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Would Debian be against the new NSA encryption Speck?

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soaringowl2145
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Would Debian be against the new NSA encryption Speck?

#1 Post by soaringowl2145 »

Is there any reason that might stop Debian from including the NSA encryption algorithm called, Speck, from the Debian kernel?

It was rejected by ISO but then Google said they would use it for Android and then it was added into Linux 4.17.

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Re: Would Debian be against the new NSA encryption Speck?

#2 Post by 4D696B65 »

Its a weak encryption for those that like weak encryption. It is NOT a backdoor.

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Re: Would Debian be against the new NSA encryption Speck?

#3 Post by Head_on_a_Stick »

soaringowl2145 wrote:Is there any reason that might stop Debian from including the NSA encryption algorithm called, Speck, from the Debian kernel?
No, the source code is freely available.
deadbang

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HuangLao
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Re: Would Debian be against the new NSA encryption Speck?

#4 Post by HuangLao »

of course Debian would not mind...they love weak encryption and work closely with the NSA.
https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/ ... ber_b.html
https://it.slashdot.org/story/08/05/13/ ... -guessable

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debiman
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Re: Would Debian be against the new NSA encryption Speck?

#5 Post by debiman »

HuangLao wrote:of course Debian would not mind...they love weak encryption and work closely with the NSA.
https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/ ... ber_b.html
https://it.slashdot.org/story/08/05/13/ ... -guessable
:sigh:
do you have any reason to believe that this is still valid 10 years later? and how do these two links constitute "work closely with the NSA"? please do share.

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Re: Would Debian be against the new NSA encryption Speck?

#6 Post by Wheelerof4te »

HuangLao wrote:of course Debian would not mind...they love weak encryption and work closely with the NSA.
Debian has no ties to any goverment or corporation. It is a community OS, built by community for the community.

Speck should be removed in the next versions of Linux kernel, so Debian 10 will probably not contain it.

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Re: Would Debian be against the new NSA encryption Speck?

#7 Post by HuangLao »

Wheelerof4te wrote:
HuangLao wrote:of course Debian would not mind...they love weak encryption and work closely with the NSA.
Debian has no ties to any government or corporation. It is a community OS, built by community for the community.

Speck should be removed in the next versions of Linux kernel, so Debian 10 will probably not contain it.
Do you actually believe that? It might not have a corporate master in the sense of RedHat, but to say it is purely community based, well that ship sailed a long time ago. You really should read up more before responding sometimes.

Ref: https://www.debian.org/devel/developers.loc
https://www.debian.org/devel/people
https://nm.debian.org/public/people/dm_all
https://www.neowin.net/news/intel-overt ... ontributor

2015-2016 top companies contributing to Linux kernel: https://www.linuxfoundation.org/blog/20 ... 2015-2016/
Company Changes Percent of total
Intel 14,384 12.9%
Red Hat 8,987 8.0%
None 8,571 7.7%
Unknown 7,582 6.8%
Linaro 4,515 4.0%
Samsung 4,338 3.9%
SUSE 3,619 3.2%
IBM 2,995 2.7%
Consultants 2,938 2.6%
Renesas Electronics 2,239 2.0%

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Re: Would Debian be against the new NSA encryption Speck?

#8 Post by Head_on_a_Stick »

^ Here's the full list, it's rather scary:

https://www.linuxfoundation.org/membership/members/

*Reboots into OpenBSD* :mrgreen:
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Re: Would Debian be against the new NSA encryption Speck?

#9 Post by stevepusser »

The module is currently not enabled in the Debian 4.17.8 kernel anyway, either upstream or in stretch-backports, but the Liquorix kernels do build it.

However, it's just a tool, right? Nothing forces other encryption programs to use it.
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Re: Would Debian be against the new NSA encryption Speck?

#10 Post by bw123 »

Seems to be some kind of controversy. Thanks for bringing it up, but as long as it is open source and can be disabled, I don't see the problem?

https://itsfoss.com/nsas-encryption-alg ... community/

Like it or not, computer science and intelligence gathering go hand in hand. The whole reason we have the internet and modern computers is because of government/corporation funding. Without that money, we would probably still be using tubes instead of transistors.

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Wheelerof4te
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Re: Would Debian be against the new NSA encryption Speck?

#11 Post by Wheelerof4te »

bw123 wrote:Without that money, we would probably still be using tubes instead of transistors.
But, but...aren't private investors the key to innovation? Isn't that what we've been thaught at school? /s

Anyway, you can't escape the survailence in this modern world. What you can do is minimize it. Debian does that job well.

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Re: Would Debian be against the new NSA encryption Speck?

#12 Post by None1975 »

bw123 wrote:The whole reason we have the internet and modern computers is because of government/corporation funding. Without that money, we would probably still be using tubes instead of transistors.
Another myth created by capitalism is repeatedly repeated by some, not very mindful people.
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Re: Would Debian be against the new NSA encryption Speck?

#13 Post by bw123 »

None1975 wrote:
bw123 wrote:The whole reason we have the internet and modern computers is because of government/corporation funding. Without that money, we would probably still be using tubes instead of transistors.
Another myth created by capitalism is repeatedly repeated by some, not very mindful people.
I don't understand the reference to capitalism? What does capitalism have to do with it? Many people feel the US became a managed economy a very long time ago.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bell_Labs
...
At its peak, Bell Laboratories was the premier facility of its type, developing a wide range of revolutionary technologies, including radio astronomy, the transistor, the laser, information theory, the operating system Unix, the programming languages C and C++. Eight Nobel Prizes have been awarded for work completed at Bell Laboratories.[14]
...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bell_Labs ... velopments
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soaringowl2145
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Re: Would Debian be against the new NSA encryption Speck?

#15 Post by soaringowl2145 »

debiman wrote:pipe down, everybody:
http://lkml.iu.edu/hypermail/linux/kern ... 05238.html
bullet dodged.
So then it will be removed from the kernel in the next linux kernel release or do I need to do something?

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Re: Would Debian be against the new NSA encryption Speck?

#16 Post by stevepusser »

I already pointed out that none of the Debian kernels ever enabled it, and even if it did, you'd have to use a tool that specifically used it. Sit tight and find something else to worry about--maybe a solar flare that'll wipe out our infrastructure.
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debiman
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Re: Would Debian be against the new NSA encryption Speck?

#17 Post by debiman »

soaringowl2145 wrote:So then it will be removed from the kernel in the next linux kernel release or do I need to do something?
not sure what to say to this.
i cannot be aware of every kernel flag or other detail in the code; i trust both kernel devs and distro maintainers to do The Right Thing.

edit:
just noticed that stevepusser already said something very similar.

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Re: Would Debian be against the new NSA encryption Speck?

#18 Post by sunrat »

When is the solar flare happening? :shock: :?
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debiman
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Re: Would Debian be against the new NSA encryption Speck?

#19 Post by debiman »

don't worry about solar flares, worry about butterflies (or emacs)!

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