Entries Tagged "UK"

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UK Threatens End-to-End Encryption

In an open letter, seven secure messaging apps—including Signal and WhatsApp—point out that the UK’s Online Safety Bill could destroy end-to-end encryption:

As currently drafted, the Bill could break end-to-end encryption,opening the door to routine, general and indiscriminate surveillance of personal messages of friends, family members, employees, executives, journalists, human rights activists and even politicians themselves, which would fundamentally undermine everyone’s ability to communicate securely.

The Bill provides no explicit protection for encryption, and if implemented as written, could empower OFCOM to try to force the proactive scanning of private messages on end-to-end encrypted communication services—nullifying the purpose of end-to-end encryption as a result and compromising the privacy of all users.

In short, the Bill poses an unprecedented threat to the privacy, safety and security of every UK citizen and the people with whom they communicate around the world, while emboldening hostile governments who may seek to draft copy-cat laws.

Both Signal and WhatsApp have said that they will cease services in the UK rather than compromise the security of their users worldwide.

Posted on April 24, 2023 at 6:39 AM • View Comments

UK Runs Fake DDoS-for-Hire Sites

Brian Krebs is reporting that the UK’s National Crime Agency is setting up fake DDoS-for-hire sites as part of a sting operation:

The NCA says all of its fake so-called “booter” or “stresser” sites -­ which have so far been accessed by several thousand people—have been created to look like they offer the tools and services that enable cyber criminals to execute these attacks.

“However, after users register, rather than being given access to cyber crime tools, their data is collated by investigators,” reads an NCA advisory on the program. “Users based in the UK will be contacted by the National Crime Agency or police and warned about engaging in cyber crime. Information relating to those based overseas is being passed to international law enforcement.”

The NCA declined to say how many phony booter sites it had set up, or for how long they have been running. The NCA says hiring or launching attacks designed to knock websites or users offline is punishable in the UK under the Computer Misuse Act 1990.

“Going forward, people who wish to use these services can’t be sure who is actually behind them, so why take the risk?” the NCA announcement continues.

Posted on April 3, 2023 at 7:05 AM • View Comments

Brexit Deal Mandates Old Insecure Crypto Algorithms

In what is surely an unthinking cut-and-paste issue, page 921 of the Brexit deal mandates the use of SHA-1 and 1024-bit RSA:

The open standard s/MIME as extension to de facto e-mail standard SMTP will be deployed to encrypt messages containing DNA profile information. The protocol s/MIME (V3) allows signed receipts, security labels, and secure mailing lists… The underlying certificate used by s/MIME mechanism has to be in compliance with X.509 standard…. The processing rules for s/MIME encryption operations… are as follows:

  1. the sequence of the operations is: first encryption and then signing,
  2. the encryption algorithm AES (Advanced Encryption Standard) with 256 bit key length and RSA with 1,024 bit key length shall be applied for symmetric and asymmetric encryption respectively,
  3. the hash algorithm SHA-1 shall be applied.
  4. s/MIME functionality is built into the vast majority of modern e-mail software packages including Outlook, Mozilla Mail as well as Netscape Communicator 4.x and inter-operates among all major e-mail software packages.

And s/MIME? Bleah.

Posted on December 31, 2020 at 6:19 AM • View Comments

Drone Denial-of-Service Attack against Gatwick Airport

Someone is flying a drone over Gatwick Airport in order to disrupt service:

Chris Woodroofe, Gatwick’s chief operating officer, said on Thursday afternoon there had been another drone sighting which meant it was impossible to say when the airport would reopen.

He told BBC News: “There are 110,000 passengers due to fly today, and the vast majority of those will see cancellations and disruption. We have had within the last hour another drone sighting so at this stage we are not open and I cannot tell you what time we will open.

“It was on the airport, seen by the police and corroborated. So having seen that drone that close to the runway it was unsafe to reopen.”

The economics of this kind of thing isn’t in our favor. A drone is cheap. Closing an airport for a day is very expensive.

I don’t think we’re going to solve this by jammers, or GPS-enabled drones that won’t fly over restricted areas. I’ve seen some technologies that will safely disable drones in flight, but I’m not optimistic about those in the near term. The best defense is probably punitive penalties for anyone doing something like this—enough to discourage others.

There are a lot of similar security situations, in which the cost to attack is vastly cheaper than 1) the damage caused by the attack, and 2) the cost to defend. I have long believed that this sort of thing represents an existential threat to our society.

EDITED TO ADD (12/23): The airport has deployed some anti-drone technology and reopened.

EDITED TO ADD (1/2): Maybe there was never a drone.

Posted on December 21, 2018 at 6:24 AM • View Comments

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Sidebar photo of Bruce Schneier by Joe MacInnis.