November 2000 - cypherpunks-legacy

re: Imagine
by Bill Stewart 30 Nov '00

30 Nov '00

At 11:04 AM 11/29/00 -0800, Steve Schear wrote a message that was in some HTML format that Eudora badly choked over when trying to reply. It was possible to save it with all the random font change garbage and funny characters, but not to just send a text reply. >> 1. Imagine that we read of an election occurring anywhere in the >> third world in which the self-declared winner was the son of the former >> prime minister and that former prime minister was himself the former >> head of that nation's secret police (CIA). Steve, or whoever The Blue Writer is, says "Correction. He was declared the winner by the fact that he has received 271 of the needed 270 electoral votes." Bush hasn't received them. Not only have the Electors not voted yet, but Florida hasn't selected their electors yet. They're still haggling about whether the votes should all be counted, and the Republicans have done a good job of preventing any recounts from being finished (or used), to the extent of organizing riots outside the Miami/Dade election office. They're also trying to decide what to do about the 19000 double-punch ballots (probably unfixable), and the 15000 absentee ballot applications that were allegedly criminally altered by the Republicans (10000 were voted for Bush, 5000 for Gore). Then there were the 12000 mainly black voters whose registrations were disqualified incorrectly because they were allegedly felons, based on a database provided by a company whose parent company gave a six-figure contribution to the Republican Party - about 8000 of those people got back on the voter rolls, and probably not all of the other 4000 would have voted, but they were much more likely to have voted Democrat. I'm not saying the double-punched ballots were Republican fraud; it looks a lot more like Democrat incompetence in the ballot design, though it's been suggested that they could also have been from Democrat attempts at fraud (punch a spike through the Gore hole, and it won't invalidate any ballots already marked for Gore, but will invalidate any ballots voting for other candidates.) The "bunch of elementary school kids had no trouble" press release is fun, but bogus. If the teacher had told the kids "Vote for Gore and Lieberman" instead of "Vote for Gore", they'd have been much more likely to make a mistake. Thanks! Bill Bill Stewart, bill.stewart(a)pobox.com PGP Fingerprint D454 E202 CBC8 40BF 3C85 B884 0ABE 4639

1 0

ADV: For all of your commercial lending needs.
by WillyBlade＠mail.com 30 Nov '00

30 Nov '00

Our Commercial Loans Division is the place to call for all of your commercial lending needs. Whether you doing an acquisition, business loan, refinance or construction loan, we handle all types of commercial loans, including raw land. We also provide construction and /or term financing for multifamily, retail, industrial, office, mobile home parks, churches, hotels and more. For companies seeking a business loan or corporate financing, please call our office at 570-947-0970 for more information.

1 0

ZKS .signature ads? (was: Re: online copy of Vinge's True Names)
by oblivious＠beta.freedom.net 30 Nov '00

30 Nov '00

anonymous(a)openpgp.net wrote: > Why is there such a tag at the bottom of *your* note? Is this a default > signature that you just chose not to remove/alter? Or is it inserted > courtesy of Freedom without the option to omit? > If the latter, my loathing of Freedom has just increased substantially -- > pay $50 for some crummy nyms and then be forced to carry ZKS advertising > to boot? No thank you. I think you can answer that for yourself. After all, another Freedom beta test nym has been posting to cypherpunks without the tagline for a couple of days. Oblivious.

1 0

ZKS .signature ads? (was: Re: online copy of Vinge's True Names)
by anonymous＠openpgp.net 30 Nov '00

30 Nov '00

obvious(a)beta.freedom.net wrote: ... > Obvious. > ________________________________________________________________________ > Total Internet Privacy -- get your Freedom Nym at http://www.freedom.net Those using mydejacluelessmail.com to send messages through the public remailer network can use "cutmarks" to remove the irritating "Sign up For MyDejaCluelessmail" footers from their messages which a) are obnoxious and b) can leak information. Why is there such a tag at the bottom of *your* note? Is this a default .signature that you just chose not to remove/alter? Or is it inserted courtesy of Freedom without the option to omit? If the latter, my loathing of Freedom has just increased substantially -- pay $50 for some crummy nyms and then be forced to carry ZKS advertising to boot? No thank you.

1 0

ip: Hobbyists intercept spy transmissions
by believer＠telepath.com 30 Nov '00

30 Nov '00

http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/113000/numbers.sml For Some, Intercepting Spy Transmissions Is Just a Hobby By Michael Della Bitta FOXNews.com Spending nights intercepting spy agencies' secret transmissions may sound like an exciting career. But for shortwave enthusiast Chris Smolinski, it's just a hobby. Smolinski and others tune in to numbers stations broadcasts instructions for deployed secret agents encoded into a sequence of numbers and read aloud on shortwave radio. Listening to a long string of numbers read over the radio may sound like dullsville, but Smolinski disagrees. "They may think it's a waste of time, but then they probably spend 30 hours a week watching sitcoms on TV." Shortwave Subculture What started as a fringe hobby for those exploring the frontiers of shortwave radio in solitude has become a group effort, thanks to the Internet. "It made it possible for hobbyists to rapidly exchange information with each other. Now someone can hear a station, and alert others in real-time, so they can tune it in, rather than reading about it months from now," Smolinski said. Smolinski runs an Internet mailing list called Spooks, named after the slang word for an undercover agent. The mailing list, along with Smolinski's Web site, is a clearinghouse for the observations of fellow hobbyists, who can jump online and share their observations with each other. And the subject of their observations is somewhat baffling. Every night, the shortwave spectrum of radio is peppered with mysterious, androgynous-sounding announcers who chant numbers in a monotone voice. Many times the broadcast is introduced by an eerie piece of music that identifies the particular station to those in the know. And since shortwave signals bounce off the atmosphere and the surface of the Earth, sometimes they can be heard from across the planet. Listeners first noticed the stations during the beginning of the Cold War, but didn't know what they were for. To this date, no government has admitted to the purpose of these broadcasts or even to running the stations that send them. It wasn't until the '70s that the source and purpose of the stations started becoming common knowledge. Shortwave listeners, by comparing their observations, have traced some of these signals back to their source. Most of them come from known military installations of the world's governments. The numbers stations are generally understood to be coded transmissions of instructions from the intelligence agencies of the world's governments to their undercover agents deployed in other countries. So why are spy agencies using low-tech shortwave radio to get word out to their agents? "The thought is that it is normal to have a small portable radio that tunes shortwave, so possession isn't incriminating," Smolinski said. "If the agent were caught with James Bond-type sophisticated gear, it would be pretty obvious he's a spy," he added. Smolinski estimates some numbers listeners spend over 20 hours a week practicing their hobby. Some postings to the Spooks list include logs of hundreds of different stations caught in the act by listeners. Unfortunately, listeners will never know the meanings of the mysterious messages. They're encoded using something called a one-time-pad, which is unbreakable unless you're in possession of a matching codebook to the one that was used to scramble the message. And agents are trained to destroy each page of their code book once used, hence the moniker "one-time." But for Smolinski, the hobby still has rewards. For one, tuning in the faint stations requires a little more shortwave-listening mettle than tuning in the BBC, for example. And by coordinating with fellow listeners, the Spooks list and other groups of its ilk have managed to figure out who runs many of the stations and their probable purpose. For example, Spooks members have noted increased broadcasts from stations run by the Mossad the Israeli version of the CIA during times when conflict flares in the Middle East. And listeners have determined that broadcasts from American stations on this continent are usually read in Spanish and thought to be aimed at Cuba. Of course, Cuba is believed to run stations of its own. A change in the regular pattern of broadcasts will often spark a speculative thread on the Spooks list. Did equipment fail? Was it some CIA agent's first day? Was that Latin beat underneath the latest broadcast interference, or just some Cuban agent listening to the radio? Spies are a mysterious bunch. --- end forwarded text -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga <mailto: rah(a)ibuc.com> The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/> 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA "... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity, [predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'

1 0

ip: Hobbyists intercept spy transmissions
by believer＠telepath.com 30 Nov '00

30 Nov '00

http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/113000/numbers.sml For Some, Intercepting Spy Transmissions Is Just a Hobby By Michael Della Bitta FOXNews.com Spending nights intercepting spy agencies' secret transmissions may sound like an exciting career. But for shortwave enthusiast Chris Smolinski, it's just a hobby. Smolinski and others tune in to numbers stations broadcasts instructions for deployed secret agents encoded into a sequence of numbers and read aloud on shortwave radio. Listening to a long string of numbers read over the radio may sound like dullsville, but Smolinski disagrees. "They may think it's a waste of time, but then they probably spend 30 hours a week watching sitcoms on TV." Shortwave Subculture What started as a fringe hobby for those exploring the frontiers of shortwave radio in solitude has become a group effort, thanks to the Internet. "It made it possible for hobbyists to rapidly exchange information with each other. Now someone can hear a station, and alert others in real-time, so they can tune it in, rather than reading about it months from now," Smolinski said. Smolinski runs an Internet mailing list called Spooks, named after the slang word for an undercover agent. The mailing list, along with Smolinski's Web site, is a clearinghouse for the observations of fellow hobbyists, who can jump online and share their observations with each other. And the subject of their observations is somewhat baffling. Every night, the shortwave spectrum of radio is peppered with mysterious, androgynous-sounding announcers who chant numbers in a monotone voice. Many times the broadcast is introduced by an eerie piece of music that identifies the particular station to those in the know. And since shortwave signals bounce off the atmosphere and the surface of the Earth, sometimes they can be heard from across the planet. Listeners first noticed the stations during the beginning of the Cold War, but didn't know what they were for. To this date, no government has admitted to the purpose of these broadcasts or even to running the stations that send them. It wasn't until the '70s that the source and purpose of the stations started becoming common knowledge. Shortwave listeners, by comparing their observations, have traced some of these signals back to their source. Most of them come from known military installations of the world's governments. The numbers stations are generally understood to be coded transmissions of instructions from the intelligence agencies of the world's governments to their undercover agents deployed in other countries. So why are spy agencies using low-tech shortwave radio to get word out to their agents? "The thought is that it is normal to have a small portable radio that tunes shortwave, so possession isn't incriminating," Smolinski said. "If the agent were caught with James Bond-type sophisticated gear, it would be pretty obvious he's a spy," he added. Smolinski estimates some numbers listeners spend over 20 hours a week practicing their hobby. Some postings to the Spooks list include logs of hundreds of different stations caught in the act by listeners. Unfortunately, listeners will never know the meanings of the mysterious messages. They're encoded using something called a one-time-pad, which is unbreakable unless you're in possession of a matching codebook to the one that was used to scramble the message. And agents are trained to destroy each page of their code book once used, hence the moniker "one-time." But for Smolinski, the hobby still has rewards. For one, tuning in the faint stations requires a little more shortwave-listening mettle than tuning in the BBC, for example. And by coordinating with fellow listeners, the Spooks list and other groups of its ilk have managed to figure out who runs many of the stations and their probable purpose. For example, Spooks members have noted increased broadcasts from stations run by the Mossad the Israeli version of the CIA during times when conflict flares in the Middle East. And listeners have determined that broadcasts from American stations on this continent are usually read in Spanish and thought to be aimed at Cuba. Of course, Cuba is believed to run stations of its own. A change in the regular pattern of broadcasts will often spark a speculative thread on the Spooks list. Did equipment fail? Was it some CIA agent's first day? Was that Latin beat underneath the latest broadcast interference, or just some Cuban agent listening to the radio? Spies are a mysterious bunch. --- end forwarded text -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga <mailto: rah(a)ibuc.com> The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/> 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA "... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity, [predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'

1 0

CDR: Authenticate the "adult field", go to jail...
by R. A. Hettinga 30 Nov '00

30 Nov '00

...an argument for bearer credentials if there ever was one... Cheers, RAH --------- http://fortworthstartelegram.com/news/doc/1047/1:METRO21/1:METRO211127100.h… Updated: Monday, Nov. 27, 2000 at 22:49 CST `Some terrible, terrible pictures' -- Jury picked to hear case of a Web porn company By Toni Heinzl Star-Telegram Staff Writer FORT WORTH -- Prosecutors warned federal jurors Monday that they will be shown "some terrible, terrible" pictures during the trial of a Fort Worth couple on charges involving child pornography on the Internet. Before nine men and three women were selected for what is expected to be a weeklong trial, attorneys outlined some of the key issues. They told jurors that they will learn about the world of adult entertainment on the Internet, so-called adult verification services that check subscribers' credit card numbers and hand out passwords, and the criminal underground of child pornography. After hearing that pornographic pictures of children will be shown to the jury, a woman in the jury pool told U.S. District Judge Terry Means, "I might need counseling after this is over." She was not selected for the jury. Thomas Reedy, 37, and his wife, Janice Reedy, 32, of Fort Worth, are accused in an 87-count indictment of providing access to several child-porn Internet sites by verifying subscribers' credit cards and assigning them passwords. The Reedys maintain that they did not know that some of the pornographic sites they provided access to contained illegal child pornography. The Reedys and their company, Landslide Inc.,which they operated from their home, are accused of sexual exploitation of minors, distributing child pornography and related charges in a conspiracy with two Indonesian Web masters, R.W. Kusuma and Hanny Ingganata, and Russian Web master Boris Greenberg. According to the indictment, the foreign Web masters started and operated the child pornography Web sites, and the Reedys controlled subscribers' access to the sites beginning in 1997. The business netted more than $1 million, the indictment said. If convicted, the couple could be sentenced to life in prison. The company could be fined up to $500,000 per count and face forfeiture of all of its assets. During questioning of prospective jurors, Assistant U.S. Attorney Terri Moore warned, "You're going to have to view some terrible, terrible pictures. Some people might not be able to handle it." According to the indictment, some of the sites have titles that leave nothing to the imagination, such as "Children Forced to Porn" and "Child Rape." Prosecutors have said that most of the children depicted appear to be about 10 or 11. The images include still photographs and videos and portray, for example, children in lewd poses and children being raped by adults, according to the indictment. The Reedys have a 9-year-old daughter who lives with her paternal grandfather. During questioning, several prospective jurors said they objected strongly to adult entertainment on the Internet in general, saying it made no difference to them whether the conduct was between consenting adults or involved children. "There's no need for this kind of stuff," said one woman who was not selected for the jury. During questioning of one prospective juror, Janice Reedy's attorney, Mike Heiskell, made the analogy of a ticket seller at a movie theater being prosecuted for the objectionable content of a movie. A prospective juror stood up to argue with Heiskell. "There are guidelines for movies in the theaters. You can read the reviews," the woman said. "The Internet does not have that regulation. I find that question ridiculous." The woman was not selected for the jury. Federal authorities have not been able to arrest the foreign Web masters and bring them to trial in federal court in Fort Worth. U.S. Attorney Paul Coggins said Monday that it could take years to extradite them. "We have forwarded it to the Justice Department's Office of International Affairs in Washington," Coggins said. "We are holding up hope that we're going to bring the Indonesians and the Russian to justice in the United States." Toni Heinzl, (817) 390-7684 theinzl(a)star-telegram.com © 2000 Star-Telegram, Fort Worth, Texas -- Terms and Conditions Serving the online community since 1982! -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga <mailto: rah(a)ibuc.com> The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/> 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA "... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity, [predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'

3 3

Re: online copy of Vinge's True Names
by obvious＠beta.freedom.net 30 Nov '00

30 Nov '00

> > Check the HTML source > > The page contains the text of a story, but there are HTML errors that > > prevent it being displayed on my browser) > > Adding a </table> at the end fixes it. > > ... or just use lynx. This points to one of the big wins of XML over HTML. Parsers are not allowed to guess at the meaning of invalid XML with unbalanced tags and such. Today we have the problem that people create bad HTML but don't know it because it looks OK on their browser, which overlooks some errors. Then it fails on someone else's browser. With XML there is a standard about what works and what doesn't, and so you know that if your parser can read it, everyone else's can too. XHTML is the XML-ized version of HTML. It's mostly compatible with HTML but inherits the strict grammar from XML. Obvious. ________________________________________________________________________ Total Internet Privacy -- get your Freedom Nym at http://www.freedom.net

1 0

RE: Survey meters.
by Carskadden, Rush 30 Nov '00

30 Nov '00

I was wondering if you forwarded all of that poor bastard's contact information to an entire mailing list with malicious intent, or if you simply didn't think about it. Then it occurs to me that anyone that randomly sends email full of contact info to people they don't know is kind of asking for it. Question is, no matter how much someone asks for it, is it ok to sock it to them? -----Original Message----- From: McMeikan, Andrew [mailto:andrew.mcmeikan@mitswa.com.au] Sent: Wednesday, November 29, 2000 9:14 PM To: 'k.brown(a)ccs.bbk.ac.uk' Cc: cypherpunks Subject: RE: Survey meters. -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 I think the simplest is probably true, they genuinely are after something, they do a quick web search and a mass mail out to all matches. I got this one which I can only attribute to the <<TUNNEL CONNECTION BETWEEN DIVING TANK AND DEEP DIVING SIMULATOR IN CHINA-DSIGN & BUILD PROJECT>> above method. (included for entertainment value) It is probably hard for people in some countries to get their hands on certain equipment and thus end up resorting to Spam. A 'sting' operation would be one where the only response would be one that confirmed guilt, I think these are just mis-directed pleas for help, when they should be doing a little more research and approaching only those that can help. The paranoid side of me notes a certain similarity in style (has anyone else received emails like these?) cya, Andrew... - -----Original Message----- From: Ken Brown [SMTP:k.brown@ccs.bbk.ac.uk] Sent: Wednesday, November 29, 2000 10:19 PM To: Anis Ahmed Sheikh Cc: cypherpunks Subject: Re: Survey meters. I was 99% sure that these posts were some sort of spam-scam, whose purpose I didn't quite get. (Am I falling for it by replying?) And about 1% doubtful that it might be a genuine company who had somehow been tricked into sending mail to toad. In which case, if you are reading this, know that your mail got sent to an obsolete gateway to a discussion list on the political and economic effects of new communication technologies & cryptography and we don't now anything about scintillation meters (I haven't used one since September). But what if, just what if, it is some crazy snoop trying to fish for illegal arms dealers? Are they that crass? Are they that imaginative? Do they really have that much time and money to play with? Are these the sort of people who have been so successful in getting Iraq to disarm? (if there are any intelligence agents reading this, that last bit was an example of "irony". This paragraph is "sarcasm". You need to know about those things to decode communications between civilians. Look it up in the handbook. It will be in the exam.) Ken -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: PGPfreeware 6.5.8 for non-commercial use <http://www.pgp.com> iQA/AwUBOiVYLUAhpS53eUNhEQK7DwCfVjs+d5NGpNzEWN9unTi2Lux7XAQAoJVF Umcm2oe2jMSTnVGl/ExVB+jC =Meho -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- = ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ----- The information transmitted is intended for the person or entity to which it is addressed and may contain confidential and/or privileged material. Any review, retransmission, dissemination, copying or other use of, or taking any action in reliance upon, this information by persons or entities other than the intended recipient is prohibited. If you have received this in error, please contact the sender and delete the material from your system. Utility Services Corporation (USC) is not responsible for any changes made to the material other than those made by USC or for the effect of the changes on the meaning of the material.

1 0

CDR: Response to false statements about Zero-Knowledge
by Austin Hill 30 Nov '00

30 Nov '00

Declan, I would like to respond to some of the discussion and false statements being made about Zero-Knowledge. Please see my comments below and FWD: to Politech. Thank you. Regards, Austin >-----Original Message----- >From: Declan McCullagh [mailto:declan@well.com] >Sent: Wednesday, November 08, 2000 7:15 PM >To: politech(a)politechbot.com >Cc: shamrock(a)cypherpunks.to >Subject: FC: Response to article on Zero Knowledge, marketing, and promises > >********* >A response to: >http://www.politechbot.com/p-01464.html >********* > >Date: Wed, 01 Nov 2000 18:49:32 -0800 >From: Lucky Green <shamrock(a)cypherpunks.to> >Subject: RE: Zero Knowledge, after poor software sales, tries new gambit >To: declan(a)well.com > >Declan, >I don't believe the conclusion that Internet users are unwilling to pay for enhanced privacy is warranted given >the information currently available. If anything, ZKS' poor sales show that Internet users are unwilling to pay >for software that claims to protect the user's privacy but doesn't. This is a very important distinction to make. >Freedom (TM) as shipping does not adequately protect the users' privacy. ZKS' marketing machine and early promises >notwithstanding, in the end the market was not fooled into buying product that doesn't deliver. First to set the record straight, Declan's claim that our software sales have been poor is completely baseless. He has reported this as fact when during my interview with him I clearly stated that we are pleased with our results for Freedom and are seeing substantial growth, so much that we are still hiring more engineers (adding to the already 100 we have working on it) and adding more features and improvements to our consumer privacy product. Because we as a private company refuse to provide Declan with actual sales & revenue numbers he has persisted in reporting that this is because of poor software sales, based on what he described as anecdotal evidence that he has observed in the cypherpunk community. Declan fails to mention that Freedom was never targeted toward Cypherpunks; our goal was to incorporate Cypherpunk-level cryptography and philosophies into a privacy tool that would empower the average Internet user to manage their privacy online. Cypherpunks can build privacy tools for themselves; our target market for Freedom is consumers who are concerned with their privacy. Declan and his editor at Wired have received a complaint regarding what we feel was irresponsible reporting, that includes a transcript of the relevant parts of the interview. As of now, they have not made any correction or retraction. Declan, I invite you to FWD: our letter to you and your Wired editor, to Politech readers so they can make up their own minds regarding the current state of our software sales and your editorial on the launch of our additional corporate privacy services. For now Declan and I have agreed to disagree about the accuracy and quality of his article. Now leaving that issue aside, Lucky Green makes the claim that we have failed to deliver what we promise. I believe this is completely baseless and false. Our promised privacy protection is detailed extensively at a very technical level in our whitepapers, http://www.freedom.net/info/freedompapers/Freedom-Architecture-Protocols.pdf http://www.freedom.net/info/freedompapers/Freedom-NymCreation.pdf http://www.freedom.net/info/freedompapers/Freedom-Security.pdf In these papers we describe every attack we protect against and more importantly every attack that we don't protect against. These whitepapers include protocols, design goals and actual results of security audits against the architecture and the code. Unfortunately, Lucky hasn't done any analysis to add to the list. To further improve our security and privacy commitment and to ensure users do not have to rely on or trust Zero-Knowledge's claims, we have also published the source code for the system, which is available at, http://opensource.zeroknowledge.com We are the only privacy company that has published whitepapers on the full protocol, security attacks against the system, and the source code. We believe that this is responsible privacy, and that it is the only way to verify and support our claims to our users. If there is _ANY_ attack, weaknesses, flaw or security bug we have invited people to review our work and inform us, and we then update our documents to reflect our continued understanding of how to design and implement the best privacy infrastructure available. Based on this, we believe we are the strongest privacy solution on the market. (In fact most other privacy companies claim that we are 'killing a fly with a bazooka' by going overboard with strong crypto and multi-hop routing). >I think it is unfortunate that ZKS' failure to deliver on their >promises will now be taken as an indication that there is no market >for a product that ZKS never built. I actually believe that Lucky's false statements and accusations stem from Zero-Knowledge shipping a solution that does not include the solution to one of the original design goals, which was a traffic-analysis-resistant network. During our first attempt to build the FREEDOM infrastructure and an AnonymousIP protocol we also tried to build it to be resistant to traffic analysis and large statistical attacks. (This remains a design goal, but we think there are open research issues to be solved before we (or anyone) can ship a system that meets this design goal). The techniques we attempted to use to facilitate this were: -Constant packet sizing -Link padding -Traffic shaping (introducing extra bogus traffic or limiting traffic to disguise the actual amount of traffic being sent through the network) During our tests of the first alpha versions of FREEDOM, we found a number of problems with this including: 1. Speed & performance degradation that made the system unusable 2. Huge costs increases in operating the backbone infrastructure (Packets were being sent with a huge increase in 'stuffed' payloads and there had to be constant traffic on the network) 3. Incomplete understanding of the effect in the security and resistances to these attacks (we found there was not enough research in the area of traffic analysis to determine if the extra delays and huge costs increased gained us anything in the protection from traffic analysis. In fact, upon review we found that since the costs of doing the bare minimum padding (full link padding from the client node to the first server node) could not be supported by what we felt users were willing to pay for privacy, we reviewed our threat model and lowered the bar on the what we were trying to accomplish. We consider traffic analysis to be an area in need of basic research. We have some information-theoretical and computationally secure proposals but minimal work on secure systems with work-factors less than computationally secure. Simple things like how to define and discuss the work-factor of these systems are missing. We do not have equivalents of basic constructs like Feistel-networks, s-boxes, or chaining modes. We have easy attacks which seem very powerful, but can't judge if those attacks are the equivalent of statistical attacks on ceaser ciphers or something more powerful. We do not have powerful techniques such as differential or linear cryptanalysis, the impossible variants, or any sort of trade-off attacks. There's not a great deal of discussion of the case where flood the pipe is not an option, or where we want to limit delays. We think the situation is analogous to the state of our understanding of block cipher analysis in 1970. We had an information-theoretically secure system. But we had little or no knowledge of the Enigma breaks (Bletchly Park is not mentioned in the index of the 1967 ed. of the Codebreakers). When the NBS proposed the DES, many were at a loss as to how to critique it beyond asking for the design criteria to be published. Compare and contrast this situation with the AES competition. Our Director of Technology, Adam Shostack raised this issue in a rump session talk at the 'Design Issues in Anonymity and Unobservability' workshop, and we're looking for other ways to bring the problem to the attention of the academic community. Our users are primarily Win 95/98 users who are worried about their privacy (i.e. email address; cookies; profiling by ad networks; pseudonyms for chat rooms and Usenet). They are not worried about the NSA doing traffic analysis on their communications. We were way too ambitious with that design goal and we decided it was not a 'must have' that would prevent us from shipping our current solution. More than that, we did so publicly (see our whitepapers) and we are also working on increasing academic research in this area (we have a few scientists working on it) so that if we decide to attack this problem in the future there will be more information available to us to review. Lucky claims that there is large market demand (in terms of $$ and/or people) for traffic-analysis-resistant, completely anonymous networking. I disagree, but would invite him to take our source code and go out and build a business based on this. The published source code is the result of 3 years of engineering by more than 100 developers and we would invite him to take this start and improve on it. We would be interested in his results both technically (how to achieve traffic analysis resistant networking) and on the business side (how do you build a business to support fully traffic analysis resistant networking). We have 250+ people working very hard on privacy systems, and have taken huge steps in making sure we are accurate in our claims, transparent in our systems and are delivering privacy services that we can be very proud of. Lucky, by claiming that we are misleading our users or not protecting their privacy because of the lack of resistance to traffic analysis is irresponsible and is allowing the best to be the enemy of the good.* * For those who don't follow security debates, this refers to idealists who want to build great systems with really neat provable properties and other useful underpinnings. Unfortunately, none of those systems have ever shipped, and in the real world, we get by with good. Freedom is the strongest privacy system that's shipping. Is it as good as we would like it to be in an ideal world? Of course not. But there is a braintrust at Zero-Knowledge of really smart people who want to make it even better, so while we've decided to ship a strong and working system that offers consumers the best privacy available today, we also have 100 engineers working to continually make it better. Regards, -Austin >The risk that the such a, in my view erroneous, conclusion would be drawn was of course the big risk to Internet >privacy worldwide that followed from ZKS' foolish gamble to ship a product that didn't meet market demand. A risk >that I on more than one occasion impressed upon the principals was to great to take. > >--Lucky Green <shamrock(a)cypherpunks.to> > > "Anytime you decrypt... its against the law". > Jack Valenti, President, Motion Picture Association of America in > a sworn deposition, 2000-06-06 > _________________________________________________________________________ Austin Hill Zero-Knowledge Systems Inc. President Montreal, Quebec Phone: 514.286.2636 Fax: 514.286.2755 mailto:a_hill@zeroknowledge.com http://www.zeroknowledge.com Are you fast enough? Are you smart enough? We are hiring those who are! http://www.zeroknowledge.com/jobs/ PGP Fingerprints RSA = 7BDB A72C 1130 BC09 CD5A 2712 F51D 72AC DH/DSS = F783 7187 E174 0C5C DD4C B1FA 0392 C7DC AF5A 1FAB _________________________________________________________________________ -- Resistance is futile! http://jobs.zeroknowledge.com

5 7