Anti–computer forensics

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti%E2%80%93computer_forensics

Anti–computer forensics or counter-forensics are techniques used to obstruct forensic analysis.

Definition

Anti-forensics has only recently been recognized as a legitimate field of study.

One of the more widely known and accepted definitions comes from Marc Rogers. One of the earliest detailed presentations of anti-forensics, in Phrack Magazine in 2002, defines anti-forensics as "the removal, or hiding, of evidence in an attempt to mitigate the effectiveness of a forensics investigation".

A more abbreviated definition is given by Scott Berinato in his article entitled, The Rise of Anti-Forensics. "Anti-forensics is more than technology. It is an approach to criminal hacking that can be summed up like this: Make it hard for them to find you and impossible for them to prove they found you." Neither author takes into account using anti-forensics methods to ensure the privacy of one's personal data.

Sub-categories

Anti-forensics methods are often broken down into several sub-categories to make classification of the various tools and techniques simpler. One of the more widely accepted subcategory breakdowns was developed by Dr. Marcus Rogers. He has proposed the following sub-categories: data hiding, artifact wiping, trail obfuscation and attacks against the CF (computer forensics) processes and tools. Attacks against forensics tools directly has also been called counter-forensics.

Purpose and goals

Within the field of digital forensics, there is much debate over the purpose and goals of anti-forensic methods. The conventional wisdom is that anti-forensic tools are purely malicious in intent and design. Others believe that these tools should be used to illustrate deficiencies in digital forensic procedures, digital forensic tools, and forensic examiner education. This sentiment was echoed at the 2005 Blackhat Conference by anti-forensic tool authors, James Foster and Vinnie Liu. They stated that by exposing these issues, forensic investigators will have to work harder to prove that collected evidence is both accurate and dependable. They believe that this will result in better tools and education for the forensic examiner. Also, counter-forensics has significance for defence against espionage, as recovering information by forensic tools serves the goals of spies equally as well as investigators.

Data hiding

Data hiding is the process of making data difficult to find while also keeping it accessible for future use. "Obfuscation and encryption of data give an adversary the ability to limit identification and collection of evidence by investigators while allowing access and use to themselves."

Some of the more common forms of data hiding include encryption, steganography and other various forms of hardware/software based data concealment. Each of the different data hiding methods makes digital forensic examinations difficult. When the different data hiding methods are combined, they can make a successful forensic investigation nearly impossible.

Encryption

One of the more commonly used techniques to defeat computer forensics is data encryption. In a presentation given on encryption and anti-forensic methodologies, the Vice President of Secure Computing, Paul Henry, referred to encryption as a "forensic expert's nightmare".

The majority of publicly available encryption programs allow the user to create virtual encrypted disks which can only be opened with a designated key. Through the use of modern encryption algorithms and various encryption techniques these programs make the data virtually impossible to read without the designated key.

File level encryption encrypts only the file contents. This leaves important information such as file name, size and timestamps unencrypted. Parts of the content of the file can be reconstructed from other locations, such as temporary files, swap file and deleted, unencrypted copies.

Most encryption programs have the ability to perform a number of additional functions that make digital forensic efforts increasingly difficult. Some of these functions include the use of a keyfile, full-volume encryption, and plausible deniability. The widespread availability of software containing these functions has put the field of digital forensics at a great disadvantage.

Steganography

Steganography is a technique where information or files are hidden within another file in an attempt to hide data by leaving it in plain sight. "Steganography produces dark data that is typically buried within light data (e.g., a non-perceptible digital watermark buried within a digital photograph)." While some experts have argued that the use of steganography techniques is not very widespread and therefore the subject shouldn't be given a lot of thought, most experts agree that steganography has the capability of disrupting the forensic process when used correctly.

According to Jeffrey Carr, a 2007 edition of Technical Mujahid (a bi-monthly terrorist publication) outlined the importance of using a steganography program called Secrets of the Mujahideen. According to Carr, the program was touted as giving the user the capability to avoid detection by current steganalysis programs. It did this through the use of steganography in conjunction with file compression.

Other forms of data hiding

Other forms of data hiding involve the use of tools and techniques to hide data throughout various locations in a computer system. Some of these places can include "memory, slack space, hidden directories, bad blocks, alternate data streams, (and) hidden partitions."

One of the more well known tools that is often used for data hiding is called Slacker (part of the Metasploit framework). Slacker breaks up a file and places each piece of that file into the slack space of other files, thereby hiding it from the forensic examination software. Another data hiding technique involves the use of bad sectors. To perform this technique, the user changes a particular sector from good to bad and then data is placed onto that particular cluster. The belief is that forensic examination tools will see these clusters as bad and continue on without any examination of their contents.

Artifact wiping

See also: Data erasure

The methods used in artifact wiping are tasked with permanently eliminating particular files or entire file systems. This can be accomplished through the use of a variety of methods that include disk cleaning utilities, file wiping utilities and disk degaussing/destruction techniques.

Disk cleaning utilities

Disk cleaning utilities use a variety of methods to overwrite the existing data on disks (see data remanence). The effectiveness of disk cleaning utilities as anti-forensic tools is often challenged as some believe they are not completely effective. Experts who don't believe that disk cleaning utilities are acceptable for disk sanitization base their opinions of current DOD policy, which states that the only acceptable form of sanitization is degaussing. (See National Industrial Security Program.) Disk cleaning utilities are also criticized because they leave signatures that the file system was wiped, which in some cases is unacceptable. Some of the widely used disk cleaning utilities include DBAN, srm, BCWipe Total WipeOut, KillDisk, PC Inspector and CyberScrubs cyberCide. Another option which is approved by the NIST and the NSA is CMRR Secure Erase, which uses the Secure Erase command built into the ATA specification.

File wiping utilities

File wiping utilities are used to delete individual files from an operating system. The advantage of file wiping utilities is that they can accomplish their task in a relatively short amount of time as opposed to disk cleaning utilities which take much longer. Another advantage of file wiping utilities is that they generally leave a much smaller signature than disk cleaning utilities. There are two primary disadvantages of file wiping utilities, first they require user involvement in the process and second some experts believe that file wiping programs don't always correctly and completely wipe file information. Some of the widely used file wiping utilities include BCWipe, R-Wipe & Clean, Eraser, Aevita Wipe & Delete and CyberScrubs PrivacySuite. On Linux tools like shred and srm can be also used to wipe single files. SSDs are by design more difficult to wipe, since the firmware can write to other cells therefore allowing data recovery. In these instances ATA Secure Erase should be used on the whole drive, with tools like hdparm that support it.

Disk degaussing / destruction techniques

Disk degaussing is a process by which a magnetic field is applied to a digital media device. The result is a device that is entirely clean of any previously stored data. Degaussing is rarely used as an anti-forensic method despite the fact that it is an effective means to ensure data has been wiped. This is attributed to the high cost of degaussing machines, which are difficult for the average consumer to afford.

A more commonly used technique to ensure data wiping is the physical destruction of the device. The NIST recommends that "physical destruction can be accomplished using a variety of methods, including disintegration, incineration, pulverizing, shredding and melting."

Trail obfuscation

The purpose of trail obfuscation is to confuse, disorient, and divert the forensic examination process. Trail obfuscation covers a variety of techniques and tools that include "log cleaners, spoofing, misinformation, backbone hopping, zombied accounts, trojan commands."

One of the more widely known trail obfuscation tools is Timestomp (part of the Metasploit Framework). Timestomp gives the user the ability to modify file metadata pertaining to access, creation and modification times/dates. By using programs such as Timestomp, a user can render any number of files useless in a legal setting by directly calling into question the files' credibility.

Another well known trail-obfuscation program is Transmogrify (also part of the Metasploit Framework). In most file types the header of the file contains identifying information. A (.jpg) would have header information that identifies it as a (.jpg), a (.doc) would have information that identifies it as (.doc) and so on. Transmogrify allows the user to change the header information of a file, so a (.jpg) header could be changed to a (.doc) header. If a forensic examination program or operating system were to conduct a search for images on a machine, it would simply see a (.doc) file and skip over it.

Attacks against computer forensics

In the past anti-forensic tools have focused on attacking the forensic process by destroying data, hiding data, or altering data usage information. Anti-forensics has recently moved into a new realm where tools and techniques are focused on attacking forensic tools that perform the examinations. These new anti-forensic methods have benefited from a number of factors to include well documented forensic examination procedures, widely known forensic tool vulnerabilities, and digital forensic examiners' heavy reliance on their tools.

During a typical forensic examination, the examiner would create an image of the computer's disks. This keeps the original computer (evidence) from being tainted by forensic tools. Hashes are created by the forensic examination software to verify the integrity of the image. One of the recent anti-tool techniques targets the integrity of the hash that is created to verify the image. By affecting the integrity of the hash, any evidence that is collected during the subsequent investigation can be challenged.

Physical

To prevent physical access to data while the computer is powered on (from a grab-and-go theft for instance, as well as seizure from Law Enforcement), there are different solutions that could be implemented:

• Software frameworks like USBGuard or USBKill implements USB authorization policies and method of use policies. If the software is triggered, by insertion or removal of USB devices, a specific action can be performed. After the arrest of Silk Road's administrator Ross Ulbricht, a number of proof of concept anti-forensic tools have been created to detect seizing of the computer from the owner to shut it down, therefore making the data inaccessible if full disk encryption is used.
• Hardware cable anchors using the Kensington Security Slot to prevent stealing by opportunistic thieves.
• Hardware kill cables like BusKill that lock, shutdown, or wipe data when ejected
• Use of chassis intrusion detection feature in computer case or a sensor (such as a photodetector) rigged with explosives for self-destruction. In some jurisdictions this method could be illegal since it could seriously maim or kill an unauthorized user and could consist in destruction of evidence.
• Battery could be removed from a laptop to make it work only while attached to the power supply unit. If the cable is removed, shutdown of the computer will occur immediately causing data loss. In the event of a power surge the same will occur though.

Some of these methods rely on shutting the computer down, while the data might be retained in the RAM from a couple of seconds up to a couple minutes, theoretically allowing for a cold boot attack. Cryogenically freezing the RAM might extend this time even further and some attacks on the wild have been spotted. Methods to counteract this attack exist and can overwrite the memory before shutting down. Some anti-forensic tools even detect the temperature of the RAM to perform a shutdown when below a certain threshold.

Attempts to create a tamper-resistant desktop computer has been made (as of 2020, the ORWL model is one of the best examples). However, security of this particular model is debated by security researcher and Qubes OS founder Joanna Rutkowska.

Use by criminals

While the study and applications of anti-forensics are generally available to protect users from forensic attacks of their confidential data by their adversaries (eg investigative journalists, human rights defenders, activists, corporate or government espionage), Mac Rogers of Purdue University notes that anti-forensics tools can also be used by criminals.

Rogers uses a more traditional "crime scene" approach when defining anti-forensics. "Attempts to negatively affect the existence, amount and/or quality of evidence from a crime scene, or make the analysis and examination of evidence difficult or impossible to conduct."

Effectiveness of anti-forensics

Anti-forensic methods rely on several weaknesses in the forensic process including: the human element, dependency on tools, and the physical/logical limitations of computers. By reducing the forensic process's susceptibility to these weaknesses, an examiner can reduce the likelihood of anti-forensic methods successfully impacting an investigation. This may be accomplished by providing increased training for investigators, and corroborating results using multiple tools.

Cypherpunk

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cypherpunk

A cypherpunk is any individual advocating widespread use of strong cryptography and privacy-enhancing technologies as a route to social and political change. Originally communicating through the Cypherpunks electronic mailing list, informal groups aimed to achieve privacy and security through proactive use of cryptography. Cypherpunks have been engaged in an active movement since at least the late 1980s and early 1990s.

History

Before the mailing list

Until about the 1970s, cryptography was mainly practiced in secret by military or spy agencies. However, that changed when two publications brought it into public awareness: the first publicly available work on public-key cryptography, by Whitfield Diffie and Martin Hellman, and the US government publication of the Data Encryption Standard (DES), a block cipher which became very widely used.

The technical roots of Cypherpunk ideas have been traced back to work by cryptographer David Chaum on topics such as anonymous digital cash and pseudonymous reputation systems, described in his paper "Security without Identification: Transaction Systems to Make Big Brother Obsolete" (1985).

In the late 1980s, these ideas coalesced into something like a movement.

Etymology and the Cypherpunks mailing list

In late 1992, Eric Hughes, Timothy C. May, and John Gilmore founded a small group that met monthly at Gilmore's company Cygnus Solutions in the San Francisco Bay Area and was humorously termed cypherpunks by Jude Milhon at one of the first meetings—derived from cipher and cyberpunk. In November 2006, the word was added to the Oxford English Dictionary.

The Cypherpunks mailing list was started in 1992, and by 1994 had 700 subscribers. At its peak, it was a very active forum with technical discussions ranging over mathematics, cryptography, computer science, political and philosophical discussion, personal arguments and attacks, etc., with some spam thrown in. An email from John Gilmore reports an average of 30 messages a day from December 1, 1996, to March 1, 1999, and suggests that the number was probably higher earlier. The number of subscribers is estimated to have reached 2,000 in the year 1997.

In early 1997, Jim Choate and Igor Chudov set up the Cypherpunks Distributed Remailer, a network of independent mailing list nodes intended to eliminate the single point of failure inherent in a centralized list architecture. At its peak, the Cypherpunks Distributed Remailer included at least seven nodes. By mid-2005, al-qaeda.net ran the only remaining node. In mid-2013, following a brief outage, the al-qaeda.net node's list software was changed from Majordomo to GNU Mailman, and subsequently the node was renamed to cpunks.org. The CDR architecture is now defunct, though the list administrator stated in 2013 that he was exploring a way to integrate this functionality with the new mailing list software.

For a time, the cypherpunks mailing list was a popular tool with mailbombers, who would subscribe a victim to the mailing list in order to cause a deluge of messages to be sent to him or her. (This was usually done as a prank, in contrast to the style of terrorist referred to as a mailbomber.) This precipitated the mailing list sysop(s) to institute a reply-to-subscribe system. Approximately two hundred messages a day was typical for the mailing list, divided between personal arguments and attacks, political discussion, technical discussion, and early spam.

The cypherpunks mailing list had extensive discussions of the public policy issues related to cryptography and on the politics and philosophy of concepts such as anonymity, pseudonyms, reputation, and privacy. These discussions continue both on the remaining node and elsewhere as the list has become increasingly moribund.

Events such as the GURPS Cyberpunk raid lent weight to the idea that private individuals needed to take steps to protect their privacy. In its heyday, the list discussed public policy issues related to cryptography, as well as more practical nuts-and-bolts mathematical, computational, technological, and cryptographic matters. The list had a range of viewpoints and there was probably no completely unanimous agreement on anything. The general attitude, though, definitely put personal privacy and personal liberty above all other considerations.

Early discussion of online privacy

The list was discussing questions about privacy, government monitoring, corporate control of information, and related issues in the early 1990s that did not become major topics for broader discussion until at least ten years later. Some list participants were highly radical on these issues.

Those wishing to understand the context of the list might refer to the history of cryptography; in the early 1990s, the US government considered cryptography software a munition for export purposes. (PGP source code was published as a paper book to bypass these regulations and demonstrate their futility.) In 1992, a deal between NSA and SPA allowed export of cryptography based on 40-bit RC2 and RC4 which was considered relatively weak (and especially after SSL was created, there were many contests to break it). The US government had also tried to subvert cryptography through schemes such as Skipjack and key escrow. It was also not widely known that all communications were logged by government agencies (which would later be revealed during the NSA and AT&T scandals) though this was taken as an obvious axiom by list members.

The original cypherpunk mailing list, and the first list spin-off, coderpunks, were originally hosted on John Gilmore's toad.com, but after a falling out with the sysop over moderation, the list was migrated to several cross-linked mail-servers in what was called the "distributed mailing list." The coderpunks list, open by invitation only, existed for a time. Coderpunks took up more technical matters and had less discussion of public policy implications. There are several lists today that can trace their lineage directly to the original Cypherpunks list: the cryptography list (cryptography@metzdowd.com), the financial cryptography list (fc-announce@ifca.ai), and a small group of closed (invitation-only) lists as well.

Toad.com continued to run with the existing subscriber list, those that didn't unsubscribe, and was mirrored on the new distributed mailing list, but messages from the distributed list didn't appear on toad.com. As the list faded in popularity, so too did it fade in the number of cross-linked subscription nodes.

To some extent, the cryptography list acts as a successor to cypherpunks; it has many of the people and continues some of the same discussions. However, it is a moderated list, considerably less zany and somewhat more technical. A number of current systems in use trace to the mailing list, including Pretty Good Privacy, /dev/random in the Linux kernel (the actual code has been completely reimplemented several times since then) and today's anonymous remailers.

Main principles

The basic ideas can be found in A Cypherpunk's Manifesto (Eric Hughes, 1993): "Privacy is necessary for an open society in the electronic age. ... We cannot expect governments, corporations, or other large, faceless organizations to grant us privacy ... We must defend our own privacy if we expect to have any. ... Cypherpunks write code. We know that someone has to write software to defend privacy, and ... we're going to write it."

Some are or were senior people at major hi-tech companies and others are well-known researchers (see list with affiliations below).

The first mass media discussion of cypherpunks was in a 1993 Wired article by Steven Levy titled Crypto Rebels:

The people in this room hope for a world where an individual's informational footprints—everything from an opinion on abortion to the medical record of an actual abortion—can be traced only if the individual involved chooses to reveal them; a world where coherent messages shoot around the globe by network and microwave, but intruders and feds trying to pluck them out of the vapor find only gibberish; a world where the tools of prying are transformed into the instruments of privacy. There is only one way this vision will materialize, and that is by widespread use of cryptography. Is this technologically possible? Definitely. The obstacles are political—some of the most powerful forces in government are devoted to the control of these tools. In short, there is a war going on between those who would liberate crypto and those who would suppress it. The seemingly innocuous bunch strewn around this conference room represents the vanguard of the pro-crypto forces. Though the battleground seems remote, the stakes are not: The outcome of this struggle may determine the amount of freedom our society will grant us in the 21st century. To the Cypherpunks, freedom is an issue worth some risk.

The three masked men on the cover of that edition of Wired were prominent cypherpunks Tim May, Eric Hughes and John Gilmore.

Later, Levy wrote a book, Crypto: How the Code Rebels Beat the Government – Saving Privacy in the Digital Age, covering the crypto wars of the 1990s in detail. "Code Rebels" in the title is almost synonymous with cypherpunks.

The term cypherpunk is mildly ambiguous. In most contexts it means anyone advocating cryptography as a tool for social change, social impact and expression. However, it can also be used to mean a participant in the Cypherpunks electronic mailing list described below. The two meanings obviously overlap, but they are by no means synonymous.

Documents exemplifying cypherpunk ideas include Timothy C. May's The Crypto Anarchist Manifesto (1992) and The Cyphernomicon (1994), A Cypherpunk's Manifesto.

Privacy of communications

A very basic cypherpunk issue is privacy in communications and data retention. John Gilmore said he wanted "a guarantee -- with physics and mathematics, not with laws -- that we can give ourselves real privacy of personal communications."

Such guarantees require strong cryptography, so cypherpunks are fundamentally opposed to government policies attempting to control the usage or export of cryptography, which remained an issue throughout the late 1990s. The Cypherpunk Manifesto stated "Cypherpunks deplore regulations on cryptography, for encryption is fundamentally a private act."

This was a central issue for many cypherpunks. Most were passionately opposed to various government attempts to limit cryptography—export laws, promotion of limited key length ciphers, and especially escrowed encryption.

Anonymity and pseudonyms

The questions of anonymity, pseudonymity and reputation were also extensively discussed.

Arguably, the possibility of anonymous speech, and publication is vital for an open society and genuine freedom of speech—this is the position of most cypherpunks.

Censorship and monitoring

In general, cypherpunks opposed the censorship and monitoring from government and police.

In particular, the US government's Clipper chip scheme for escrowed encryption of telephone conversations (encryption supposedly secure against most attackers, but breakable by government) was seen as anathema by many on the list. This was an issue that provoked strong opposition and brought many new recruits to the cypherpunk ranks. List participant Matt Blaze found a serious flaw in the scheme, helping to hasten its demise.

Steven Schear first suggested the warrant canary in 2002 to thwart the secrecy provisions of court orders and national security letters. As of 2013, warrant canaries are gaining commercial acceptance.

Hiding the act of hiding

An important set of discussions concerns the use of cryptography in the presence of oppressive authorities. As a result, Cypherpunks have discussed and improved steganographic methods that hide the use of crypto itself, or that allow interrogators to believe that they have forcibly extracted hidden information from a subject. For instance, Rubberhose was a tool that partitioned and intermixed secret data on a drive with fake secret data, each of which accessed via a different password. Interrogators, having extracted a password, are led to believe that they have indeed unlocked the desired secrets, whereas in reality the actual data is still hidden. In other words, even its presence is hidden. Likewise, cypherpunks have also discussed under what conditions encryption may be used without being noticed by network monitoring systems installed by oppressive regimes.

Activities

As the Manifesto says, "Cypherpunks write code"; the notion that good ideas need to be implemented, not just discussed, is very much part of the culture of the mailing list. John Gilmore, whose site hosted the original cypherpunks mailing list, wrote: "We are literally in a race between our ability to build and deploy technology, and their ability to build and deploy laws and treaties. Neither side is likely to back down or wise up until it has definitively lost the race."

Software projects

Anonymous remailers such as the Mixmaster Remailer were almost entirely a cypherpunk development. Other cypherpunk-related projects include PGP for email privacy, FreeS/WAN for opportunistic encryption of the whole net, Off-the-record messaging for privacy in Internet chat, and the Tor project for anonymous web surfing.

Hardware

In 1998, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, with assistance from the mailing list, built a $200,000 machine that could brute-force a Data Encryption Standard key in a few days. The project demonstrated that DES was, without question, insecure and obsolete, in sharp contrast to the US government's recommendation of the algorithm.

Expert panels

Cypherpunks also participated, along with other experts, in several reports on cryptographic matters.

One such paper was "Minimal Key Lengths for Symmetric Ciphers to Provide Adequate Commercial Security". It suggested 75 bits was the minimum key size to allow an existing cipher to be considered secure and kept in service. At the time, the Data Encryption Standard with 56-bit keys was still a US government standard, mandatory for some applications.

Other papers were critical analysis of government schemes. "The Risks of Key Recovery, Key Escrow, and Trusted Third-Party Encryption", evaluated escrowed encryption proposals. Comments on the Carnivore System Technical Review. looked at an FBI scheme for monitoring email.

Cypherpunks provided significant input to the 1996 National Research Council report on encryption policy, Cryptography's Role In Securing the Information Society (CRISIS). This report, commissioned by the U.S. Congress in 1993, was developed via extensive hearings across the nation from all interested stakeholders, by a committee of talented people. It recommended a gradual relaxation of the existing U.S. government restrictions on encryption. Like many such study reports, its conclusions were largely ignored by policy-makers. Later events such as the final rulings in the cypherpunks lawsuits forced a more complete relaxation of the unconstitutional controls on encryption software.

Lawsuits

Cypherpunks have filed a number of lawsuits, mostly suits against the US government alleging that some government action is unconstitutional.

Phil Karn sued the State Department in 1994 over cryptography export controls after they ruled that, while the book Applied Cryptography could legally be exported, a floppy disk containing a verbatim copy of code printed in the book was legally a munition and required an export permit, which they refused to grant. Karn also appeared before both House and Senate committees looking at cryptography issues.

Daniel J. Bernstein, supported by the EFF, also sued over the export restrictions, arguing that preventing publication of cryptographic source code is an unconstitutional restriction on freedom of speech. He won, effectively overturning the export law. See Bernstein v. United States for details.

Peter Junger also sued on similar grounds, and won.

Civil disobedience

Cypherpunks encouraged civil disobedience, in particular, US law on the export of cryptography. Until 1997, cryptographic code was legally a munition and fell under ITAR, and the key length restrictions in the EAR was not removed until 2000.

In 1995 Adam Back wrote a version of the RSA algorithm for public-key cryptography in three lines of Perl and suggested people use it as an email signature file:

# !/bin/perl -sp0777i<X+d*lMLa^*lN%0]dsXx++lMlN/dsM0<j]dsj
$/=unpack('H*',$_);$_=`echo 16dio\U$k"SK$/SM$n\EsN0p[lN*1
lK[d2%Sa2/d0$^Ixp"|dc`;s/\W//g;$_=pack('H*',/((..)*)$/)

Vince Cate put up a web page that invited anyone to become an international arms trafficker; every time someone clicked on the form, an export-restricted item—originally PGP, later a copy of Back's program—would be mailed from a US server to one in Anguilla.

Cypherpunk fiction

In Neal Stephenson's novel Cryptonomicon many characters are on the "Secret Admirers" mailing list. This is fairly obviously based on the cypherpunks list, and several well-known cypherpunks are mentioned in the acknowledgements. Much of the plot revolves around cypherpunk ideas; the leading characters are building a data haven which will allow anonymous financial transactions, and the book is full of cryptography. But, according to the author the book's title is—in spite of its similarity—not based on the Cyphernomicon, an online cypherpunk FAQ document.

Legacy

Cypherpunk achievements would later also be used on the Canadian e-wallet, the MintChip, and the creation of bitcoin. It was an inspiration for CryptoParty decades later to such an extent that A Cypherpunk's Manifesto is quoted at the header of its Wiki, and Eric Hughes delivered the keynote address at the Amsterdam CryptoParty on 27 August 2012.

Communist society

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communist_society

In Marxist thought, a communist society or the communist system is the type of society and economic system postulated to emerge from technological advances in the productive forces, representing the ultimate goal of the political ideology of communism. A communist society is characterized by common ownership of the means of production with free access to the articles of consumption and is classless, stateless, and moneyless, implying the end of the exploitation of labour.

Communism is a specific stage of socioeconomic development predicated upon a superabundance of material wealth, which is postulated to arise from advances in production technology and corresponding changes in the social relations of production. This would allow for distribution based on needs and social relations based on freely-associated individuals. The term communist society should be distinguished from the Western concept of the communist state, the latter referring to a state ruled by a party which professes a variation of Marxism–Leninism.

Xue Muqiao wrote that within the socialist mode of production there were several phases. Su Shaozhi and Feng Langrui article created two subdivisions within the socialist mode of production; the first phase was the transition from the capitalist mode of production to the socialist mode of production—the phase in which the proletariat seized power and set-up the dictatorship of the proletariat and in which undeveloped socialism was created. The second phase was advanced socialism; the socialism that Marx wrote about. The notion that socialism and Communism are distinct historical stages is alien to Karl Marx's work and only entered the lexicon of Marxism after his death. It is said that Karl Marx distinguishes between two phases of marketless communism: an initial phase, with labor vouchers, and a higher phase, with free access.

Economic aspects

A communist economic system would be characterized by advanced productive technology that enables material abundance, which in turn would enable the free distribution of most or all economic output and the holding of the means of producing this output in common. In this respect communism is differentiated from socialism, which, out of economic necessity, restricts access to articles of consumption and services based on one's contribution.

In further contrast to previous economic systems, communism would be characterized by the holding of natural resources and the means of production in common as opposed to them being privately owned (as in the case of capitalism) or owned by public or cooperative organizations that similarly restrict their access (as in the case of socialism). In this sense, communism involves the "negation of property" insofar as there would be little economic rationale for exclusive control over production assets in an environment of material abundance.

The fully developed communist economic system is postulated to develop from a preceding socialist system. Marx held the view that socialism—a system based on social ownership of the means of production—would enable progress toward the development of fully developed communism by further advancing productive technology. Under socialism, with its increasing levels of automation, an increasing proportion of goods would be distributed freely.

Social aspects

Individuality, freedom and creativity

A communist society would free individuals from long working hours by first automating production to an extent that the average length of the working day is reduced and second by eliminating the exploitation inherent in the division between workers and owners. A communist system would thus free individuals from alienation in the sense of having one's life structured around survival (making a wage or salary in a capitalist system), which Karl Marx referred to as a transition from the "realm of necessity" to the "realm of freedom". As a result, a communist society is envisioned as being composed of an intellectually-inclined population with both the time and resources to pursue its creative hobbies and genuine interests, and to contribute to creative social wealth in this manner. Marx considered "true richness" to be the amount of time one has at his disposal to pursue one's creative passions. Marx's notion of communism is in this way radically individualistic.

In fact, the realm of freedom actually begins only where labor which is determined by necessity and mundane considerations ceases; thus in the very nature of things it lies beyond the sphere of actual material production.

—Capital, Volume III, 1894

Marx's concept of the "realm of freedom" goes hand-in-hand with his idea of the ending of the division of labor, which would not be required in a society with highly automated production and limited work roles. In a communist society, economic necessity and relations would cease to determine cultural and social relations. As scarcity is eliminated, alienated labor would cease and people would be free to pursue their individual goals. Additionally, it is believed that the principle of "from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs" could be fulfilled due to scarcity being non-existent.

Politics, law and governance

Marx and Engels maintained that a communist society would have no need for the state as it exists in contemporary capitalist society. The capitalist state mainly exists to enforce hierarchical economic relations, to enforce the exclusive control of property, and to regulate capitalistic economic activities—all of which would be non-applicable to a communist system.

Engels noted that in a socialist system the primary function of public institutions will shift from being about the creation of laws and the control of people into a technical role as an administrator of technical production processes, with a decrease in the scope of traditional politics as scientific administration overtakes the role of political decision-making. Communist society is characterized by democratic processes, not merely in the sense of electoral democracy, but in the broader sense of open and collaborative social and workplace environments.

Marx never clearly specified whether or not he thought a communist society would be just; other thinkers have speculated that he thought communism would transcend justice and create society without conflicts, thus, without the needs for rules of justice.

Transitional stages

Marx also wrote that between capitalist and communist society, there would be a transitory period known as the dictatorship of the proletariat. During this preceding phase of societal development, capitalist economic relationships would gradually be abolished and replaced with socialism. Natural resources would become public property, while all manufacturing centers and workplaces would become socially owned and democratically managed. Production would be organized by scientific assessment and planning, thus eliminating what Marx called the "anarchy in production". The development of the productive forces would lead to the marginalization of human labor to the highest possible extent, to be gradually replaced by automated labor.

Open-source and peer production

Many aspects of a communist economy have emerged in recent decades in the form of open-source software and hardware, where source code and thus the means of producing software is held in common and freely accessible to everyone; and to the processes of peer production where collaborative work processes produce freely available software that does not rely on monetary valuation.

Ray Kurzweil posits that the goals of communism will be realized by advanced technological developments in the 21st century, where the intersection of low manufacturing costs, material abundance and open-source design philosophies will enable the realization of the maxim "from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs".

In Soviet ideology

The communist economic system was officially enumerated as the ultimate goal of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in its party platform. According to the 1986 Programme of the CPSU:

Communism is a classless social system with one form of public ownership of the means of production and with full social equality of all members of society. Under communism, the all-round development of people will be accompanied by the growth of the productive forces on the basis of continuous progress in science and technology, all the springs of social wealth will flow abundantly, and the great principle "From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs" will be implemented. Communism is a highly organised society of free, socially conscious working people a society in which public self-government will be established, a society in which labour for the good of society will become the prime vital requirement of everyone, a clearly recognised necessity, and the ability of each person will be employed to the greatest benefit of the people.

The material and technical foundation of communism presupposes the creation of those productive forces that open up opportunities for the full satisfaction of the reasonable requirements of society and the individual. All productive activities under communism will be based on the use of highly efficient technical facilities and technologies, and the harmonious interaction of man and nature will be ensured.

In the highest phase of communism the directly social character of labor and production will become firmly established. Through the complete elimination of the remnants of the old division of labor and the essential social differences associated with it, the process of forming a socially homogeneous society will be completed.

Communism signifies the transformation of the system of socialist self-government by the people, of socialist democracy into the highest form of organization of society: communist public self-government. With the maturation of the necessary socioeconomic and ideological preconditions and the involvement of all citizens in administration, the socialist state—given appropriate international conditions—will, as Lenin noted, increasingly become a transitional form "from a state to a non-state". The activities of state bodies will become non-political in nature, and the need for the state as a special political institution will gradually disappear.

The inalienable feature of the communist mode of life is a high level of consciousness, social activity, discipline, and self-discipline of members of society, in which observance of the uniform, generally accepted rules of communist conduct will become an inner need and habit of every person.

Communism is a social system under which the free development of each is a condition for the free development of all.

In Vladimir Lenin's political theory, a classless society would be a society controlled by the direct producers, organized to produce according to socially managed goals. Such a society, Lenin suggested, would develop habits that would gradually make political representation unnecessary, as the radically democratic nature of the Soviets would lead citizens to come to agree with the representatives' style of management. Only in this environment, Lenin suggested, could the state wither away, ushering in a period of stateless communism.

In Soviet ideology, Marx's concepts of the "lower and higher phases of communism" articulated in the Critique of the Gotha Program were reformulated as the stages of "socialism" and "communism". The Soviet state claimed to have begun the phase of "socialist construction" during the implementation of the first Five-Year Plans during the 1930s, which introduced a centrally planned, nationalized/collectivized economy. The 1962 Program of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, published under the leadership of Nikita Khrushchev, claimed that socialism had been firmly established in the USSR, and that the state would now progress to the "full-scale construction of communism",though this may be understood to refer to the "technical foundations" of communism more so than the withering away of the state and the division of labor per se. However, even in the final edition of its program before the party's dissolution, the CPSU did not claim to have fully established communism, instead claiming that the society was undergoing a very slow and gradual process of transition.

Fictional portrayals

Main article: List of utopian literature

Several works of utopian fiction have portrayed versions of a communist society. Some examples include: Assemblywomen (391 BC) by Aristophanes, an early piece of utopian satire which mocks Athenian democracy's excesses through the story of the Athenian women taking control of the government and instituting a proto-communist utopia;

The Law of Freedom in a Platform (1652) by Gerrard Winstanley, a radical communist vision of an ideal state; News from Nowhere (1892) by William Morris, describing a future society based on common ownership and democratic control of the means of production; Red Star (1908, Russian: Красная звезда), Alexander Bogdanov's 1908 science fiction novel about a communist society on Mars; and The Dispossessed: An Ambiguous Utopia (1974) by Ursula K. Le Guin, set between a pair of planets: one that like Earth today is dominated by private property, nation states, gender hierarchy, and war, and the other an anarchist society without private property.

The economy and society of the United Federation of Planets in the Star Trek franchise has been described as a communist society where material scarcity has been eliminated due to the wide availability of replicator technology that enables free distribution of output, where there is no need for money.

The Culture novels by Iain M Banks are centered on a communist post-scarcity economy where technology is advanced to such a degree that all production is automated, and there is no use for money or property (aside from personal possessions with sentimental value). Humans in the Culture are free to pursue their own interests in an open and socially-permissive society. The society has been described by some commentators as "communist-bloc" or "anarcho-communist". Banks' close friend and fellow science fiction writer Ken MacLeod has said that The Culture can be seen as a realization of Marx's communism, but adds that "however friendly he was to the radical left, Iain had little interest in relating the long-range possibility of utopia to radical politics in the here and now. As he saw it, what mattered was to keep the utopian possibility open by continuing technological progress, especially space development, and in the meantime to support whatever policies and politics in the real world were rational and humane."

Détente

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Leonid Brezhnev, Viktor Sukhodrev, and Richard Nixon during Brezhnev's 1973 visit to Washington, D.C., a high-water mark in détente between the United States and the Soviet Union

Détente (/deɪˈtɑːnt/ day-TAHNT, also UK: /ˈdeɪtɒnt/ DAY-tont; French for 'relaxation', French pronunciation: [detɑ̃t]) is the relaxation of strained relations, especially political ones, through verbal communication. The diplomacy term originates from around 1912, when France and Germany tried unsuccessfully to reduce tensions.

The term is often used to refer to a period of general easing of geopolitical tensions between the Soviet Union and the United States during the Cold War. Détente began in 1969 as a core element of the foreign policy of U.S. president Richard Nixon. In an effort to avoid an escalation of conflict with the Eastern Bloc, the Nixon administration promoted greater dialogue with the Soviet government in order to facilitate negotiations over arms control and other bilateral agreements. Détente was known in Russian as разрядка (razryadka), loosely meaning "relaxation of tension".

History

Cold War

The "Three Worlds" of the Cold War era in 1975:

  First World: Western Bloc led by the United States and its allies

  Second World: Eastern Bloc led by the Soviet Union, China (Independent), and their allies

  Third World: Non-Aligned and neutral countries

While the recognized era of détente formally began under the Richard Nixon presidency, there were prior instances of relationship relaxation between the United States and Soviet Union during the Cold War. Following the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962, both the United States and Soviet Union agreed to install a direct hotline between Washington and Moscow, colloquially known as the red telephone. The hotline enabled leaders of both countries to communicate rapidly in the event of another potentially catastrophic confrontation.

The period of détente in the Cold War saw the ratification of major disarmament treaties such as the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty and the creation of more symbolic pacts such as the Helsinki Accords. An ongoing debate among historians exists as to how successful the détente period was in achieving peace.

Détente is considered to have ended after the Soviet intervention in Afghanistan in 1979, which led to the U.S.' boycott of the 1980 Moscow Olympics. Ronald Reagan's election as president in 1980, based in large part on an anti-détente campaign, induced a period of rising tension. In his first press conference, Reagan claimed that the U.S.'s pursuit of détente had been used by the Soviet Union to further its interests.

Relations had been continued to increasingly sour through the unrest in Poland, the U.S.'s withdrawal from the SALT II arms treaty, and the NATO Able Archer exercise.

In response to the heightening tensions, U.S. secretary of state George P. Shultz shifted the Ronald Reagan administration's foreign policy towards another period of de-escalation with the Soviet Union especially following Mikhail Gorbachev coming to power. During Gorbachev's leadership, dialogue over the START arms reduction treaty meaningfully progressed. Diplomatic overtures were continued by the succeeding Bush administration, including the ratification of the START treaty, up until the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. This period of a renewed de-escalation from 1983 to 1991 is sometimes referred to as the second period of détente.

According to Eric Grynaviski, "Soviet and U.S. decision-makers had two very different understandings about what détente meant" while simultaneously holding "an inaccurate belief that both sides shared principles and expectations for future behaviour."

Summits and treaties

Alexei Kosygin and Lyndon B. Johnson at the Glassboro Summit Conference in 1967

Before Richard Nixon became president, the foundations of détente were developed through multilateral arms-limitation treaties in the early to middle 1960s. These included the August 1963 Partial Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, the January 1967 Outer Space Treaty, and the July 1968 Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons. Historical developments such as the Cuban Missile Crisis and technological advancements such as the development of the intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) spurred these agreements.

When Nixon came into office in 1969, several important détente treaties were developed. The Political Consultative Committee of the Warsaw Pact sent an offer to the U.S. and the rest of the West that urged a summit on "security and cooperation in Europe" to be held. The West agreed, and the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks began towards actual limits on the nuclear capabilities of both superpowers, which ultimately led to the signing of the SALT I treaty in 1972. It limited each power's nuclear arsenals but was quickly rendered outdated as a result of the development of MIRVs. Also in 1972, the Biological Weapons Convention and the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty were concluded, and talks on SALT II began the same year. The Washington Summit of 1973 further advanced mutual and international relations through discussion of diplomatic cooperation and continued discussion regarding limitations on nuclear weaponry.

In 1975, the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE) met and produced the Helsinki Accords, a wide-ranging series of agreements on economic, political, and human rights issues. The CSCE was initiated by the Soviet Union and involved 35 states throughout Europe. One of the most prevalent issues after the conference was the question of human rights violations in the Soviet Union. The Soviet Constitution directly violated the Declaration of Human Rights of the United Nations, and that issue became a prominent point of separation between the United States and the Soviet Union.

The Jimmy Carter administration had been supporting human rights groups inside the Soviet Union, and Leonid Brezhnev accused the US of interference in other countries' internal affairs. That prompted intense discussion of whether or not other nations may interfere if basic human rights, such as freedom of speech and religion, are violated. This basic disagreement between the superpowers, a democracy, and a one-party state, did not allow that issue to be reconciled. Furthermore, the Soviets proceeded to defend their internal policies on human rights by attacking American support of South Africa, Chile, and other countries that were known to violate many of the same human rights.

In July 1975, the Apollo–Soyuz Test Project (ASTP) became the first international space mission; three American astronauts and two Soviet cosmonauts docked their spacecraft and conducted joint experiments. The mission had been preceded by five years of political negotiation and technical co-operation, including exchanges of American and Soviet engineers between both countries' space centres.

Trade relations between both blocs increased substantially during the era of détente. Most significant were the vast shipments of grain that were sent from the West to the Soviet Union each year and helped to make up for the failure of the kolkhoz, the Soviet collective farms.

At the same time, the Jackson–Vanik amendment, signed into law by U.S. president Gerald Ford on 3 January 1975 after a unanimous vote by both houses of the U.S. Congress, was designed to leverage trade relations between the Americans and the Soviets. It linked U.S. trade to improvements in human rights in the Soviet Union, particularly by allowing refuseniks to emigrate. It also added to the most favoured nation status a clause that no country that resisted emigration could be awarded that status, which provided a method to link geopolitics to human rights.

End of Vietnam War

Nixon and his national security advisor, Henry Kissinger, moved toward détente with the Soviet Union in the early 1970s. They hoped, in return, for Soviets to help the U.S. extricate or remove itself from Vietnam. People then started to notice the consciousness with which US politicians started to act.

Strategic Arms Limitations Talks

Gerald Ford and Leonid Brezhnev signing a joint communiqué on the SALT I treaty during the Vladivostok Summit in 1974

Nixon and Brezhnev signed an ABM treaty in Moscow on 26 May 1972 as well as SALT I, the Interim Agreement, which temporarily capped the number of strategic arms (MIRVs, SLBMs, and ICBMs). That was a show of détente militarily since an expansion of nuclear ballistic arms had started to occur.

The goal of Nixon and Kissinger was to use arms control to promote a much broader policy of détente, which could then allow the resolution of other urgent problems through what Nixon called "linkage." David Tal argued:

The linkage between strategic arms limitations and outstanding issues such as the Middle East, Berlin and, foremost, Vietnam thus became central to Nixon's and Kissinger's policy of détente. Through employment of linkage, they hoped to change the nature and course of U.S. foreign policy, including U.S. nuclear disarmament and arms control policy, and to separate them from those practiced by Nixon's predecessors. They also intended, through linkage, to make U.S. arms control policy part of détente. ... His policy of linkage had in fact failed. It failed mainly because it was based on flawed assumptions and false premises, the foremost of which was that the Soviet Union wanted strategic arms limitation agreement much more than the United States did.

Apollo–Soyuz handshake

The Apollo–Soyuz crew in 1975

A significant example of an event contributing to détente was the handshake that took place in space. In July 1975, the first Soviet-American joint space flight was conducted, the ASTP. Its primary goal was the creation of an international docking system, which would allow two different spacecraft to join in orbit. That would allow both crews on board to collaborate on space exploration. The project marked the end of the Space Race, which had started in 1957 with the launch of Sputnik 1, and allowed tensions between the Americans and the Soviets to decrease significantly.

Concurrent conflicts

As direct relations thawed, increased tensions continued between both superpowers through their proxies, especially in the Third World. Conflicts in South Asia and the Middle East in 1973 saw the Soviet Union and the U.S. backing their respective surrogates, such as in Afghanistan, with war material and diplomatic posturing. In Latin America, the U.S. continued to block any left-wing electoral shifts in the region by supporting unpopular right-wing military coups and military dictatorships. Meanwhile, there were also many communist or left-wing guerrillas around the region, which were militarily and economically backed by the Soviet Union, China and Cuba.

During much of the early détente period, the Vietnam War continued to rage. Both sides still mistrusted each other, and the potential for nuclear war remained constant, notably during the 1973 Yom Kippur War when the U.S. raised its alert level to DEFCON 3, the highest since the Cuban Missile Crisis.

Both sides continued aiming thousands of nuclear warheads atop intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) at each other's cities, maintaining submarines with long-range nuclear weapon capability (submarine-launched ballistic missiles, or SLBMs) in the world's oceans, keeping hundreds of nuclear-armed aircraft on constant alert, and guarding contentious borders in Korea and Europe with large ground forces. Espionage efforts remained a high priority, and defectors, reconnaissance satellites, and signal intercepts measured each other's intentions to try to gain a strategic advantage.

Reignited tensions and the end of the first détente

See also: Team B

Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev in 1985

The 1979 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, carried out in an attempt to shore up a struggling pro-Soviet regime, led to harsh international criticisms, and a boycott of the 1980 Summer Olympics, held in Moscow. U.S. president Jimmy Carter boosted the budget of the U.S. Department of Defense and began financial aid to the office of Pakistan president Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq, who, in turn, subsidized the anti-Soviet radical Islamist group of Afghan mujahideen fighters.

Another contributing factor in the decline in the popularity of détente as a desirable U.S. policy was the inter-service rivalry between the U.S. State Department and Department of Defense. From 1973 to 1977, there were three secretaries worth mentioning: Elliot Richardson, James Schlesinger, and Donald Rumsfeld. Schlesinger's tenure as secretary of defense was plagued by notably poor relations with Kissinger, one of the most prominent advocates of détente in the U.S. Their poor working relationship bled into their professional relationship, and policy clashes would increasingly occur. They ultimately resulted in Schlesinger's dismissal in 1975. However, his replacement, Rumsfeld, had similar issues with Kissinger although their disagreements stemmed more from domestic resistance to détente. As a result, clashes on policy continued between the State and the Defense Departments. Rumsfeld thought that Kissinger was too complacent about the growing Soviet strength. Although Rumsfeld largely agreed with Kissinger's stance that the U.S. held military superiority over the Soviet Union, he argued that Kissinger's public optimism would prevent Congress from allowing the Defense Department the funds that Rumsfeld believed were required to maintain the favorable gap between the US and the Soviets. Rumsfeld responded by regularly presenting a more alarmist view of the superior strength of the Soviets.

In response to the stranglehold of influence by Kissinger in the Nixon and Ford administrations and the later decline in influence over foreign policy by the Department of Defense, Richardson, Schlesinger, and Rumsfeld all used the growing antipathy in the U.S. for the Soviet Union to undermine Kissinger's attempts to achieve a comprehensive arms reduction treaty. That helped to portray the entire notion of détente as an untenable policy.

The 1980 U.S. presidential election saw Reagan elected on a platform opposed to the concessions of détente. Negotiations on SALT II were abandoned as a result. However, during the later years of his presidency, Reagan and Soviet General Secretary Gorbachev pursued a policy that was considered to be détente. However, the Reagan administration talked about a "winnable" nuclear war and led to the creation of the Strategic Defense Initiative and the Third World policy of funding irregular and paramilitary death squads in Central America, sub-Saharan Africa, Cambodia, and Afghanistan.

Cuban thaw

Further information: Cuban thaw

Barack Obama and Raúl Castro at a press conference in Havana in 2016

On 17 December 2014, U.S. president Barack Obama and Cuba president Raúl Castro resolved to restore diplomatic relations between Cuba and the U.S. The restoration agreement had been negotiated in secret in the preceding months. The negotiations were facilitated by Pope Francis and hosted mostly by the Canadian government, which had warmer relations with Cuba at that time. Meetings were held in both Canada and the Vatican City. The agreement would see some U.S. travel restrictions lifted, fewer restrictions on remittances, greater access to the Cuban financial system for U.S. banks, and the reopening of the U.S. embassy in Havana and the Cuban embassy in Washington, which both closed in 1961 after the breakup of diplomatic relations as a result of Cuba's alliance with the Soviet Union.

On 14 April 2015, the Obama administration announced the removal of Cuba from the State Sponsors of Terrorism list. Cuba was officially removed from the list on 29 May 2015. On 20 July 2015, the Cuban and U.S. interest sections in Washington and Havana were upgraded to embassies. On 20 March 2016, Obama became the first U.S. president to visit Cuba since Calvin Coolidge visited in 1928. In 2017, Donald Trump, Obama's successor, stated that he was "canceling" the Obama administration's deals with Cuba, while also expressing that a new deal could be negotiated between the Cuban and U.S. governments.