April 1993 - cypherpunks-legacy

Boston Globe article 4/17/93
by Bill Sommerfeld 17 Apr '93

17 Apr '93

[I've called the Globe to complain about their swallowing the government's story, hook, line, and sinker; I suggest others do likewise...] US reveals computer chip for scrambling telephones By John Mintz Washington Post WASHINGTON -- The White House yesterday announced its new plan to prevent criminals, terrorists, and industrial spies from decoding communications over telephones, fax machines, and computers while ensuring the government's ability to eavesdrop. The plan features a $1200 government-developed computer chip embedded in a scrambling device the size of a small notebook, which the government hopes will be adopted as the universal means of encryption. The Clinton administration said the technology will balance the interests of civil libertarians, corporations, and individuals on the one hand against law enforcement and intelligence agencies on the other. The official White House announcement yesterday was the endorsement of the Clipper Chip, developed by NSA, as the government standard for encryption devices. Industry and US officials said that means the Clipper Chip also will become widely accepted in corporate America, because companies and individuals desiring to do business with federal agencies that encode their information would have to use the government's standard. The success of the government's initiative depends on the willingness of companies to accept encryption that the government can crack. AT&T announced yesterday it would use the new chip in all its secure nongovernment telephones. The NSA has licensed two California firms to manufacture and market the Clipper Chip, officials said. The price is expected to drop to about $25 each, they said.

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Proposal for anon chaining
by KINNEY WILLIAM H 17 Apr '93

17 Apr '93

Recent traffic on anonymous remailers/servers: >From: Eli <ebrandt(a)jarthur.claremont.edu> >> From: Hal <74076.1041(a)CompuServe.COM> >> This method of posting does not allow you to receive replies. I have set >> "nicknames" for these two accounts as "Untraceable account" which will appear > >in the "From" line on the postings. Hopefully that will offer a clue that > >the normal reply mechanism doesn't work. Maybe the nickname should say so >> more explicitly? > > >The security provided by this technique could be provided without >the IMHO serious disadvantage of having no return address. Eric's >hybrid approach, where a pseudonym server hands mail to an remailer >chain, is secure (barring sophisticated traffic analysis) if you >trust the last remailer in the chain. Julf, have you thought about >whether you want to do something like this? > Hal Here's an idea I haven't seen suggested before, which would remove the need for a pseudonym server: The way things stand now, chaining Cypherpunk remailers works by nesting PGP encryptions of the form <remail header> *********** message text *********** If you want to chain remailers, you encrypt the above, make IT the new message text, and then add another header, and so on until you get bored. My proposal is for a modification of this protocol to allow for pseudonymous return mail addresses, like this: The trick would be to separate the message text from the remailer routing information, in a message of the form *********** ROUTING INFORMATION *********** *********** MESSAGE TEXT *********** where both blocks are encrypted with PGP. The message text would be encrypted with the PGP public key of the intended final recipient of the message, and would not be modified by the intermediate anon remailers. The routing information would be for the benefit of the remailers only. It would be created by the RECIPIENT and made publicly available as a pseudonymous mail address. It would work like this: Suppose user foo(a)bar.com wishes to establish a pseudonymous identity, and wants to route it through anon remailers "anon1" and "anon2". What he does is take a message of the form :: Request-Remailing-To: foo(a)bar.com and encrypts it with server anon1's PGP public key, to create <ANON1 ENCRYPTED ADDRESS>. Then he adds another header to make :: Request-Remailing-To: anon1 <ANON1 ENCRYPTED ADDRESS> and encrypts THIS with anon2's public key to make <ANON2 ENCRYPTED ADDRESS>, and adds a header to make :: Request-Remailing-To: anon2 <ANON2 ENCRYPTED ADDRESS> Obviously, this procedure can be nested to arbitrary depth, chaining through as many anon servers as you like. The trick is that this address block can be made PUBLIC, since the only way to unwind the routing is to have access to the secret keys of all the intermediate anon servers, and the identity of the recipient is protected. foo(a)bar.com then anonymously posts a PGP public key and a routing block to some public forum, and people can communicate with him without having any idea as to his actual identity. When I want to send a message to him, I encrypt the message with his provided public key, and then add the encrypted routing header, which he has also provided. I give him my own pseudonymous mail routing header to allow him to reply. This seems to me to be a very robust pseudonymous mail system which could be implemented by relatively minor changes to the existing Cypherpunk remailer structure. It has the additional advantage of being decentralized and maintenance-free. It could be used for pseudonyms on net news, e-mail, wherever, and could presumably be integrated in some way into Julf's anon server. Comments? -- Will

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REAL ftp address of agrep tool
by grady＠netcom.com 17 Apr '93

17 Apr '93

The real address is: cs.arizona.edu in the directory "agrep". The incorrect ftp site I mentioned before, sunsite.unc.edu, has some interesting poly sci papers, but not much code. Too many archives. Too little time. Grady Ward

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fuzzy grep available
by grady＠netcom.com 17 Apr '93

17 Apr '93

"agrep" version 2.0.4 available via anonymous FTP from sunsite.unc.edu (including source) has a feature of cryptographic interest: fuzzy searches. For example, agrep -2 cypherpunks newsgroupspooldirectory would find all occurrence of"cypherpunks" or any such pattern with up to two errors of substitution, addition or deletion. cpyherpunks, cyphernks cipherapunks would all be found, fer instance. And the thing is Boyer-Moore sublinear FAST. Also has egrep features looking for up to 30,000 (yes, thirty thousand) patterns simultaneously with Boyer-Moore speed. For the NSA the applications are obvious: look for a bounch of keys words like revolution Timothy May NSA quickly. For us a good initial use might be to screen out "bad" passwords that are to simply a variant of a normal word. For example, if agrep -3 <prospective password/phrase> usr/dict/words or the lyric library, or the star trek location list or whatever, if anything were found then that password FAILS. This is a lot easier to use than other available tools. Like, MacPGP2.2 source, I will mail this on request IF you cannot do anonymous FTP from where you are. Grady Ward

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More info on Clipper Chip
by Dave Banisar 17 Apr '93

17 Apr '93

Comments on White House Clipper Plan I attended the "interesting" NIST press conference yesterday on the "Clipper Chip" and may be able to clear up a few quaestions. According to NIST: The Chip has 4 functions, including Key Encryption Serial Number Escrow functionality Thus, it sounds like a key management system may have to be built into the devices that will be sold with the chip. However this means that they will also be able to determine which key to get becuase they will know the serial number. It also seems likely that once your key is compromised, its gone forever. This is a serious problem The Attorney General will determine next week who will be the escrow agents for this. I am willing to bet $ that NIST/Commerce will be one of them (not a lot, after all, I do work for a non-profit). Everything about this proposal is classified. The chip is classified but even more disturbing, the president directing ordering a review into crypto policy is also classified. CPSR has already filed 11 FOIA requests for all information, including the directive. You can expect that we will be filing suit shortly to get those documents and force this out into the open. When I questioned them about why the review was happening after the proposal, they did not answer me. This is not 1984 all over again-its '86. The NSA tried this exact same "black box" proposal (minus the escrow) in 1986. Industry laughed them out of the park. NIST also stated that the proposal has been implimented for 14 months and they (NSA actually) have been working on it for at least 4 years. AT&T announced yesterday that will will begin selling devices with these Clippers in them immediatly. We've been sold down the river by ma bell again. Dave Banisar CPSR Washington Office

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CPSR Statement on White House Plan
by Dave Banisar 17 Apr '93

17 Apr '93

CPSR Crypto Statement ----------------------------------------------- April 16, 1993 Washington, DC COMPUTER PROFESSIONALS CALL FOR PUBLIC DEBATE ON NEW GOVERNMENT ENCRYPTION INITIATIVE Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility (CPSR) today called for the public disclosure of technical data underlying the government's newly-announced "Public Encryption Management" initiative. The new cryptography scheme was announced today by the White House and the National Institute for Standards and Technology (NIST), which will implement the technical specifications of the plan. A NIST spokesman acknowledged that the National Security Agency (NSA), the super- secret military intelligence agency, had actually developed the encryption technology around which the new initiative is built. According to NIST, the technical specifications and the Presidential directive establishing the plan are classified. To open the initiative to public review and debate, CPSR today filed a series of Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests with key agencies, including NSA, NIST, the National Security Council and the FBI for information relating to the encryption plan. The CPSR requests are in keeping with the spirit of the Computer Security Act, which Congress passed in 1987 in order to open the development of non-military computer security standards to public scrutiny and to limit NSA's role in the creation of such standards. CPSR previously has questioned the role of NSA in developing the so-called "digital signature standard" (DSS), a communications authentication technology that NIST proposed for government-wide use in 1991. After CPSR sued NIST in a FOIA lawsuit last year, the civilian agency disclosed for the first time that NSA had, in fact, developed that security standard. NSA is due to file papers in federal court next week justifying the classification of records concerning its creation of the DSS. David Sobel, CPSR Legal Counsel, called the administration's apparent commitment to the privacy of electronic communications, as reflected in today's official statement, "a step in the right direction." But he questioned the propriety of NSA's role in the process and the apparent secrecy that has thus far shielded the development process from public scrutiny. "At a time when we are moving towards the development of a new information infrastructure, it is vital that standards designed to protect personal privacy be established openly and with full public participation. It is not appropriate for NSA -- an agency with a long tradition of secrecy and opposition to effective civilian cryptography -- to play a leading role in the development process." CPSR is a national public-interest alliance of computer industry professionals dedicated to examining the impact of technology on society. CPSR has 21 chapters in the U.S. and maintains offices in Palo Alto, California, Cambridge, Massachusetts and Washington, DC. For additional information on CPSR, call (415) 322-3778 or e-mail <cpsr(a)csli.stanford.edu>. ======================================

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Big Brother: Unlawful Taking
by Harry Shapiro 17 Apr '93

17 Apr '93

I think the gov. involvement in the Clipper is an unlawful taking against anyone else who has made an investment in selling encryption. RSA, for example. These people should sue the government to talking this multi-billion dollar business away from them. /harry -- Harry Shapiro habs(a)panix.com List Administrator of the Extropy Institute Mailing List Private Communication for the Extropian Community since 1991

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Big Brother: Public Escrow is Needed
by Harry Shapiro 17 Apr '93

17 Apr '93

All the talk about Escrowing of keys by sepeerate agencies is all well and good. However, to be really secure, the computer system they reside on, and all access to it, must be in some way very public and very very limited. The public needs to know that at least one of the key-pairs, can in no we be retrieved except through some very public process. That law enforcement or some cracker doesn't have some back order into teh Escrowed Key Server... As as somebody else pointed out, once my key is know ALL my communication is now "OPEN." Not just what they got a warrent for. Thus, the actual opening of my "mail/voice/etc" should be done in more, again very public place, so they my key-pair (and the cost of replacing it if the warrent is unfounded) is kept secure and never in the hands of any person or agency. In other words, I don't want my key-pair sitting in a non-secured database, to re-used latter (with or without a warrent.) If the key-pair is turned over to someone/agency and I am not found quilty or indicted, etc. I need to be told so I can change my keys, or even have the government pay me for this cost as they have un lawfully taken the value of my Clipper based device away from me. /harry -- Harry Shapiro habs(a)panix.com List Administrator of the Extropy Institute Mailing List Private Communication for the Extropian Community since 1991

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Big Brother: Easy to Break
by Harry Shapiro 17 Apr '93

17 Apr '93

I recall having a conversation at the Boston ExI meeting, talking about super computers and how fast they could break small keys (like 80 bits). I think it was carlf, and I don't recall the exact estimate given, it I think it was on the order of several hours to several days for a fast connection machine class super computer to break such a key by brute force. The NSA certainly has plenty of fast machines, and I assume they will be able to break any clipper based encryption routinely. Certainly as 64-bit, high speed multiprocessors come on line in the next few years it will be easier and easier for even us plain folks to break such keys (although I sure not a simple task). With NSA having the algorithim and access to perhaps at least half the key or perhaps some little bit of "known text" that clippper puts into each message to make it easier to do a known text attack on someone's clipper encoded message, we can assume that the escrowed keys are at best a ruse... -- Harry Shapiro habs(a)panix.com List Administrator of the Extropy Institute Mailing List Private Communication for the Extropian Community since 1991

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Big Brother: Post Filtering the Clipper
by Harry Shapiro 17 Apr '93

17 Apr '93

Some posters have speculated that it might be possible to get a phone, swap it with someone else, and then the feds would not be able to get the correct key-pair. An other poster assumed that each clipper chip would send out some sort of Clipper-ID in plain-text before and/or during and/or after a session. Which causes me to further speculate that it may be possible to filter out these plain text messages. (They are probally built in to the exchange of keys ritual and so can't be filtered out without preventing the Clipper to do it thing...). If they can be filter, filtering them may either be an out right criminal act or be considered probally cause for a warrent to determine why you are filtering them out, etc. -- Harry Shapiro habs(a)panix.com List Administrator of the Extropy Institute Mailing List Private Communication for the Extropian Community since 1991

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