Tag Archive for: Secrecy

French Supreme Court rejects EncroChat verdict after lawyers question secrecy over hacking operation


France’s Supreme Court has referred a criminal case that relies on evidence from the hacked EncroChat encrypted phone network back to the court of appeal after finding that prosecutors failed to disclose sufficient information about the hacking operation.

The Cour de Cassation in Paris found that French investigators and prosecutors had failed to supply a certificate to authenticate intercepted phone data and messages obtained from EncroChat phones as required by French law. There was also an absence of technical data about the hacking operation, the court found.

French police and prosecutors refused to disclose how a joint Dutch and French operation to hack EncroChat, which led to thousands of arrests of suspected organised criminals around the world, was undertaken – citing defence secrecy.

Defence lawyer Robin Binsard, co-founder of law firm Binsard Martine, which took the case to the Supreme Court, said last night that the case would be re-heard by the court of appeal to determine whether adequate legal guarantees were in place.

“The Supreme Court stated that, in the absence of a certificate of truthfulness, the evidence covered by defence secrecy could not be legal. The case will be sent to another court to see if the certificate exists. In the meantime, there is no guarantee of validity of evidence from EncroChat,” he wrote on Twitter.

“The Supreme Court stated that in the absence of a certificate of truthfulness, the evidence covered by defence secrecy could not be legal. The case will be sent to another court to see if the certificate exists. In the meantime, there is no guarantee of validity of evidence from EncroChat”

Robin Binsard, Binsard Martine

The hearing follows an operation by French cyber experts to harvest 120 million messages from EncroChat phone users in multiple countries, in a novel interception operation that provided a rich source of intelligence and evidence on the activities of criminal groups in 2020.

In the UK, the National Crime Agency (NCA), working with regional organised crime units, the Metropolitan Police and other law enforcement agencies, made more than 2,600 EncroChat-related arrests using the French data by…

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Ghostwriter update. Quds Day warning. Drivetime talk radio comes to the cyber battlespace? Secrecy as friction. Inadvertent tweets.


At a glance.

  • Update on Ghostwriter.
  • Jerusalem Day alert.
  • Zoom prankers and deepfake goofs.
  • Secrecy as friction.
  • Inadvertent tweets.

Ghostwriter, and signs of a broader campaign.

FireEye’s Mandiant unit this morning updated its research into Ghostwriter, an influence-operator that came to attention last year as it sought to affect public opinion in Latvia, Lithuania, and Poland. Its messaging then was anti-NATO. The campaigns of 2020 relied upon artlessly crude forgeries and implausible rumor-mongering, but of course disinformation doesn’t need to be art, as long as it can get the right amplification, which Ghostwriter worked to accomplish. 

It was easy for officials to quickly debunk such hogwash as the claim that Canadian soldiers were spreading COVID-19, or that an internal memo circulating in the Polish Ministry of Defense called for resistance against an American “army of occupation” (forged memo helpfully provided, hijacked social media accounts used to lend plausibility to a very implausible narrative). CyberScoop offered a useful account of these efforts at the end of last July. But of course lies can have a bit of a run if they’re provided with a headstart.

In any case, Ghostwriter has now expanded its thematic content to include disruption of domestic Polish politics and also (according to Tagesschau) credential theft attacks on German political figures. FireEye believes the threat actor it tracks as UNC1151 operates some portions of Ghostwriter. The firm characterizes UNC1151 as “a suspected state-sponsored cyber espionage actor that engages in credential harvesting and malware campaigns.”

Taggeschau calls the attackers “chaos troops,” which is apt enough for an operation that aims at disruption. At least seven members of Germany’s Bundestag have received phishing emails, as have some thirty members of the Länder assemblies, that is, the state-level legislatures. German authorities are taking activity seriously. The Bundesamt für Verfassungsschutz (the BfV, the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution) und the Bundesamt für die Sicherheit in der Informationstechnik (the BSI, the Federal Officer for Information Security) are investigating, and have…

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Perfect Forward Secrecy Explained – Hashed Out by The SSL Store™


Perfect Forward Secrecy Ensures HTTPS Traffic Stays Encrypted – Even if the Private Key is Later Compromised

Imagine for a second that someone breaks into your house. They can theoretically take whatever is in your place at that moment. That’s a scary enough thought right there. But what if it went a step further? What if they could also pick from everything that’s ever been in your house in the past? And then be able to steal any future item you purchase, as well? Sounds like a nightmare scenario, doesn’t it?

Unfortunately, the same thing can happen with your data. Encryption keeps it safe, but only as long as your private key is safe. We all dread the thought of one of our private keys being compromised, ending up in the hands of a hacker. Your future communications would immediately be at risk. Not only that, but what’s stopping them from examining your past data for juicy, sensitive information that they can exploit for their own gain?

But don’t worry, it’s not all doom and gloom. Cryptographers have once again come to the rescue! A solution was created to deal with exactly this sort of problem, and it’s called “perfect forward secrecy.” Long story short, it prevents future security incidents from compromising past encrypted data.

More and More Site Owners Are Taking Advantage of Perfect Forward Secrecy

Even better, it’s a security feature that is continuing to become more and more common. All major browsers support it, as do post-Windows XP operating systems. SSL Labs found in their October 2020 scan that 21.8% of surveyed sites supported perfect forward secrecy with all modern browsers and 64.5% supported perfect forward secrecy with most browsers. Only 1.2% of sites didn’t support perfect forward secrecy at all.   

The numbers keep going up, and the support of industry giants certainly hasn’t hurt, either. Google has been using it with Gmail and other products for years now, and Apple made perfect forward secrecy a requirement on the App Store in 2017. When TLS 1.3 was introduced, the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) mandated perfect forward secrecy, only allowing cipher suits that offered it. It’s an important part…

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Mobile Mix: Security, secrecy and ZTE – Mobile World Live

Mobile Mix: Security, secrecy and ZTE  Mobile World Live

This week, we again address one of the hottest and controversial issues in the industry, security, as Chinese vendor ZTE opened its newest cybersecurity lab in …

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