Silk Road forums

Discussion => Off topic => Topic started by: pine on November 12, 2012, 11:27 pm

Title: I have a message for the Director of the CIA
Post by: pine on November 12, 2012, 11:27 pm
Join PGP Club.
Title: Re: I have a message for the Director of the CIA
Post by: 1100101 on November 12, 2012, 11:31 pm
I lol'd ... might as well also invite all the rest of the alphabet :)
Title: Re: I have a message for the Director of the CIA
Post by: TreeOfLiberty on November 12, 2012, 11:34 pm
LOL
Title: Re: I have a message for the Director of the CIA
Post by: wsg on November 12, 2012, 11:45 pm
Damn I knew it but I couldn't resist the title I am already a member :)
Title: Re: I have a message for the Director of the CIA
Post by: Leapfrogger on November 12, 2012, 11:59 pm
Epic.
Title: Re: I have a message for the Director of the CIA
Post by: ben wade on November 13, 2012, 12:04 am
Don't scare me like that lol.
Title: Re: I have a message for the Director of the CIA
Post by: eddiethegun on November 13, 2012, 12:11 am
Join PGP Club.

may i date you  , i know a god thai restaurant after this we could visit cinema expandables 2 ^^ !?

Pine is a dude, mate.
Title: Re: I have a message for the Director of the CIA
Post by: pine on November 13, 2012, 12:20 am
I don't want to be mean to him, clearly David is as human as the rest of us i.e. periods of mediocrity, occasional moments of brilliant clarity shot through with the disease of monstrous error. But you'd think the Director of the fucking Central Intelligence Agency would know how to cover his tracks and certainly how to encrypt his emails. 

So I believe it was fitting that he should be removed from office. Not because of infidelity, but because he didn't belong to whatever the government's equivalent of our darknet club is.

If there is any military commander or intelligence chief who doesn't grasp the necessity of encrypting ALL communications, then they deserve to be made redundant. They are a threat to the security model, even to the country itself, no matter how hardworking or sophisticated they are in other areas.

For what it is worth he probably did know how to encrypt email, but he chose not to do so. He chose to use plaintext and Gmail accounts with fake nyms. So he was aware of the danger and he used security by obscurity. Let that be a lesson to everybody. Encrypt email everyday. It is your final defense against interception.

Join PGP Club.

P.S. Any credible intelligence agency with an exploit for access to Gmail's servers (think the Russian/Chinese equivalent of Flame) could have run stegnograhic pattern matching algorithms and used public information written by the Director to find his 'secret' communications. Not specifically for David Petraeus probably, for any figures of note within the US government. This is not rocket science, if Pine has thought of it then it's probably already being done. So yes, the potential for blackmail is real and you should treat public email services, let alone Facebook, as the informational equivalent of a public toilet.
Title: Re: I have a message for the Director of the CIA
Post by: grahamgreene on November 13, 2012, 01:59 am
Join PGP Club.

Indeed, haha. Welcome back pine!  :)
Title: Re: I have a message for the Director of the CIA
Post by: kortneykilledkurt on November 13, 2012, 02:39 am
yeah she's good but when will she start posting in english.
Title: Re: I have a message for the Director of the CIA
Post by: danconia on November 13, 2012, 02:42 am
If there's one thing I've come to realize about government it's that even within their "Top Secret" CIA departments they are still sloppy and imprecise.  Their effectiveness is a result of their threats and what some call "security theater".  The general population the appearance of being advanced or effective is the same as actually being advanced or effective.

Heck TSA auditors who test airport security find that ~80% of the time they can sneak guns on board.  You rarely hear that sort of stuff on the news.  Instead we get "CIA and FBI Foil Plot to Blow Up XYZ", and of course when you dig deeper you find out they coerced someone into agreeing to something that they wouldn't have done otherwise.  I guess it's easier to foil plots when you're the one masterminding them!

PR seems to matter more to security agencies than actual results.  Which I guess in some cases might be a good thing.
Title: Re: I have a message for the Director of the CIA
Post by: flicky42 on November 13, 2012, 03:02 am
Pine add me on thefacebook.
Title: Re: I have a message for the Director of the CIA
Post by: FBI on November 14, 2012, 04:06 pm
I'll tell him next time we meet up.
Title: Re: I have a message for the Director of the CIA
Post by: Ballzinator on November 14, 2012, 04:15 pm
I don't want to be mean to him, clearly David is as human as the rest of us i.e. periods of mediocrity, occasional moments of brilliant clarity shot through with the disease of monstrous error. But you'd think the Director of the fucking Central Intelligence Agency would know how to cover his tracks and certainly how to encrypt his emails. 

So I believe it was fitting that he should be removed from office. Not because of infidelity, but because he didn't belong to whatever the government's equivalent of our darknet club is.

If there is any military commander or intelligence chief who doesn't grasp the necessity of encrypting ALL communications, then they deserve to be made redundant. They are a threat to the security model, even to the country itself, no matter how hardworking or sophisticated they are in other areas.

For what it is worth he probably did know how to encrypt email, but he chose not to do so. He chose to use plaintext and Gmail accounts with fake nyms. So he was aware of the danger and he used security by obscurity. Let that be a lesson to everybody. Encrypt email everyday. It is your final defense against interception.

Join PGP Club.

P.S. Any credible intelligence agency with an exploit for access to Gmail's servers (think the Russian/Chinese equivalent of Flame) could have run stegnograhic pattern matching algorithms and used public information written by the Director to find his 'secret' communications. Not specifically for David Petraeus probably, for any figures of note within the US government. This is not rocket science, if Pine has thought of it then it's probably already being done. So yes, the potential for blackmail is real and you should treat public email services, let alone Facebook, as the informational equivalent of a public toilet.
Damn, that was better than any AVGN rant ;D
Title: Re: I have a message for the Director of the CIA
Post by: ZenAndTheArt on November 14, 2012, 09:54 pm
Pine is a dude, mate.

I love Pine regardless of his/her gender. :D

@Pine - Sometimes I wonder what would you do if PGP had never been invented (please don't say "invent it")? :P :)
Title: Re: I have a message for the Director of the CIA
Post by: Leapfrogger on November 15, 2012, 12:20 am
As Pine points out, this is about more than just cryptographic savvy. It's about habits.

At what point does one ask a potential paramour to start encrypting your communications? Yes, they should have been using encryption from the very beginning, especially with one of them being the director of the CIA. But then again, they didn't start out talking about anything sensitive or salacious. Why bother spending several emails explaining PGP when there's nothing to hide?

I've certainly been in situations where a conversation went somewhere I didn't expect and thought, "I'd really prefer not to have logs of this floating around forever." Did I drop everything and insist that we start encrypting our messages before going any further? In some cases, I have. But what if it was taken the wrong way? What if the conversation wasn't going where I thought it was and the person got really sketched out?

What if I was 60 years old and had been sleeping with the same woman for 40 years? Would I risk scaring off a potential new mate?

There's another factor: Petraeus' lover was blabbing to third parties. As a result, she managed to get herself tracked down by the feds. Even if they had been doing everything right from the beginning, I have no doubt that she would've decrypted all her communications with Petraeus when requested, lest she be tossed in the hole with Bradley Manning. (Of course, if she had been taught how to remain anonymous online, they never would have tracked her down, but she doesn't seem like the most careful person to begin with.)

My cryptographic habits are close to impeccable on Silk Road, but that's because I knew EXACTLY what I was getting into going into this. Petraeus had no idea. Encryption can only take you so far. The human element is always what gets you.