==Phrack Inc.==

               Volume 0x0c, Issue 0x41, Phile #0x06 of 0x0f


|=-----------------------------------------------------------------------=|
|=--------=[ The only laws on the Internet are assembly and RFCs ]=------=|
|=-----------------------------------------------------------------------=|
|=-------------------=[ By julia@winstonsmith.info ]=--------------------=|
|=-----------------------------------------------------------------------=|


------[  Index

     0 -  starting point, our world and the Internet

     1 -  What's an incoherent law ?

     2 - DEEP FOCUS, AND REAL TARGET: RIPA III

     3 - Elettra

     4 - THE ANONYMOUS IDENTITY: julia@winstonsmith.info

     5 - REFERENCES
    

------[  0. starting point, our world and the Internet

2008: During the past 10 years the Internet accrued its value in a way that
was not predictable. A lot of players are trying to gain power over it: 
recording and cinema industries, governments, software vendors.

Eight, ten years ago our feeling with the net was hacking pleasure; now,
the hacking techniques are recycled by security vendors for their security
services. Once the diffusion of a crack was proof of value, now it only 
represents the risk to be busted. A lot has changed and for someone this 
is the opportunity to reconsider and eventually change both his ways of 
acting and his priorities.
The spirit has changed: may the energies be readdressed?
Is there space for fun, still, and where?
The game now is hard. The tools in our hands have changed and threats are 
much more realistic. Hacking is a game, but now the risk level has to 
be carefully taken into consideration to protect ourselves and the 
people near us, to avoid jail or being exploited.

Media industry, political entities and vendors are trying every possibility
to set foot where they can have even a minimum of control over users. This
is because control, even if only partial, means power.

We can envision how the Internet, its operating systems and softwares
operate. We clearly know what is going on, and why it works in that 
specific way and not otherwise.

Those who are trying to get their hands on the network and on the Internet
users often (and fortunately) do not have the skills necessary to 
understand the concepts on which the network is based. The fact that the 
internet society is based on technical rules before that on moral ones is 
somehow less natural for us to believe. 

So it happens that computers and the Internet are subject to legislation, 
control and governmental based restriction, whilst the Internet and 
computers are by definition the same all over the world and the Internet is
made by all users equally.

Whether it speaks of computers, hard drives, forensic analysis, censorship 
or wiretapping, items are always the same. 
We can still understand this, while the politicians are on average 50 years
old and spent more or less 30 of those years in the political career. 
Information technology has been developed seriously in recent 15 years, so 
it is normal that politicians do not understand anything of IT matters. 

Other than that, we see that political choices must enjoy the support of 
the people, but people have not a better comprehension of IT matters than 
politicians. This explains why no one has yet seen a law making some real 
sense from a technological point of view and yet achieving its purposes 
(which usually consists of an increased sense of security). 

We think that we are the ones who can demonstrate that the Internet follows
different laws. That's because we are the generation born with the Internet
and we are able to speak internet language enthusiastically. 
We, as developers, can not write laws nor directly challenge them, but we 
can develop software demonstrating from a practical point of view how wrong
these laws are.
It seems to us that this is the most effective and less painful way to show
politicians their mistakes and give citizens their freedom, ruled on the 
Internet by mathematical logics.

It is told by the Hacker Manifesto:

"I made a discovery today. I found a computer. Wait a second, this is cool.
It does what I want it to. If it makes a mistake, it's because I screwed 
it up. Not because it doesn't like me... Or feels threatened by me... Or 
thinks I'm a smart ass... Or doesn't like teaching and shouldn't be 
here..."

Mentor's ideas in the 1986, and our ideas since then, are the same for all
the Internet users even now. If this freedom of acting is disturbing to 
someone, it's our duty to remember that this freedom cannot be erased. 

The incentives to hack have changed, exposure may have become uncomfortable
...so an anonymous identity rises: julia@winstonsmith.info, dedicated to 
the spread of software written to demonstrate the inconsistency of laws 
to control and limit users and the Internet.


------[  1. What's an incoherent law ?

As the tendency to create inadequate laws is increasing, for what concerns 
the control of the internet and its users, we felt the need to question 
this modus operandi.

The goal is to create software designed to demonstrate that most laws that
restrict and control the Internet are inadequate (unnecessary, 
counterproductive and risky). 

You, more than any other community, have the chance to demonstrate that 
any law trying to:

- regulate the Internet or computer use from a governmental point of view
- control users communications (by filtering and limiting them)

are not enforceable from a scientific point of view, because they are mere 
transposition of real life laws on the digital dimension.

In general, our line of action can rely on this logic:
- A law is promulgated (data retention, search profiling, forbidden 
  publishing...)
- We analyze two aspects: 
	1) the logical structure of the law, in order to understand its 
	   bases
	2) the technical implementation of the law
- From (1) we can see and develop ideas not considered
- From (2) we can develop technical solutions 
- The news that the law is a failure has to be spread. In fact, our
  knowledge has no impact on politics, the audience and the users
  information if it remains in our hands.

One example of law-reversing-and-attack could be:

1) Human side: A state deploys a law that forbids speaking about 
   cryptography
2) Tech side: being the domain owner of a website speaking of cryptography 
   lands you in jail.
3) Tech implementation: once the police is notified of the existence of a 
   server inside country boundaries serving forbidden content, an email is
   sent asking to remove the pages, or in a short time the domain owner 
   will be busted and the server unplugged. 

human countermeasure:

1a) Migrate to a free blog/website outside your country.

hacker countermeasure:

1a) Use a TOR hidden service, reachable through the Internet with a proxy 
    in another country [1]
1b) Use a FreeNET website [2]
1c) Post your content with an anonymous remailer to a mailing list [3]
1d) Publish your contents via peer to peer network using a digital 
    signature for trusted download, with the first node publishing the data
    outside the country. 
1e) Use a self decryption javascript site, capable to protect session
    layer and cutting off crawlers that don't support javascript
    (-> open source intelligence too), in some free-blog outside our 
    country. [4]
1f) A distributed server like "project R*" from "Autistici/Inventati" [5].
1g) Use one of the other infinite solutions, because we should move 
    ourselves among the RFCs, spreading software automatically and always 
    find new ways to bypass the law description.

The Internet for the mere users is only "the web", whilst we have more 
possibilities. But we fail to keep our servers online, or to publish our
information without problems, because we are not using the best solutions
in strong encryption and network distribution.


------[  2. DEEP FOCUS, AND REAL TARGET: RIPA III
 
RIPA (investigation of electronic data protected by  encryption - power to 
require disclosure, [6]).

In practical terms, it is the possibility for an UK investigator to 
request the password protecting an encrypted file: in  case of refusal or 
impossibility to give the password, the user it is punishable with up to 
two years' imprisonment.

Comparing this with the real life, it is the equivalent of a law requiring
a suspect to open his safe to investigators. But computers and the Internet
move on other schemes.
In addition, this law is specifically making the UK less secure. 
Let's see why: 

- A person possessing an encrypted archive containing secrets potentially 
  incriminating for a more than 2 years punishment will accept the 2 years 
  imprisonment instead of revealing the password.

- The one whose encrypted archive doesn't contain secrets incriminating, 
  but sensitive political, personal information, will give them to police 
  (or, more often, to private consultants that practically proceed with the
  forensic examination).

- Theoretical security is not achieved by delegating the power to control 
  to an institution, because if this is corrupted it would become the 
  gateway for any sort of abuse. Theoretical security can be achieved by 
  preventing future crime, not by applying controls in order to act as a 
  deterrent.

Following the logic presented in the point 2 of this document, a safer way
to avoid RIPA-III is to use a more sophisticated way of protection. 

Encryption models use to define actors (Alice & Bob) and scenarios (with 
Mallory, Eve and the Family of Attack). The encryption model required to 
hide the data, and the presence of encrypted data, is steganography [7].
In our scenario it is enough to demonstrate the absence of encrypted data,
and cryptography offering a "plausible deniability" is our solution.

Deniable cryptography allows a user to protect his data by plausibly deny 
existence of hidden data inside an encrypted file. This kind of protection 
is very useful when the user is compelled to give up the password by 
violent or intimidating methods [8]. Different forms of deniable 
cryptography are currently used:
- TrueCrypt [9] implements full disk encryption. The image of a second 
  encrypted disk is hidden inside free sectors of a container filesystem. 
  Since a TrueCrypt disk is first filled with random data, it is not 
  possible to differentiate between free sectors with random data on them 
  and sectors with encrypted data of the hidden volume. As a consequence of
  this, the TrueCrypt user can plausibly deny existence of the hidden disk.
- OTR (Off-the-Record messaging) [10] is a cryptographic protocol that 
  provides strong encryption for instant messaging. After authenticating 
  the user (via key fingerprint comparison) it encrypts messages without 
  checking their digital signatures. This lack of integrity check allows 
  the sender of a message to plausibly deny sending that message since any 
  other user could have been the sender. 
- 2c2/4c [11]: It takes two input files and generates an output. 
  Depending on the password used it decrypts one file or the other.

The goal of deniable cryptography is to deny the existence itself of a 
piece of information. Steganography has the same goal (steganalysis is 
effective only after the existence of hidden data has been proven), but it 
is more ambitious in hiding the data to the adversary because it carefully 
chooses a container that prevents an analyst to realize that the container 
covers hidden information. In case of an encrypted file, the attacker 
already knows it could contain valuable information; the aim now becomes to
deny the existence of the data inside the exposed container: in such a
situation, deniable cryptography has higher signal-to-coverdata ratio 
compared to steganography. 

------[ 3. Elettra

Elettra can generate archives of multiple files where a different file is 
extracted depending on the password provided. 
This because the password used for encryption is not only an "information 
required for decrypt" one file in the archive, is also the "information 
required to find" a file in the archive. 
Every file is encrypted with its own password. Every password unlocks
a single file. Since elettra can add random padding to an archive, it's 
impossible to determine how many files are contained in it.

Plausible deniability consists in allowing the user to deny existence of 
other files except the only file he revealed the password to.

Elettra bases its security on mathematical principles derived from 
reverse-engineering on the RIPA and its possible interpretations.

Elettra is a command line program developed for POSIX systems (tested under
Linux, cygwin and MacOSX). A GUI wrapper developed in wxWidgets has been 
developed and both software, with related gpg signature, are available at:

https://www.winstonsmith.info/julia/elettra

Despite the fact that the GUI was coded in a tenth of the time spent for 
Elettra, it helps a dramatically wider range of users to understand and use
the program. Usability and easiness of distribution of a software have 
rarely been a goal for hackers, but this time we want to highlight and 
spread a way of action/reaction made possible by open source technologies 
and a network able to quickly communicate a content. The GUI is a necessary
compromise between features and usability :)

How to use Elettra:

user@linz:~/elettra/src/build$ ./elettra        
./elettra by julia@winstonsmith.info, http://www.winstonsmith.info/julia
You should improve the quality of life, using privacy enhancing technology!
./elettra encrypt outputfile [size increment]% plainfile[::password] 
./elettra decrypt cipherfile [password] [output directory]
./elettra checkpass password(s)
./elettra example (show examples of use)
- passwords, if not available, is ask with echo off

Elettra in encrypt mode 

user@linz:/tmp$ ./elettra encrypt output 10% file1::passwd1 file1::passwd2
user@linz:/tmp$ ls -l file1 file2 output 
-rw-r--r-- 1 user user  7132 Jan 15 18:35 file1
-rw-r--r-- 1 user user 36287 Jan 15 18:35 file2
-rw-r--r-- 1 user user 29027 Jan 17 10:35 output

Further generation of /tmp/output file, with the same file/password:

-rw-r--r-- 1 user user 30744 Jan 17 10:36 output
-rw-r--r-- 1 user user 32018 Jan 17 10:36 output
-rw-r--r-- 1 user user 29533 Jan 17 10:36 output

One goal of the algorithm is that the outputs differ given the same input.
In practice you can keep the smallest output.

here are some outputs with a padding of 100%

-rw-r--r-- 1 user user 65198 Jan 17 11:43 output
-rw-r--r-- 1 user user 54336 Jan 17 11:43 output
-rw-r--r-- 1 user user 57579 Jan 17 11:43 output
-rw-r--r-- 1 user user 64938 Jan 17 11:43 output
-rw-r--r-- 1 user user 67284 Jan 17 11:43 output
-rw-r--r-- 1 user user 29219 Jan 17 11:43 output
-rw-r--r-- 1 user user 48946 Jan 17 11:43 output
-rw-r--r-- 1 user user 37260 Jan 17 11:43 output

and some with 1000%:

-rw-r--r-- 1 user user 247351 Jan 17 11:43 output
-rw-r--r-- 1 user user 109079 Jan 17 11:43 output
-rw-r--r-- 1 user user 303188 Jan 17 11:43 output
-rw-r--r-- 1 user user 301261 Jan 17 11:44 output
-rw-r--r-- 1 user user 290419 Jan 17 11:44 output
-rw-r--r-- 1 user user 288720 Jan 17 11:48 output
-rw-r--r-- 1 user user 114376 Jan 17 11:48 output
-rw-r--r-- 1 user user 169173 Jan 17 11:48 output
-rw-r--r-- 1 user user 197720 Jan 17 11:48 output
-rw-r--r-- 1 user user 114376 Jan 17 11:48 output
-rw-r--r-- 1 user user 266452 Jan 17 11:48 output


The third argument is the filename of the archive that is going to be 
created.
The fourth argument (optional) is the amount of random padding that will be
inserted at the beginning or appended at the end of the compressed archive.

Padding can vary between 10% and 1000%.

How encryption works in Elettra:

Elettra has five command: encrypt, decrypt, checkpass, help and example.

Is executed with: elettra command [args]

We want to encrypt file /tmp/ls-manpage and /tmp/ps-manpage. 
two file = two password we use "weirdness" and "foxnewsshower", the order 
link:
        ls-manpage (weirdness)
        ps-manpage (foxnewsshower)

$ ./elettra encrypt /dev/shm/output 15% /tmp/ls-manpage::weirdness \
/tmp/ps-manpage::foxnewsshower

the size of our source file are:

$ ls -l /tmp/ls-manpage /tmp/ps-manpage 
-rw-r--r-- 1 user user  7132 Jan  8 05:57 /tmp/ls-manpage
-rw-r--r-- 1 user user 36287 Jan  8 05:57 /tmp/ps-manpage

The command line specifies 15% of random padding. Required args for the 
"encrypt" command, are the output file, the source files and the passwords.
If passwords are not inserted via command line, they are prompted 
interactively.

Before the encryption gzip compression is used, the output file is:

$ ls -l /dev/shm/output 
-rw-r--r-- 1 user user 42615 Jan  8 06:13 /dev/shm/output

Now we have an encrypted archive. The elettra decryption routine takes a 
password and, optionally, a destination directory:

$ ./elettra decrypt /dev/shm/output weirdness /dev/shm/
$ ls -l /dev/shm/
-rw-r--r-- 1 user user  7132 Jan  8 06:32 ls-manpage
-rw-r--r-- 1 user user 42615 Jan  8 06:13 output

If you want to check your passwords, use the command "checkpass":

./elettra checkpass actresss weirdness shoeless
password(s) combinations work ok, with password block of 512 bytes, use it.

If checkpass or encrypt command receive a bad password sequence, notice 
to the users.

This is how an elettra output file looks like:

RRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKCCCCRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR
RRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKCCCCRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR
RRRRRRKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKCCCCRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR
        /-- end of initial keyblock, start of data section --/
RRrrrrccccllllddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddd
dddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddffffFILE1PPPPPRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRrrrrcc
ccllllddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddd
dddddddddddddddddddddddffffFILE2PPPPPRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRrrrrccccllllddddddddd
ddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddd
ddddddddffffFILE3PPPPPRRRRRRRRRRRR

K = Key
C = checksum of password
R = random padding (before the entry point)
r = random encrypted bytes (used in AES CBC)
c = checksum of key
l = length of the compressed file
d = compressed data
f = length of filename
FILE1, FILE2, FILE3 names of decrypted file
P = encrypted padding to fill the minimum AES-128 block up to its end
Random padding is generated with cyclic SHA256 functions.

K and C are in the first segment, called "initial keyblock", the other 
components are the data in the elettra archive.

Here's how the file is created:

encrypt takes OUTPUT PADDING FILE[1..N] PASSWORD[1..N] arguments

try for n in [1 .. N]
	HASHp_n =hash(PASSWORD_n)

Each of these hashes is required for obtaining an unique number dependent
from the password.
This unique number (which is modulo the initial keyblock size) is named 
"entry point" thus obtaining an entry point for each file in the archive.
It is called entry point because it identifies the point where reading will
start at decryption time

 initial keyblock:

 /----------------- keyblock length: 512 + (x * 256) ----------------/

 +--------------+--+----+--+--------+--+----------------------+--+---+
 |              |  |    |  |        |  |                      |  |   |
 |  Random      |  | R  |  |  R     |  |    Random            |  |   |
 |              |  |    |  |        |  |                      |  |   |
 +--------------+--+----+--+--------+--+----------------------+--+---+
                ^ ^
                | |
  entry point --+ |
                  +- password block struct (32 byte)

The keyblock length is not hardcoded but its value is choosen in an 
adaptive way in such a way as to avoid password struct block collisions.
A collision occurs if two or more password struct blocks overlap.
Obviously a collision may disrupt the information contained in the initial
keyblock and as such it has to be avoided.

The password struct block is encrypted with the PASSWORD[1..N], and 
contains an unsigned int checksum and a 28 byte KEY[1..N]. 

This mean that each password computation identifies an entry point inside 
the initial keyblock where the key resides encrypted in 28 of the 32 byte 
of password struct block.  The other data in the initial keyblock are 
random.

This is the algorithm shown in pseudocode:

 for x in [1..12]:
 {
    size = (random_between(1, 12) * 256 ) + 512
    size = size + ( N * 256 )

    create keyblock[size]

    for n in [1..N]
       add_password_hash_to_keyblock(HASHp_n);

    if keyblock[size] has collision
       continue;
    else
       use size as good value
 }

When a keyblock size is found, continue to the next step: creation of
data section.

 for n in [1..N]:
 {
    GZ-FILE-LEN_n = gzip(FILE_n)
 }

 totalsize = keyblock size
 for n in [1..N]:
 {
    MIN-EP_n = totalsize;
    totalsize = totalsize + (GZ-FILE-LEN_n * PADDINDG% )
    MAX-EP_n = totalsize;
    totalsize = totalsize + GZ-FILE-LEN_n
 }

In this step we'll get the total length of the Elettra archive to build 
through using two arrays MIN-EP[1..N], MAX-EP[1..N] defined later.

Suppose to encrypt two elements:

         /----- GZ-FILE-LEN 1 ------/       /----- GZ-FILE-LEN 2 -----/
 +-------+--------------------------+-------+-------------------------+
 |       |                          |       |                         |
 |   R1  |       GZ-FILE1           |  R2   |      GZ-FILE2           |
 |       |                          |       |                         |
 +-------+--------------------------+-------+-------------------------+
 ^       ^                          ^       ^
 |       +--- MAX-EP1       MIN-EP2 +       |
 +- MIN-EP1                                 +-- MAX-EP2

R1 and R2 are two padding blocks. The dimension of these blocks depends 
on the padding % value, the size of the compressed file and a bit of 
random.

The entry point for identifying FILEn position MUST fall between MIN-EP_n 
and MAX-EP_n. 
This second entry point is derived from KEY_n and so the keys KEY[1..N] are
chosen in order to fulfill this requirement following the algorithm 
reported below:

 for n in [1..N]:
 {
   for x in [1..10000]:
   {
      KEY_n = random()
      HASHk_n = HASH(KEY_n)
      EP_n = HASHk_n % totalsize
      if( MIN-EP_n < EP_n < MAX-EP_n)
        return KEY_n;
   }
 }

     /----- GZ-FILE-LEN 1 -----/        /----- GZ-FILE-LEN 2 -----/
 +---+-------------------------+----+---+-------------------------+---+
 |   |                         |    |   |                         |   |
 | R |     GZ-FILE1            | R  | R |      GZ-FILE2           | R |
 | 1 |                         | 2  | 3 |                         | 4 |
 +---+-------------------------+----+---+-------------------------+---+
     ^                              ^   ^                         ^ 
     |                              |   |                         |
     +--EP1                MIN-EP2--+   + EP2                     + B

 R1 is the first block of random (from MIN-EP1 to EP1)
 R2 is the post file padding (from EP1 + GZ-FILE-LEN to MIN-EP2)

Every file is written between two random sequences of padding blocks. 
The length of each padding sequence is random. Every length is plausible 
before and after a given file, because the attacker doesn't know the 
padding percentage requested at encryption time.

Now the algorithm has retrieve:

1) The length of inital keyblock
2) The entry points derived from the passwords
3) The keys
4) The padding sections
5) The internal structs used for keeping file names, file lengths and 
   checksums saved before the file data just after EP_n

Now it's simply a matter of opening a file, writing the initial keyblock 
and the data section and save.

Decryption sequence for Elettra:

1) Password and input file are given
2) The password is hashed and this value (referred as HASHp) is used to 
   search the initial keyblock size. The possible value are obtained with 
   the following algorithm

   for x in [1..80]:
     try_size = 512 + ( 256 * x );

   When the password is able to decrypt the first 32 bytes pointed by 
   HASHp modulo try_size and to verify the internal checksum, the initial 
   keyblock size is identified.
3) Read the key from the initial keyblock, decrypt it and evaluate its hash
   modulo the file total length.
4) Decrypt the first 32 bytes. If the checksum matchs, decrypt the file 
   length, decompress it and rename it with its original name.

Conclusions about algorithm: 

An analyst that will have to analyze files encrypted by using Elettra will
not be able to make any assumption a priori, since the algorithm aims at 
behaving randomly in order to make any output plausible. Every Elettra 
output file should contain one or more file, and is plausible assume that 
only one file had been encrypred, because the padding before and after the 
decrypted file seem plausible random padding.

The security of this algorithm is based on the propriety of encrypted data
to appear fully random over a statistical analysis. An attack which is able
to detect the difference between compressed+encrypted data and random data 
could exploit Elettra.

An example of plausible deniability:

The analyst has found a 1.4Mb long file, encrypted by using Elettra.
Using the user provided password, he extracts a .pdf file 2Mb long.
Then, the following is plausible:

A: the user has ran Elettra with a 40% proportional padding. The file size 
was 2Mb and it has been compressed in 1 Mb. Before the beginning and after 
the end of the file a total of 400k bytes of random padding has been added.

But it is also likely that:

B: the user has used a 2Mb long .pdf as covert file and a 200k file of 
secret data. The compressed size of the .pdf was 1Mb, but the other file 
could not be compressed anymore, so its size stayed 200k. From 1Mb 
compressed .pdf + 200k of secret file and a 16% proportional padding it has
been created the 1.4Mb resulting file.

Both cases are plausible: either way the analyst has a password that 
extracts a .pdf file 2Mb long that compresses in 1Mb. The analyst could 
then inspect which part of the file is decrypted, but the position of an 
encrypted file in the archive gives no information, since it is plausible 
that both before and after each file in the archive there is random data.

Elettra has been developed with these attacks and countermeasures in mind:

1) Files are encrypted with AES-128, random padding is the output of SHA 
   functions and it is also mathematically impossible to say if data is 
   encrypted or just random noise;
2) It is not possible to make assumptions based on the final size of the 
   archive (e.g. verifying if the padding is a whole quantity or a 
   fraction is useless because the proportional increase of dimension 
   supplied by the user is not used as is, but a new value is derived from 
   it;
3) Checksums used to verify integrity of passwords are implemented, and
   are checked before the decryption of files;
4) In algorithms that work in CBC mode, first bytes are initialized with 
   random data to make cryptography stronger;
5) The probability distribution of random data is equal at the beginning 
   and at end of the encrypted file.
6) Minimum password length is 6 bytes. 
7) Disclose a password or a key doesn't give to the attacker any 
   information useful for attacks. 

Elettra counts more or less 1600 lines of source code. Every other coder 
could have found other ways to accomplish the same task, even less complex 
than the one presented in this article that requires to remember multiple 
different passwords. In such kind of program there is always room for 
improvements. The important thing to think about is that in a couple of 
weeks somebody could develop something unforseen and unexpected by laws, 
but still perfectly legal.

------[  4. THE ANONYMOUS IDENTITY: julia@winstonsmith.info

The name Julia comes from the novel "1984", as the whole Winston Smith 
Project. Julia shows to Winnie the way, the tools and the motives for 
freedom. Thus, this Julia - just when the Internet is fighting for its 
freedom - wants to be the one who demonstrates how laws written by 
politicians are incoherent, inconsistent, unnecessary.

Spreading techniques aimed to the human rights protection on the Internet
have a goal that is not related to personal visibility. On the contrary, in
some cases personal safety can be endangered by the spreading of the 
technique. Thus, other spreading techniques have to be evaluated.

We created an anonymous group identity to have a single reference point 
(a name, a keyword, an ideal). This experiment brings us some advantages:
- Visibility is obtained as a collective effort, and can survive the single
  work
- Coders minimize legal and personal risks
- Both individual confrontation and preservation of one's identity inside
  the group are diminished 
- At the moment there is no central blog or web site, as centralizing means
  being exposed to the risk of being censored, attacked or to draw unneeded
  attention
- The collective identity identifies itself through a digital signature, 
  and media can be distributed using p2p, web sites, blogs, usenet.
  The most choices we have, the most options we can consider.
- We are a network made up of people around the world with the skills, 
  the knowledge and the ability to deeply understand problems related with
  our countries.

Those who want to team up with julia@winstonsmith.info can write an email
message (we strongly suggest using an anonymous remailer or TOR and a throw
away email address).

The anonymous identity will not have a web site to express itself, Elettra
gets served from url http://www.winstonsmith.info/julia/elettra.
Please note that this is done just for convenience, and has no relationship
with the anonymous identity.

The only way to verify the authenticity of the source is the digital 
signature of media using the following key:

-----BEGIN PGP PUBLIC KEY BLOCK-----
Version: GnuPG v1.4.7 (Darwin)

mQGiBEdqIL0RBAChcjI1XSCY6uBj8tt822t3QAIrbUgIL1f+fknclPHPQqjyv+DI
H793WaP2TlJ0mPNJqK2D8pyhO1l8MMzZIzNq+86zblogLklYUo68LbznUPJYNl0f
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bQ9bfCtizrCOn3h547m7nm6RQ+3JfnCVjJqB9eFtP6WFIsDKKIhJBBgRAgAJBQJH
aiC9AhsMAAoJEPN+OujxBBhf16YAnRJLQTTY6JiJGDJG4f2JJFUxereAAJ9hXs0P
/yO+HtkGHnfSuwoaRvSQdw==
=+vKf
-----END PGP PUBLIC KEY BLOCK-----

Whoever shares the objectives of the Julia project can contact the address
julia@winstonsmith.info (anonymously or not).

Future objectives are not clear, still.
It would be interesting to put together a list of all the world's laws and 
the technologies which render them useless. Somewhere this activity may be 
seen as misdemeanor incitement, that's why we choose an anonymous identity,
and no fixed media to publish material.

Julia was not born by the will of a single person, but because we felt the
need of other people to be able to share and give information and 
techologies that can help build freedom of expression, privacy rights, 
technological awareness. Julia is just a landmark, whoever shares the same 
aims can pursue them without it.

No vendor and no State, however much we can respect it, can rule the 
Internet. Open technologies belong to everybody.

-------[  5. REFERENCES

[1] http://www.torproject.org/docs/tor-hidden-service.html.en 
[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freenet
[3] http://www.andrebacard.com/remail.html
[4] http://pajhome.org.uk/crypt/sda/index.html
[5] http://www.autistici.org/en/who/rplan/index.html
    http://dev.autistici.org/orangebook/ 
[6] http://www.opsi.gov.uk/acts/acts2000/ukpga_20000023_en_8
[7] http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~rja14/Papers/jsac98-limsteg.pdf
[8] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rubber-hose_cryptanalysis
[9] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TrueCrypt
[10] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Off-the-Record_Messaging
[11] http://lcamtuf.coredump.cx/soft/2c2.tgz