fishbowl ( secure phone )
the national security agency discussed project fishbowl this week — a project to build out a secure voip network for android devices .
usmobile' s scrambl3 has implemented the most salient security features of nsa' s' fishbowl' (secure phone) initiative secure voice over internet protocol (voip) architecture, and has a number of unique characteristics that put it in a class ahead of existing commercial secure voip techniques ,
said dr .
users of the fishbowl phone will even be able to utilize a special security - centric app store created and managed by the u. s. defense information systems agency. whether or not the fishbowl phone actually goes into large scale production, and whether it remains tagged with that rather interesting moniker, will be up to enterprising manufacturers .
all traffic from the phone is routed through the enterprise as a primary security design goal .
the fishbowl phone came about as an offshoot of the nsa mobility program, an effort to ensure scalable secure mobile communication frameworks based on commercial technologies. and, in case any major manufacturers are interested in producing fishbowl - style handsets for the government on a large scale, the nsa has conveniently provided online specifications detailing how off - the - shelf components were used to construct the device .
the law enforcement community is a prime target customer for scrambl3 because public cell phone networks don’t meet heightened police security standards, and photographic evidence requires a secure uploading process .
the nsa created a super secure smartphone using google' s android operating system .
several other compromises were made but none that reduced the security of the phone, salter said .
the national security agency (nsa) has developed an ultra - secure android phone built using off - the - shelf kit that allows us government staff to discuss top secret materials .
called scrambl3, the app creates a secure virtual - private network that connects bring - your - own devices to an agency server to send messages using end - to - end encryption. irvine, calif. - based usmobile developed the scrambl3 technology when team members worked with the national security agency to create “fishbowl, ” a secure phone network available only to defense department users via the dod information network .
nsa’s vendor of choice, for now, is motorola. but that’s because the voice app fishbowl needed ran on that motorola phone first. “it worked, but… android is not android! ” salter proclaimed. “android is whatever the handset vendor or the oem chooses to put on the phone! and that is another one of the rude surprises we had when we were going through all this .
according to the agency' s margaret salter, building the new phone was done using simple off - the - shelf technology. speaking to it security journal secure business intelligence, salter said ,
the plan was to buy commercial components, layer them together and get a secure solution it uses solely commercial infrastructure to protect classified data .
#. / build - key - server fishbowl #. / build - key client1 #. / build - key client2 #. / build - dh
in 2011, usmobile staff began meeting with the national security agency (nsa) on a new generation of secure mobile architecture. the
fishbowl
( secure phone) initiative was designed to protect government top secret classified communication. scrambl3, developed using the latest nsa standards for that new generation, is the world' s first and only commercial implementation of those standards. the nsa, for national security reasons, has encouraged commercial development of secure mobile communications in large part to help american businesses protect their valuable intellectual property (ip) from theft, estimated to result in billions of dollars worth of stolen trade secrets and ip .
the aim, salter said, was to produce secure devices that had the ease - of - use at a low cost .
the division’s head, margaret salter, said anyone can reproduce the phone using specifications published online today because it uses off - the - shelf components .
the phone is part of a wider nsa mobility program to design all communications technologies used for classified discussions from commercial off - the - shelf components .
today' s leading solutions / protocols to secure mobile communications (e. g. - srtp and zrtp) are missing the first step, which is the most critical and differentiating feature of' fishbowl,' the creation of a top secret grade vpn
dark internet tunnel
to cloak encrypted communication .
scrambl3 employs encryption algorithms and internet protocols, approved for top secret classified communication, to create encrypted voice, video and data communication. all encrypted communication is
cloaked
by placing it within usmobile
dark internet tunnels ,
which are virtual private networks that employ u. s. national security agency' s' top secret' suite b encryption and authentication parameters, part of the nsa' s new generation
fishbowl
( secure phone) initiative .
the nsa fishbowl (secure phone) project became the architectural foundation of the current nsa “mobility capability package, ” which has been deployed within the department of defense for top secret classified mobile communication. the most salient feature of the “fishbowl” project was to protect encrypted voip (application layer) within a vpn (transport layer) where both of these layers / tunnels are independently secured by employing nsa suite b encryption algorithms and internet protocols that the nsa approved for top secret applications. usmobile is the first commercial application to implement this architecture for mobile voice and text, which offers the highest available security for individuals who are high - value targets for hackers .
dubbed the
fishbowl ,
these devices make fully - encrypted calls that are secure enough to allow the discussion of even the most classified information. the handsets will rely on an unidentified voip app, similar to skype, that routes calls through nsa servers (kind of like what they already do with everybody else' s) .
about 100 of the fishbowl phones were developed and released to government staff. they were designed to comply with the nsa’s tough information security rules yet be as cheap as possible and easy to use .
“we’ve implemented fishbowl in the form of a software - defined network, so all of those typical hardware components that you’d find in a mobile network - - routers, vpns, gateways, firewalls, proxy servers - - all of those components are expressed or implemented in our system in the form of software, ” said jon hanour, usmobile’s president and ceo. “we’ve made an affordable version of fishbowl. ”
the era of smartphones has been a boon for consumers, but when government officials need to use such devices, things get tricky in terms of information leakage. to address this concern, the u. s. national security agency (nsa) came up with project fishbowl, an initiative to create a super secure smartphone using the android operating system .
the ideal fishbowl phone would need a securable voip app and a securable data transfer app. if at all possible, it should not have to be tied to any single carrier. it needed to be capable of connecting to the wi - fi network supplied by “the ranch” (headquarters). it would need to be remotely manageable using policy, and all of the traffic through the phone must be routed through the enterprise manager. “because if we allowed it to go all kinds of different places, we lost all control, ” salter said .
fishbowl phones do exist now – in fact, two of salter’s nsa colleagues in the audience had some. but the working models made significant compromises, which salter appeared to hold out hope could be remedied .
the new handsets, limited to about 100 units, will allow agency workers to communicate without needing to
speak in code .
encrypted using nsa protocols ipsec and srtp, conversations on the phone can be monitored using a special app, and the agency believes the device is even secure enough for top - secret telephone conversations .
“the plan was to buy commercial components, layer them together and get a secure solution, ” salter said. “it uses solely commercial infrastructure to protect classified data. ”
“we didn’t pick any of these vendors because we think they’re sensationally better than the other vendors, in any of these classes, ” salter explained to one questioner, who had asked whether fishbowl’s choices were indicative of any degree of hardware or software superiority among smartphone standards. “we picked these vendors because we were trying to put a puzzle together. and as we picked certain puzzle pieces, other puzzle pieces fell into place… why is the fishbowl phone an android phone? because ios is lousy? no, that is not at all the reason why. it turned out that, because of certain controls that we needed, we were actually able to do modifications to the android os, and we didn’t have that control over the other oses in the space… but it is not our intention to only use android. it is our intention to use any os that meets our requirements. ”
individuals. android phone users, from celebrities to anyone who desires protection from surveillance of sensitive personal matters, from health and medical information to finances to relationships, will find peace of mind with scrambl3 .
the nsa (national security agency) is the premier agency responsible for protecting government communications. their traditional approach is using proprietary hardware and software, that is secure but very expensive .
the phones were designed and built by the nsa’s 40 year - old information assurance directorate, which is responsible for providing secure communications to the us government, including the department of defence .
she said the android operating system and key store were customised to be made secure enough for top secret conversations, and a “kind of police app” was designed to monitor operations on the device .
recently, they have been working on a plan to use ready - made commercial standards and equipment for their secure technology needs, instead of reinventing the wheel in their own labs. the idea hasn’t quite worked out as expected, which you can read about in this article, but it has lead to the development of the “fishbowl. ” these are souped - up, super - secure android smartphones, that nsa agents can feel safe using to send even the most sensitive information. information sent through these handsets are double - encrypted as well as screened through nsa servers. please see our security article on why securing real - time communication is hard .
the possibilities are truly endless when it comes to customizing these configurations. one thing that is nice to have is an analog phone converter like the linksys pap2t. this type of device allows you to use a normal telephone with the same secure setup. ensure that your converter supports both tls and srtp, if you' re going to use this setup. experiment with adding phone bridges, trunking multiple asterisk boxes together across the vpn. this article should have provided you with enough information to get you up and running. if you want more specific details, go to the respective wiki links as both asterisk and openvpn have great support networks .
for additional peace of mind, no messages, voicemails or call data are stored on scrambl3 servers, or any other servers. encryption is maintained end - to - end, providing uninterrupted security of communication traveling between two communicating parties. scrambl3 users have several deletion and security options to keep private scrambl3 messages on their phone, including auto - delete and integration with samsung knox ™, which will encrypt the messages until they are deleted from the phone .
all of the mobility program is still in its early stages, and the nsa has said it isn' t necessarily tied to android — the platform was selected because it was easy to modify — but it does think this system is the future for its mobile communications. the agency wants to develop a closed app distribution system, get secure voip working over wi - fi, and hopefully get industry partners on board before it' s fully ready to rollout project fishbowl .
agents will also be able to install national defense - related apps from an app store run by the us defense information systems agency, ensuring that only secure applications are installed (sorry path) .
this configuration can be used for secure communication with end to end pcs and cellular telephones alike (ios and android both have voip clients in their respective stores that support srtp and sip + tls. )
“if we let it go to all kinds of places, we lost control of figuring out what the phone was doing. if i want pizza, i have to go through the enterprise which has to route me to pizza hut. ”
but at first, nist suggested not srtp but dtls. nsa had no reason to question that recommendation, so it went shopping for a phone with both dtls and srtp, using the “rule of two” as justification for both. “we couldn’t buy one. we could pay someone to make it, but that wasn’t the plan. the plan was to be able to buy commercial components, layer them together, and get a secure solution. ”
inside usmobile' s
dark internet tunnels ,
calls and texts made with scrambl3' s private mobile network are private and secure. and for additional privacy and security, a user' s private network is not interconnected to standard mobile phone numbers, landlines or any other segment of the publicly switched telephone network (pstn) – thus avoiding u. s. government bulk surveillance programs that include prism and calea. while usmobile collaborated with the nsa on this new secure mobile architecture, the company then went on to independently develop its implementation of the architecture and source code; the nsa does not have a
back door
to usmobile' s private mobile network .
speaking at the rsa conference in san francisco, margaret salter, a technical director in the nsa’s information assurance directorate, outlined the beefed - up phone: it runs a stripped - down version of android with multiple layers of encryption, has a custom voip app, and a
police app
that logs everything done on the device. salter didn' t reveal much about the hardware, but based on the agency' s wish list of features, it seems like there may be modifications at that level as well. the nsa hopes to use project fishbowl as a reference design for manufacturers to incorporate the systems the agency needs into consumer devices. this would allow the same off - the - shelf phone used by a civilian to be authorized for use on the nsa' s secured network, which is the other side of the equation .
the craziest thing about a typical “top secret” u. s. government phone is that you can probably spot it from a football field away. if your mental picture of a hollywood - style nsa agent drives a black amc ambassador, wears a polyester suit and ray - bans, and smokes luckies, then his phone may either be maxwell smart’s shoe or a general dynamics sectera edge (pictured left). at any distance, it looks like one of the pocket football games my junior high school vice principal used to confiscate and collect in his back drawer .
late last year we heard rumblings that the national security agency was testing android phones for use on a secured networ k, and now we' ve got confirmation that this is indeed happening. one hundred customized motorola android phones are in use by various employees at the nsa as part of project fishbowl. the project is part of the agency' s mobility program, a two - pronged approach to developing secure mobile solutions without sacrificing the user experience of the modern smartphone. the nsa also wants to shift away from costly government - developed systems to inexpensive off - the - shelf solutions, which is where the android handsets come in .
the national security agency wants a real - world smartphone, not the one it has now – not the one you see here. of course, it must fulfill the dept. of defense’s requirements for session encryption and data retention. but beyond that fact, the nsa wonders why its secure phone can’t have multitouch, apps, and speed just like the civilians have. based on looks alone, you’d think the civilians are a couple of pegs ahead of the g - men. this is a story of looks being more deceptive than even a security agency could have anticipated .
users will be able to install defence applications on the device from an enterprise app store run by the us defence information systems agency. this would ensure only secure applications were installed, and remove the need for nsa staff to otherwise vet the integrity of third party applications .
the above configuration will dial client1 if anyone dials extension 100 and client2 if anyone dials extension 200. the 1 here indicates that it is the first step in the call process. asterisk allows you to setup extensive voice prompts and menus for callers as well as setup conference bridges, fax documents, voice mails, call parking lots etc etc. this will however meet our bare requirements in making secure phone calls over a vpn with fully encrypted svoip. keep in mind that we need to safeguard keys when transferring them, and client1. pem / client2. pem both contain private keys along with the client certificates .
“we needed a voice app that did dtls (datagram transport layer security), suite b and srtp (secure real - time transport protocol) and we couldn’t buy it, ” salter said. “but the industry was thinking more about session description … so we went with that. ”
salter’s team considered whether it was feasible for nsa to utilize a real, commercial smartphone – one like all the kids are using nowadays – but with software that made the device perhaps more secure than the sectera edge. “the phones are so popular and exploding all over the place, because we can play angry birds on them, and do whatever you want. but we needed enterprise management – some control over it, because honestly, we didn’t really want you to be able to go load angry birds on your ts [ top secret ] phone… that was not a business model that we could support, or even defend. ”
voice traffic needed to be encrypted twice – once through ipsec and once again on the voip layer through srtp. this was in keeping with a design principle the nsa calls “the rule of two: ” as margaret salter described it, “two independent bad things have to go wrong in order for an adversary to take advantage of your phone or data. ”
the national security agency, america' s eyes and ears, constantly deals with highly - sensitive data. problem is, discussing that data over unprotected airwaves represents a huge security risk, often requiring agents to communicate in code. that' s why the agency has developed its own super - secure android handset .
it is important to note that each private key (file type ends in. key) must be protected in order to maintain network integrity. key exchanges must be conducted across secure lines of communication. this could involve directly handing over the keys in person on an encrypted device, it could be a prearranged symmetric
“the advantage of this architecture is that the communication that the mobile device management software would typically have with the device, that communication can now run inside the vpn, so it makes that even more secure, ” hanour said. “it creates value for the mobile device management system as well because you can protect it inside the vpn. ”
now that cyberspace is the primary arena in which we protect information, we are working toward shaping an agile and secure operational cyber environment where we can successfully outmaneuver any adversary. a key step in building confidence in cyberspace is a willingness to offer what we know. please visit our site at urltoken to learn more about our unique experiences and capabilities .
over time, it became more difficult over time for the agency to define “ease of use” on a comparative scale. in just the last five years, the consumer universe appeared to leave the nsa’s secure market behind. “the world everyone wants is, i want to get what i want, when i want it, where i want it. ”
salter describes the “shopping” process for commercial products capable of meeting this frankly ordinary level of encryption, as “hard… we went shopping, we had our little bag and our little list, and we were wandering around looking for stuff. and one of the things we were wandering around looking for was a suite b ikev2 ipsec app that ran on a phone. that was a difficult shopping list to maintain. ”
scrambl3 users remain anonymous when they sign - up for an account and choose their private scrambl3 name. new users only need a valid email address and an android phone to use this privacy technology – no credit card information is required for the public beta. scrambl3 further extends the level of privacy of its users by preventing
public lookups
and
friend requests ,
which are typical of other mobile networks .
the real face of the national security agency looks more like margaret salter. at the rsa conference in san francisco last wednesday, salter told attendees the story of the nsa’s secure mobility strategy. she leads a department called the information assurance directorate. for the better part of four decades, iad has been tasked with securing secret government communications, and building specifications for the tools to do it. the nsa contracts with private suppliers to build a class of devices it calls gots (government off - the - shelf). the gestation cycle for each of these devices – from the conceptual stage, to development, to deployment – typically consumes years. perhaps the best - known gots product is still in wide use today – 1987’s stu - iii secure telephone, which looks about as home on an agent’s desk today as an ibm pc .
instead of dialing up using traditional public phone numbers, scambl3 users call or text using a private scrambl3
black book
contact listing available only to them and other users with whom they have privately shared their scrambl3 name. a private mobile network is only formed after both parties add each other' s scrambl3 names to their respective black books. and for even further privacy, the contacts in each user' s black book will disappear when users log out of the scrambl3 app on their phones .
surprisingly, the devices employ off - the - shelf components and run on openly - available protocols .
the plan was to buy commercial components, layer them together and get a secure solution ,
margaret salter, head of the nsa' s information assurance directorate, said .
it uses solely commercial infrastructure to protect classified data .
calls will be double - encrypted through both ipsec and srtp, per nsa policy .
but their ease of use ranked right up there with a world war ii cipher machine. “once you get something in the hands of an individual user who’s not a cleared comsec custodian, someone who knows what they’re supposed to be doing with this stuff and understands all the details, ease of use became incredibly freakin’ important. and it turned out that, although our stuff was incredibly secure, it was not incredibly easy to use. ”
the part was not to be found, for reasons salter attributes to the industry paying attention to a feature that nist hadn’t considered, called session descriptors – headers that describe the content of media being exchanged in a voip traffic session. “unified communications is more than just making a phone call, ” she explained. “there’s presence, conference calls, and all these cool things they show you they can do… and the only way to do that really is to use that session descriptors protocol rather than break up the dtls. ”
nsa set out to endow fishbowl with support for public cryptographic standards that were good enough, in combination with one another, to enable classified - level communication. nsa calls these standards suite b. “for encryption, it’s aes at the 128 - and 256 - bit strength. for key exchange, it’s elliptic curve diffie - hellman – and we’ve got two nist curves, the p256 and the p384. for the signatures, it’s elliptic curve dsa, with those same parameters. and we add a hash function, which is the sha - 2 series. we needed those, because they’re the cryptography that’s strong enough to protect classified. ”
they launched project fishbowl, a pilot to produce a smartphone made of mostly commercial parts and infrastructure (more cots than gots), capable of supporting classified voice and data, while remaining as easy to use as its civilian counterpart and staying inexpensive. the historical significance of the nsa embracing commercial crypto standards cannot be stressed enough. anyone familiar with how rsa came to be in the first place will recall the fights its engineers faced keeping the government from classifying it, taking its power out of the public’s hands. perhaps the whole point of the rsa standard and the rsa conference is to promote the power of security for everyone through manageable encryption .
the information assurance (ia) mission at the national security agency (nsa) serves a role unlike that of any other u. s. government entity. national security directive (nsd) 42 authorizes nsa to secure national security systems, which includes systems that handle classified information or are otherwise critical to military or intelligence activities. ia has a pivotal leadership role in performing this responsibility, and partners with government, industry, and academia to execute the ia mission .
now we will generate the required keys in order to use tls to encrypt our sip signalling. first we need to create the directory to store our keys in. similar to openvpn, asterisk also comes with its own scripts to help ease the task of creating cryptographic keys. the script comes in
contrib / scripts / ast _ tls _ cert .
in case you' re using the debian packages, i' ve included a copy in the github repository. you' ll be asked for a password to be using with the certificate authority for signing additional keys. pick something secure that you' ll be able to remember in the future as well .
salter said she would previously need to “speak in code” if using a commercial mobile device to discuss classified information .
the information assurance directorate ran into a string of problems during the build due to a lack of interoperability between vendor products .
salter said a lack of interoperability between ssl vpn options forced designers to use ipsec .
designers were also challenged by the functionality in commercial products. vendors were chosen not by reputation or preference, but by their support of required functionality. each was plotted on a grid and chosen by “drawing a line through the list” .
salter said the security specifications, such as those sought for the voice application, would be useful to everyone .
“we need to send a message [ about ] standards, interoperability and plug and play ,
she said .
voice calls are encrypted twice in accordance with nsa policy, using ipsec and srtp, meaning a failure requires “two independent bad things to happen, ” salter said .
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note: the iad. gov website uses tls 1. 2, supported by a department of defense (dod) pki certificate, to ensure confidentiality and integrity for all users. iad. gov website users will need to have the current dod root and intermediate certificate authorities (ca) loaded into their browsers to avoid receiving untrusted website notifications .
install dod root and cas please visit the information assurance support environment (iase) site to download the dod root ca certificates. select the trust store tab and choose the latest installroot: nipr windows installer .
the security platform will also be applied to tablets, another nsa official told the technology review. so far, 100 of the devices have been developed and distributed to government officials .
what' s more, the nsa is hoping that carriers and mobile manufacturers will adopt some of the same concepts for their own products. that is, run all data from its voip app through its own servers, which i' m sure consumers would have absolutely no qualms with. there' s no word on how well this device protects its sensitive contents from being left it in a bar. [ sc magazine via technology review ]
kinja is in read - only mode. we are working to restore service .
to make a call, users dial out using the voip app, which then sends encrypted data over any given carrier' s data network. however, instead of routing directly to another device, the data goes through the nsa' s servers to be verified, logged, and re - encrypted, before being sent back out to the data network and on to its destination. just like its android phones, the nsa is building this infrastructure with existing enterprise - level equipment .
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the only term being thrown around government more than “2016 elections” these days is “cybersecurity, ” particularly following a rash of damaging and high - profile data breaches. with that focus on protecting information top of mind in agencies, usmobile officials hope to find a ready market for their commercial app, which lets government workers use their personal smartphones for top - secret communications .
when the turnkey solution comes to market in october, it will work with android and apple ios devices. it uses the security - enhanced linux operating system and a defense - in - depth approachthe layered approach uses a vpn connection with an encrypted voip call travelling within. when an agency deploys scrambl3 enterprise, administrators will set up what usmobile calls black books, or lists of contacts that each user can communicate with via the vpn .
“a lower - level person wouldn’t necessarily have the director of that particular agency listed, ” hanour said. “conversely, the director of that particular agency would have [ a ] contact list populated with people that are at the higher levels of management. ”
when a user logs into the app on a smartphone, it creates a vpn that connects to the agency’s server, whether it’s in the cloud or on premises. currently, scrambl3 enterprise software is deployed only on ibm power systems linux servers .
a two - rack server can handle up to 3, 000 concurrent calls, hanour said, a capacity “that would handle comfortably an agency of 50, 000 people. ”
once connected, users can see who in their black book is also logged in, as indicated by a green dot next to the name, and then select the mode of communication: email, voice call or text. both senders and recipients would need to have scrambl3 installed .
“once you establish this powerful vpn, you can run anything through it, ” hanour said. “anything that you can put on a server, you can use scrambl3 to communicate with. ”
calls are highly encrypted until they reach the recipient, where the app decrypts them. that communication happens at a top - secret - grade level as specified by nsa. despite that encryption / decryption process, hanour said, latency is unnoticeable .
for additional protection, nothing is recorded – users can’t even leave voicemail – unless an agency specifies otherwise. for instance, hanour said, some law enforcement regulations require that all communication among officers be recorded .
to use scrambl3, agencies don’t need mobile device management systems, but it integrates with any that might exist .
licensing fees for scrambl3 depend on the number of users, but typically start at $ 5 per user per month. the most it would cost, hanour said, is about $ 10 per user per month .
right now, scrambl3 for android is available in beta form in the google play store for testing. scramble3 for ios will be available next month .
the beta version does not include all scrambl3’s features, such as conference calling. when the release version is up and running in october, scrambl3 will offer the only top - secret - grade conference call capability outside dod’s network, hanour said. users will be able to initiate a conference call by touching a few people’s names and pressing the call button .
besides law enforcement, hanour sees potential customers in several types of government operations, including health care, the state department when conducting diplomatic relations and even individual politicians, who might want to communicate in absolute privacy .
“the whole idea is to create trusted communications over untrusted networks (i. e. , the internet), ” hanour said .
guys weak up. do you really think nsa would creat an app that they can' t control? ?? pleaseee stop to dream .
so i use ironsocket vpn and hooray! it has been a success to be able to have ironsocket that gives 100% protection from hackers or whoever. ! we can' t avoid unwanted networks that' s why we have to be more careful. i connect to any wifi zones anywhere i go and i feel safe on anything i scan, download, etc. in my mobile .
ban on encryption is impossible. this is understatement made by people that doesn' t even have a clue that whole internet is practically encrypted. though i doubt that you can expect a complete privacy and security from free applications. only companies like urltoken and urltoken provide complete privacy and security on mobile communications .
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still, as salter told the rsa attendees, for the better part of half a century, the nsa explicitly defined its own market, a private universe of products made for its own exclusive consumption. “that was cool for us, for the longest time. we kinda had a monopoly on this from the very beginning, ” she remarked. “we were mostly building things like radios for combat, [ and ] big link encryptors to hook one site up to another site. ”
“so one of the things i harp on most is, why was that so hard? ” remarked salter .
what appeared at first to be the protocol of choice for digital voice was srtp. “turns out, getting the key management scheme nailed down for that was hard, ” she said. finally, iad was able to work out a way to do this using transport layer security – which it also discovered was preferable to ssl for every other conceivable purpose as well .
none of these standards are unfamiliar to the security community. six years ago, said salter, nsa announced suite b as good enough for classified level. “then there was a big asterisk next to that, ” she added, “that said, ‘by the way, your key management has to be reasonable, and nsa has to look at it to make sure it’s all good. ’ we were trying to give the industry a lead time, to say eventually, if you’ve got these algorithms in your products, we’ll be able to use them in solutions… to protect classified information. ”
but none of the session descriptors protocols in use supported the upgraded tls 1. 2 – the substitute for the deficient ssl – and few of these protocols enabled client authentication. this was necessary in order to avoid an engineering technique called split tunneling, which salter described as a kind of intentional leak that might be acceptable for some businesses but not for national security .
“one of the things we should be demanding, ” she stated at another point, “is that voice apps that do these protocols interoperate with one another. why in heaven’s name don’t they? ”
later, a questioner from the audience offered an answer: he noted that, despite the rapidly accelerating changes in mobile technology, the customer does not appear to be in charge of what those changes are, who’s in control of them, or where they are leading. perhaps any large group of companies, whether in private industry or the government, should be capable of laying down the law when it comes to the foundations and standards they’ll accept for phones purchased in mass quantities .
“i think for us, our mechanism is going to be to publish everything as widely as humanly possible, ” replied the employee of a government secrets agency, “and hope to heck that this makes sense to people… we’ll say, ‘this is our architecture that we’re doing for mobility, ’ and other corporations will say, ‘hey, somebody did all this work for us! ’ and hopefully just take it, show it to their vendor, and say, ‘i want one of these. ’ that’s our hope. ”
scrambl3 is built on a new generation of technology that provides a quantum leap in mobile privacy and security for businesses, government and individuals .
when scrambl3 users communicate with each other, scrambl3 creates a
dark internet tunnel
between their smartphones. this tunnel cloaks the calls and texts by making them invisible on the internet .
business executives. scrambl3 protects publicly - traded company insider information; substantially reduces the risk of theft of trade secrets and intellectual property, of particular concern in overseas markets; safeguards customer and personnel information, and communications related to litigation and contract negotiations matters; and demonstrates management and governance' best practices' approaches to protecting company information .
government officials. scrambl3 protects global leaders, government employees, law enforcement personnel, and elected officials at a top secret and below top secret level for classified and sensitive official as well as personal communications .
effective today, the scrambl3 app for android - based phones is available for a 60 - day free beta offering from the google play store. following the beta test period, usmobile will offer individual scrambl3 subscriptions for approximately
– charlotte, dr. zheng conducted an independent analysis of scrambl3. (see his complete analysis at
the white house has said publicly that it is reviewing use of android - based smartphones that incorporate the same top secret standards and technology that scrambl3 employs in its private mobile platform .
scrambl3 users can make calls on their private mobile network using both cellular 3g / 4g data plans and wi - fi .
in our brave new world, where the details of our lives and businesses are becoming increasingly public through social media, sophisticated marketing techniques and government surveillance, we are seeing a trend toward protecting our privacy ,
hanour said .
we believe privacy is the future, and while people are connecting in positive ways through social networks, we are also seeking privacy solutions to keep our mobile calls and texts confidential .
computing platforms. with scrambl3 enterprise, businesses and governments can create their own top secret grade mobile communications network and mobile intranet that runs exclusively on their private servers. this disruptive technology will start at just
per month for up to 50 users. usmobile and ibm will jointly market scrambl3 enterprise solutions to businesses and governments around the world beginning in 2015 q3 .
- based company founded by a team of engineers with the mission to provide a private mobile network with the highest level of mobile communications privacy and security for its customers .
copyright © 2018 pr newswire association llc. all rights reserved. a cision company .
with all the media attention about government spying, nsa data collection and intercepts, fisa courts, snowden, etc... people are finally waking up and realizing that they need to take steps to actively protect themselves on the internet. as society becomes more and more connected, the possibility of data theft and corruption grows even more. be honest though. are you really surprised ?
now with that out of the way, what technologies are out there that can help safeguard us safe from the government, crooks, and nosy neighbors? the obvious answer is encryption, and layered security. how can we apply this to telecommunications that will work for us on the go and at home? the nsa actually was kind enough to provide us with the specifications needed to build our own clone of an infrastructure that is trusted to protect up to top secret classified material and communications .
. in order to spare you the details of 116 pages of agency and technical speak, here are the basic components of mcp .
the web browser on the user equipment is configured to prohibit the storing or caching of any data in non - volatile memory .
for the time being, we' re going to disregard the requirements for web, email etc. we' re solely focused on the svoip and vpn setup. i know that the requirements now state the use of an ipsec vpn, but the original requirements they planned on using an ssl based vpn. due to inter - operability issues with proprietary ssl vpns, the nsa elected to go with ipsec. for ease of setup and use, we' re going to use
whether you choose to run openvpn and asterisk from your desktop, on a raspberry pi, in a virtual instance, on a vps, or a dedicated solution, go ahead and prep your environment. for consistency sake, i' m going to show the commands to do the setup on a
we already discussed that pki is a requirement for our little project, because we' re not going to use a static configuration due to security concerns. this allows each client to have his / her own public / private key pair. the first step is to setup our own local certificate authority (ca). fortunately, openvpn comes with a tool suite designed to keep pki management simple. it' s called
easy - rsa .
now, depending upon your distribution and packaging system, it may be installed in various directories. for debian, it' s / usr / doc / openvpn / examples / easy - rsa / 2. 0. go ahead and copy that directory into your vpn user' s home directory .
# cp - r / usr / doc / openvpn / examples / easy - rsa / 2. 0 ~ / easy - rsa # cd ~ / easy - rsa
as you can see, you can define key length and other variables associated with the keys that will be generated while using the easy - rsa suite. go ahead and make any changes that you feel necessary for this step. you will be asked again if you want to change any of the variables listed at the bottom during the key building process .
now we' re going to build the actual ca certificates with the following commands .
follow the prompts and change anything that you may have forgotten about in the vars file .
again, follow the prompts for each command in order to generate the required key pairs .
. if you' d like to change any of the variables, please do so at this time. you can change listening address, lan ip space, key locations and so on. save the server. conf file to / etc / openvpn / server. conf. now we need to pull in the keys we previously created using easy - rsa .
as previously discussed, transferring private key requires a great deal of thought and security. you should have a chosen method for key distribution (one that involves physical mediums and not transmitting the keys over plaintext protocols), and sent the clients the following files .
. you will need to change the server ip address in order to match it back to your own openvpn server .
you now have a fully functional vpn configuration. generate as many client keys as needed, and send them the appropriate configuration files. now, its time to move on to asterisk .
asterisk is a full featured, open source pbx solution that includes all of the supported features that we require for this exercise. first of all, we' re going to go ahead and install asterisk onto our respective servers. again, you can host this on the same box as the vpn or on any number of platform choices. if you' re going to run it on another computer, you' ll need to generate vpn keys so that it can connect through the vpn. use the previous steps to set this up. i am again giving the commands for installing this on a debian based system. for my configuration, i' ll be placing the asterisk box on the same server as openvpn. keep this in mind, and change your ips / network segments accordingly .
# mkdir / etc / asterisk / keys #. / ast _ tls _ cert - c 192. 168. 77. 1 - o
fish bowl communications
- d / etc / asterisk / keys
this created quite a few files under / etc / asterisk / keys. the ca. crt is important, because it will be required in order to distribute to the clients. we also still need to create additional keys for the clients in order for them to be able to communicate with asterisk. go ahead and create two certificates for client1 and client2 respectively .
#. / ast _ tls _ cert - m client - c / etc / asterisk / keys / ca. crt - k / etc / asterisk / keys / ca. key - c client1 - o
fish bowl communications
- d / etc / asterisk / keys - o client1 #. / ast _ tls _ cert - m client - c / etc / asterisk / keys / ca. crt - k / etc / asterisk / keys / ca. key - c client2 - o
fish bowl communications
- d / etc / asterisk / keys - o client2
fishbowl is a mobile phone architecture developed by the u.s. national security agency ( nsa ) to provide a secure voice over ip ( voip ) capability using commercial grade products that can be approved to communicate classified information . it is the first phase of nsa 's enterprise mobility architecture . according to a presentation at the 2012 rsa conference by margaret salter , a technical director in the information assurance directorate , “ the plan was to buy commercial components , layer them together and get a secure solution . it uses solely commercial infrastructure to protect classified data . " government employees were reportedly testing 100 of the phones as of the announcement . the initial version was implemented using google 's android operating system , modified to ensure central control of the phone 's configuration at all times . to minimize the chance of compromise , the phones use two layers of encryption protocols , ipsec and secure real-time transport protocol ( srtp ) , and employ nsa 's suite b encryption and authentication algorithms . usmobile has implemented commercial enterprise version of fishbowl technology via the scrambl3 mobile apps that run on both android and ios platforms . the phones are locked down in many ways . while they use commercial wireless channels , all communications must be sent through an enterprise-managed server . no direct voice calls are allowed , except for 9-1-1 emergency calls . only nsa approved applications from the nsa enterprise app store can be installed . nsa has published a 100-page overview specification for the mobility capability package . in tandem with the capability package there are a series of protection profiles . these protection profiles list out the requirements a commercial product must meet to be used in the mobile phone architecture .
fishbowl is a mobile phone architecture developed by the u.s. national security agency (nsa) to provide a secure voice over ip (voip) capability using commercial grade products that can be approved to communicate classified information. it is the first phase of nsa's enterprise mobility architecture. according to a presentation at the 2012 rsa conference by margaret salter, a technical director in the information assurance directorate, “ the plan was to buy commercial components, layer them together and get a secure solution. it uses solely commercial infrastructure to protect classified data. " government employees were reportedly testing 100 of the phones as of the announcement. the initial version was implemented using google's android operating system, modified to ensure central control of the phone's configuration at all times. to minimize the chance of compromise, the phones use two layers of encryption protocols, ipsec and secure real-time transport protocol (srtp), and employ nsa's suite b encryption and authentication algorithms. usmobile has implemented commercial enterprise version of fishbowl technology via the scrambl3 mobile apps that run on both android and ios platforms. the phones are locked down in many ways. while they use commercial wireless channels, all communications must be sent through an enterprise-managed server. no direct voice calls are allowed, except for 9-1-1 emergency calls. only nsa approved applications from the nsa enterprise app store can be installed. nsa has published a 100-page overview specification for the mobility capability package. in tandem with the capability package there are a series of protection profiles. these protection profiles list out the requirements a commercial product must meet to be used in the mobile phone architecture.
fishbowl is a mobile phone architecture developed by the u.s. national security agency (nsa) to provide a secure voice over ip (voip) capability using commercial grade products that can be approved to communicate classified information. it is the first phase of nsa's enterprise mobility architecture. according to a presentation at the 2012 rsa conference by margaret salter, a technical director in the information assurance directorate, “ the plan was to buy commercial components, layer them together and get a secure solution. it uses solely commercial infrastructure to protect classified data. " government employees were reportedly testing 100 of the phones as of the announcement. the initial version was implemented using google's android operating system, modified to ensure central control of the phone's configuration at all times. to minimize the chance of compromise, the phones use two layers of encryption protocols, ipsec and secure real-time transport protocol (srtp), and employ nsa's suite b encryption and authentication algorithms. usmobile has implemented commercial enterprise version of fishbowl technology via the scrambl3 mobile apps that run on both android and ios platforms. the phones are locked down in many ways. while they use commercial wireless channels, all communications must be sent through an enterprise-managed server. no direct voice calls are allowed, except for 9-1-1 emergency calls. only nsa approved applications from the nsa enterprise app store can be installed. nsa has published a 100-page overview specification for the mobility capability package. in tandem with the capability package there are a series of protection profiles. these protection profiles list out the requirements a commercial product must meet to be used in the mobile phone architecture.