June 2002 - cypherpunks-legacy

Palladium: Microsoft Bets the Company
by Rick Smith at Secure Computing 29 Jun '02

29 Jun '02

I have to admit I couldn't understand why, earlier this year, Bill Gates declared that security would be a key element of future Microsoft products. Now it looks like an innovative way to try to dominate the industry again. This is a 'bet the company' strategy. Traditionally Microsoft has pushed third-party flexibility and programmability (subordinated to their own products, of course) over anything else. This allowed them to promote new sales and upgrades based on improved features. By moving to security, however, Microsoft must move away from flexibility. This is risky. Consider a quick history lesson: Why did the Wintel PC prevail over the Mac in the computing community? Answer: economy and flexibility. Question: What do you give up when you implement a hermetically sealed system as is proposed by TCPA and Microsoft's Palladium? Answer: economy and flexibility. Complicated cryptosystems are troublesome beasts. This is probably the main reason PKI is "mostly dead" instead of being the foundation of modern infosec. It's time consuming to get all the keys and permissions in the right places, and it costs money to keep all those bits of the infrastructure working. Remember: to make this work, the TCPA and Palladium people have to operate a bureaucracy to issue certificates, validate software, and do background checks. That drives up costs and it's really hard to do this efficiently. Moreover, hermetically sealed systems like this aren't robust -- they trade off reliability for the protection of the 'protected material.' Things break when you don't expect them to, like the 9/11 recovery workers who had to abandon Windows XP when it died after failing to be properly registered. Your PC crashes more, but you get to watch "Bambi." Gosh. Given that, most people will try to use non-TCPA computers whenever a PC isn't intended as an entertainment nexus. This turns the TCPA/Palladium machines into glorified set-top boxes and perhaps a 21st century Divix. The only hope for TCPA and Palladium is for Congress to outlaw normal computers. Frankly, if grassroots computer users lose that battle, we deserve what we get. And we'd end up with the 21st century version of Prohibition in which people smuggle in large-screen monitors and unfettered motherboards instead of bathtub gin. Rick. smith(a)securecomputing.com roseville, minnesota "Authentication" in bookstores http://www.smat.us/crypto/

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by sazoo 29 Jun '02

29 Jun '02

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Obtain a Potential $5,000 per bank account you open ----------------------- sko
by Dan Nunan 28 Jun '02

28 Jun '02

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How Wealth is Built on the Internet
by Home Biz Forum 28 Jun '02

28 Jun '02

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Judge strikes law citing 'terrorist' groups
by Major Variola (ret) 28 Jun '02

28 Jun '02

Judge strikes law citing 'terrorist' groups http://www.washtimes.com/world/20020627-595079.htm By Ben Barber THE WASHINGTON TIMES A U.S. law authorizing the State Department to designate groups as "terrorist" and which allows those who support them to be prosecuted has been declared unconstitutional by a federal judge, throwing U.S. anti-terrorism strategies into disarray. A U.S. official who has been dealing with the issue said yesterday there will be "serious problems" if the decision stands on appeal. The U.S. government could no longer use the existing law to prosecute those who give "material support" to groups on the list such as Hamas, al Qaeda, Islamic Jihad and Hezbollah. U.S. District Judge Robert M. Takasugi in Los Angeles ruled against the Justice Department in the little-noticed decision last week, declaring the 1996 law "unconstitutional on its face" since it does not allow the suspect groups to challenge the terrorist designation. <snip>

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Re: mount filesystem and run a program when hotplugged
by Harmon Seaver 28 Jun '02

28 Jun '02

Never tried it with USB, but use autofs a lot -- look at your /etc/auto.master and /etc/auto.misc files. I use "crypt -fstype=reiserfs :/dev/loop0" in /etc/auto.misc to automount an encrypted loop device. The user that owns that filesystem can just cd to it and it mounts automagically, to others it's not even there. That is, there's nothing in the /misc/ dir until I cd into /misc/crypt and it self unmounts if you aren't in it for so long, however long you set the timeout for. You have to have already run the losetup for the loop device, of course, and all that. Autofs works fine for automounting floppys and pccards as well, don't know why it wouldn't work for USB drives. Getting it to run a shell script when mounted shouldn't be that hard. On Fri, Jun 28, 2002 at 05:29:17PM +0200, Eugen Leitl wrote: > I've bought me a little (32 MBytes) hotpluggable USB flash stick (a > TrekStor). It mounts fine, but what I'd like to do is to automount it, and > fire up a program (I intend to put my keyring on it) if hotplugged. > > The system I'm testing this on is RH 7.3. > > I've been using mount -t vfat /dev/sda /mnt/usbhd to mount it manually and > put diverse entries into /etc/fstab, to no avail. Any suggestions? -- Harmon Seaver CyberShamanix http://www.cybershamanix.com

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Obtain a Potential $5,000 per bank account you open ----------------------- jfm
by Dan Nunan 28 Jun '02

28 Jun '02

Hello, My name is Dan... Let me start by telling you a little bit about myself in the hopes that you will join me. For 21 Years I worked for IBM. Back in 1996 I left IBM and found a way to use the U.S. Banking System to my advantage. My wife and I, and two dogs, live on a $2,000,000+ Ranch. Unimatrix Capital has a 6 Page Blueprint that can allow motivated people to potentially put $5,000 into each bank account they open, each and every month. This is not a get rich quick scheme and it does take some effort. We are in good standing with the Better Business Bureau. This is in no way a scam. This is NOT a multi-level-marketing or pyramid scheme. It takes very, very little money to get started. It does NOT involve selling any products. It does NOT involve buying homes with no money down. It does NOT involve investments. It does NOT require that you to work at it full time. We will be sending you a detailed 6 page "Blueprint" of what to do. So that we may share with you our discovery, We're going to ask you to take the first step and invest $20 for something we feel can be a life changing investment. If you are NOT satisfied with the information Unimatrix Capital has sent you, we will refund the entire $20. Simply return the information provided. Yes, this is a 100% money back guarantee. Yours truly, Dan Nunan Unimatrix Capital LLC ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Please cut along dotted line and mail this bottom portion to us O.K. Dan you're on! I want it! Rush me my copy of the 6 page Blueprint, but only on the condition I can return if I am not satisfied. There is no possible way I can lose. On those terms, here is my $20. Your Name: _____________________________________________ Address: _____________________________________________ City: ___________________________ State: ___________________________ Zip Code: ______________ Email Address: ___________________________________ Please make out check or money order to "Unimatrix Capital LLC" Please make $20 payment to: Unimatrix Capital LLC 1903 S. Greeley Hwy. Ste 272 Cheyenne, WY 82007 This offer is only for residents of the United States. If you want it mailed to an address outside the United States please add $10. Privacy Policy: Information provided, such as your name, address and email will be held strictly confidential and not shared with anyone. To be removed from our email list please REPLY to this message with REMOVE in the subject line. 02 lsconjxxiaopoeqfbrrfkpe

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RE: Ross's TCPA paper
by Marshall Clow 28 Jun '02

28 Jun '02

Pretty good summary in NTK <http://www.ntk.net> > Lot of talk this week about Microsoft's new bluesky project: > In the softest of previews in Newsweek, Steven Levy banged > on about PALLADIUM, alluding to the sacred (but as it turns > out, a bit horse-blind) guardian of Troy. British readers > will know the term better as the fancy West End theatre that > spawned Beatlemania and now shows overpriced performances of > "Chitty Chitty Bang Bang". Figures: either way, you're not > getting in, and we're not sure you'd want to. In a > (cryptographically hardened) nutshell: Microsoft's Palladium > will be an area of your future PC, fenced off and unreadable > except for trusted software. "Untrusted" apps won't have > have access. And how does code gain Palladium's trust? By > having you, the PC owner, sanction its entry? Oh no. > *You're* untrustworthy - you might sign in your dodgy CD and > DVD ripping programs. No, this area will only be for > software sanctioned by Microsoft and their paying friends - > Hollywood-approved media players, for instance. No backstage > pass for you at this Palladium, even though you own the damn > theatre. As Ross Anderson points out in his FAQ, "Palladium" > is just Microsoft's fancy name for the old "Trusted PC" > initiative. And the only reason why they need to trust the > PC is: they don't trust its owner. Remember that when the > hard sell begins: the only person Palladium protects your > computer from - is you. > http://www.msnbc.com/news/770511.asp > - Levy ensuring that RMS *stays* "the Last Hacker" > http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/users/rja14/tcpa-faq.html > - Ross Anderson, Cassandra to this tale > http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,3973,274309,00.asp > - hold on: this project is headed by someone called Juarez? > http://www.alt2600.com/faqs/ > - is that some kind of joke? -- -- Marshall Marshall Clow Idio Software <mailto:marshall@idio.com> My name is Boba Fett. You killed my father, prepare to die!

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Re: Revenge of the WAVEoids: Palladium Clues May Lie In AMD Motherboard Design
by pgut001＠cs.auckland.ac.nz 28 Jun '02

28 Jun '02

"R. A. Hettinga" <rah(a)shipwright.com> writes: >WAVE, some of you might remember, was started by a former NatSemi Chairman >back before the internet got popular. It was going to be a dial-up book-entry- >to-the-screen content control system with special boards and chips patented to >down to it's socks. Think of it as DIVX for PCs, with a similar chance of success (see my earlier post about TCPA being a dumping ground for failed crypto hardware initiatives from various vendors). Its only real contribution is that the WAVEoid board on Ragingbull (alongside the Rambus one) is occasionally amusing to read, mostly because it shows that the dot-com sharemarket situation would be better investigated by the DEA than the FTC. Peter. --------------------------------------------------------------------- The Cryptography Mailing List Unsubscribe by sending "unsubscribe cryptography" to majordomo(a)wasabisystems.com

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RE: Diffie-Hellman and MITM
by Nymious 28 Jun '02

28 Jun '02

IMHO ... the MQV key exchange is an excelelnt choice. It would be commonly used if it were not for the patents :-( > -----Original Message----- > From: Marcel Popescu [mailto:mdpopescu@subdimension.com] > Sent: Thursday, June 27, 2002 7:40 AM > To: cypherpunks(a)lne.com > Subject: Diffie-Hellman and MITM > > > Is there a defense against MITM for Diffie-Hellman? Is there another > protocol with equivalent properties, with such a defense? (Secure > communications between two parties, with no shared secret and > no out-of-band > abilities, on an insecure network.) > > Thanks, > Mark > > http://grouper.ieee.org/groups/1363/ Yahoo! - Official partner of 2002 FIFA World Cup http://fifaworldcup.yahoo.com

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