Schneier on Security

"Key to the Extraterrestrial Messages"?

I've got to admit, my curiosity is piqued.

Dan,
That's easy. Just send me the $25 and i'll tell you the keys :)

Well done, more useful information provided to those in the public.

Yeah -- who knew the NSA was actually publishing stuff about extraterrestrials?

There's also: "Communications with Extraterrestrial Intelligence" and "Extraterrestrial Intelligence" if the keys to their messages don't quite do it for you.

One would think you wouldn't have encouraged FOIA spam considering the seminal publication "Don't Be Too Smart" is in the index.

It gets better: Cryptologic Spectrum Index (1969-1981) "Boners Wanted".

One of my favorite sites for FOIA information (not limited to just the NSA) is cryptome.org. Seems they always have one or two nifty little bits of information there.

One of the UFO docs is online:

http://www.nsa.gov/ufo/ufo00034.pdf

Any one read "The Name of the Rose" by Ecco?

"KAL 007 Shootdown: A View from [redacted]" -- Wasn't [redacted] destroyed by Katrina?

"The BS Attitudes: How Things Work in Bureaucracies" -- Bureaucracies are definitely full of BS.

"Why Some Projects Fail" -- see the BS attitudes in Bureaucracies.

tangent:
plain hilarious: "...even allowing for a margin of error of 5000%..."

Congratulations NSA, this journal really good to the people who want the information about Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). People can take this journal as a reference of cryptographic topics. Especially for the student who learn about the data security. This journal should be done early, but now still not to late.

███████ ███ and ███████████! hahaha

Hi

Quick question, and I'll be honest - I've done no research on this my self.

How does one go about submitting a FOIA request to a public/government agency? Is there any sort of "formal" wording required?

"How does one go about submitting a FOIA request to a public/government agency?"

Instructions for requesting any of the NSA articles or documents via FOIA are given on the page that Bruce linked to in this post:
http://www.thememoryhole.org/nsa/bibs.htm

I'm guessing that Extraterrestrial Intelligence is something kinda mundane, like listening to radio communications inadvertantly bounced off the Moon.

This is the most interesting one to me:

The Fallacy of the One-Time-Pad Excuse

Fallacy? One-Time-Pad Excuse?

"don't be too smart"
don't worry.
extraterrestrial intelligence? we don't even have a good handle on terrestrial intelligence yet. first the bars, then the stars, ok?

"Coupon Collecting and Cryptology" That's one I'd like to read.

Wonder if there is any info that'd give away what kindof custom encryption cracking hardware they've got........

I mean.... (wildass example) if they can do 2048 bit RSA in hardware.... the obvious choice would be to pick a different method.

If they can crack ANYTHING in hardware...... then lets just all go back to ROT13..........

nobody,
the one time pad excuse is that using a bitwise exclusive or (xor) for encryption is just as secure as any other means. In that, it only uses a key once to encrypt and decrypt. This is a fallacy since the nsa has most likely found a way to easily decrypt any one time pad encryption. (might even be public... i feel lazy.)

@Nobody: I'd take a wild guess that they mean the "I can't decrypt it, they used a one-time pad" excuse.

Pity those are just indexes. There are few titles seems to be quite interesting.

Stuff like this is why the guys at work and I are always toying with the idea of filing a FOIA request for "everything" and waiting to see what cool stuff turns up.

Is anyone organizing already a systematic effort to obtain copies of all these articles mentioned in the index?

Great article about UFO !!

Is there a limit to what would be given out if one asked for all the mentioned articles in all of those published indexes? (Barring the addtional monetary fees). And timewise, how long? How likely is it for me, a student, to obtain copies of all (or just some) of these documents. My university has agreed to be the contact info behind the FIOA request; would that give any additional bearing?

@opscure

"This is a fallacy since the nsa has most likely found a way to easily decrypt any one time pad encryption."

Um, no. the OTP is "provably secure" providing you do not ever recycle the keys, because there are an infinite number of possible plaintexts from any given text.

Not to say it cannot be attacked (though this is hard with a few obfuscating practices and/or a checksum), but it cannot be "easily decrypted".

@███████: ███ ██████ ████████████████████████████ the ████.
hehehe

Any chance of collecting and coalating any FOIA requests people make for these articles? Perhaps even re-creating the journals themselves from the results of FOIA requests?

I'm not an American yet by this publication on the Internet I can read these documents. Not sure if that was intended. Such is certainly kept in mind when any info is requested by the public. I am however from a EU country where we have similar laws (which excepts 'ongoing cases' though). For example, in my country (The Netherlands) these laws are used to get information about voting machines. Although not related to NSA, you can see the website / group where the scanned documents are published at http://www.wijvertrouwenstemcomputersniet.nl (which means "wedonttrustvotingcomputers", some info available in English).

Similarly, since by a publication such as this the whole world would be able to read such I didn't expect much of this. Only old parts and such. However what this is... just a stupid index. Thats not informative! Such does not inform anyone except what the NSA has been busy with. I could have guessed myself that the NSA is interested in Windows running RISC and several cryptographic subjects... so, mostly disappointing.

Many controversial documents at secret service organisations are also destroyed into papershreds. I doubt we'll ever get to see the documents regarding the CIA's Project Monarch, to name an example.

Read about NSAKey for Windows

Then wonder about the closed source ATI and NVIDIA drivers for Linux

In response to student's comments "Is there a limit to what would be given out if one asked for all the mentioned articles in all of those published indexes? (Barring the addtional monetary fees). And timewise, how long? How likely is it for me, a student, to obtain copies of all (or just some) of these documents. My university has agreed to be the contact info behind the FIOA request; would that give any additional bearing?"

There is no timeline for responding to FOIA and there is no penalty for not responding. Also classified material is exempt according to the Supreme Courts findings in EPA v Mink in 1973 so it's pretty interesting to me that they took the time to declassify this stuff.

I hate to necropost, but in case anyone is looking for these documents, I thought I'd post here.

The ET documents are available through a Google search of the NSA website, e.g. "site:nsa.gov Extraterrestrial Intelligence." It is my belief that these documents are intentionally public, but I could not find an index page for them on their site.

It is a fictitious message received and you are asked to decipher it. The "Key to... " paper tries to document its interpretation. It is a very interesting read. I suggest anyone with an interest in Mathematics check it out, and don't peek at the keys.

The quality of the scan is terrible, so some things are rather difficult to read, but it is worth the headache.