Encryption Issue

[Frank or Barbara Rossi]

This Encryption Issue is tearing this group apart, and that is NOT what this group is for.
This is the Digital Voice Group.
Work should be on how to make Digital Voice better, not Encryption.

All digital modes we use in Ham Radio are as good as Encrypted to non hams that don't know how to decode the mode.
Most all of the digital modes we use have no Commercial counterpart.
Therefore the general public should not be able to decode our digital communications anyway.
Only Ham Radio people would have the knowledge.
Encryption will only add an extra hassle for your Ham Radio Operators.

Encryption to the General Public, all our digital modes are UN decodeable to the General Public already.
We Hams don't need Encryption.

Now lets get this Group back to Digital Voice.
N3FLR - Frank

[jdow]

It's time to drop the encryption discussion. We're all simply repeating
the same old same old over and over with no new light on the subject.

It might be interesting if the ARRL opens an open (for hams) forum for
discussing the issues with encryption vis a vis ham radio. But this is
not an ARRL sponsored/moderated forum nor is it a forum for encryption
whether it is a good idea, a bad idea, or an indifferent idea.

{^_^} Joanne/W6MKU

[Kristoff Bonne]

Hi Joanne,

On 06-07-13 19:18, jdow wrote:
> It's time to drop the encryption discussion. We're all simply repeating
> the same old same old over and over with no new light on the subject.

I agree that the discussion "should we do it? yes or no?" is mainly a
repetition of the earlier argument.

However, something like providing a way so that the FCC can always
decode the encrypted audio, or how encryption actually works is
something that is new here.

To be honest, I get the impression that very few people here actually
know encryption works internally.

> It might be interesting if the ARRL opens an open (for hams) forum for
> discussing the issues with encryption vis a vis ham radio. But this is
> not an ARRL sponsored/moderated forum nor is it a forum for encryption
> whether it is a good idea, a bad idea, or an indifferent idea.

Correct, this is not an ARRL forum and is shouldn't be.
Digital voice is more then ham-radio, and ham-radio is more then just
two or more hams chatting about the weather over the radio.

A system like FreeDV has the potential that goes way beyond ham-radio.
It's an ideal system to allow (say) HF communication for rural areas,
for personal communication on isolated islands in the middle of the
ocean, to allow NGOs in (say) Latin America contact their headquaters
over a secure channel over NVIS HF communication, etc. These are typical
uses where encryption would have a place.
For me, the idea behind FreeDV and codec2 is pretty much simular to
something like "the village telco" project: create an open technology to
allow people to help solve their own problems.

This forum is called "digital voice" isn't it? Not "ham-radio digital
voice".





You know. The more I work on digital voice for ham-radio, the more I
notice that -once you go into the more advanced domain of technolgy:
digital communication, software, DSP, microcontrollers, SDR-radios,
FPGAs, GRU-radio, unix-boards ..., that the ham-radio community really
has lost it as as "the main technology hobby".
I see much more people involved in these more advanced fields of
technology in (say) the open source software or open source hardware
areas, doing robotics, doign 3D printers, working in hackerspaces, in
the "maker community", etc. then I see that in the ham-community.

I have the impression that the very large majority of the ham-radio
operators have a very big problem "to think outside the box".


And I see the same thing here:
I get the impression that people are afread of encryption. They fear
"what encryption will do the the ham-world".
And, for some reason, this gets translated in "we don't want to discuss
it" and "we don't want to know how it works".


I think that everybody who is a bit interested in digital technologies
these days should have at least a basic understanding of technologies
like public-private key systems, PKI, about pseudo-random generators,
about certificates, etc.
That are just a few of the building-blocks for any modern technology can use

And they are used in a other fields of communication. Ever wondered what
the "PRN" stands for when you see a list of GPS satellites?




One of the problems I see here is that -because most hams do not
understand encryption and coding- they seams to think it is some kind of
magic, something that very few people in the world are able to create a
encryption application.


But I think you are in for a pretty big surprise. If you just look at
what software building blocks are needed to do build a basic encryption
application and you look at what source-code packages that are already
availabe in the open source world. There is a simple conclussion: my
guess is that almost any college student that does a major in
computer-technology or maths can probably hack an encryption layer into
FreeDV, c2gmsk or some of the D-STAR tools in ... roughtly one evening.

There are probably thousands of people in the world that have the coding
skills to just take one of the cypher-libraries from openssl, add them
to c2gmsk, freeDV and add some glue-code and ... create a version of
FreeDV that has encryption. The same thing applies for c2gmsk or the
D-STAR related tools!
This really is not magic! It is all a logical effect of digital
communication and the availability of open source software.


Like it or not, we will all be having to deal with encrypted voice
channels on ham-radio frequencies. And how do you think the
ham-community is going to deal with this if they do not even understand
the basic ideas of how encryption works?



Please, let's not be afread to learn about technology!!!!



For me, I currently have some other priorities for the c2gmsk modem (raw
gmskmode, GNURadio module, better 4800bps modem), but once that is done,
the audiotool application (the part of the c2gmsk package that deals
with audio/in and codec2 encoding/decoding) will be expanded with an
encryption layer!

It will be interesting to learn (as Ed has also just mentioned) how to
deal with transmission-errors in these kind of senarios.



>
> {^_^} Joanne/W6MKU
73
kristoff - ON1ARF

[James Hall]

Encryption is a solved problem. It's really easy to find out how some unbreakable encryptions work. But just because you know doesn't mean you can decrypt anything without the key.

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[Marciniak, Ed]

May I make the suggestion of picking up a good book like 'applied cryptography'?

Short keys just because they're session keys are not acceptable, and it is OT to explain why.

While the topic of encryption is interesting to me, perhaps it would be better to start a new group for those interested (or join an existing) for that.

I suppose it might be unavoidable to talk about matters like framing, bit flags, etc to mark a transmitted signal to identify it. The actual matters of things like keying, algorhytms, etc belong elsewhere.

Although encyption is not generally permitted on ham bands, if the desire were to evolve a single standard format that could be used both on amateur radio and internet or other transports, certain aspects might be fair game here for discussion to further that goal.


 

From: Steve [mailto:coupay...@gmail.com]
Sent: Saturday, July 06, 2013 06:15 PM
To: digita...@googlegroups.com <digita...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: [digitalvoice] Re: Encryption Issue
 

Java makes public key RSA encryption easy (symetric encryptions are as easy, but then you have to distribute keys).

For example a Codec2 voice chat with a new key every session, would be something like the following. The advantage of something like this, is no one knows what keys are being used, and different keys will be used on the next session. Thus, small keys can be used.

    private static KeyPairGenerator keyGen;

    private static KeyPair keyPair;

    private static PrivateKey privateKey;

    private static PublicKey publicKey;

    private static PublicKey remotePublicKey;

    private static Cipher cipherEncrypt;

    private static Cipher cipherDecrypt;

...blah...blah...

        codec = new Codec2();

        setMode(Codec2.MODE_1300);

        try {

            cipherEncrypt = Cipher.getInstance("RSA/ECB/PKCS1Padding");

            cipherDecrypt = Cipher.getInstance("RSA/ECB/PKCS1Padding");

        } catch (Exception e) {

            System.out.println("Unable to initialize RSA cipher " + e.toString());

            System.exit(-1);

        }

        /*

         * Create 512 bit RSA Session Keys

         */

        try {

            SecureRandom random = SecureRandom.getInstance("SHA1PRNG");

            keyGen = KeyPairGenerator.getInstance("RSA");

            keyGen.initialize(512, random);

            keyPair = keyGen.generateKeyPair();

            privateKey = keyPair.getPrivate();

            publicKey = keyPair.getPublic();

        } catch (Exception ex) {

            System.out.println("Unable to generate RSA key pair " + " " + ex.toString());

            System.exit(-1);

        }

        try {

            /*

             * Encrypt with remote public key

             */

            cipherEncrypt.init(Cipher.ENCRYPT_MODE, remotePublicKey);

...blah...blah..

            /*

             * Decrypt with local private key

             */

            cipherDecrypt.init(Cipher.DECRYPT_MODE, privateKey);

        } catch (Exception ex) {

            System.out.println("Unable to set cipher modes " + ex.toString());

            System.exit(-1);

        }

    }

 

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