November 2002 - cypherpunks-legacy

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by Howell Corritore 06 Nov '02

06 Nov '02

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US Airways' Domestic E-Savers
by ESavers＠usairways.com 06 Nov '02

06 Nov '02

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Re: "patent free(?) anonymous credential system pre-print" - a simple attack and other problems
by Jason Holt 06 Nov '02

06 Nov '02

(Re: my paper at http://eprint.iacr.org/2002/151/ ) Stefan Brands wrote: > - The system is subject to a simple attack. The problem lies with the > multiplication of the hashes. Let's take the Chaum blinding as an [...] (For our readers at home, that was the vulnerability I mentioned in my response to Adam). [...] > - My work certainly does provide for "revocable anonymity" and "pooling" > prevention. For pooling protection, see paragraph 2 on page 193, > section 5.11 page 210 paragraph 2, and section 5.5.2 on page 211. For [...] When I speak of pooling credentials, I'm talking about Alice presenting her student ID along with the senior-citizen ID Bob loaned her (or for which Bob is answering clandestine-ly), as if they both belonged to her, in order to get both discounts on her movie tickets. In my system, you get your credentials issued in a set associated with a single identity, and it's hard for Alice to get Bob's credentials included in one of her own sets. It works even if the CAs don't trust each other. Page 211 of your book talks about discouraging lending, which doesn't help in the case when Bob answers in Alice's behalf when she shows his credentials. In any case, section 5.5.2 only adds liability to pooling - it doesn't prevent it mathematically. (As to lending in general, I think you're right that discouragement may be the best we can do). Page 193 and 210 do talk about having an identifying value encoded in the credentials which the holder can prove is or isn't the same as in other credentials. However, the discussion on page 193 is with respect to building digital pseudonyms, and the discussion on page 210 seems to be about showing that values are *not* the same, following a scenario in which a pseudonym holder has been identified as a misbehaver. I can think of ways in which this feature might be leveraged to create otherwise-unlinkable sets of credentials from different (distrusting) CAs, but it's never addressed directly that I can see, and would need some specifics filled in. Nonetheless, I'll point out in my paper that it's a possibility in your system. > - The proposed hashing technique for selective disclosure was introduced > by myself in 1999. Quoting from page 27 of my MIT Press book titled [...] Pages 27 and 184 of your book are now both referenced in my section on selective disclosure. > - More seriously, the simple hash technique has numerous drawbacks, as I > explain on page page 27 of my MIT Press book, in the very same > paragraph: "Although certificate holders now have some control over > which attributes they reveal to verifiers, they are forced to leave > behind digital signatures. ... [...] What do you mean by "forced to leave behind digital signatures"? > ... Worse, nothing prevents the CA and others from tracing and linking all > the communications and transactions of each certificate holder." ... [...] This is of course overcome in my system with blinding and cut-and-choose. > [ > Snipped discussion of features which Brands' system has and my system > doesn't: boolean formulae, lending prevention, limited show, > wallet-with-observer, discarding protection, anonymous recertification / > updating, multi-application certificates, etc. > ] From my response to Adam Back: I'm glad that was clear in my text. This isn't a do-everything system like Brands' - rather, it has 2 aims. 1: show how to do simple selective disclosure in a Chaum/Fiat/Naor-like system using X.509v3 credentials as a base, and 2: show how to link credentials from multiple issuers to the same identity without compromising anonymity. And actually, I forgot to mention the original goal of my paper, which was to create a system not encumbered by your patents or Chaum's. I'll expand my related work section to point out that your system and others have lots of features which my system doesn't attempt to provide. My apologies if my terse treatment mischaracterized your work. -J

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中国教育网：吉林特产高等专科学校2003年招生
by owner-cypherpunks＠minder.net 06 Nov '02

06 Nov '02

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Special situation commodity moves
by Capitol Commodity Services, Inc. 05 Nov '02

05 Nov '02

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Re: patent free(?) anonymous credential system pre-print
by Nomen Nescio 05 Nov '02

05 Nov '02

Stefan Brands writes regarding http://eprint.iacr.org/2002/151/: > The paper shows some promise but, apart from being insecure, has other > drawbacks that should be addressed: > > ... My work... introduced by myself... my MIT press book... > > In addition to various other drawbacks pointed out by of Dr. Adam Back > (see www.mail-archive.com/cypherpunks-moderated@minder.net/msg02752.html) > the proposal does not offer a wallet-with-observer mode, discarding > protection, anonymous recertification / updating, multi-application > certificates, etcetera. And balanced against all these numerous shortcomings, there is one inescapable, overwhelming fact: THE AUTHORS ARE MAKING THE FRUITS OF THEIR LABOR AVAILABLE FREELY FOR THE WORLD TO USE. With all of your patents, and your writings, and your self-promotion, how many people are using your certificates in the real world? Think how much you could have accomplished, how much of a difference you could have made, if you had been willing to sacrifice the hope of great riches. Instead you have followed in the footsteps of your mentor Chaum, and both of you have withheld your talent from the world. What is it about cash and credential systems that everyone who works in the area thinks they should patent their results? All you have accomplished is to make sure that no implementations exist! What good are your great ideas if no one can use them? Look at Chaum! Is that where you want to be in 20 years? Bitter and barren? Cut off from the cryptographic community? Reduced to publishing via the government patent office? That's no life for a great mind. Creativity demands interaction with an active and vital intellectual community. You have to give in order to take. Building walls around your intellectual property shuts others out even as you shut yourself in. If you really want to accomplish something meaningful, rather than continuing to hype and shill for a system which no one can use without entering into delicate financial negotiations, why not make it available on some basis for people to experiment with? Maybe a non-commercial, open-source GPL implementation could be a starting point. There is considerable interest in reputation systems among the P2P community and credentials could be a part of that. You can still protect your commercial interests while letting people get familiar with the technology by making a non-commercial library available. That's just one possibility. The point is, your ideas are going nowhere using your present strategy. Either this technology won't be used at all, or inferior but unrestricted implementations will be explored, as in the recent work. If you want things to happen differently, you must change your strategy.

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世界旅游网欢迎您!
by hk 05 Nov '02

05 Nov '02

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"patent free(?) anonymous credential system pre-print" - a simple attack and other problems
by Stefan Brands 05 Nov '02

05 Nov '02

The paper shows some promise but, apart from being insecure, has other drawbacks that should be addressed: - The system is subject to a simple attack. The problem lies with the multiplication of the hashes. Let's take the Chaum blinding as an example, something similar work for the "Laurie" protocol. The simple idea is to take X1 = [ \prod hash(bogus_att, salt_i) ] \times [hash(correct_att, salt)]^{-n/2} modulo pq X2 = X3 = ... = Xn = hash(correct_att, salt) Submit the blinded Xi's. Assuming X1 will not have to be opened (prob = 1/2 or 1, depending on whether or not protocol is interactive), one obains X1^d modulo pq from the signer, which contains consistently all the bogus attributes. Here is a suggestion for a "fix" to repair this total break. Make sure to that the signer, in additional to the consistency check for the opened blinded candidates, also checks that the opened blinded candidates have _different_ values. Of course, serious analysis needs to be done to ensure that this is enough to guarantee security. I do not have the time to look into this, but my gut feeling is that variations of the attack based on the same principle will still work, but with lower success probability; this will have to be compensated for by making n bigger, which makes the protocol even more inefficient. My advice is to the author is to analyze the proposed fix, and explore other possible fixes, before distributing an updated version. - My work certainly does provide for "revocable anonymity" and "pooling" prevention. For pooling protection, see paragraph 2 on page 193, section 5.11 page 210 paragraph 2, and section 5.5.2 on page 211. For not needing separate signing exponents for each attribute, see page 266 last paragraph on the page. For recovable anonymity, see the e-cash references on page 264/5. - The proposed hashing technique for selective disclosure was introduced by myself in 1999. Quoting from page 27 of my MIT Press book titled "Rethinking Public Key Infrastructures": "Another attempt to protect privacy is for the CA to digitally sign (salted) oneway hashes of attributes, instead of (the concatenation of) the attributes themselves. When transacting or communicating with a verifier, the certificate holder can selectively disclose only those attributes needed.22 {22 Lamport [244] proposed this hashing construct in the context of one-time signatures. When there are many attributes, they can be organized in a hash tree to improve efficiency, following Merkle [267].} This generalizes the dual signature technique applied in SET [257]." Since this technique is merely at the level of an observation, and because it is a simple generalization of the SET technique, I in fact decided at the time to put the entire paragraph under section header 1.2.2 of my book, titled "Previous privacy-protection efforts and their shortcomings". - More seriously, the simple hash technique has numerous drawbacks, as I explain on page page 27 of my MIT Press book, in the very same paragraph: "Although certificate holders now have some control over which attributes they reveal to verifiers, they are forced to leave behind digital signatures. Furthermore, they are seriously restricted in the properties they can demonstrate about their attributes; Boolean formulae, for instance, are out of the question. Worse, nothing prevents the CA and others from tracing and linking all the communications and transactions of each certificate holder." Other techniques, such as lending prevention and limited-show, do not work either. It was for these and other reasons that I was motivated to work on the more sophisticated selective disclosure in the first place. - In addition to various other drawbacks pointed out by of Dr. Adam Back (see www.mail-archive.com/cypherpunks-moderated@minder.net/msg02752.html) the proposal does not offer a wallet-with-observer mode, discarding protection, anonymous recertification / updating, multi-application certificates, etcetera. Hope this helps, Stefan Brands

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Re: What email encryption is actually in use?
by David Howe 05 Nov '02

05 Nov '02

On Sun, Nov 03, 2002 at 11:23:36AM -0800, Tim May wrote: > - -- treat text as text, to be sent via whichever mail program one > uses, or whichever chatroom software (not that encrypted chat rooms > are likely...but who knows?), or whichever news reader software Hmm. I know of at least one irc server (and nntp server, as it happens, on the same box) that only allows access by ssh tunnel...

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ScanMail Message: To Sender, virus found and action taken.
by System Attendant 05 Nov '02

05 Nov '02

ScanMail for Microsoft Exchange has blocked a file attachment(s). Place = garmstrong(a)carecredit.com Sender = cypherpunks Subject = If you would like to apply online from the Delivery Time = November 04, 2002 (Monday) 23:05:38 Action on file attachment(s): Message from recipient's administrator: Warning to sender. ScanMail detected a virus in an email attachment you sent.

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