Random Wikipedia of the Day (RWotD): Church Committee

A lot of people concerned about NSA because of Edward Snowden may not be familiar with the Church Committee, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Church_Committee.

The Church Committee was a US Senate Committee that looked into illeagal spying by the NSA, FBI, & CIA back in 1975.

I was reminded of it when I read this Gawker article http://gawker.com/after-30-years-of-silence-the-original-nsa-whistleblow-1454865018 on Perry Fellwock (aka Winslow Peck), a former NSA employee turned Whistleblower back in 1971 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perry_Fellwock.

To see more post like this, just click on the Random Wikipedia of the Day RWotD label, more labels can be found in cloud at left side of blog and at bottom left of every post.

Security & Hacking: Xavier de Carné's "How I compiled TrueCrypt 7.1a for Win32 and matched the official binaries"

Good paper https://madiba.encs.concordia.ca/~x_decarn/truecrypt-binaries-analysis/ by Xavier de Carné (Twitter @xavier2dc or https://twitter.com/xavier2dc).

If your unfamiliar with the concerns about TrueCrypt, Xavier's "Challenges and implications" section concisely outlines those concerns.

Including the IsTrueCryptAuditedYet? project http://istruecryptauditedyet.com/ which I have blogged http://cliffsesportcorner.blogspot.com/2013/10/psa-truecrypt-audit-project.html

To see all my post on TrueCrypt, or to bookmark to easily check for new posts, click on the Truecrypt label.

Labels can be found at bottom left of every blog post and in Label cloud at left side of Blog.

Additional links from Xavier de Carné's paper:

• Analysis: Is there a backdoor in Truecrypt? Is Truecrypt a CIA honeypot? http://www.privacylover.com/encryption/analysis-is-there-a-backdoor-in-truecrypt-is-truecrypt-a-cia-honeypot/
• Security Analysis of TrueCrypt 7.0a with an Attack on the Keyfile Algorithm (PDF) https://www.privacy-cd.org/downloads/truecrypt_7.0a-analysis-en.pdf

Security & Hacking: "Why David Petraeus’s Gmail account is a national security issue"

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/worldviews/wp/2012/11/10/why-david-petraeuss-gmail-account-is-a-national-security-issue/

Patraeus was head of CIA until he resigned over this issue.  http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/david-petraeus-resigns-as-cia-director/2012/11/09/636d204e-2aa8-11e2-bab2-eda299503684_story.html

Not clear to me, but it sounds like Paula Broadwell, the woman who did his Biography & who he was having affair with, had some type of access to his personal Gmail account.

Evidently one of his Gmail contacts got threatening emails from Broadwell, and contacted the FBI over it, and there was some concern that his GMail account had been hacked.

Could have been as simple as staying logged in to account while he was out of room where computer or phone was, while she was there.

Honestly though, as someone interested in Cyber Security, that is that part I am most curious about, though I also wonder about the motives of all the parties involved.