June 2002 - cypherpunks-legacy

Vacation Planning! Save up to 85% off airline tickets!
by Going Somewhere? 07 Jun '02

07 Jun '02

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Insight on the News Email Edition
by Insight on the News 06 Jun '02

06 Jun '02

INSIGHT NEWS ALERT! New Stories From Insight on the News Are Now Online. http://insightmag.com ............................................... Folks, dont miss Gordon Thomas breaking bombshell on how al Qaeda may have acquired enough Uranium-235 to make a suitcase bombfrom the Russian Mafia! http://insightmag.com/news/254837.html And John Berlaus expose of how Canada has turned itself into a terrorist haven has set tongues wagging from Washington to Ottawa. http://insightmag.com/news/254290.html Thats it for now. Until next time, from the Bunker, Im your newsman in Washington. ............................................... AL QAEDA, THE RUSSIAN MOB, AND THE SUITCASE DEVICE Gordon Thomas reveals that German scientists are tracking the possibility that Osama bin Laden and the Al Quada group have obtained further nuclear material. Three associates were arrested in Paris with enough Uranium-235 to create a "suitcase-type nuclear bomb"courtesy of the Russian Mafia. http://insightmag.com/news/254837.html ............................................... DONT GO IN THE WATER (OR.WHOS ENDANGERED HERE?) Sean Paige writes that two federally funded events concerning shark attacks suggest that Americans have good reason to be wary as another summer beach season gets under way. http://insightmag.com/news/254304.html ............................................... EUROPE FOR THE EUROPEANS? Gareth Harding writes that immigration and asylum issuesonce unmentionable-- have shot to the top of the political agenda in Europe. http://insightmag.com/news/254550.html ======================================== Don't Gamble with your Family's Health! Click here for Affordable Health Insurance NOW! http://etools.ncol.com/a/jgroup/bg_uici_wwwinsightmagcom_8.html ======================================== RUMMY THE PEACEMAKER What's with Rumsfelds peace-making odyssey to South Asia? http://insightmag.com/news/254551.html ............................................... IS AMERICA DISAPPEARING DOWN THE PC MEMORY HOLE? Don Feder tells us that young Americans are oblivious to their heritage. Ignorance of our past has been carefully cultivated by the educational establishment, and the result is a cut-flower generation, severed from its roots. http://insightmag.com/news/254233.html ............................................... REAPING THE EBONIC PLAGUE Nicholas Stix opines that for the last six years, with the connivance of the mainstream media, most Americans have been able to forget ebonics. Unfortunately, however, this foolishness has continued. http://insightmag.com/news/254234.html ======================================== SUBSCRIBE TO THE INSIGHT PRINT EDITION TODAY! And Save 72% (Off Our Newsstand Price) https://www.collegepublisher.com/insightsub/subform1.cfm ======================================= You have received this newsletter because you have a user name and password at Insight on the News. To unsubscribe from this newsletter, visit "http://insightmag.com/main.cfm?include=unsubscribe". You may also log into Insight on the News and edit your account preferences on the Web. If you have forgotten or don't know your user name and password, it will be emailed to you after visiting the following link: http://insightmag.com/main.cfm?include=emailPassword&serialNumber=16oai891z…

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Slashdot | 'Unbreakable Linux', a new distro?
by Jim Choate 06 Jun '02

06 Jun '02

http://slashdot.org/articles/02/06/06/029258.shtml?tid=163 -- -- ____________________________________________________________________ When I die, I would like to be born again as me. Hugh Hefner ravage(a)ssz.com www.ssz.com jchoate(a)open-forge.org www.open-forge.org --------------------------------------------------------------------

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Re: overcoming ecash deployment problems (Re: all about transferable off-line ecash)
by Marcel Popescu 06 Jun '02

06 Jun '02

From: "Adam Back" <adam(a)cypherspace.org> > So this would be the argument for a closed supply of money in the > system, like the digicash betabucks where they stated up from that > they would only issue 1,000,000 betabucks. People trade them based on > supply and demand. > > Perhaps. Though at the time Wei Dai had some arguments at the time > that if they were popular, they would be a good investment and people > would have an incentive to hold on to them which would make them > difficult to obtain, highly inflationary, and hard to use. I have missed that one; however, it is wrong - if people hold them, then they become MORE valuable, and thus you have high deflation - the purchasing power of money grows - which is great. And if their value gets so big that subdivisions start to become necessary, one can always convert them to "new betabucks", each old one being worth a million new ones. End of problem. Mark

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Making algebra.com Choate-free
by Igor Chudov 06 Jun '02

06 Jun '02

I am considering procmailing Jim Choate and ssz.com to /dev/null at algebra.com. That should only affect subscribers of algebra.com. I would like to hear your opinions. igor

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The Register - Security through obsolecence...
by Jim Choate 06 Jun '02

06 Jun '02

Somebody needs to do their homework, Brian Aker is nowhere near first to come up with this one... http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/55/25608.html -- -- ____________________________________________________________________ When I die, I would like to be born again as me. Hugh Hefner ravage(a)ssz.com www.ssz.com jchoate(a)open-forge.org www.open-forge.org --------------------------------------------------------------------

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CNN.com - Bush to announce new intelligence agency - June 6, 2002
by Jim Choate 06 Jun '02

06 Jun '02

http://www.cnn.com/2002/ALLPOLITICS/06/06/bush.security/index.html -- -- ____________________________________________________________________ When I die, I would like to be born again as me. Hugh Hefner ravage(a)ssz.com www.ssz.com jchoate(a)open-forge.org www.open-forge.org --------------------------------------------------------------------

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Slashdot | D-VHS to Hit The Market This Week
by Jim Choate 06 Jun '02

06 Jun '02

http://slashdot.org/articles/02/06/06/0219237.shtml?tid=97 -- -- ____________________________________________________________________ When I die, I would like to be born again as me. Hugh Hefner ravage(a)ssz.com www.ssz.com jchoate(a)open-forge.org www.open-forge.org --------------------------------------------------------------------

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Re: Laurie's blinding w/cut and choose?
by Nomen Nescio 06 Jun '02

06 Jun '02

Jason Holt writes: > In his paper on Lucre ("2nd defence" against marking): > http://anoncvs.aldigital.co.uk/lucre/ > > Ben Laurie gives this as a (possibly patent-free) blinding technique, > where h is the message, and g is the public generator: > > r = blind(h) = h^y * g^b (mod p) > > To "sign", > > s = sign(r) = m^h > > To unblind, > > (s/g^k^b)^(1/y) (mod p) > > (where k is the signer's secret exponent. Of course, nobody but the > signer can verify the signature). Unfortunately, this doesn't work with cut > and choose where the signer signs the product of unrevealed documents, since > the 1/y exponent above would distribute to all the internal terms: Boy, you've got a lot of faith asking this question on cypherpunks. It's not exactly the intellectual center of the crypto freedom movement these days, you know. The average IQ is rapidly descending into double digits, even not counting Choate. But let's see what we can do for you. First, let's fix your notation. r = blind(h) = h^y * g^b OK s = sign(r) = r^k, not m^h. unblind(s) = (s/g^k^b)^(1/y) = h^k = sign(h). That's what you want to end up with, h^k, as the pseudo-signature on h. Now for a credential system, you apparently want to create a bunch of values which have some structure, and get a signature on a product of them. Using cut and choose, the client will prepare blinded forms of all of the values, then the server will ask for half of the blinding factors to be revealed. This exposes the raw values to be signed and the server can make sure they are in the right form. If so, it then signs the product of the remaining values, which the client unblinds to get back a good signature on the product of the unblinded values. The fundamental problem with this is that the blinding factors have to be different for each of the values. If they are all the same, then when they are revealed for some of the values during cut and choose, that will reveal them for all of them, and so none of them will be effectively blinded any more. But if the blinding factors are all different, we can't unblind since we don't have a unique power 1/y to raise to. That's your problem, right? Here are a couple of possible solutions. First, you could do a cut and choose in which all but one of the blinded values are revealed, and only the remaining (unrevealed) one is signed. This has the problem that it has only a 1/n security factor with n values. That is, the client can just guess which one the server won't ask to check, and if it sent say 100 values, it has a 1/100 chance of getting lucky, which might seem too high. However since credential issuing usually occurs in a non-anonymous context, you can afford to penalize people very heavily if they are caught in this manner. (Cutting the connection and refusing to resume with the previous values has to count as cheating.) Another approach is as follows. Go back to the 50-50 cut and choose with signature on the product. However, use the same y blinding factor for all of the values. Now when the client has to reveal during cut and choose, it keeps the y value secret but reveals all of the h and b values. It then proves in zero knowledge that there exists a y such that the h^y equals the required value. This is a standard ZK proof of knowledge of a discrete logarithm. It is similar to the example Ben's paper gives of how the bank can prove it is raising to the right power. Since you don't have to reveal y, you can use the same y for all of them and successfully perform the unblind operation, getting back the signature on the product of the h's as required. But actually another solution is much simpler, which is to do blinding as just h * g^b, without a y factor. That works fine as long as the bank is known not to be misbehaving. Ben's paper shows how the bank can use a ZK proof to show that it is raising to the same power k every time, basically again that same ZK proof regarding discrete logarithms. If the bank uses such a proof then you can use simpler blinding without a y factor, and you can recover the signature on the product of your h values by dividing by g^k^(sum of b's). So there you go. A little technical for cypherpunks, but unfortunately coderpunks, like the little old lady, has fallen and it can't get up.

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Slashdot | Using Your Privacy Against You (CC Fraud, e-commerce, terrorism)
by Jim Choate 06 Jun '02

06 Jun '02

http://yro.slashdot.org/yro/02/06/06/0432250.shtml?tid=158 -- -- ____________________________________________________________________ When I die, I would like to be born again as me. Hugh Hefner ravage(a)ssz.com www.ssz.com jchoate(a)open-forge.org www.open-forge.org --------------------------------------------------------------------

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