Silent Circle's warrant canary is out of date

https://canary.silentcircle.com/

by scotchmi_st • 12 years ago

148 103 12 years ago

canary.silentcircle.com

sarciszewski• 12 years ago

Good catch :)

astrojams• 12 years ago

Does that mean they've been served a warrant?

CSMastermind• 12 years ago

Either that or they forgot to update it.

TillE• 12 years ago

For nearly three weeks. They might just be on vacation or something, but promising weekly updates and letting it go this long is more than a simple oversight.

StavrosK23• 12 years ago

[DELETED, wait for an official company response]

spacefight15• 12 years ago

Maybe they were indeed slapped with an NSL. What a nice christmas present, huh!?

If they failed their own canary - how could you believe them in terms of their warant canaray setup ever again? Not so much at all, I'd say.

StavrosK23• 12 years ago

The entire purpose of a canary is to get manually updated. Automating it would defeat the purpose. If the person (or people, but you'd want to keep them as few as possible) was sick, unavailable, etc, it obviously wouldn't get updated.

A canary also fails open by design. There's no way for the canary to fail on the side of getting your data compromised. If we forget to update it, you should just be more cautious, until we update it again (if we do).

spacefight15• 12 years ago

Of course it needs to be manually. Fail open? A warrant canary system setup for the sole purpose of telling the whole world (and the clients, of course) that they were hit by not posting "a declaration that, up to that point, no warrants have been served, nor have any searches or seizures taken place".

Can there really be a fail-open or fail-safe here?

Edit: "not posting" fixed.

throwaway90446• 12 years ago

I may be persuaded that the individual tasked with signing and updating the canary got drunk over the Holidays and forgot.

Nobody is going to convince me that same individual went on a twenty day bender and sobered up on Christmas morning.

higherpurpose• 12 years ago

Does the US Patriot Act even apply to them anymore? They moved to Switzerland this year. Still, they should probably look into doing the same kind of thing for Swiss laws.

https://blog.silentcircle.com/our-move-to-switzerland/

If the warrant canary is out of date, though, I wonder if they moved to Switzerland because the US government tried to get to them, and it wasn't just a forward-thinking action.

toyg• 12 years ago

As long as you have a single server in the US, the Patriot Act applies to that server and its administrators, regardless of where they are located.

spacefight15• 12 years ago

Which they have, and they even have offices there.

$> whois 199.180.184.6

a3n• 12 years ago

Even if there are no servers in the US, are any of the principals or employees US citizens? If so, then they're as immune as they have the resources to fight off an assertion by the USG that they're not.

Think of Microsoft's current fight over giving up email from one of their Irish servers. Microsoft has the resources to fight this off, and that's the only reason they're still fighting and not complying. Someone small would have to fold or go to jail.

If you're small, it doesn't matter if the law is on your side if the USG overwhelms you before the question even gets a hearing.

StavrosK23• 12 years ago

[DELETED, wait for an official company response or canary update]

jacquesm20• 12 years ago

That's pointless. It's like allowing an alarm to ring without cause. Next time it rings the canary won't be trusted until you personally vouch for the fact that it wasn't an accident, and if that's the new channel the canary has lost its value.

False alarms are lethal for something as important as this.

Sorry...

spacefight15• 12 years ago

That's what I exactly tried to convince the parent before and I even got downvoted for it. So it sure looks like, someone has to explain everyone here why Silent Circle has a warrant canary and how we should interpret it....

StavrosK23• 12 years ago

I'm not trying to tell you that it's okay that this happened, I just saw this post while waiting for a deployment and figured I'd comment. Now I'm kind of regretting that.

rsync2• 12 years ago

"That's pointless. It's like allowing an alarm to ring without cause. Next time it rings the canary won't be trusted until you personally vouch for the fact that it wasn't an accident, and if that's the new channel the canary has lost its value."

That's not really true.

The canary is only "dead" and that channel is only useless until a new one is published. Unless the operator of the canary has decreed in advance that a particular time period elapsed should be considered "dead" regardless of future updates, then the canary is alive and well as soon as a new update comes out.

Here's the thing - a warrant canary is, by definition, a manual process. It should never be automated. A human has to resign and republish (or they are doing it wrong). And this means that sometimes they get published late.

In the 9 years that we (rsync.net) have been publishing our canary, we've probably missed our normal Monday morning publish 10 or 15 times. But as soon as we publish, with the affirmative canary and it's signature and language, etc., it's alive and well again.

Obviously this changes if someone is months late with an update.

late2part3• 12 years ago

I'd like to see a cryptographically signed assertion on this forum that says that the company has not been compromised by a foreign government entity, that you have not been served by an NSL from the US or similar from another country, and that Silent Circle "simply" forgot to update.

I don't care for all this "I'm 99% sure" and "blah bah bah."

Make an affirmative assertion, and back it up, please.

StavrosK23• 12 years ago

Then you should wait for an official response. I never said I'm in charge of the canary (I specifically said I'm not) or that I know what happened or why, I just happened to see this and tried to get some more info. My comments here shouldn't be taken as official at all.

jacquesm20• 12 years ago

That completely defeats the purpose of the canary. If you trust cryptographically signed assertions over the canary it had no reason to exist in the first place.

dang2• 12 years ago

As long as it's a false alarm, we'll demote this story.

Edit: Ok, we restored it with a question mark. That's a more balanced way to handle these; I just forgot about it.

Edit 2: Now that I think about it, there's no need for a question mark on a factual statement. Sorry—I'm a little distracted right now! (We can change "is" to "was" if they update it, but someone will have to let us know.)

I'm going to detach this subthread now so it can go to the bottom as off-topic.

spacefight15• 12 years ago

I'm not so sure if the demotion is valid for this story.

The sole issue of a warrant canary is to either feed it weekly (their own decision) or retire it.

Not feeding the updates weekly means something... telling everyone false alarm doesn't make me happy.

lawl2• 12 years ago

Maybe I'm paranoid. But if is an NSL he obviously couldn't say anything. If really nothing happened the answer should have been shit i'll update it straight away.

Everything else would completely defeat the purpose of the canary.

Edit: the only thing i'll accept here is an explanation signed with the same PGP key As long as that hasn't happened something happened. Period.

StavrosK23• 12 years ago

Well, not exactly. I'm not in the US, so I can't be served an NSL (or don't really give a crap about them), and I can't update the canary myself. I've messaged both the security officer and the person who updates it (well, I messaged the entire company, really), and I was assured we'll update it ASAP.

Tomte• 12 years ago

I'm pretty tired of sensationalist NSA stories here on HN, as well, but I think you're really wrong here.

First of all, it is a factual post, nothing sensationalist.

Second, it is obviously on topic (warrant canaries and their failure modes have been discussed here several times, and usually very civilly).

Third, just because "some guy" tells you "hey, everything is fine" doesn't make it true. You just declared that you're satisfied with the explanation, which I can understand, but demoting the story means that you don't believe that someone can rationally think otherwise. That's unfair, IMO.

Fourth, if you're posting a warrant canary and fail to update it, you deserve the suspicion and discussion. That's kind of the whole point. So: working as designed. :-)

spacefight15• 12 years ago

Yes - dang, plesae put that discussion back up where it belongs.

jacquesm20• 12 years ago

Canaries die only once, consider this an obit. A revived canary is worthless, it's only sitting on the branch because it's been nailed there.

eternalban• 12 years ago

The warranty has been now updated and a google search turns up nothing in the interim. We are in agreement regarding the obituary of the said warranty. Curious as to how you read the messages (regardless) given that it promises a "declaration" that it does not make. Did they ever make a declaration?

ThinkBeat2• 12 years ago

Ok, so from a conspiracy perspective:

Lets say there was a good reason for the canary not being updated.

I the FBI or whichever law enforcement agency was involved in the process noticed that updates were missing, (or saw it because it was pointed out on a well trafficked website)

Could the law enforcement agency then compel the employees to post a note that it was just a mistake and it will be rectified soon? And then have them update it?

Since not updating it when asked would equal disclosing that the event had taken place, which under certain laws might be illegal?

This hurts my head.

late2part3• 12 years ago

Yes, they could. A federal judge can compel people to do many, many things.

jacquesm20• 12 years ago

I would be worried about that long after I'd be worried about people simply striking a deal in some trumped up criminal lawsuit after being suitably intimidated.

MichaelGG2• 12 years ago

Or, since Silent Circle partakes of extremely misleading marketing and claims you can make encrypted calls all over the world, LE can just go tap the VoIP providers they use. Legally, or, since almost all VoIP is unencrypted, just by tapping Ethernet. Seriously, go read the press release for the BlackPhone and tell me you'd trust their CEO at all. Even Mr Zimmerman admits the entire business relies on LE not coming into their office with guns.

StavrosK23• 12 years ago

What? Where is this claimed? As far as I know, all claims are that OCA calls are encrypted to the server.

It sounds like you're confusing the PSTN calling offering with the Silent Phone service itself, which is encrypted peer to peer.

spacefight15• 12 years ago

That canary sits in direct reach of a LE (Law enforcement) of the US.

$> whois 199.217.106.243

http://myip.ms/view/ip_addresses/3352914432/199.217.106.0_19...

Edit: Typo law enforcement.

StavrosK23• 12 years ago

I'm not sure what a LAE is, but the server doesn't matter much, since we sign the file itself.

read• 12 years ago

Is a warrant canary even legal? If it isn't, what's the point of having them?

From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warrant_canary

The US security researcher Moxie Marlinspike states that "every lawyer we've spoken to has confirmed that [a warrant canary] would not work" for the TextSecure server.

Direct link: https://github.com/WhisperSystems/whispersystems.org/issues/...

pakled_engineer2• 12 years ago

The main worry for TextSecure is that Google upon receiving a NSL will send you a targeted update for the TS client and GAPPS framework that sends all your msgs to a three letter agency before being encrypted and sent as usual. So Google would need a canary for the play store

dublinben• 12 years ago

If you're concerned about that threat vector, you wouldn't be using GAPPS/Play. Except that's the only way they'll distribute TextSecure.

jlund2• 12 years ago

Except for the fact that Google does not have the signing keys that are used for the TextSecure binaries. They cannot silently distribute a binary that has been tampered with. This distributed trust system is one of Android's strengths:

https://developer.android.com/tools/publishing/app-signing.h...

wnevets• 12 years ago

The EFF quote in your link suggest yes.

ThinkBeat2• 12 years ago

First off I have no standing here, and I am nobody. I am a customer of Silent Circle though. (or so I claim)

I am sure that StavrosK is well known by the community and it is my fault that I dont know his connection with SilentCircle. His profile points to stavros at stochastic dot io.

But more importantly HackerNews is not a very secure platform.

We have no real way of knowing StavrosK is StavrosK, or if ThinkBeat is the same ThinkBeat as last week. Using Hackernews or any social media as a platform to "override" a warrant canary is ill advised. In fact I think it makes matters worse.

Properly signed messages through the announced channel is the way to go.

StavrosK23• 12 years ago

Yep, this is definitely true. The only way to get this resolved is to update the canary. I can prove I work there, but it's irrelevant.

I also want to note that I didn't try to override anything, dang helpfully tried to temporarily hide this post to avoid causing a panic while we get this resolved, but that doesn't change the fact that this is still a problem we need to resolve.

jacquesm20• 12 years ago

I think this needs an additional safeguard, such as the destruction of the private key associated by the messages and a defined 'grace period' (defined up front, not after the fact) in case of a missed update as well as a very good procedure to update and check that the update has indeed been made.

CGamesPlay• 12 years ago

The purpose of the canary is to provide the issuer with a way of saying "I am no longer trustworthy". Since the canary has not been updated, nothing that can be said in favor of Silent Circle should be trusted. When the canary is again updated, it will be Silent Circle saying "I can be trusted again" (subject to the limitations about coercion as described in the canary message).

For now, do not trust that Silent Circle has not been compromised despite anything you may read in this thread. When the canary is updated, then you may return to the state that you had before: you can speculate that they are being coerced into lying about the canary, or that they are trustworthy. That choice is an has always been yours to make.

StavrosK23• 12 years ago

Oh yes, sorry. Definitely do not take my comments as trustworthy. The canary is the only thing to watch for.

spacefight15• 12 years ago

We're back on page one. This is exactly what some of us have said hours ago already and others have been doing: they watched the canary "die" (in terms of the mining analogy).

jacquesm20• 12 years ago

I disagree that the state post a future update of the canary is equal to the state before it failed. New canary, same as the old does not apply, the alarm has rung, it can't be 'un-rung'.

jcrawfordor2• 12 years ago

The warrant canary is not an alarm that an NSL/etc has been served precisely because NSLs do not allow for any such alarm to be raised. The canary is an assertion that this event has not happened up to a certain date, and so one issued at any point whatsoever is as valid (up to its issue date) as any other.

It's not practical to release new canaries constantly, so there is always an interrim period between one and the next where it is unclear if the situation has changed. A due date/release schedule is a guideline to users for that interrim period. Last canary within one normal scheduled interval? Everything is normal. Last canary longer back? Now we must worry that the situation has changed, because if it hadn't the canary should have been updated.

The release schedule is only that, though, a guideline for deciding during the period since issuance. It changes nothing about the fundamental nature of the canary as a claim up to the specified date. A new canary, early, on time, or late, makes the exact same assertion as each of the older canaries. It being late just prevents user confidence about the state of the service in the time period between 'expiration' and new issuance, the new issuance brings back this confidence.

Releasing a canary late is a sin because it creates a time period in which the state of the service is in question, and frequent/lengthy/otherwise egregious incidents should reduce user trust in a service. That time period ends when a new canary is issued, though, as the protection of the canary is once again in place.

But perhaps I simply misunderstand your ideas. Could you explain what you mean by a means other than analogy (which is honestly not particularly useful here, as the nature of signed text is different than the nature of birds)? Or a better question, if a new canary is issued, but late, then what is the actual scenario that users are not protected against?

gpm• 12 years ago

Reading this canary has me worried, it doesn't actually say that "no warrants have been served, nor have any searches or seizures taken place", it only says that a declaration stating that will be provided.

Compare this to rsync's (http://www.rsync.net/resources/notices/canary.txt), which this seems to have been based off of. It explicitly states "No warrants have ever been served to rsync.net, or rsync.net principals or employees. No searches or seizures of any kind have ever been performed on rsync.net assets, including:..."

StavrosK23• 12 years ago

You're right, it looks like the wording is a bit unclear. I'll talk to the guys to see if we can get it updated, thanks.

raverbashing• 12 years ago

"As of Thu Dec 25 19:07:56 2014 UTC, here are the current headlines"

So it's up again?

tedivm• 12 years ago

Yeah, my guess is that someone at the site saw this and realized that they need to update it.

That or they were forced to by law enforcement due to all of the attention this was getting. Turns out warrant canaries are mostly useless.

qnaal• 12 years ago

Based on a critical reading of the 'Thu Dec 25 19:07:56 2014 UTC' update I'd say it has served its purpose and delivered its only message as loudly and clearly (or absently and morbidly, as the analogy may go) as it can.

ps anyone got a link to any previous canary update, or even a copy of the public key?

pps the update I read (including signature) had sha1sum 790b9817923137c68bd0a818456f2b47ff25719f

subleq• 12 years ago

I hadn't heard of Silent Circle before so I looked at their offerings. Is it any different than what you get from TextSecure and RedPhone for free?

spacefight15• 12 years ago

So it looks now, that the canary got updated. No other information given, at least not within the canary itself.

https://canary.silentcircle.com/

shalmanese• 12 years ago

It seems to me that a warrant canary being updated after public notice is the most definitive proof we have that Silent Circle hasn't been served with an NSL.

If the NSL had the ability to force an update, the canary would have been updated before anyone noticed it was a problem. If the NSL didn't have the ability to force an update, the canary would still remain un-updated.

Silent Circle's warrant canary is out of date

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