June 1993 - cypherpunks-legacy

Re: comments on your recent post of FOIAed documents.
by Jason Zions 22 Jun '93

22 Jun '93

>1) The first document is particularly compelling, especially >considering the apparant references to the censored paragraph in the >un-censored paragraph... it makes it obvious that there are two sets >of reasons for clipper; the ones that they'll admit, and the ones >which are classified and which they won't admit in public. I also find it interesting that, while the President directed that the fact of access to keys by Law Enforcement Officials should not be hidden from the public, the fact of access to keys by ithe intelligence community (i.e. FBI/CIA/NSA) was not to be similarly disclosed. >> In one recent experiment it took three minutes and >> fourteen seconds to locate a source-code version of DES on the >> INTERNET. > >Hmm. It only took me under minute when I tried it (using the command >"archie -s des.tar"). Maybe they tried it when the archie servers >were overloaded :-), or maybe they counted the time needed to read the >archie man page.. They probably ran the client at the far end of a 9600-baud straw on a bad archie day. >5) What kind of a dork uses words like "incentivized"? A government dork. I find it more damning that the government basically bought-off AT&T by promising them contracts; whatever happened to competetive bid? I find it highly unlikely that the contracts in question are for clipper-based phones; we already know the government doesn't plan to use clipper technology itself, since it can be suborned by LEO types. Hi, Bill! Jason "Jazz" Zions

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Re: The Bizdos flap
by George A. Gleason 22 Jun '93

22 Jun '93

Quoting you, "If one wishes PKP to behave "ethically," it is necessary for us to make it unprofitable for PKP to behave in the manner in which it is. E. g. question their patents, bring suits against them, and otherwise make PKP's existence unprofitable. Suddenly, it will behave "ethically." That's like, if you want your kid to behave, beat him any time he misbehaves. Yeah, uh-huh. If we want PKP to behave ethically, we have to show them positive i.e. profitmaking incentives for doing so. For instance commitments to buy their products if they do (whatever). -gg

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Re: one reaction: early FOIA results
by George A. Gleason 22 Jun '93

22 Jun '93

Re AT&T being "incentivised;" again, I'd like to suggest it's time to dis-incentivise them like right now. If you're on AT&T long distance, change your carrier. If you're using an AT&T phone system, replace it with anything else. It would be interesting to find out that magic number of phones which AT&T were promised under the Federal contract. Then we can either a) set that as a target for business phone systems getting rid of AT&T, i.e. one for one; or b) figure out what the revenues would be and get an equivalent amount in disconnected AT&T long distance (this one could be done on a gross dollar equivalent amount, assuming one year's worth of service is the relevant gross dollar value of a given client), or c) *both.* Well....? -gg

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Re: OTP dual decryption
by George A. Gleason 22 Jun '93

22 Jun '93

Cyphertexts: I was thinking, you do your actual comms in a PKS and then decrypt on disc and then reencrypt same over to OTP with an innocuous covertext stored alongside... oh poo, now of course; I was mistaken. You take your PKS cyphertext and generate a spurious OTP covertext from there. Okay, my error. Sorry.... -gg

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hardware RNG
by Douglas Sinclair 22 Jun '93

22 Jun '93

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Cypherpunks, A while back there was lots of discussion in the list about hardware random number generation. The consensus was that diode white noise was the easiest thing to use. It probably is, but I havn't been able to persuade a single diode to be noisy yet. Anyhow, I turned to the simplest white noise source that I have, which happens to be a radio tuned to a dead channel. I hooked that up to a home made interface board that has previously served as a frame grabber, and wrote some software to grab random numbers. The hardware compares the signal to four known voltages, and sets the feedback pins on my printer port correspondingly. Thus, I get a nibble of information every cycle. However, it's fairly interrelated (if the high bit is set, the low ones must be set too, &c). So, this is the scheme I came up with to randomize it. Read two nibbles and concatenate them into a byte. Take the parity of this byte to give you one bit. Read eight bits this way, to make one byte. Read 128 bytes by this method, and take a MD5 hash of this data. Use the 16 byte message digest as the final random bitstream. Do this as many times as needed to get the desired number of bytes. Using the ENTROPY1 software submitted to the list by Peter Meyer, I determined that a 1000000 byte file had a relative entropy of 0.999980. This seems close enough to 1 for cryptographical use. For each bit of output, 64 bits have been read from the device. The MD5 transposition should eliminate all of the wave nature of the signal and make adjacent bytes unrelated. So, the question now is, is it safe? An obvious method of attack is to simply connect an identical device to a radio and grab identical data. However, I feel this is unfeasible. Radio noise is omnidirectional and thus (I think) should give you very different signals at different geographic locations due to the different phases of the various sources. There are too many variables in the hardware itself. What frequency is it at? What are the comparison values set to? What other method could be used to attack this except for the obvious tempest attack on the host computer? Doug -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.3 iQCVAgUBLCZM4SEF9mfcHsd/AQGpYgP+OaJl7v7GO4SITR7nalpdU0wx6mdXHYwD CYP/u1f5BVrPfE85Thsi7beiZMp8o8aI+H5MK1uCMQ1X6pj7SOODuRXhRaXmbjnv jghthWkt19SH4AbpDz7wpV2X7BXmIO0zGBv1rZB84cBgsXQH7cmlgyUCNJP86EUq cCmt7bFSG+U= =tmPC -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- -- PGP 2.2 Key by finger

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The Bizdos flap
by rclark＠nyx.cs.du.edu 22 Jun '93

22 Jun '93

bout all the Bizdos flap: It is entirely possible that PKP has no sensible alternative but to capitulate to the NSA's offer. While Bizdos himself may oppose the Clipper chip, it is obviously in PKP's best interest to accept a virtual monopoly on the crypto industry. While Bizdos' title may be "President," it is very easy for a company to remove a "President" who makes unprofitable choices. As has been said before, corporations have no truck with ethics. To expect a corporate entity to behave ethically is the same as to expect a T-cell to cease absorbing phagocytes. It ain't in its nature. If one wishes PKP to behave "ethically," it is necessary for us to make it unprofitable for PKP to behave in the manner in which it is. E. g. question their patents, bring suits against them, and otherwise make PKP's existence unprofitable. Suddenly, it will behave "ethically." Any ideas, folks? Don't expect help from Bizdos on it, though. [P. S. Ever notice that the only two people who have automatic form-letter answers to their email are Billys? Billy Idol and Billy Clinton. Fitting, somehow.] ---- Robert W. F. Clark rclark(a)nyx.cs.du.edu clark(a)metal.psu.edu

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FOIA request
by rclark＠nyx.cs.du.edu 22 Jun '93

22 Jun '93

ngs.lance.colostate.edu (L. Detweiler) says: >I'm really amazed how unbiased these letters are. In fact, maybe they >were designed to be suitable for FOIA release. There is none of the >one-sided propaganda tone of the Clipper announcement. Perhaps they were prepared. However, it seems just as likely that they realized that there would be a vast outcry over Clipper, just as there was over the "Digital Telephony" proposal. They would have to be dumber than even I consider them not even to consider the possibility of public outcry. >Does anyone >suppose that the important military aides anticipate FOIA requests and >come up with bland and benign documents to satisfy them? I'll bet they started doing this the moment that the FOIA was passed. Why wouldn't they? It's expedient. >For the first time we have an official confirmation that the original >intent of Clipper (or similar technology) was to make it *mandatory*. Yep. This particular quote ought to be distributed widely. We cypherpunks have known this since the Clipper proposal reared its monstrous head; now it's official writ, only recently declassified. Let's make the most of it. >I think this is rather ironic considering many of the apologist's >current main rationalizations (Denning, Sternlight, etc.) that it is a >`voluntary' program. Caveat Emptor! Well, as we've known, they're either shills or idiots. Perhaps both. >`incentivised' -- a cute euphemism for collusion. I wonder to what >extent they were `incentivised'. 'Incentivised' indeed. I believe that anyone capable of using such a revolting neologism is, _ipso facto_, untrustworthy. Even Hollywood people don't speak _that_ badly. [. . .] >>In the meantime, DoD has trapdoor technology ... >wow, they call Clipper `trapdoor technology' -- great PR, for us. It's pretty appalling that they even _admit_ that it is 'trapdoor' technology. However, as P. T. Barnum once said: "No one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public." They're probably planning some new crime already, realizing that Clipper will be defeated. They had Clipper in the hopper since before Digital Telephony was defeated. As Clipper makes Digital Telephony look like a schoolboy prank, prepare for something genuinely monstrous in a few months. Probably just when we start feeling a little complacent and victorious, too. [Thanks to John Gilmore repeated; the FOIA gave very useful information.] ---- Robert W. F. Clark (still waiting on the results rclark(a)nyx.cs.du.edu of my OWN FOIA request) clark(a)metal.psu.edu

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Re: comments on your recent post of FOIAed documents.
by Fred Heutte 22 Jun '93

22 Jun '93

I did better than that: 2 seconds flat for archie -m10 des.tar :-)

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What is going on here?
by TO1SITTLER＠APSICC.APS.EDU 22 Jun '93

22 Jun '93

From: SMTP%"Postmaster" 21-JUN-1993 22:58:06.38 To: <TO1SITTLER> CC: Subj: Undeliverable Mail Date: Mon, 21 Jun 1993 22:57:59 -0600 (MDT) From: Postmaster(a)APSICC.APS.EDU Subject: Undeliverable Mail To: <TO1SITTLER> Bad address -- <cdohner(a)indirect.com> Error -- Address refused by receiver: <cdohner(a)indirect.com> (550 <cdohner(a)indirect.com>... User unknown) Start of returned message Date: Mon, 21 Jun 1993 22:57:54 -0600 (MDT) From: TO1SITTLER(a)APSICC.APS.EDU (Kragen Sittler) Message-Id: <930621225754.d46(a)APSICC.APS.EDU> Subject: What? To: cdohner(a)indirect.com X-Vmsmail-To: SMTP%"cdohner(a)indirect.com" From: SMTP%"cypherpunks-request(a)toad.com" 21-JUN-1993 15:27:12.37 To: TO1SITTLER CC: Subj: Date: Mon, 21 Jun 93 10:56:26 MST From: cdodhner(a)indirect.com (Christian D. Odhner) Message-Id: <9306211756.AA03344(a)indirect.com> Content-Type: text Content-Length: 123 Apparently-To: cypherpunks(a)toad.com Just checking out a "patently false rumor" I heard about... <g> Yeah I'll bite. Drop me a note or not... -Happy Hunting. What are you talking about? End of returned message

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Re: OTP dual decryption
by zane＠genesis.mcs.com 22 Jun '93

22 Jun '93

In message <93Jun21.003959pdt.14001-3(a)well.sf.ca.us>, "George A. Gleason" writes: > > interesting... If I understand you; it's keep your DES key in your head, and > use the DES cyphertext to create an appropriate OTP key that decrypts back > to something innocuous. good. The thing is, to make this credible, we > still need an OTP program which is in general use for communications. Yeah. OTP's seem awfully cumbersome. > > Now here's another possible problem. Let's say that They are tapping you > and grab all the cyphertext of your actual communications. Now they grab > your hard drive and what they get is a different batch of cyphertext. That > in and of itself might call up some suspicions. Any solution in sight...? Hmm? I don't understand this problem. There's only one set of cyphertext.. the actual cyphertext. Do you mean "different batch of cyphertext" as the OTP which creates the innocuous plaintext from the cyphertext? Maybe encrypt the OTP w/DES and keep it on your hard drive. When "they" snag the drive, they see the different cyphertext, you tell them that it's the OTP you used and give them the DES-key to decrypt the innocuous OTP. I sense a problem with histogram equalization, however. Is there a problem here or does OTP-encryption take care of that? -- | Sameer Parekh-zane(a)genesis.MCS.COM-PFA related mail to pfa(a)genesis.MCS.COM | | Apprentice Philosopher, Writer, Physicist, Healer, Programmer, Lover, more | | "Symbiosis is Good" - Me_"Specialization is for Insects" - R. A. Heinlein_/ \_______________________/ \______________________________________________/

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