Schneier on Security

Clive Robinson • April 8, 2025 11:47 AM

@ Brian, Bruce, ALL,

As noted above,

“.GOV ain’t about to give up…”

No it’s not be it .gov.us .gov.uk .gov.eu and all the others.

If we assume –and it’s a very big assumption– that we have nixed backdoors in crypto so that full E2EE becomes acceptable if not the norm, a question arises, and that is

“Where will they take the war next?”

My viewpoint suggests to me that they will “backdoor the User Interface” next.

That is because that is where the “plaintext” of message information rather than meta-data is. But it is beyond the “security endpoint” but by necessity needs to be able to reach back to and through the “communications endpoint” and out into the “general / publicly accessable network”.

We’ve already seen this nonsense attempted by Apple with what was claimed was CSAM image scanning technology.

The problem is the method at the low level was way way to generic and would work for any type of scanning just as well if not more effectively than for CSAM images.

The fact is that “CSAM images” was just an excuse[1] to,

“Get the hooks in to every Apple product user.”

It does not matter what Tim Cook or other Apple seniors think the fact is either they lied, collaborated or were played by “ulterior motives”.

The fact this faux-CSAM got contested, and the high level user scanning of “See What You See”(SWYS) / user device scanning has been removed for now[2]. Does not mean the low level parts of the system nor the hooks to use them were removed.

Think for a moment what that actually means above and beyond confirming peoples suspicions[2] and what the known “future path” will achieve[3].

It was exactly this “low level system and hooks” situation that allowed the “alleged” Chinese Communist Party associated hackers to run rampant through the CALE Act interfaces.

Worse they were not the first the NSA and CIA were known to not just have used the low level CALE system and interface during the “Greek Olympics”. The Greek Government has named one US operative for the murder made to look like suicide of a Greek Vodafone Engineer to cover up how the NSA / CIA had done it through the CALE low level system and hooks.

Much as Lockdown was an excuse to put the low level processes of BLE or WiFi “beaconing” into the two major mobile / smart device OS’s produced by Alphabet/Google and Apple. Now they are there they represent a significant security vulnerability even though comparatively they have a very low bandwidth to communicate.

Why?

Because all they have to do is return the user device electronic serial number and a “flag” that could be the equivalent of one bit of information. The other “tracking systems” already in place will give “general movement / usage patterns” thus setting up a targeted higher bandwidth BLE / WiFi base becomes an almost trivial task.

As all these low level systems and hooks remain in the OS’s still a question has to be asked,

“What is the excuse for these backdoor communications systems?”

Thus “What is the real reason they have not been removed?”

My viewpoint is that this has already been thought out (after all if I can think it out… so can several of the many thousands that work for the Intel Services like the FiveEyes).

The next step will be “See What You See”(SWYS) scanning based on “On device AI” something Microsoft is “busy ramming in Win 11” and “busy ramming Win 11 on all users” (now might be a good time to find an OS with good security no AI and capable of running fully energy gapped).

But for it to work the user device must have “connectivity to the mothership” some how. Which is possibly yet another reason Microsoft is trying to force “always on line” on people.

So logically you need to “cut the umbilical cord” to publicly accessable or external communications[4].

But is this mitigation by “energy gap” sufficient or even usable?

The answer for many is “No” for various reasons most of which can be mitigated another way.

I’ve mentioned quite a few times about “going off device” to put the “security endpoint” that terminates E2EE and provides “plaintext” for the “user interface” safely beyond the “communications endpoint” such that if there is SWYS / user device scanning in place it can not communicate back.

How to go about this is conceptually simple[5] but is somewhat messy to do effectively, so I won’t go into the long-winded details, just simply say,

If the user interface is the only place there is “plaintext”[5] and there is no communications path back across the security endpoint then high levels of privacy can be achieved.

[1] It’s now reasonably well documented thus established that those who make and consume CSAM are not negatively effected by authorities attempts to use high end technology against them. In fact an argument can and has been made that attempts to use technological means whilst achieving at best very little if anything, takes very significant resources away from more established and successful means of combating CSAM users, producers, and abusers.

[2] By many reports the high level CSAM scanning was not much of a success any way as the false positive and false negative rates were not that good due to trying to limit the SWYS scanning impact[3].

[3] There are many reasons why this early scanning was a failure the simplest to understand is “CPU cycles”. That is the high number of CPU cycles required not only slowed things down it put a significant hit on the battery life. Because the hardware to do better was not available then. Now however the talk is of adding AI hardware for “Digital Assistants / Agents” such hardware will reduce the impact of scanning significantly.

[4] Simply breaking the bridge by which “SWYS / user device scanning” communicates back renders it a technological failure. Hence “mitigation by segregation” or putting things behind an “energy gap”.

[5] Importantly not storing, processing/using or communicating information in an unencrypted or “plaintext” format keeps it away from “SWYS / user device scanning.

Clive Robinson • April 10, 2025 8:10 PM

@ Jim,

You say of the Patriot Act,

“Now it gives power to the gov. Law enforcement clearly needs enough sources to do their job, and I think they have the means, without the Patriot Act.

One of the issues with the Patriot Act is that chunks of it are “secret law”, this is actually bad for any kind of Government be they truly democratic or oppressively authoritarian.

Secret law almost always backfires on the framers of it (even if they live for just a short time after it’s enacted). Because by it being used partial information leaks, and people will start joining dots and coming to conclusions that may or may not be valid. Either way,

“Things will out irrespective of want.”

But another issue with the Patriot Act secrecy is we have no way of judging it’s effectiveness, as there is no visible accounting or oversight.

Based on what little we’ve observed my guess is that the secret parts of the Patriot Act are like much modern technological legislation actually fairly useless for “law enforcement”(LE) activities.

One of my reasons to think this is that “Methods and Sources” are “fragile” at best. Whilst they may be of use for just Intelligence Work as carried out by Government Intel Agencies that have no “disclosure requirements” LE primarily are about “disclosure” into the public forum of a Court. Even when held “in camera” much about a Court Case leaks in a way it can be “surmised”, and like the pieces of a jigsaw put together such that a picture builds…

We’ve seen this with the US FISA cases and in the UK the recent nonsense with “Apple -v- Home Office” has resulted in what the UK Home Office most certainly does not want, which is an adverse judicial decision making things front page news.

The simple fact is a look at US LE successes they are all basically by “old school / traditional” methods that “do what they say on the tin”.

As far as we know the UK Apple case is the first serious test of the “Snoopers Charter” and it’s unraveling fast… Whilst it’s based on RIPA 2000 judges have been very reluctant to allow the use of aspects of it, that were called into question back in the 1990’s when it was being discussed.

Whilst legislators may draw up powers and grant them foolishly, judges siting in Courts generally tend to see such wayward legislation as the sort of infernal devices that you can easily be hoist by, thus treat them with significant caution. Something that even William Shakespeare was all too aware of nearly half a millennium ago, hence the oft quoted “petard” phrase.

Modern politicians unfortunately appear to view the making of unsound wayward legislation a priority in their activities, rather than proceeding with thought, consideration, and care.

Need it be said,

“If you jerk a knee, then kickback is to be expected…”.