Security News > 2003 > May > Red Brigades' PDAs highlight encryption controversy

http://www.computerworld.com/securitytopics/security/story/0,10801,81486,00.html By Philip Willan IDG News Service MAY 23, 2003 ROME -- Italian police have seized at least two Psion handheld devices from members of the Red Brigades terrorist organization, but the major investigative breakthrough they were hoping for as a result of the information contained on the devices has been thwarted by encryption software used by the left-wing revolutionaries. The failure to crack the code, despite the reported assistance of FBI computer experts, puts a spotlight on the controversy over the wide availability of powerful encryption tools. The Psion devices were seized March 2 after a shootout on a train traveling between Rome and Florence, Italian media and sources close to the investigation said. The devices, believed to number two or three, were seized from Nadia Desdemona Lioce and her Red Brigades comrade Mario Galesi, who was killed in the shootout. An Italian police officer was also killed. At least one of the devices contains information protected by encryption software and has been sent for analysis to the FBI facility in Quantico, Va., news reports and sources said. The FBI declined to comment on ongoing investigations, and Italian authorities wouldn't reveal details about the information or equipment seized during the shootout. The software separating the investigators from a potentially invaluable mine of information about the shadowy terrorist group was Pretty Good Privacy (PGP), the Rome daily La Repubblica reported. So far, the system has defied all efforts to penetrate it, the paper said. Palm devices can run PGP only if they use the Palm OS or Windows CE operating system, said Phil Zimmermann, who developed the encryption software in the early 1990s. Psion PLC uses its own operating system, known as Epoc, but it might still be possible to use PGP as a third-party add-on, a spokesman for the British company said. There is no way that the investigators will succeed in breaking the code with the collaboration of the current manufacturers of PGP, Palo Alto, Calif.-based PGP Corp., Zimmermann said in a telephone interview. "Does PGP have a back door? The answer is no, it does not," he said. "If the device is running PGP, it will not be possible to break it with cryptanalysis alone." Investigators would need to employ alternative techniques, such as looking at the unused area of memory to see if it contained remnants of plain text that existed before encryption, Zimmermann said. The investigators' failure to penetrate the PDAs' encryption provides a good example of what is at stake in the privacy-vs.-security debate, which has been given renewed attention since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks in the U.S. Zimmermann remains convinced that the advantages of PGP, which was originally developed as a human rights project to protect individuals against oppressive governments, outweigh the disadvantages. "I'm sorry that cryptology is such a problematic technology, but there is nothing we can do that will give this technology to everyone without also giving it to the criminals," he said. "PGP is used by every human rights organization in the world. It's something that's used for good. It saves lives." Nazi Germany and Stalin's Soviet Union are examples of governments that had killed far more people than all the world's criminals and terrorists combined, Zimmermann said. It was probably technically impossible, Zimmermann said, to develop a system with a back door without running the risk that the key could fall into the hands of a Saddam Hussein or a Slobodan Milosevic, the former heads of Iraq and Yugoslavia, respectively. "A lot of cryptographers wracked their brains in the 1990s trying to devise strategies that would make everyone happy, and we just couldn't come up with a scheme for doing it," he said. "I recognize we are having more problems with terrorists now than we did a decade ago. Nonetheless, the march of surveillance technology is giving ever-increasing power to governments. We need to have some ability for people to try to hide their private lives and get out of the way of the video cameras," he said. Even in the wake of Sept. 11, Zimmermann retains the view that strong cryptography does more good for a democracy than harm. His personal Web site contains letters of appreciation from human rights organizations that have been able to defy intrusion by oppressive governments in Guatemala and Eastern Europe thanks to PGP. One letter describes how the software helped to protect an Albanian Muslim woman who faced an attack by Islamic extremists because she had converted to Christianity. Zimmermann said he had received a letter from a Kosovo man living in Scandinavia describing how the software had helped the Kosovo Liberation Army in its struggle against the Serbs. On one occasion, he said, PGP-encrypted communications helped in coordinating the evacuation of 8,000 civilians trapped by the Serbs in a Kosovo valley. "That could have turned into another mass grave," Zimmermann said. Italian investigators have been particularly frustrated by their failure to break into the captured Psions because so little is known about the new generation of Red Brigades. The terrorist group destabilized Italy during the 1970s and 1980s, assassinating politicians, businessmen and security officials and terrorizing the population by "knee-capping," or shooting perceived opponents in the legs. It revived its practice of political assassination in 1999, and since then, the terrorists have shot dead two university professors who advised the government on labor law reform. Zimmermann isn't optimistic about the investigators' chances of success. "The very best encryption available today is out of reach of the very best cryptanalytic methods that are known in the academic world, and it's likely to continue that way," he said. Sources close to the investigation have suggested that investigators may have to turn to talented hackers for help in breaking into the seized devices. One of the magistrates coordinating the inquiry laughed at mention of that idea. "I can't say anything about that," he said. - ISN is currently hosted by Attrition.org To unsubscribe email majordomo () attrition org with 'unsubscribe isn' in the BODY of the mail.

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