June 1993 - cypherpunks-legacy

PKP sellout?
by hal＠alumni.cco.caltech.edu 12 Jun '93

12 Jun '93

This was my response on sci.crypt to this announcement that PKP will be supporting DSS, and licensing its technology for use by Clipper phones. Thanks to Lance for alerting us to this announcement. ----- jim(a)rand.org (Jim Gillogly) forwards: >This is to notify the public that the National Institute of >Standards and Technology (NIST) intends to grant an exclusive >world-wide license to Public Key Partners of Sunnyvale, California >to practice the Invention embodied in U.S. Patent Application No. >07/738.431 and entitled "Digital Signature Algorithm." And so it appears that another patent jewel will be added to the crown worn by PKP, the de facto owner of cryptographic technology in the United States. They will have an exclusive license to the DSA, as they already do to RSA and most other worthwhile encryption technologies. This also appears to put to rest the much-publicized feud between RSA and NIST/NSA. Conspiracy theorists can now comfortably return to the position that PKP/RSADSI is actually an arm of the NSA, dedicated to restricting and delaying access to strong cryptography as much as possible. >Notice of availability of this invention for licensing >was waived because it was determined that expeditious granting of >such license will best serve the interest of the Federal Government >and the public. Once again we are presented with a fait accompli; no other organizations were given an opportunity to bid for the licensing of this patent. The government prefers to see PKP holding the keys to all cryptography in the U.S. Remember how Clipper's technology was similarly assigned to particular corporations on a non-competitive basis? >Subject to NIST's grant of this license, PKP is pleased to declare >its support for the proposed Federal Information Processing >Standard for Digital Signatures (the "DSS") and the pending >availability of licenses to practice the DSA. And what of the technical objections to DSA/DSS raised in earlier documents by officials of RSADSI, such as in the recent CACM? No doubt those objections are now moot. >PKP will also grant a license to practice key management, at no >additional fee, for the integrated circuits which will implement >both the DSA and the anticipated Federal Information Processing >Standard for the "key escrow" system announced by President Clinton >on April 16, 1993. So PKP is now supporting key escrow and Clipper. Can anyone seriously argue that this company is a friend to supporters of strong cryptography? These are dark times indeed. PKP has thrown in with the government, getting behind DSS and Clipper in exchange for exclusive licensing rights. Their ownership of DH and RSA will make it that much harder for any competition to Clipper to arise. If the 60-day comment period really means anything, perhaps public criticism can be effective here. There is much to be concerned about in this announcement. Hal Finney hal(a)alumni.caltech.edu

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Nsa/gshq
by M..Stirner＠f28.n125.z1.FIDONET.ORG 12 Jun '93

12 Jun '93

* Reply to msg originally in CYPHERPUNKS Uu> Good lord, cypherpunks, I wouldn't be surprised if Britain soon Uu> official endorses the Clipper. All our worst paranoia would be Uu> reality. Consider it: the NSA and GCHQ have been in active Uu> collaboration ever since WWII and especially in recent years. Uu> This is all documented by Bamford. To say nothing of Peter Wright's [MI5] revelations, the publication of which I understand was banned in the UK. Very interesting stuff - I hope Britons eventually got the chance to read his book, _Spycatcher_. ********************************************************************* * <m..stirner(a)f28.n125.z1.fidonet.org> - PGP Key D30909 via servers * * > What country can preserve its liberties if its rulers are not <* * > warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit <* * > of resistance? Let them take arms!" - Thomas Jefferson, 1787 <* ********************************************************************* ___ Blue Wave/QWK v2.12 -- M. Stirner - via FidoNet node 1:125/1 UUCP: ...!uunet!kumr!shelter!28!M..Stirner INTERNET: M..Stirner(a)f28.n125.z1.FIDONET.ORG

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Unsubscribe
by Leo Reilly 12 Jun '93

12 Jun '93

could you please remove me from the mail list. I am on the road for two weeks, without a laptop, and I cannot affored the disk space to be taken up while I am gone. Cheers! Leo Reilly

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Pgp v 2.2/8088
by M..Stirner＠f28.n125.z1.FIDONET.ORG 12 Jun '93

12 Jun '93

* Reply to msg originally in CYPHERPUNKS > version 2.2 locks up 8088-based computers. Version 2.1 does not. > There is an unauthorized bug fix version, 2.21. I use 2.2 as it Uu> PGP 2.2 runs without a hitch on at least one 10 MHz+ XT Uu> box in which the 8088 was replaced with an NEC V-20 and an 8087 Uu> co-processor added when new... about six years ago. I don't doubt it for a second, but I know it definitely will lock up a real 8088. Also there is a problem with DesqView in some cases. Uu> Probably far more XT boxes running, worldwide, than some Uu> are capable of imagining. I'm sure of that, too. PGP is a worldwide phenomenon, & there are a whole lot of XT-class computers in the outside world. Uu> Key generation on the XT is as exciting... and as fast... Uu> as a baseball game... Well, more like _cricket_, actually. 8-) Uu> Encryption speed is more than adequate. Considering the math involved, yes. Still even a 20MHz 286 fairly flies doing PGP tasks in comparison, though. ********************************************************************* * <m..stirner(a)f28.n125.z1.fidonet.org> - PGP Key D30909 via servers * * > What country can preserve its liberties if its rulers are not <* * > warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit <* * > of resistance? Let them take arms!" - Thomas Jefferson, 1787 <* ********************************************************************* ___ Blue Wave/QWK v2.12 -- M. Stirner - via FidoNet node 1:125/1 UUCP: ...!uunet!kumr!shelter!28!M..Stirner INTERNET: M..Stirner(a)f28.n125.z1.FIDONET.ORG

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Remailer mail logging:
by The Phantom 12 Jun '93

12 Jun '93

just for your info: the mead remailer has no logging enabled! :) Matt Thomlinson Say no to the Wiretap Chip! University of Washington, Seattle, Washington. Internet: phantom(a)u.washington.edu phone: (206) 528-5732 PGP 2.2 key available via email or finger phantom(a)hardy.u.washington.edu

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more Clipper proponents on sci.crypt
by L. Detweiler 12 Jun '93

12 Jun '93

Call me paranoid, but I think the NSA has decided that sci.crypt is now a good spot to level propaganda. From: pugh(a)cs.umd.edu (Bill Pugh) Organization: U of Maryland, Dept. of Computer Science, Coll. Pk., MD 20742 >I don't like the Clipper, and don't think it will succeed. However, on the >chance that we get stuck with it, we should figure out ways to solve many >of the concerns people have raised. > >A lot of people have concerns about the key escrow system. There are >good reasons to be worried about a system in which the government can >get a court order to decode your communications. But an even greater >concern to many people is how to make sure that key disclosure is limited >to lawfully authorized cases. The more I see statements like these, the more I suspect that the Clipper has a backdoor besides the key escrow systems. I think the whole escrow issue is a decoy to getting a widespread NSA standard in place. Also, keep in mind it could be the case that NSA builds different versions of the chips over time. How would we ever know? From: rja14(a)cl.cam.ac.uk (Ross Anderson) Organization: U of Cambridge Computer Lab, UK >At Eurocrypt 93 a few weeks ago, the NSA's technical director said that the >key escrow system was still `vaporware' and that they had no objection to >interested parties getting involved in the design, to make sure that it was >`whiter than white'. > >Here's my twopenceworth: you can in fact make an escrow system which will be >goood enough to silence all or most of the reasonable objections, and here is >how to do it. > >1. The International Problem. > >... if clipper is restricted to the US, it will lose a lot of its value. >The bad guys such as the Mafia and the various terrorist groups will just >buy their communications systems in Europe or the Far East. Indeed, >respectable US corporations may end up buying their kit there as this is the >only way in which they can get the same kind of scrambler phone in each of >their offices. This guy then goes on to propose a lot of bizarre international configurations of key escrow. Holy cow-- this guy is advocating *international* key escrow? Good lord, cypherpunks, I wouldn't be surprised if Britain soon official endorses the Clipper. All our worst paranoia would be reality. Consider it: the NSA and GCHQ have been in active collaboration ever since WWII and especially in recent years. This is all documented by Bamford. What if Clipper is not just amenable to the NSA, but was also developed with British input? >The big question of course is whether the Agency would be happy with an >escrow system which really worked, on top of algorithms which were really >hard to break and were implemented well. Perhaps the object of the current >exercise is simply to sow fear, uncertainty and doubt, and thus postpone the >uptake of crypto in the commercial sector, I don't care if `the Agency' is happy or not. I think they would most definitely *not* be happy under such an arrangement and would use any significant Clipper entrenchment as torque to later ban alternative cryptographic schemes. I'm growing desperately weary. I think the tidal wave is approaching.

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Privacy panel at USENIX Conference
by Matt Blaze 12 Jun '93

12 Jun '93

Anyone who's going to be attending USENIX the week after next will want to make sure not to miss the privacy panel, to be held Friday afternoon (First session after lunch, I think). The topic to be discussed is anonymity on the net... Here's the official announcement: USENIX SUMMER 1993 TECHNICAL CONFERENCE June 21 -25, 1993 Cincinnati, Ohio Privacy Panel: Anonymity Servers - Finding The Bounds of Rights This USENIX Panel session will address anonymity servers, systems serving to sanitize e-mail and NetNews postings in order to conceal the source. We will explore the legal and ethical issues involved, and try to shed some light on the subtle complexities involving "the bounds of rights" such systems pose. Some of the issues are considerably more complex than they might first appear. Our panel will consist of Dan Appelman, John Gilmore, Johan ("Julf") Helsingius, and will be convened by Mike O'Dell. Biographies of the participants follow. Dan Appelman, Panelist Dan Appelman is a lawyer who practices computer and telecommunications law from his office in Palo Alto, California. He also teaches a course in telecommunications policy, law and regulation and has written and lectured about the legal issues in both the telecommunications and data processing industries. Dan is the lawyer the USENIX Association and several other amusing high-tech enterprises. He is a partner in the law firm of Heller, Ehrman, White & McAuliffe. John Gilmore, Panelist Among his other interests and accomplishments, John Gilmore is a dedicated champion of civil liberties in cyberspace. John was a cofounder of the Electronic Frontier Foundation and has campaigned aggressively for public availability of high-quality encryption systems. He was employee number five at Sun Microsystems, may well have written more APL interpreters than any other single human, and his most recent business venture is the founding of Cygnus Support, a software support company dedicated to the commercial viability of free software. He notes that he has never had time to attend college or buy a suit. Johan Helsingius, Panelist The last time anyone really referred to Johan Helsingius using his family name was while he was doing his military service long ago. As the memories are not too fond, he prefers to be called "Julf", a name based on a play on words involving 3 languages. He has been heavily involved in all manner of European Unix-related activities for longer than he cares to remember. He founded and still runs two successful consultancy and training companies, Penetron and Penetic, which manage to fund his well-developed tastes for global travel and exploring the native arcania. Most recently Julf established an anonymity server, anon.penet.fi, that quickly became the most popular anonymous posting service on the Internet with more than 20,000 users. Although he is based in downtown Helsinki, Julf tends to spend most of his time in airport departure lounges. Mike O'Dell, Provocateur Mike O'Dell is Vice-president of the USENIX Association and he is also Editor-in-Chief of the USENIX journal, Computing Systems. When he is not busy doing either of those two things, he is Vice-president of Engineering at UUNET Technologies, Inc., a commercial IP and UUCP connectivity provider. Mike's role in this panel, however, is to reprise his occasional role as Resident Crank and thereby provoke a lively analysis of the issues.

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it's official: PKP sells out for Clipper
by L. Detweiler 12 Jun '93

12 Jun '93

>From the following document: >PKP will also grant a license to practice key management, at no >additional fee, for the integrated circuits which will implement >both the DSA and the anticipated Federal Information Processing >Standard for the "key escrow" system announced by President Clinton >on April 16, 1993. more weasel words: >Notice of availability of this invention for licensing >was waived because it was determined that expeditious granting of >such license will best serve the interest of the Federal Government >and the public. what else? ===cut=here=== From: jim(a)rand.org (Jim Gillogly) Newsgroups: sci.crypt Subject: DSA: NIST and PKP come to terms Message-ID: <16860(a)rand.org> Date: 11 Jun 93 20:56:44 GMT Sender: news(a)rand.org Organization: Banzai Institute This text was transcribed from a fax and may have transcription errors. We believe the text to be correct but some of the numbers may be incorrect or incomplete. --------------------------------------------------------------------- ** The following notice was published in the Federal Register, Vol. 58, No. 108, dated June 8, 1993 under Notices ** National Institute of Standards and Technology Notice of Proposal for Grant of Exclusive Patent License This is to notify the public that the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) intends to grant an exclusive world-wide license to Public Key Partners of Sunnyvale, California to practice the Invention embodied in U.S. Patent Application No. 07/738.431 and entitled "Digital Signature Algorithm." A PCT application has been filed. The rights in the invention have been assigned to the United States of America. The prospective license is a cross-license which would resolve a patent dispute with Public Key Partners and includes the right to sublicense. Notice of availability of this invention for licensing was waived because it was determined that expeditious granting of such license will best serve the interest of the Federal Government and the public. Public Key Partners has provided NIST with the materials contained in Appendix A as part of their proposal to NIST. Inquiries, comments, and other materials relating to the prospec- tive license shall be submitted to Michael R. Rubin, Active Chief Counsel for Technology, Room A-1111, Administration Building, National Institute of Standards and Technology, Gaithersburg, Maryland 20899. His telephone number is (301) 975-2803. Applica- tions for a license filed in response to this notice will be treated as objections to the grant of the prospective license. Only written comments and/or applications for a license which are received by NIST within sixty (60) days for the publication of this notice will be considered. The prospective license will be granted unless, within sixty (60) days of this notice, NIST receives written evidence and argument which established that the grant of the license would not be consistent with the requirements of 35 U.S.C. 209 and 37 CFR 404.7. Dated: June 2, 1993. Raymond G. Kammer Acting Director, National Institute Standards and Technology. Appendix "A" The National Institute for Standards and Technology ("NIST") has announced its intention to grant Public Key Partners ("PKP") sublicensing rights to NIST's pending patent application on the Digital Signature Algorithm ("DSA"). Subject to NIST's grant of this license, PKP is pleased to declare its support for the proposed Federal Information Processing Standard for Digital Signatures (the "DSS") and the pending availability of licenses to practice the DSA. In addition to the DSA, licenses to practice digital signatures will be offered by PKP under the following patents: Cryptographic Apparatus and Method ("Diffie-Hellman") No. 4,200,770 Public Key Cryptographic Apparatus and Method ("Hellman-Merkle") No. 4,315,552 Exponential Cryptographic Apparatus and Method ("Hellman-Pohlig") No. 4,434,414 Method For Identifying Subscribers And For Generating And Verifying Electronic Signatures In A Data Exchange System ("Schnorr") No. 4,995,082 It is PKP's intent to make practice of the DSA royalty free for personal, noncommercial and U.S. Federal, state and local government use. As explained below, only those parties who enjoy commercial benefit from making or selling products, or certifying digital signatures, will be required to pay royalties to practice the DSA. PKP will also grant a license to practice key management, at no additional fee, for the integrated circuits which will implement both the DSA and the anticipated Federal Information Processing Standard for the "key escrow" system announced by President Clinton on April 16, 1993. Having stated these intentions, PKP now takes this opportunity to publish its guidelines for granting uniform licenses to all parties having a commercial interest in practicing this technology: First, no party will be denied a license for any reason other that the following: (i) Failure to meet its payment obligations, (ii) Outstanding claims of infringement, or (iii) Previous termination due to material breach. Second, licenses will be granted for any embodiment sold by the licensee or made for its use, whether for final products software, or components such as integrated circuits and boards, and regard- less of the licensee's channel of distribution. Provided the requisite royalties have been paid by the seller on the enabling component(s), no further royalties will be owned by the buyer for making or selling the final product which incorporates such components. Third, the practice of digital signatures in accordance with the DSS may be licensed separately from any other technical art covered by PKP's patents. Fourth, PKP's royalty rates for the right to make or sell products, subject to uniform minimum fees, will be no more than 2 1/2% for hardware products and 5% for software, with the royalty rate further declining to 1% on any portion of the product price exceeding $1,000. These royalty rates apply only to noninfringing parties and will be uniform without regard to whether the licensed product creates digital signatures, verifies digital signatures or performs both. Fifth, for the next three (3) years, all commercial services which certify a signature's authenticity for a fee may be operated royalty free. Thereafter, all providers of such commercial certification services shall pay a royalty to PKP of $1.00 per certificate for each year the certificate is valid. Sixth, provided the foregoing royalties are paid on such products or services, all other practice of the DSA shall be royalty free. Seventh, PKP invites all of its existing licensees, at their option, to exchange their current licenses for the standard license offered for DSA. Finally, PKP will mediate the concerns of any party regarding the availability of PKP's licenses for the DSA with designated representatives of NIST and PKP. For copies of PKP's license terms, contact Michael R. Rubin, Acting Chief Counsel for Technolo- gy, NIST, or Public Key Partners. Dated: June 2, 1993. Robert B. Fougner, Esq., Director of Licensing, Public Key Partners, 310 North Mary Avenue, Sunnyvale, CA 94033 [FR Doc. 93-13473 Filed 8-7-93; 8:45 am] --------------------------------------------------------------------- Forwarded by: -- Jim Gillogly Trewesday, 21 Forelithe S.R. 1993, 20:56

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DH for email
by nobody＠rosebud.ee.uh.edu 12 Jun '93

12 Jun '93

Suppose you are communicating with someone using email about something which the government wouldn't like. Being careful, you use PGP or something similar. Later, the government gets wind of your activities. They seize your computer, recovering your encrypted secret key. You do not have copies of your old mail, but to your dismay, you discover that your email service provider keeps backups of old mail. Using a court order, the government is able to recover copies of all of your old email. The court orders you to reveal your pass phrase for your secret key. Any refusal will result in your being jailed for contempt. You are forced to comply. The result is that your old messages are decrypted and used against you as evidence. It would be good to have an alternative which would not be subject to this kind of attack. Diffie-Hellman key exchange is generally suitable for an interactive environment like an encrypted telnet session or a secure serial line. But it could be adapted to email by having each side create one or more "key halves" in advance, and exchanging these in an initial message. Future email could use a session key created by taking the next pair of key halves (one from each person). When the supply of key halves got low, more could be generated and piggybacked with the next email message. Such a system would be more secure against the kind of attack described here. There would be no possibility of reconstructing the session key used if the key halves were destroyed after use. You may choose to keep your own personal copies of email, but you can delete them and be secure in the knowledge that no attacker will be able to reconstruct them. A program like PGP could be created which would automatically take care of the bookkeeping involved with creating and exchanging key halves for the DH algorithm. Then users could have electronic conversations which were freer from the threat of being coerced into revealing their secret keys and having the contents of their mail exposed.

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Mail logging
by Timothy Newsham 12 Jun '93

12 Jun '93

> > >I was rooting around soda for some other reason and stumbled upon the > >mail logs (!) for soda. I just sent myself some mail to generate a > >sample entry. It's got complete traffic analysis data, complete with > >to/from pairs, time of day, and message size. The goal of this list is not to turn off such "features" but to provide security in the face of these features, in hostile environments, environments not totally under our own control.

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