New PROMIS software just dropped.  Crypto backdoor in TETRA, the standard used in radios all over the world.

Quote:For more than 25 years, a technology used for critical data and voice radio communications around the world has been shrouded in secrecy to prevent anyone from closely scrutinizing its security properties for vulnerabilities. But now it’s finally getting a public airing thanks to a small group of researchers in the Netherlands who got their hands on its viscera and found serious flaws, including a deliberate backdoor.

The backdoor, known for years by vendors that sold the technology but not necessarily by customers, exists in an encryption algorithm baked into radios sold for commercial use in critical infrastructure. It’s used to transmit encrypted data and commands in pipelines, railways, the electric grid, mass transit, and freight trains. It would allow someone to snoop on communications to learn how a system works, then potentially send commands to the radios that could trigger blackouts, halt gas pipeline flows, or reroute trains.

Researchers found a second vulnerability in a different part of the same radio technology that is used in more specialized systems sold exclusively to police forces, prison personnel, military, intelligence agencies, and emergency services, such as the C2000 communication system used by Dutch police, fire brigades, ambulance services, and Ministry of Defense for mission-critical voice and data communications. The flaw would let someone decrypt encrypted voice and data communications and send fraudulent messages to spread misinformation or redirect personnel and forces during critical times.

Three Dutch security analysts discovered the vulnerabilities—five in total—in a European radio standard called TETRA (Terrestrial Trunked Radio), which is used in radios made by Motorola, Damm, Hytera, and others. The standard has been used in radios since the ’90s, but the flaws remained unknown because encryption algorithms used in TETRA were kept secret until now.

The technology is not widely used in the US, where other radio standards are more commonly deployed. But Caleb Mathis, a consultant with Ampere Industrial Security, conducted open source research for WIRED and uncovered contracts, press releases, and other documentation showing TETRA-based radios are used in at least two dozen critical infrastructures in the US. Because TETRA is embedded in radios supplied through resellers and system integrators like PowerTrunk, it’s difficult to identify who might be using them and for what. But Mathis helped WIRED identify several electric utilities, a state border control agency, an oil refinery, chemical plants, a major mass transit system on the East Coast, three international airports that use them for communications among security and ground crew personnel, and a US Army training base.

Carlo Meijer, Wouter Bokslag, and Jos Wetzels of Midnight Blue in the Netherlands discovered the TETRA vulnerabilities–which they’re calling TETRA:Burst–in 2021 but agreed not to disclose them publicly until radio manufacturers could create patches and mitigations. Not all of the issues can be fixed with a patch, however, and it’s not clear which manufacturers have prepared them for customers. Motorola—one of the largest radio vendors—didn’t respond to repeated inquiries from WIRED.

The Dutch National Cyber Security Centre assumed the responsibility of notifying radio vendors and computer emergency response teams around the world about the problems, and of coordinating a timeframe for when the researchers should publicly disclose the issues.

In a brief email, NCSC spokesperson Miral Scheffer called TETRA “a crucial foundation for mission-critical communication in the Netherlands and around the world” and emphasized the need for such communications to always be reliable and secure, “especially during crisis situations.” She confirmed the vulnerabilities would let an attacker in the vicinity of impacted radios “intercept, manipulate or disturb” communications and said the NCSC had informed various organizations and governments, including Germany, Denmark, Belgium, and England, advising them how to proceed. A spokesperson for DHS’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency said they are aware of the vulnerabilities but wouldn’t comment further.

The researchers say anyone using radio technologies should check with their manufacturer to determine if their devices are using TETRA and what fixes or mitigations are available.

The researchers plan to present their findings next month at the BlackHat security conference in Las Vegas, when they will release detailed technical analysis as well as the secret TETRA encryption algorithms that have been unavailable to the public until now. They hope others with more expertise will dig into the algorithms to see if they can find other issues.

TETRA was developed in the ’90s by the European Telecommunications Standards Institute, or ETSI. The standard includes four encryption algorithms—TEA1, TEA2, TEA3, and TEA4—that can be used by radio manufacturers in different products, depending on their intended use and customer. TEA1 is for commercial uses; for radios used in critical infrastructure in Europe and the rest of the world, though, it is also designed for use by public safety agencies and military, according to an ETSI document, and the researchers found police agencies that use it.

TEA2 is restricted for use in Europe by police, emergency services, military, and intelligence agencies. TEA3 is available for police and emergency services outside Europe—in countries deemed “friendly” to the EU, such as Mexico and India; those not considered friendly—such as Iran—only had the option to use TEA1. TEA4, another commercial algorithm, is hardly used, the researchers say.

The vast majority of police forces around the world, aside from the US, use TETRA-based radio technology, the researchers found, after conducting open source research. TETRA is used by police forces in Belgium and the Scandinavian countries, East European countries like Serbia, Moldova, Bulgaria, and Macedonia, as well as in the Middle East in Iran, Iraq, Lebanon, and Syria.

Additionally, the Ministries of Defense in Bulgaria, Kazakhstan, and Syria use it. The Polish military counterintelligence agency uses it, as does the Finnish defense forces, and Lebanon and Saudi Arabia’s intelligence service, to name just a few.

Critical infrastructure in the US and other countries use TETRA for machine-to-machine communication in SCADA and other industrial control system settings—especially in widely distributed pipelines, railways, and electric grids, where wired and cellular communications may not be available.

Although the standard itself is publicly available for review, the encryption algorithms are only available with a signed NDA to trusted parties, such as radio manufacturers. The vendors have to include protections in their products to make it difficult for anyone to extract the algorithms and analyze them.

To obtain the algorithms, the researchers purchased an off-the-shelf Motorola MTM5400 radio and spent four months locating and extracting the algorithms from the secure enclave in the radio’s firmware. They had to use a number of zero-day exploits to defeat Motorola protections, which they reported to Motorola to fix. Once they reverse-engineered the algorithms, the first vulnerability they found was the backdoor in TEA1.

All four TETRA encryption algorithms use 80-bit keys, which, even more than two decades after their release, still provides sufficient security to prevent someone from cracking them, the researchers say. But TEA1 has a feature that reduces its key to just 32 bits—less than half the key’s length. The researchers were able to crack it in less than a minute using a standard laptop and just four ciphertexts.

Brian Murgatroyd, chair of the technical body at ETSI responsible for the TETRA standard, objects to calling this a backdoor. He says when they developed the standard, they needed an algorithm for commercial use that could meet export requirements to be used outside Europe, and that in 1995 a 32-bit key still provided security, though he acknowledges that with today’s computing power that’s not the case.

Matthew Green, a Johns Hopkins University cryptographer and professor, calls the weakened key a “disaster.”

"I wouldn’t say it’s equivalent to using no encryption, but it’s really, really bad,” he says.

Gregor Leander, a professor of computer science and cryptographer with a security research team known as CASA at Ruhr University Bochum in Germany, says it would be “stupid” for critical infrastructure to use TEA1, especially without adding end-to-end encryption on top of it. “Nobody should rely on this,” he says.

Murgatroyd insists the most anyone can do with the backdoor is decrypt and eavesdrop on data and conversations. TETRA has strong authentication, he says, that would prevent anyone from injecting false communication.

“That’s not true,” says Wetzels. TETRA only requires that devices authenticate themselves to the network, but data and voice communications between radios are not digitally signed or otherwise authenticated. The radios and base stations trust that any device that has the proper encryption key is authenticated, so someone who can crack the key as the researchers did can encrypt their own messages with it and send them to base stations and other radios.

While the TEA1 weakness has been withheld from the public, it’s apparently widely known in the industry and governments. In a 2006 US State Department cable leaked to Wikileaks, the US embassy in Rome describes an Italian radio manufacturer asking about exporting TETRA radio systems to municipal police forces in Iran. The US pushed back on the plan, so the company representative reminded the US that encryption in the TETRA-based radio system they planned to sell to Iran is “less than 40-bits,” implying that the US shouldn’t object to the sale because the system isn’t using a strong key.


The second major vulnerability the researchers found isn’t in one of the secret algorithms, but it affects all of them. The issue lies in the standard itself and how TETRA handles time syncing and keystream generation.

When a TETRA radio contacts a base station, they initiate communication with a time sync. The network broadcasts the time, and the radio establishes that it’s in sync. Then they both generate the same keystream, which is tied to that timestamp, to encrypt the subsequent communication.

“The problem is that the network broadcasts the time in packets that are unauthenticated and unencrypted,” says Wetzels.

As a result, an attacker can use a simple device to intercept and collect encrypted communication passing between a radio and base station, while noting the timestamp that initiated the communication. Then he can use a rogue base station to contact the same radio or a different one in the same network and broadcast the time that matches the time associated with the intercepted communication. The radio is dumb and believes the correct time is whatever a base station says it is. So it will generate the keystream that was used at that time to encrypt the communication the attacker collected. The attacker recovers that keystream and can use it to decrypt the communication collected earlier.

To inject false messages, he would use his base station to tell a radio that the time is tomorrow noon and ask the radio to generate the keystream associated with that future time. Once the attacker has it, he can use the keystream to encrypt his rogue messages, and the next day at noon send them to a target radio using the correct keystream for that time.

Wetzels imagines Mexican drug cartels could use this to intercept police communications to eavesdrop on investigations and operations or deceive police with false messages sent to radios. The attacker needs to be near a target radio, but the proximity is only dependent on the strength of the rogue base station’s signal and the terrain.

“You can do this within a distance of tens of meters,” he says. The rogue base station would cost $5,000 or less to build.

ETSI’s Murgatroyd downplays the attack saying TETRA’s strong authentication requirements would prevent a non-authenticated base station from injecting messages. Wetzel disagrees, saying TETRA only requires devices to authenticate to the network, not to each other.

The researchers didn’t find any weaknesses in the TEA2 algorithm used by police, military, and emergency services in Europe, but they did initially think they found another backdoor in TEA3. Given that TEA3 is the exportable version of TEA2, there was good reason to believe it might also have a backdoor to meet export requirements.

They thought they found something suspicious in a substitution box, or S-box, used in the algorithm, which contains a bad property they say would “never appear in serious cryptography.” The researchers didn’t have sufficient skill to examine it to determine if it was exploitable. But Leander’s team did examine it and he says it’s not.

“In many ciphers if you used such a box it would break the cipher very badly,“ he says. “But the way it’s used in TEA3, we couldn’t see that this is exploitable.” This doesn’t mean someone else might not find something in it he says, but he’d “be very surprised if it leads to an attack that’s practical.”

With regard to fixes for the other problems the researchers found, Murgatroyd says ETSI fixed the keystream/timestamp issue in a revised TETRA standard published last October, and they created three additional algorithms for vendors to use, including one that replaces TEA1. Vendors have created firmware updates that fix the keystream/timestamp issue. But the problem with TEA1 cannot be fixed with an update. The only solution for that is to use another algorithm—not an easy thing to switch—or to add end-to-end encryption on top of TETRA, something Wetzels says is impractical. It’s very expensive since the encryption has to be applied to every device, it requires some downtime to do the upgrade—something not always feasible for critical infrastructure—and can create incompatibility issues with other components.

As for asking their vendor to switch out TEA1 for one of the new algorithms meant to replace it, Wetzels says this is problematic as well, since ETSI plans to keep those algorithms secret, like the others, asking users to trust again that the algorithms have no critical weakness.

“There’s a very high chance that [the replacement algorithm for TEA1] will be weakened” as well, he says.

The researchers don’t know if the vulnerabilities they found are being actively exploited. But they did find evidence in the Edward Snowden leaks that indicate the US National Security Agency (NSA) and UK’s GCHQ intelligence agency targeted TETRA for eavesdropping in the past. One document discusses an NSA and Australian Signals Directorate project to collect Malaysian police communications during a climate change conference in Bali in 2007 and mentions that they obtained some TETRA collections on Indonesian security forces' communications.

Another Snowden leak describes GCHQ, possibly with NSA assistance, collecting TETRA communications in Argentina in 2010 when tensions rose between it and the UK over oil exploration rights in a deep-sea oil field off the coast of the Falkland Islands. It describes an operation to collect high-priority military and leadership communications of Argentina and reveals that the project resulted in successful TETRA collections.


“This doesn’t indicate they exploited these vulnerabilities that we found,” Wetzels says. “But it does show … that state-sponsored actors are actively looking at and collecting these TETRA networks, even in the early 2000s.”

They really, yes really, want to pump our kids full of this MRNA crap even though they know there are major cardiac repercussions. 


https://www.ny1.com/nyc/all-boroughs/new...hot-annual-

Quote:One factor that worries Dr. Cohen is vaccine distrust – particularly as the threat of the so-called “tripledemic” of COVID-19, influenza and RSV, continues to be an issue.

“I’m very worried about parents not vaccinating kids,” she said. “I got my kids vaccinated from the circulating viruses. There’s plenty of other things that are hard as parents that we can’t do. This is one we can do to protect our kids.”

Quote:Democrat President Joe Biden’s newly appointed director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has said that she expects Americans to “get your annual Covid shot.”

Dr. Mandy Cohen said she’s pushing for mRNA Covid injections to become an annual inoculation like the flu shot.


During the interview with Spectrum News, Cohen was asked if the United States is at a point where Americans should get “booster” shots for Covid every year.


Cohen responded, “We’re just on the precipice of that, so I don’t want to get ahead of where our scientists are here and doing that evaluation work, but yes, we anticipate that Covid will become similar to flu shots, where it is going to be you get your annual flu shot and you [b]get your annual Covid shot[/b].”
“That’s where we’re going to,” she continued.


“We’re not quite there yet,” added Cohen, the previous secretary of health and human services in North Carolina.


Official guidance from the U.S. health agency regarding an annual Covid shot should arrive in early or mid-September, the CDC director said.


Cohen, a Democrat, said she expects Big Pharma companies to produce a new Covid booster by the fall.
During Cohen’s interview, the subject of trust in public health agencies plummeting during the COVID-19 pandemic was broached.

In March, a Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health survey found that approximately a quarter of Americans have little-to-no trust in the CDC for health information.


Cohen told Spectrum News, “While we saw trust go down in lots of institutions, we actually saw trust increase in North Carolina.


“We measured trust in the Department of Health and Human Services and saw that increase.”
“We still had respectful disagreement, but at least we’re having a respectful conversation about how to approach hard, hard topics,” she added.

Some more good news sanity today. We are on a roll.


https://humanevents.com/2023/07/29/briti...ge-clothes

British Swimming changes locker room rules to stop 65-year-old trans-identified male from watching teen girls change clothes

Quote:British Swimming changed its locker room guidance this week after parents complained that a 65-year-old trans-identified male called Anne Coombes used the women's changing room as a walkthrough route to the pool while young girls were changing, making them uncomfortable. 

According to the Daily Mail, the new rules prohibit any officials or volunteers from using the locker room area as a walkthrough during competitions. One parent told the Telegraph, "My daughter was in the changing rooms when this person walked through. And then came back again to use the toilets."

"She came and told me. How intimidating must it be to be a girl, changing in a women's space, when this happens?" added the parent. "And these girls feel that they can't complain in case they get labeled as transphobic."

On top of the stricter guidance, British Swimming added heightened security for changing rooms at the competitions. It said as soon as there was a complaint it "immediately followed procedure to correctly identify the necessary facts."

"Having established the details, relevant protocols were reviewed and all volunteers working on the event have been reminded of their responsibilities in adhering to our protocols," a spokesperson for British Swimming said. 

On Monday, Commbes garnered attention on Twitter after complaining that the assistant at the Mercure Hotel in Sheffield assumed the 65-year-old wanted to use the unisex changing room instead of the women's. 

"I am so f*****g angry," the now-deleted post read. "This is the first time anyone IRL (in real life) has treated me as if I am not a woman... decent people accept the rule of self-identity. If in doubt then find a polite way to ask, don't assume."

Former Olympic swimmer Sharron Davies responded to the tweet, saying, "You’re male, use the changing room with other males or at the very least the unisex changing room!" She added, "Deciding you want to change where you want to change does NOT trump women & girls' rights. Ps I don’t know a single female that would subject that level of discomfort on others."

In another post from 2021 found by The Daily Mail, Coombes said, "I don't actually want to upset anyone, but I am determined that I am going to use the female changing rooms. I am not going to be shunted off to a separate facility such as a disabled changing room." The post continued, "As I see it, the problem with that solution is that once it is taken, not only are you identified as being different but it will inevitably become permanent." 

Coombes' Twitter account was deactivated following these incidents.

Some good news for a change. Chief DIE officers are being canned throughout the country as lawsuits and product boycotts impact their bottom line.


https://www.informationliberation.com/?id=63870

Quote:

Quote:Two years ago chief diversity officers were some of the hottest hires into executive ranks. Now, they increasingly feel left out in the cold.

Companies including Netflix, Disney and Warner Bros. Discovery have recently said that high-profile diversity, equity and inclusion executives will be leaving their jobs. Thousands of diversity-focused workers have been laid off since last year, and some companies are scaling back racial justice commitments.

Diversity, equity and inclusion -- or DEI -- jobs were put in the crosshairs after many companies started re-examining their executive ranks during the tech sector's shake out last fall. Some chief diversity officers say their work is facing additional scrutiny since the Supreme Court struck down affirmative action in college admissions and companies brace for potential legal challenges. [...]

New analysis from employment data provider Live Data Technologies shows that chief diversity officers have been more vulnerable to layoffs than their human resources counterparts, experiencing 40% higher turnover. Their job searches are also taking longer.

"I got to 300 applications and then I stopped tracking," says Stephanie Lubin, who was laid off from her role as diversity head at Drizly, an online alcohol marketplace, in May following the company's acquisition by Uber. In one case, Lubin says she went through 16 rounds of interviews for a role she didn't get, and says she is now planning to pivot out of DEI work.

[...] Since the Supreme Court overturned affirmative action in June, companies are anticipating spillover legal action could have an impact on them. Those that are still hiring CDOs want people who can help the board navigate the political and legal landscape of diversity work and figure out how to take defensive moves to shield them from litigation, says Tina Shah Paikeday, global leader of Russell Reynolds’s diversity, equity and inclusion practice.

"They recognize it would be smart to get ahead of that."

"Diversity officer" is the ultimate grift.

Ashleigh Shackleford, a true DEI pioneer, summed up the entire field many years ago in a legendary presentation.

Looks like the DNC is getting ready for the 2024 election.

You want voter ID, fine, we will give illegals drivers licenses. Prove their mail in ballots are not valid because you will never be allowed to audit it. Our judges will throw out your case.... just like last time.

https://bigleaguepolitics.com/thousands-...achusetts/

Quote:Tens of thousands of illegal aliens across Massachusetts are rushing to secure driver’s licenses after voters approved a law to extend driving privileges to those in the United States illegally. 

100,000 requests for appointments to obtain a learner’s permit have been placed since July 1st.


The majority, tens of thousands, of those requests are likely illegal aliens who were given the right to a driver’s license in Massachusetts after voters approved the law in a statewide ballot initiative late last year.

In passing this law, Massachusetts became the 17th state to grant driver’s licenses to illegal aliens, a dubious distinction that states such as California, Colorado, Connecticut, and New York hold.

In the first four years of the law going into effect, state officials have revealed that they project roughly 300,000 illegal aliens in Massachusetts to submit applications for driver’s licenses. In sum, the law is expected to put taxpayers on the hook for at least $28 million in order to implement.

Coming to the USA?


Video: https://twitter.com/WallStreetSilv/statu...0403305474

China adds facial recognition glasses

https://twitter.com/songpinganq/status/1...2088860674

Quote:Coming to the USA?

China shames citizens, who are on the blacklist of Social Credit System, by displaying their faces, ID, addresses...on every government-run billboard in the town for all to see.

This also alerts who you may want to 'stay away' from, lest your social credit score goes down!

New video of the "Patriot Front" replacement called "Blood Tribe". Same clothing and masks, etc.


https://twitter.com/WallStreetSilv/statu...7761773569

Quote:It looks like the Feds got tired of using the name "Patriot Front" because it had already been exposed.

Now the Feds are using the name "Blood Tribe" and carrying flags in Watertown Wisconsin protesting a Pride event.

Similar Fed uniform clothing and masks that they used when they were using the name Patriot Front.

A Seminole County detective was arrested after investigators say he warned a number of suspects they were targets of a child sex sting. The sheriff's office says Jose Tirado had been a part of the Crimes Against Children Unit for eight years.

Yes, the sex crimes detective was giving warning to child sex predators. Sick perverts are everywhere.



Seminole County detective arrested, accused of tipping off suspects in child-sex sting



https://www.wmfe.org/2023-07-28/seminole...-sex-sting

https://www.wesh.com/article/seminole-se...g/44674507

https://www.mynews13.com/fl/orlando/news...ony-counts

https://www.wftv.com/news/local/seminole...BGPYB7FJM/

Get the Mylar, oxy absorbers and buckets out and start filling them up. Rice and Wheat are going to be problematic this year.


These Foods Will Be In Short Supply In 2023, So Stock Up Now (Or Find Alternatives)

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/start-thi...48504.html

https://www.producer.com/markets/world-m...is-year-2/

Quote:Producing countries expected to harvest ‘pedestrian’ to terrible crops; an analyst says flour buyers should be getting antsy


Wheat is finally becoming a “sexy” crop after years of being the ugly duckling, says an analyst.


Stephen Nicholson, global grains and oilseeds strategist for Rabobank, said a series of supply side threats is making things exciting.


Canada’s crops are withering in the fields. MarketsFarm is forecasting 30.4 million tonnes of all wheat production, well below the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s latest prediction of 35 million tonnes.


The U.S. winter wheat crop was a disappointment, and the country’s spring wheat crop is suffering through dry conditions.


[url=https://www.producer.com/markets/china-resumes-purchasing-flax-from-canada/][/url]Argentina recently harvested a terrible crop and the new one is off to a rough start.
Conditions initially looked good in the European Union, but it turned hot and dry, and yields are shrinking.


“Australia is going to have a pedestrian crop this year,” he said during an interview at the Ag in Motion show near Langham, Sask.


El Nino could be wreaking havoc in India and Southeast Asia and China has quality problems due to harvest rains.


“You have to draw the conclusion that maybe the wheat crop is not going to be as big as everyone thinks it is going to be,” said Nicholson.


That is the exact conclusion being drawn by MarketsFarm analyst Bruce Burnett.
He noted during his AIM market outlook presentation that the USDA is forecasting 54.7 million tonnes of wheat ending stocks for the world’s major exporters in 2023-24.


That is a 4.5 million tonnes lower than last year.

However, Burnett feels the USDA’s production numbers are five million tonnes too high for Canada and three to four million tonnes overstated for Australia.
Argentina’s new crop is off to a poor start, while the USDA is forecasting a big rebound for that country.


“The market is reacting like there’s tons of wheat around and it doesn’t matter,” he said.

“But really, the situation is becoming very, very tight and it won’t take too much to tip it over.”


Nicholson said he would be getting antsy if he was a flour buyer because the milling wheat crops are in trouble in North America.


They can take some solace in the fact that the U.S. hard red winter wheat crop was averaging 13.2 percent protein as of July 14, which is above average.
However, due to the small HRWW crop, there will be a need to blend more spring wheat and it could be hard to find.


Burnett said the USDA is forecasting 11 million tonnes of Ukrainian wheat exports in 2023-24, but that seems doubtful now that Russia has backed out of the Black Sea Grain Initiative.


“There is limited opportunity to export via other channels,” he said.
Ukraine can move grain through the Baltic Sea via Poland or through Romania’s Black Sea ports.


However, those countries have bigger crops and are not interested in moving Ukrainian wheat through their ports.

Burnett believes Ukraine’s exports will fall two to three million tonnes short of the USDA’s forecast.


“If we get into a real missile-flying thing, it might knock out all their abilities to export,” he said.


Ukraine could also start targeting Russia’s ports, which could hamper that country’s ability to ship wheat around the world.


“The wheat market has not been pricing in any of the risks associated with this,” said Burnett.

Being the 2nd Largest DNC Donor & Donating $46 Million To Democrats Has Bonuses It Appears. Who cares if it is "scam money". What, do you think the DNC is going to give it back? Dirty Scam Money Is Best Money. Video At The Link

https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2023/07...rat-donor/

Quote:SBF who is known for running the multi-billion dollar crypto investment scam network, FTX, is seeing additional federal charges dropped by the DOJ on technicalities, citing a treaty with the Bahamas.

SBF is an American citizen and also happens to be the 2nd largest democrat donor in 2022, providing over $40 million to the candidates in that year alone. It sure does pay to play. He is still facing fraud charges and could see jail time.