they must be evil.
once again, that is fine, but please if it does not make sense to you, state it does not make sense to you.
But it certainly does make sense to at least some people.
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Re: Re: Re: its as simple as "good" and "evil" !!!! LOL
I guess true goodness is even more rare than I thought, if that's too much for people to grasp.
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Re: Re: Re: its as simple as "good" and "evil" !!!! LOL
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I guarantee the FBI copied every last bit on everything.
This is what they do, and with impunity. The ISP is at fault for failure to notify its clients, and the use of "gag orders" and other such nonsense is something one would expect in a fascist, totalitarian state. Sorry folks, but the US populace is screwed, totally, and forever. Your government thanks you, and expects your continued "cooperation". Now bend over, and "cooperate"!
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Ironically it is this sort of unpunished behavior that gave rise to groups like wikileaks, anonymous, lulsec in the first place.
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FBI seizures
However, this sounds more like the gestapo under Hitler than American. I am not sure I would be willing to serve, and certainly not willing to "give up my life", for a country that allows such things.
I can only hope the American people (with the help of the blogs - certainly no help from the news media!) will someday come to their senses, and take steps to stop this sort of thing.
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The FBI will..
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Re: The FBI will..
or that no other person or group would ever use that word ?
Oh no, I just did, so am I a terrorist now ?
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Re: Re: The FBI will..
Do you EVER have anything positive to say about any non-troll/shill posts?
Do you even *read* other people's posts?
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Sue 'em.
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They have your hashes, they have your password and all your data.
How a cheap graphics card could crack your password in under a second
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Re: They have your hashes, they have your password and all your data.
I have been thinking about that for a while and the best way to keep it secure and non-static that I could think of was Paper Keys.
One could get new encryption keys to everyone just by printing them and distributing those or uploading to their trusted cellphones(not recommended though) or a dedicated device that is designed to hold the keys.
One can print those in stickers that can be put on keychain, the thing is that it requires the machine to have a camera.
RFID could be used for the same purpose but they leak through the walls and can be grabbed on the streets.
Now using paper-keys along with a password that would be a 2 layer protection instead of the one we have today, any attacker would have to have the password and the digital key that can be updated several times per week or day, and if people get really paranoid they could use another layer maybe biometrics, but for casual users you could create really big passwords and store them in 2D barcodes like QR-Code and use those to sign in to services, the advantage is that the size of the password and its composition will no longer mater, the bad is that if you loose that piece of paper you are screwed.
Password change can be automated and probably would reduce the number of weak passwords on a real environment.
Maybe people should start making e-ink keychains like USB thumbdrives on one end you have your USB connection that goes on the computer and gets uploaded with the keys and in the other end when you push the button it pops out a little e-ink tongue that displays the key with the name of the key so people can use another bottom to cycle through 10 or more keys.
It would even work with third party websites for those who already use a e-wallet that stores their passwords it could authenticate against the password from the paperkey and every time you login to a service it changes the password automatically.
And of course passwords could be generated to be 256 characters long using symbols, now that would take a long time to brute force.
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FBI does not need the passwords anyway !
It does not stop someone with system admin rights to view all the data files that are on the server in PLAIN TEXT !.
So they dont even have to crack the passwords to access the information that people are storing on their servers.
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