March 2001 - cypherpunks-legacy

RE: PGP flaw found by Czech firm allows dig sig to be forged
by aluger＠hushmail.com 22 Mar '01

22 Mar '01

At Wed, 21 Mar 2001 23:01:56 -0500, "Phillip Hallam-Baker" <hallam(a)ai.mit.edu> wrote: > >The report is incorrect in stating that PGP is the most popular email >security package, there are 100 million copies of S/MIME enabled >email applications in use. And how many of those "in use" applications actually USE the S/MIME feature? I love the creative accounting practice that makes this argument. > > Phill > >> -----Original Message----- >> From: owner-fight-censorship(a)vorlon.mit.edu >> [mailto:owner-fight-censorship@vorlon.mit.edu]On Behalf Of Declan >> McCullagh >> Sent: Wednesday, March 21, 2001 1:36 PM >> To: cypherpunks(a)cyberpass.net; cryptography(a)c2.net >> Cc: fight-censorship(a)vorlon.mit.edu >> Subject: PGP flaw found by Czech firm allows dig sig to be forged >> >> >> >> >> http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,42553,00.html >> >> Your E-Hancock Can Be Forged >> by Declan McCullagh (declan(a)wired.com) >> 10:20 a.m. Mar. 21, 2001 PST >> >> WASHINGTON -- A Czech information security firm has found a flaw >in >> Pretty Good Privacy that permits digital signatures to be forged >in >> some situations. >> >> Phil Zimmermann, the PGP inventor who's now the director of the >> OpenPGP Consortium, said on Wednesday that he and a >> Network Associates >> (NETA) engineer verified that the vulnerability exists. >> >> ICZ, a Prague company with 450 employees, said that two of its >> cryptologists unearthed a bug in the OpenPGP format that allows >an >> adversary who breaks into your computer to forge your e-mail >> signature. >> >> Both Zimmermann and the Czech engineers, Vlastimil Klima and Tomas >> Rosa, point out that the glitch does not affect messages encrypted >> with PGP. OpenPGP programs -- including GNU Privacy Guard and newer >> versions of PGP -- use different algorithms for signing and >> scrambling, and only the digital signature method is at risk. >> >> PGP and its offspring are by far the most popular e-mail encryption >> programs in the world. Nobody has disclosed a flaw in their >> message-scrambling mechanisms, but PGP owner Network Associates >> suffered an embarrassment last August when a German cryptanalyst >> published a way that allows an attacker to hoodwink PGP into not >> encoding secret information properly. >> >> In this case, someone wishing to impersonate you would need to >gain >> access to your secret key -- usually stored on a hard drive or >a >> floppy disk -- surreptitiously modify it, then obtain a message >you >> signed using the altered secret key. Once those steps are complete, >> that person could then digitally sign messages using your name. >> >> "PGP or any program based on the OpenPGP format that does >> not have any >> extra integrity check will not recognize such modification >> and it will >> allow you to sign a message with the corrupted key," says Rosa, > who >> works at Decros, an ICZ company. Rosa says he demonstrated the >> vulnerability with PGP 7.0.3. >> >> [...] > Free, encrypted, secure Web-based email at www.hushmail.com

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Open sesame
by Morlock Elloi 22 Mar '01

22 Mar '01

Depending on your PPL (personal paranoia level), this may sound as an boring conspiracy theory or be the reason to stop using things with transistors in them :-) (1) Take a block cipher with block size b and key size k. Any block cipher. (2) Assume that k > b. (3) Now, if you take a particular input block B (plaintext), and encrypt it with all possible keys (2**k), a decent cipher should produce output that covers full 2**b output space, right ? (4) The question is: is there such B that, in process (3) generates output from which (part of) each key can be trivially inferred ? For instance, the output is a ROT-13 of the lower b bits of the key, or blowfish encrypted upper b bits of the key (with the blowfish key being "suckers suckers "). You get the drift. (5) is it possible to prove that the answer to (4) is "yes" or "no" ? What could be learned by doing the brute force test on 56-bit DES for two keys and trying to find correlation in the resulting 2**57 space ? (6) If it is impossible to prove that the answer to (4) is "no", what can be done to prevent the chosen plaintext attack ? [as for conspiracy, if the answer is "yes", then only two block ciphers need to have this feature: DES and AES. Easily done and not too expensive either.] __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Get email at your own domain with Yahoo! Mail. http://personal.mail.yahoo.com/

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10 Million Email Addresses, Stealth Mass Mailer & More.. 12440
by d4rft＠yahoo.com 22 Mar '01

22 Mar '01

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Slashdot | Don't Trust Code Signed by 'Microsoft Corporation'
by Jim Choate 22 Mar '01

22 Mar '01

VeriSign probably needs to update their verification process... http://slashdot.org/articles/01/03/22/1947233.shtml -- The Laws of Serendipity: 1. In order to discover anything, you must be looking for something. 2. If you wish to make an improved product, you must first be engaged in making an inferior one. Tivoli Certification Group, OSCT James Choate jchoate(a)tivoli.com Senior Engineer 512-436-1062

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10 Million Email Addresses, Stealth Mass Mailer & More.. 394
by d4rft＠yahoo.com 22 Mar '01

22 Mar '01

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Hacker obtains "Microsoft" code signing key;
by Trei, Peter 22 Mar '01

22 Mar '01

My reading of this is that a hacker managed to human-engineer Verisign into signing a public key used for codesigning. While the key is signed as being Microsofts, it is in fact the hackers. He can therefore sign his own ActiveX components and make them appear come from Microsoft. Trojan horses, anyone? Verisign should be getting a lot of flack on this one - they're who business model relys on being a trustworthy confirmer of identies. Peter Trei --------------------------------------- http://www.msnbc.com/news/548228.asp Microsoft digital certificate stolen Verisign issued "virtual notary seal" to computer criminal By Bob Sullivan MSNBC March 22 Microsoft Corp. issued a warning today to all its customers that a computer criminal has obtained a digital certificate with the company's name and authority. The equivalent of a royal seal, digital certificates prove software code was written by a particular company and is safe. Microsoft said the criminal tricked Verisign Inc. into issuing two of the certificates. The software giant is warning users to be suspicious of any program that arrives with a certificate claiming Microsoft's authority. MICROSOFT'S SCOTT CULP said Verisign issued the two fake certificates accidentally on Jan. 29 and Jan. 30, and discovered the mistake only recently. (MSNBC is a Microsoft-NBC joint venture.) Web browsers generally encounter such certificates when the arrive on a Web site that has an ActiveX control, which allows dynamic content. Usually, a dialog box pops up asking the users if they would like to trust the code and allow it to run on the their machines. The fraudulent certificates would indicate to a user that the code was written by Microsoft and might trick a victim into allowing the code to run. "That's exactly one of the scenarios that pose the greatest risk," Culp said. The firm is working on a downloadable solution for the problem, but it won't be ready for about a week, Culp said. In the meantime, he urged Web users to be suspicious of any digital certificate they encounter, suggesting they check the certificate's details. "Anything that says it was issued on 29th and 30th of January is bogus. Do not trust it," Culp said. HUMAN ERROR? Culp blamed the problem on human error inside Verisign. He said law enforcement is now working with the company to track the criminal, who apparently was able to convince Verisign he was a Microsoft employee. "This wasn't a failure of technology. It was a failure of one particular Certificate authority to follow its procedures," he said. Digital certificates are issued by third parties, called certificate authorities, as a way of virtually "notarizing" computer code. There are hundreds of authorities, but Verisign is one of the largest. Each authority is supposed to follow detailed procedures to verify the identity of the programmer making a certificate request. Verisign did not immediately return phone calls.

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Companies crack down on loose lips - Tech News - CNET.com
by Jim Choate 22 Mar '01

22 Mar '01

http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1007-201-5209901-0.html?tag=bt_pr -- The Laws of Serendipity: 1. In order to discover anything, you must be looking for something. 2. If you wish to make an improved product, you must first be engaged in making an inferior one. Tivoli Certification Group, OSCT James Choate jchoate(a)tivoli.com Senior Engineer 512-436-1062

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CNN.com - Suspect linked to bin Laden held secretly 4 months - March 22, 2001
by Jim Choate 22 Mar '01

22 Mar '01

http://www.cnn.com/2001/LAW/03/22/embassy.bombings.suspect.ap/index.html -- The Laws of Serendipity: 1. In order to discover anything, you must be looking for something. 2. If you wish to make an improved product, you must first be engaged in making an inferior one. Tivoli Certification Group, OSCT James Choate jchoate(a)tivoli.com Senior Engineer 512-436-1062

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Salon.com People | Welcome to my world
by Jim Choate 22 Mar '01

22 Mar '01

A reflective view on American culture... http://www.salon.com/people/col/pagl/2001/03/21/spring/print.html -- The Laws of Serendipity: 1. In order to discover anything, you must be looking for something. 2. If you wish to make an improved product, you must first be engaged in making an inferior one. Tivoli Certification Group, OSCT James Choate jchoate(a)tivoli.com Senior Engineer 512-436-1062

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Release: "Medical Privacy" Doesn't Mean Privacy
by Kent Snyder-The Liberty Committee 22 Mar '01

22 Mar '01

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE - Thursday, March 22, 2001 Contact: Kent Snyder, 703-241-1003 E-mail: mailto:kentsnyder@thelibertycommittee.org Web site: http://www.thelibertycommittee.org The Liberty Committee 701 W. Broad St., Fifth Floor Falls Church, VA 22046 "MEDICAL PRIVACY" DOESN'T MEAN PRIVACY IN WASHINGTON "Washington's dirty little secret is out -- the so-called 'final federal medical privacy rule' recently announced by the federal government gives us less privacy, not more," stated Kent Snyder of The Liberty Committee. Section 160.310: Grants the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services access to a person's medical information without his consent or a warrant. Section 164.512: Grants many third parties access to a person's medical information (including genetic information) without his written, informed, non-coerced (as in "sign away your right to privacy or we will deny treatment") consent. Sections 164.502 and 164.506: The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has the ultimate authority to decide who can access your medical records without your informed consent. "The truth is that laced throughout the 367-page federal medical privacy rule are provisions that actually give a patient less control over his own medical records than he currently has. At the same time, these regulations give federal, state, and local governmental agencies -- along with insurance companies, HMOs and others -- more access and more control than the patient himself has," Kent Snyder stated. Reacting to growing public concern, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson reopened the comment period on these deceptive "privacy" regulations. Unfortunately, in order for a citizen's comment to be acceptable, it must follow guidelines as to form and content -- thus ensuring that many well-meant and deeply felt concerns will be discarded as simply not in compliance. As a public service, The Liberty Committee is providing a free on-line petition that meets the guidelines for comments and reminds Washington what the true definition of "privacy" is. The petition can be found at http://www.thelibertycommittee.org/medprivacypetition.htm . The Liberty Committee is a nationwide, grassroots organization of over 51,000 Americans whose goal is to defend and advance liberty by restoring our national government to its constitutional limitations. -30-

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