NSA advisory sparks concern of secret advance ushering in cryptoapocalypse

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Risk Assessment / Security & Hacktivism

Once elliptic curve crypto was viewed as a savior. Now its future looks doomed.

by Dan Goodin - Oct 22, 2015 6:15pm EDT

In August, National Security Agency officials advised US agencies and businesses to prepare for a not-too-distant time when the cryptography protecting virtually all sensitive government and business communications is rendered obsolete by quantum computing. The advisory recommended backing away from plans to deploy elliptic curve cryptography, a form of public key cryptography that the NSA spent the previous 20 years promoting as more secure than the older RSA cryptosystem.

NSA preps quantum-resistant algorithms to head off crypto-apocalypse

Quantum computing threatens crypto as we know it. The NSA is taking notice.

Almost immediately, the dramatic about-face generated questions and anxiety. Why would the NSA abruptly abandon a series of ECC specifications it had championed for so long? Why were officials issuing the advice now when a working quantum computer was 10 to 50 years away, and why would they back away from ECC before recommending a suite of quantum-resistant alternatives? The fact that the NSA was continuing to endorse use of RSA, which is also vulnerable to quantum computing, led some observers to speculate there was a secret motivation that had nothing to do with quantum computing.

On Tuesday, researchers Neal Koblitz and Alfred J. Menezes published a paper titled A Riddle Wrapped in an Enigma that compiles some of the competing theories behind the August advisory. The researchers stressed that that their paper isn't academic and at times relies on unsourced facts and opinions. And sure enough, some of the theories sound almost conspiratorial. Still, the paper does a good job of evaluating the strengths and weaknesses of the NSA's highly unexpected abandonment of ECC in a post quantum crypto (PQC) world.

"The PQC announcement suggests that NSA has no interest in this topic because it now views ECC as only a stopgap solution," the researchers wrote. "This caught many people by surprise, since it is widely believed that ECC will continue to be used extensively for at least another decade or two."
The researchers remain skeptical that quantum computing is the real reason for backing away from ECC. Documents leaked by former NSA subcontractor Edward Snowden have so far given no indication of any advances in the field that pose an imminent threat to any form of public key crypto. The budget for quantum-based research is modest by NSA standards, an indication that neither the US nor any other country is on the brink of a breakthrough, they said.

The theory that has generated the most attention among readers is that NSA researchers are now aware of breakthroughs that are unrelated to quantum computing that threaten ECC but not RSA. Matt Green, a Johns Hopkins University professor specializing in cryptography, notes the advance might involve classical cryptanalysis of what's known as the elliptic curve discrete logarithm problem (ECDLP). To date, the mathematical problem is believed to be so hard to solve that properly implemented ECC can't be broken without requiring millions or even billions of years. But there's no proof this assumption is correct. If NSA researchers stumbled on a new way to tackle the problem efficiently, it would torpedo the entire suite of crypto schemes banks, government subcontractors, and others have been using at the strong urging of the federal government.

"If the NSA's mathematicians began to make even modest, but sustained advances in the state of the art for solving the ECDLP, it would put the entire field at risk," Green wrote in a blog post. "Beginning with the smallest of the standard curves, P-256, which would now provided less than the required 128-bit security."

P-256 refers to a curve set in a 256-bit field. Because of the exponential number of operations required to solve ECDLP provides the equivalent of 128 bits of security, the minimum threshold mandates for encrypting classified material. A little-noticed provision in the NSA's August communication, Green noted, was the announcement that P-256 was being retired.

Nobody can crack important algorithms yet, but the world needs to prepare for that to happen.

While not everyone agrees with the theories, the paper makes a compelling argument that NSA researchers are aware of new information they have yet to disclose that's causing them to lose confidence in cryptography they were among the first to champion in the late 1990s and have continued to support ever since. More recently, ECC has been embraced as the alternative to the frailer RSA cryptosystem. The NSA's announcement is causing some researchers to question that assumption. Hanging in the balance is the security of just countless industrialized governments, banks, and websites everywhere.

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Hillary says she is most proud Republicans are her enemy. Compares members of the GOP to NRA, health insurance companies, drug companies, and the Iranians.

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If Republicans are her proudest enemy, what does that make Independents?

In the most recent Democratic Presidential candidates debate at CNN, CNN's Anderson Cooper asked, "which enemy are you most proud of?"

Clinton replied

“In addition to the NRA, the health insurance companies, the drug companies, the Iranians, probably the Republicans.”

Never has a presidential candidate demonstrated such polarization toward an entire group of politically affiliated people as Hillary did when she condemned the entire Republican party to being her enemy.

As for the Independents who are already fed up with political polarization, Hillary seems to have slammed the door on them as well.  Independents are already fed up with politicians and after Hillary spoke we know why.

Most polls show 50-75% of the voters are still somewhat undecided on who to vote for in the general election.  Well Hillary sent a clear and concise message to the Republicans and Independents in that category that she considers them the enemy.

Of course, that is just one half of the impact from what she said as her statement also included a holier than thou claim health insurance and drug companies are also enemies and she is proud of it.

As you will also note from the following articles, the health and drug companies have showered Hillary, and Bill, and the Clinton Foundation with millions of dollars in contributions.  Perhaps she should have said "now that I fleeced the health and drug companies, they no longer serve me any purpose.  I got the millions!", cackle, cackle.

Did anyone else note that she has developed a cackle like the Wicked Witch of the West?  I first noticed it in the debate.  You take millions and condemn the donors.  With all accounts paid up why not, it keeps the progressives and liberals from looking at her contributors since she is the newly incarnated Queen of Progressives, at least until she wins the democratic nomination.

Once she takes the big primary prize then she will start becoming a conservative like her husband who stole the Republican platform in 1992 to run on and to use while president.

It worked once for the Clintons, why not work again?  Still, there is something to be said for a little laughter in politics and the bevy of photos in this article show you the lighter side of the Washington drama kings and queens.

Hillary Takes Millions in Campaign Cash From ‘Enemies’

Clinton named the drug and insurance industries among her “enemies,” but has accepted millions in donations from them.

By Kimberly Leonard Oct. 14, 2015 | 4:25 p.m. EDT

When asked during the Democratic presidential debate what enemies she was most proud to have made, Hillary Clinton named pharmaceutical and health insurance companies at the top of her list. But that hasn’t stopped the Democratic front-runner from accepting millions of dollars in campaign cash from both industries in the course of her political career, financial disclosure records show.

Since her first bid for Senate in 2000, Clinton has accepted nearly $1 million from drug and health companies and more than $2.7 million from the insurance field and its related sectors, according to an analysis of public records from the Center for Responsive Politics. While the analysis did not include campaign finance figures for the 2016 cycle, some of the same donors and patterns can be seen in Clinton’s lone financial disclosure filed in July.

Contributions tied to some of the same firms that gave to her 2008 presidential campaign appear in the latest disclosure, including donations connected to pharmaceutical companies Pfizer Inc., Johnson & Johnson, Bristol-Myers Squibb Co.; and insurers Aetna Inc., MetLife Inc. and Centene Corp., the latter of which is among Clinton’s largest donors this year.  

In the course of her 2008 presidential bid, records show that Clinton was the third-largest recipient of campaign donations from drug and health product companies, receiving $738,359 in donations. The industry also contributed $86,875 to her 2000 Senate run, and spent $157,015 supporting her re-election in 2006.

The insurance industry – which includes health insurers and also car, life and property insurance – donated $1,260,400 to her 2008 campaign, making her the third-highest recipient of cash from the industry that year and also in 2006, when she raised $397,110 for her re-election to the Senate. During her first bid for the Senate in 2000, she raised $167,550 from the industry.

She was the second-highest recipient of cash in 2008 from the health services sector and HMOs, receiving $636,670, and the highest earner in 2006, at $183,770. In 2000, she raised $70,575. 

More recently, the Clinton Foundation has also benefited from these groups’ donations. Donors and grantors who have given between $1 million and $5 million include Pfizer, the Procter & Gamble Co., Blue Cross Blue Shield of North Carolina and Humana Inc.

But Clinton seems to have turned on the pharmaceutical industry in particular in recent weeks, releasing a plan to improve on President Barack Obama’s health care law, the Affordable Care Act, by tackling drug costs. The plan includes allowing Medicare, the government’s health plan for adults over 65 and disabled Americans, to negotiate lower drug costs – a measure the industry heavily opposes.

Her policy proposal also stated that she plans to reduce the amount of time a pharmaceutical company has exclusive rights to biologics, which are drugs made of living cells that are expensive to develop and can be difficult for patients to afford. Though she supported the bill that led to a 12-year exclusivity while in the Senate, her new proposals say she would reduce the patent to seven years, allowing the drug to be copied by other manufacturers and therefore reducing its price. Drugmakers are against this proposal, saying they need to recoup the massive costs of developing the drugs and to invest in new treatments and cures.

When Clinton was secretary of state, she supported the Trans-Pacific Partnership, which includes provisions that strengthen patent protections for drugmakers. Last week, however, she said she opposes the deal.

When asked for a response to Clinton calling the pharmaceutical industry “enemies,” Tina Stow, a spokeswoman for the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, or PhRMA, said the group has a long history of supporting and working with candidates and policymakers on both sides of the aisle.

“We will continue to do so as we look to advance a pro-patient, pro-innovation, pro-jobs agenda,” she wrote in an email. PhRMA has publicly come out against Clinton’s plan for prescription drugs, saying it would restrict patients’ access to medicines, result in fewer new treatments, would cost jobs and would end the country’s standing as a leader in biomedical innovation.

It’s unclear to what extent insurers and drug companies will continue to support her campaign, particularly after the comments during CNN’s debate, although it would not be the first time Clinton has been at odds with the industries.

Asked to explain the financial relationship between Clinton’s campaign and the industries, campaign officials pointed to the contentious war fought against Clinton when she was first lady and head of the Task Force on National Health Care Reform in 1993. The health insurance industry ran millions of dollars of ads against a health care plan she championed that would have overhauled the system, playing a large role in ultimately killing it. They also point out that her positions to tackle drug costs have been unpopular among pharmaceutical lobbying groups, which could help to demonstrate she ultimately isn’t beholden to the industry’s interests.

In total, Clinton raised $245.8 million for her 2008 presidential run, $51.6 million for her 2006 Senate campaign and $30.2 million for her 2000 Senate bid.

Pharmaceutical companies and insurers are typically generous with members of both parties, giving slightly more to Republicans. Clare Krusing, press secretary for America's Health Insurance Plans, says its political action committee supports candidates of both parties and, in particular, candidates who support policies aligned with the industry's priorities around affordability.

In recent years, both industries have contributed more to Democrats. Obama was the top recipient during the 2008 presidential election, and again during his re-election in 2012, with his Republican opponents – first Mitt Romney, then Sen. John McCain – receiving slightly less from pharmaceutical companies.

 International Business Times

Wednesday, October 21, 2015 As of 7:52 AM EDT

Democratic Debate 2015: Hillary Clinton’s ‘Enemies’ In Pharmaceutical and Insurance Industries Have Supported Her Campaigns, Foundation

By Andrew Perez @AndrewPerezDC andrew.perez@ibtimes.com
David Sirota @davidsirota d.sirota@ibtimes.com on October 14 2015 12:42 AM EDT

Bill Clinton famously tried to parse what the meaning of “is” is -- and now his wife, Hillary Clinton, seems to be challenging the precise definition of “enemies.”

In an exchange toward the end of the Democratic presidential debate in Las Vegas on Tuesday, the candidates were asked who their biggest enemies had been over the course of their careers. Clinton responded by saying, “In addition to the NRA, the health insurance companies, the drug companies, the Iranians -- probably the Republicans.”

It is true that the National Rifle Association and the Republicans have been Clinton’s nemeses, and she has been involved in tense negotiations about international policy toward Iran. But health insurance companies and drug companies have been some of her biggest financial supporters.

In 2008, Clinton was the among the three biggest recipients of campaign cash from pharmaceutical-related companies, according to data compiled by the Center for Responsive Politics. In all, the watchdog group reports that she raised $738,000 from employees of pharmaceutical manufacturers and companies classified as “Pharmaceuticals /Health Products.” The center reports that Clinton also raised more than $1.2 million from the insurance industry -- which includes health insurers.

On top of those campaign contributions, the Clintons and their family foundation have benefited from their ties to the pharmaceutical and insurance industries.

In 2011, the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA) -- the primary trade association representing drug companies -- paid Bill Clinton $200,000 for a speech, as the organization was lobbying the Hillary Clinton-led State Department. Last year, the Drug Chemical and Associated Technologies Association, a trade group whose members include major pharmaceutical companies, paid her a $250,000 speaking fee.

Meanwhile, the Clinton Foundation has received between $1 million and $5 million worth of donations separately from drug manufacturers Pfizer and Procter & Gamble, and from health insurers Humana and Blue Cross Blue Shield of North Carolina. Some of those companies made donations as recently as this year, according to the foundation’s website.

That largesse was part of a friendship forged after those industries opposed her 1993 health care initiative -- and which continued after she won reelection to the Senate in 2006.

As secretary of state, Clinton repeatedly championed the Trans-Pacific Partnership, which critics say includes provisions that strengthen patent protection for drug manufacturers. (Last week, she declared that she now opposes the trade deal.) As a presidential candidate in 2008, she promoted the idea of a federal mandate effectively requiring Americans to buy private health insurance.

Those Clinton positions were strongly supported by the same drug and insurance industries that she now calls “enemies.”

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Obamaville October 21 - Who are the builders and who are the destroyers? Presidential Politics when the Outsiders take on the Politicians

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Well the political pundits and lame street media should pay attention because they are all missing the point when it comes to the will of the people.

"We the people are the rightful masters of both Congress and the courts, not to overthrow the Constitution but to overthrow the men who pervert the Constitution."

Abraham Lincoln

Americans are fed up with institutional constipation, they are fed up with political polarization, they are fed up with years of government inertia, and they are fed up with lies from politicians and elected representatives.

Those that think they control the will of the American people will no longer get away with their lies, divisiveness, and manipulation.  We have come to the end of an era, when entire classes of people were taken for granted by our political parties.  Truth is in the results, and the results condemn the system we have. 

  

"America will never be destroyed from the outside.  If we falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves."

Abraham Lincoln

Look at the record.  Our government now spends $3.4 trillion dollars a year.  What do we get for the taxes we pay, more lies, more deception, more excuses, and no action.  Obama brags that he has reduced the annual deficit to $532 billion, but forgets to say he has raised the national debt to  $18.4 trillion.

On January 20, 2009, when Obama took office, the national debt stood at $10.6 trillion and today it stands at $18.4 trillion.  That is over a 73% increase in less than seven years.  Our economy has not recovered, we have simply mortgaged our lives, our future, and our children's future.     

"In the end, it's not the years in your life that count.  It's the life in your years."

Abraham Lincoln

Once upon a time people dared to live the American dream.  No more.  As The Wall Street Journal reported last January:

"The U.S. homeownership fell to its lowest level in 20 years at the end of 2014—levels last seen when national leaders embarked on a broad push to expand homeownership in the mid-1990s.

The Commerce Department’s estimates published Thursday show that, after adjusting for seasonal factors, some 63.9% of U.S. households owned their homes in the fourth quarter, a level last recorded in the third quarter of 1994. The homeownership rate hasn’t fallen below that level since 1988."

"Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak and remove all doubt."

Abraham Lincoln

Obama and the mouthpieces for the Democratic Party espouse on the strength of our economic recovery yet millions of people simply gave up seeking a job while millions more took major incomes reductions to work.

Obamacare promised affordable health care to all Americans, and the president signed the bill on March 23, 2010, nearly five years ago.  Today, sadly, the number of uninsured non-elderly Americans in 2014 (the most current statistics) is 32 million and that does not count the eleven or more million illegal immigrants using emergency services.

Health care, prescription drug, food, and education costs have all increased much faster than wages and the number of Americans in poverty has increased since Obama took office from 12.5% to nearly 15%, a total of about 48 million people.  Is that what we were promised?

"My dream is of a place and a time where America will once again be seen as the last best hope of earth."

Abraham Lincoln

So now we are in the midst of another election.  This time it is the outsiders against the insiders with Trump, Carson, and Fiorina on the GOP side and Sanders on the Democrat side.  The principle establishment politicians are Bush and Clinton.  What is that all about?  Twenty-three years ago, it was Bush and Clinton running for president.  Have we not had enough of the Bush - Clinton years?

       

"This country, with it's institutions, belongs to the people who inhabit it.  Whenever they shall grow weary of the existing government, they can exercise their constitutional right of amending it, or exercise their revolutionary right to overthrow it."

Abraham Lincoln

Here are the hard facts.  Over half of the eligible voters in America refuse to participate in the voting process.  Beyond that, over forty percent of the people who do register to vote refused both political parties and registered as Independents.

That means the all the Democrat or all the Republican Party members make up about fifteen percent of the eligible voters.  It means fewer eligible voters actually vote than any point in our history and what Obama and the lame street media called the Obama mandate from the people in the last election, was a joke.

In fact, in 2012 the Obama mandate came from just 23.5% of the eligible voters.  Or, seventy-five percent of the eligible voters DID NOT vote for Obama - some mandate.          

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CPT Twits -1950's (and a little 1960's) Muscle cars, Fashions, Hot Rods, Kids, when we fixed our own car and social media was talking to a human!

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