December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

Re: "Trustworthy" PGP Timestamping Service ??
by tcmay＠got.net 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 6:51 PM 1/21/96, Matthew Richardson wrote: >-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- > >I have recently setup a free PGP timestamping service which operates >by email. > >The objective of the service is to be able to produce "trustworthy" >timestamps which cannot be backdated without detection. It achieves >this by:- > >(a) giving every signature a unique sequential serial number; > >(b) every day making a ZIP file of that day's detached signatures >and feeding the ZIP file back for signing (and hence the assignment >of another serial number); ... It sounds like a variant of the Haber and Stornetta work on digital timestamping, about which much has been written on our list (check the archives, and/or sections of my Cyphernomicon). They have a company, Surety, which is doing this (or was, last time I heard). www.surety.com will get you there. My hunch is that your scheme implements a version of a hash (the idea of hashing the doc and then publishing the hash as a "widely witnessed event," in Haber and Stornetta terms) that could infringe on their patents (assuming they applied, as I recall hearing they did). Before you go much further on this, it would behoove you to check on what they are doing and on what patents, if any, you might need to license. --Tim May Boycott espionage-enabled software! We got computers, we're tapping phone lines, we know that that ain't allowed. ---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---- Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, tcmay(a)got.net 408-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA | knowledge, reputations, information markets, Higher Power: 2^756839 - 1 | black markets, collapse of governments. "National borders aren't even speed bumps on the information superhighway."

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Re: NSA vacuuming down Internet traffic
by Rick Smith 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

alanh(a)infi.net (Alan Horowitz) asks: >Is there any open source - or otherwise - knowledge or speculation about >which words/phrases the Terra-cycle cpu's are text-searching *for*? If it >were your responsibility to eavesdrop on Iranian terrorists ... >... would you know for sure which words/phrases to key on? It >doesn't sound like a tractable problem to me. There are two parts to this question. First, how do you choose targets? It's been a few years since I read Bamford's book (when *is* the next edition coming out, anyway?) but I seem to remember that there is some sort of "committee" that agrees on what to aim at. It probably contains the usual collection of bureaucrats from military and civilian agencies. Despite the lofty budgets, even the NSA's vacuum cleaner has a hose of limited size. The committee allocates the available resources to prioritized objectives. You can probably predict targets by estimating political priorities and clout of the various agencies, and, of course, by watching CNN. Second, how do you ensure that you capture relevant traffic? I'm sure you start with the obvious -- look at traffic that's definitely relevant and set up filters to find more of it. While it's attractive to want to treat this as a state detection problem (message is/isn't relevant) you really want more of a signal analysis solution (measure likelihood of relevance). Also, a high priority target would probably have its hit behavior evaluated by real humans to ensure that the expected amount of relevant traffic is continuously sucked up. My first job, twenty years ago, involved a prototype speech recognition system under contract for Rome Air Development Center (a traditional cover for TLA research). The machine was supposed to go beep whenever a specified word or phrase was heard over the input voice stream. We joked about testing for the term "Russian Spy" but settled on looking for "Kissinger" instead. That let us run tests by listening to news broadcasts of the time. We built custom boards with Schottky TTL and a blazing fast 120ns cycle time. Times change, eh? Rick. smith(a)sctc.com secure computing corporation

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Espionage-enabled Lotus notes.
by Trei Family 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

I've come up with a new term to describe the type of 'improved' security in the new International edition of Lotus Notes: 'espionage-enabled' It's specifically built for export, and has a backdoor to enable USG agents to read the messages more easily. From the viewpoint of a foreign purchaser, 'espionage-enabled' seems an appropriate term. If we spread this term sufficiently, we may be able to discourage the widespread adoption of this half-measure, and increase the pressure for good, unencumbered crypto. speaking only for myself, Peter Trei ptrei(a)acm.org

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Re: NYT New Web Site
by take＠imasy.or.jp 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Dear Mr. John Young, This is Tsuyoshi Hayashi. At 11:18 AM 96.1.22 -0500, John Young wrote: >NYT reported today that it has set up a new web site: >http://www.nytimes.com Now I visiting there. It's very worth for me. Very very thanks for your info. (^^) >For the Times-addicted, today's WSJ has a page one article on Does WSJ have there own web site, too? - Tsuyoshi Hayashi <take(a)imasy.or.jp> --- hayashi(a)scs.sony.co.jp is no longer valid. --- Please update to take(a)imasy.or.jp

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An IDEA whose time has come (Notes from the RSA Conference)
by Jonathan Zamick 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Well the RSA Security Conference is over, and I finally had time to sleep. Thus, I'll give you all a bit of my impressions. First, there were a heck of a lot more merchants this year. Last year, there were about 400 people. This year it was 1100, with a couple hundred waiting. Thus the conferences were a bit more mixed in level of topic. (As one person put it, the more interesting the title, the more likely it is a blatant plug for a product.) On the other hand there were a number of great conferences too. Sadly, I was busy at the Consensus booth and didn't have time for many of them. Last year Clipper was the big issue, but export controls were predicted to be the big issue this year. This year export controls were the big issue, but certificates were predicted to be the big issue next year. Lotus got low marks in everyone's book for setting the precedent of giving the government 24 bits of their key. (As if France is going to be satisfied with that solution.) I didn't meet many Cypherpunks at this conference. Partially it may have been because I was dirt tired after planning the booth in only two weeks, and running it. They had a lot of nice giveaways. I have a metal backed dayrunner which is cute, an etch-a-sketch keychain which is causing rabid jealousy in the office, and a nifty t-shirt with the logo 'A good marketing organization listens to its customers'... then the picture of a woman on the phone w/ two spooks listening in.. finally 'We Hear You... Your NSA'. Needless to say, I like it. Anyway here is the point of the subject from this message. A while back I asked for all your wish lists. One of the big issues was making IDEA available w/ RSAREF. Well, I did even better, you can now license IDEA from Consensus whether you use RSAREF or not. This was the biggest hit at our booth. A number of groups saw a very strong, fast, Swiss block cypher as a nifty thing. Imagine, you can use 128 bits in Europe. Right now I'm trying to convince Ascom to develop a crippled version of IDEA to simply give away if anyone wants it for export. (Like most of the folk here, I don't see a 40 bit key as very valuable, but it is useful for companies which don't have contacts in Europe.) As a little promo, Ascom, the company which developed IDEA, and will be licensing it in Europe, announced a challenge. If you can break one ciphered message in the next year, they'll send you on a vacation to the Matterhorn, give you a nice dinner w/ the creators of IDEA, and be really impressed. :) Anyway, I'll be putting more information up on our web pages about IDEA. If anyone wants info on my Etch-A-Sketch keychain, feel free to send me some mail. If you want info on anything else, you can send email for that too. Take care all. Jonathan ------------------------------------------------------------------------ ..Jonathan Zamick Consensus Development Corporation.. ..<JonathanZ(a)consensus.com> 1563 Solano Ave, #355.. .. Berkeley, CA 94707-2116.. .. o510/559-1500 f510/559-1505.. ..Mosaic/WWW Home Page: .. .. Consensus Home Page ..

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No Subject
by owner-cypherpunks＠toad.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

January 15th Fortune (don't normally read it, but I picked up a free copy) has a lengthy and evidently well-researched article bylined Richard Behar on the efforts of BFI, a large regional trash hauler and recycler, to break into the (by most accounts) Mafia-controlled garbage collection industry in New York City. Cypherpunk relevance: BFI is cooperating closely with the DA in helping to prosecute its allegedly mob-affiliated competitors, which raises a lot of very interesting questions, for which I have yet to formulate any answers. Also a sidenote about how NYC's disclosure laws actually aid organized crime by helping the various bosses track who owns what territory. Electronic surveillance. Money laundering. Steganography (sending messages by way of the disembodied head of a dog). Open access to information and free-market capitalism versus violent bozos, with and without uniforms. Pen trumps sword. Rich says check it out. -- Rich Graves Fucking Statist

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The Collapse of Ideas in a Pop Culture
by tcmay＠got.net 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Someone sent me a note asking about my recent comment that I no longer read "Wired." I replied to him by citing the trendy, busy, information-overloaded, and personality-oriented nature of "Wired"...and its dozen or so direct competitors, mostly GenX rags, plus the several dozen or so tangentially similar magazines that fill shelf after shelf in the Barnes and Noble and Supercrown sorts of superstores. Here's what I said to him: --- And "Wired" is frustratingly repetitive, trendy, over-busy with graphics, sidebars, etc. And the mine of good topics is being mined by several dozen other mags, such as Access, RayGun, Mondo, Details, etc. etc. Many of these are aimed at GenXers, with an explicit focus on personalities rather than ideas. (How many of these mags have had Traci Lords on the cover, for example?) I grew up with "Scientific American" as my standard: long, detailed articles. (And even their articles are getting shorter and more pop-oriented.) --- The Cypherpunks relevance, I think, is that many of the ideas we espouse just cannot easily be covered in a "personality" piece, or in a "freak of the week" (to paraphrase Dave Mandl) photo shoot. Journalists who want "some quick shots" of "Cypherpunks talking about privacy" do a disservice to the deeper ideas. To be fair to journalism, I think several journalists--whose names I have mentioned before, but won't here--do a fine job of in-depth reporting. They are the Jules Bergmanns of our modern age. (If you don't know who Jules Bergmann was, you're a GenXer and can't be held responsible for your ignorance :-}.) There is some hope. When people ask questions about what terms mean, about where to find more information, we don't refer them to articles in "Access" about how former porn queen is really big on PGP, or squibs in "Interview" about how Seattle's java houses are going apeshit over Java....we refer them to "Applied Cryptography," to "The Puzzle Palace," and even to articles on digital cash in "Scientific American." I wander through the cavernous bookstores that are so common these days, with miles of aisles, and wonder how I ever got educated in an era when a "big" bookstore was a Brentano's that would now fit in just the _magazine_ section of a Borders or Bookstar or Barnes and Noble. (Hmmmmh, attack of the killer Bs?). The answer is that in-depth study of ideas hasn't changed much. The Tofflerian idea of "overchoice" is solvable by simply ignoring the ephemeral cruft that threatens to engulf us. --Tim May Boycott espionage-enabled software! We got computers, we're tapping phone lines, we know that that ain't allowed. ---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---- Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, tcmay(a)got.net 408-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA | knowledge, reputations, information markets, Higher Power: 2^756839 - 1 | black markets, collapse of governments. "National borders aren't even speed bumps on the information superhighway."

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Re: Hassles taking App. Crypt. to Taiwan?
by p.ruhnau＠jinxed.dinoco.de 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

On 21 Jan 96, TCMAY(a)GOT.NET wrote: > On the Taiwan side, though, they may wonder why you brought an > expensive > U.S.-printed copy when you get the special rice-paper edition of "Applied > Cryptography, 2nd Ed." for the equivalent of $2.25 in Taipei's book stalls. Can anybody tell me the addresses of taiwanese mail-order bookstores, please? MfG, Peter -- #define putc(c,fp) (--(fp)->_pc<0 ? (*(fp)->_pt)(c,fp) : (*(fp)->_cp++=c))

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DigiCash Ecash - 2 security topics
by Bryce 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- An entity calling itself "Marcel van der Peijl" <bigmac(a)digicash.com> is alleged to have written: > > (I wrote:) > > E.g. has there been a DigiCash response to Ian Goldberg's > > publication of a denial-of-service attack which operates by > > spending a coin with the same serial number as your victim's > > coin? > After discussing things with Ian we came up with several solutions. > One is encrypting more messages (which we will do in a next revision > of the protocol), the other is enabling ecash to work over ssl > servers. You may not see the answer directly in the list, but you > will see it in the next protocol revision. What kind of performance hit does this new encryption entail? (No additional performance hit if SSL does it, I know.) Are you considering having different protocols for SSL-protected transactions versus unprotected ones? Let me repeat something I said a couple of weeks ago: I suspect that the weakest point in DigiCash security is on the end-user's own harddrive. A malicious cracker could write a Trojan horse or even a virus which would steal the user's coins and send them to himself. Hm. Now that I think about it, if the user has a back-up copy of those coins then he can reveal their blinding factors to the bank after the theft, thus catching the thief! So the thief program would have to deposit those coins with the bank, make a new withdrawal (ouch!) and then steal the new coins. I'm not sure that anything can be done by DigiCash or by Ecash- issuing banks to prevent this, but I thought I'd mention it. (Hm. The program also has to steal the user's password in order to make the withdrawal.. This is getting to be a pretty smart program!) Regards, Bryce "Toys, Tools and Technologies" the Niche New Signal Consulting -- C++, Java, HTML, Ecash Bryce PGP sig follows -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.2 Comment: Auto-signed under Unix with 'BAP' Easy-PGP v1.01 iQCVAwUBMQPWs/WZSllhfG25AQHv2gQAuJsZqQh+IF0vk8C2OY9zsvMlbqN0+GxN LinbZhWRDlqcRJ69dtzYDhbuvDphHuQYdNUJka5r3Bzplj5tim3sJ+wvEF2eiXTO vUSXrJ8DvnZPji+qEuv1Zs5D8gXdFs2ALsUbsDxQxVrVlcTbDKnz2EQel0apzqld VTV8CFvHaRY= =i3hX -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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Netscape + Verifone
by Perry E. Metzger 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

My pager delivers me selected miniaturized Reuters news stories. I just got one that reads: REDWOOD CITY, CA - Netscape Communications Corp. and Verifone Inc. will devise a system to make electronic payments on the internet more secure. Anyone know anything about this? I'm away from my normal sources of such things (like Bloomberg terminals)... .pm

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Lotus key breaking?
by Thomas Grant Edwards 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Hmmm...how long is the single private key of Lotus Notes? Is it time to warm up the key-cracking net again? VTW Billwatch #33 said that: >LOTUS BLINKS IN INDUSTRY/NSA CRYPT STANDOFF ... >On Wed, Jan. 17th, 1996, Lotus announced that it had increased the key >length of its International version of the Lotus Notes product to 64 >bits. They did this by building in a back door for the Administration to >use to decrypt any international traffic that it might desire to read. >Although there are a lot of reasons why we think this is a terrible idea, >the first one that springs to mind is the fact that the one public key that >Lotus has embedded in all their software is a single point of failure >for every International Lotus user throughout the world. ... >You can find a copy of the Lotus press releases at >http://www.lotus.com

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ecash
by Juzzy 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Hello, I'm new to this mailing list and i was wondering if someone could post me some information on ecash, what it is, and its implementation. Thank You Justin Walker

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Crypto comedy
by dmandl＠panix.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

During some free time over the holidays, I finally got around to HTML-izing a bunch of articles I've had published over the years. These are among the most riotously funny things ever written. However, one of these pieces may be of particular interest to cypherpunks, as it revolves around cryptography. Be warned that the piece has no scientific merit whatsoever, and even misuses some archaic crypto terms. I was aware of it at the time, but I knew that 99.9% of people would never notice. (This was six years ago, long before cryptography became hip.) The piece is called "Ching Chow's Hidden Agenda." (Ching Chow was a comic that used to appear in the New York Daily News.) That's: http://www.wfmu.org/~davem (choose the "Some things I've written" option). There's some other interesting stuff on my web pages as well, with equally little scientific merit. --Dave. -- Dave Mandl dmandl(a)panix.com http://www.wfmu.org/~davem

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Re: Ultimate Paranoia
by Lou Zirko 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 12:10 PM 1/22/96 +0100, Anonymous wrote: >Fellow Cypherpunks, > >I have been lurking around for some time and I have learned alot, But I have >a few questions that I either haven't seen posted or I've missed all together. > >I keep PGP stored on a removable hard drive and keep it under lock and >key when it's not in use. I write and encrypt messages on a stand-alone >computer, >that I only have access to. My passphrase is rather long and full of gibberish, >But I still fear the other things that I can not control. > >Does anyone make and sell a device that emits white and pink noise? > >How do you take the randomness collected from radation sensors to create >a truly random sample for creating a PGP key? > >Is there anything else that I might be missing besides lining the walls & >computer >in tin foil? :^) > >Thanks for your help! > >-Murphy > >-- There is a windows sond package that will generate brown, pink and white noise. The package is called Cool Edit. The currrent version is 1.52 and is available from : http://www.netzone.com/syntrillium/ Hope this helps. Lou Z. Lou Zirko (615)851-1057 Zystems lzirko(a)isdn.net "We're all bozos on this bus" - Nick Danger, Third Eye -----BEGIN PGP PUBLIC KEY BLOCK----- Version: 2.6.2 mQCNAzBLJocAAAEEAMlDzYJPYq0pvfMuSiKU0Y65L2nJql+qEJHYGjO5Pys4prDw YW1ooPWaqrPQAy/eyqrM7I9KNFDCtmaPxtgcPw2oEDfc/w6cPkrVzvovKLfHQvtg V/hHUekptSf6j525omrVAoM9MxVL3sEGCjn9VrTeC3h9upkfntHOJeL88i2NAAUR tB5Mb3UgWmlya28gPHppcmtvbEBkYXRhdGVrLmNvbT4= =Qlxm -----END PGP PUBLIC KEY BLOCK-----

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No Subject
by owner-cypherpunks＠toad.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- In article <9601200326.AA09366(a)toad.com>, Peter Trei <trei(a)process.com> wrote: > > > If they're nasty, they'll check on the receiving side as well, to > > > ensure that the LEAF and/or the espionage-enabling key have not been > > > patched in the sending 'International' version. > > > > Nearly impossible. Why? Because they can only include the public key, > > and not the private key, of the GAK authority in the code. You can > > encrypt the three bytes of key, but it is very hard for a receiver > > other than the govvies to read them. There is no shared secret > > information or private information available, ergo, they can't check > > their LEAF equivalent. > > Think it through. [suggesting that Alice encrypts 24 bits of key under NSA's public key, Bob repeats calculation and checks that the two LEAFS are the same] > Thus, you can prevent a non-complying copy of Lotus from talking to > a complying copy of Lotus, which is one of the goals of the GAKers. No, you're wrong, the process you've described does not work. Note that RSA normally is used as probabilistic encryption: encrypt the same plaintext twice, and you'll likely get two different ciphertexts. Thus, if RSA is used in the normal probabilistic way, the receiver can't tell whether the sender was compliant. Now you might suggest that the sender should not include probabilistic padding, and use RSA deterministically, so that (somehow) the receiver can check whether those 24 bits are correct. That again won't work, since a third-party eavesdropper will be able to do a 2^24 brute force calculation to recover those 24 bits. There are complicated ways to prevent a non-compliant copy of Lotus from inter-operating with a compliant copy (as others on cypherpunks have kindly pointed out), but they are complicated, and would require a re-design of Lotus Notes' encryption module. Since the export version is interoperable with the non-export version, this would seem to require too much foresight and work to be very likely. In any event, I've heard that the export version of Lotus Notes 4 always sends a LEAF, but the receiver never checks it. So I think a simple binary patch to change the NSA's public key should work. P.S. So does anyone know how large the NSA's public LEAF key is? - --- [This message has been signed by an auto-signing service. A valid signature means only that it has been received at the address corresponding to the signature and forwarded.] -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.2 Comment: Gratis auto-signing service iQBFAwUBMQKzSyoZzwIn1bdtAQF/zAGAxODShPqrBQLsWzRVAkW7+jbVJidQIF5q 1Jyisn2EedTQoBLHnZD7ojnmws807XZK =bRAO -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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Re: More thoughts about digital postage (was Re: Digital postage and remailerabuse)
by shamrock＠netcom.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 8:42 1/22/96, Alan Bostick wrote: >People asked in earlier in this thread how remailers could issue digital >postage stamps without being able to know who is using which stamp issued. > >One obvious approach is to use blind signatures. Sure. That is the obvious approach. It also is, IMHO, by far the best. One minor problem is that the blind signature technology has been patented by its inventor, David Chaum the ower of DigiCash. You can't just write your own implementation. You also don't need to. Just use DigiCash's Ecash for postage. There is some work being done on a new MIME based remailer standard that would allow this to happen. At this time, the big problem seems to be keeping the message size constant between hops. See the remailer-operators list for the current discussion. -- Lucky Green <mailto:shamrock@netcom.com> PGP encrypted mail preferred.

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Re: DigiCash Ecash - 2 security topics
by shamrock＠netcom.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 11:26 1/22/96, Bryce wrote: >What kind of performance hit does this new encryption entail? >(No additional performance hit if SSL does it, I know.) Very little. >Are you considering having different protocols for SSL-protected >transactions versus unprotected ones? It isn't just an issue of SSL vs. unprotected. The new Ecash API that DigiCash is jointly designing with developers, will support two basic levels of operation. The first is similar to today's Ecash software. The client handles the transport. The second just generates the messages. Your application is responsible for getting them to where they should go. Presumably securely. >Let me repeat something I said a couple of weeks ago: I suspect >that the weakest point in DigiCash security is on the end-user's >own harddrive. A malicious cracker could write a Trojan horse >or even a virus which would steal the user's coins and send them >to himself. Given the amounts likely to be found on a drive, I doubt it would be worth the effort. -- Lucky Green <mailto:shamrock@netcom.com> PGP encrypted mail preferred.

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request mailing list
by an253362＠anon.penet.fi 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

please include in mailing list --****ATTENTION****--****ATTENTION****--****ATTENTION****--***ATTENTION*** Your e-mail reply to this message WILL be *automatically* ANONYMIZED. Please, report inappropriate use to abuse(a)anon.penet.fi For information (incl. non-anon reply) write to help(a)anon.penet.fi If you have any problems, address them to admin(a)anon.penet.fi

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Re: Lan Manager security
by daw＠beijing.CS.Berkeley.EDU 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- In article <9601221620.AA11356(a)capybara.transarc.com>, <lws(a)transarc.com> wrote: [ ... the LanMan / Samba(?) password authentication protocol ... ] > The password is uppercased and truncated to 14 bytes (or padded to 14 > bytes with nulls). This is split (0..6,7..13) into two DES keys > which are each used to encrypt a static 8-byte value. The resulting > 16 byte key is stored at the server. [...] > To authenticate a connection, the server issues an 8 byte random challenge. [...] > The client then pads the 16-byte key to 21 bytes (with zeros, natch), > splits it in thirds, {0..6}, {7..13}, {14,15,NUL,NUL,NUL,NUL,NUL}, > uses each third to DES-encrypt the challenge, concatenates the > ciphertexts, and returns the response to the server. Oh yeah, this protocol again. I remember looking at it a while ago; many thanks to Andy Brown <a.brown(a)nexor.co.uk>, who showed it to me and kindly gave me lots of information. It's pretty crappy, IMHO. It's very weak against dictionary attacks (assuming I have a sniffer). For instance, if you use a password which is less than 12-14 characters long, it will be very easy to recover bytes 7..13 of your password. After that, it will often be simple enough to extend the password backwards if it is based on a dictionary word; even if the password is purely random, this reduces the strength of the password to an effective length of 7 bytes. Also, there is no salt used in the password hashing function, so precomputed dictionary attacks are easy (e.g. the "Exabyte attack", where you precompute the hash of each likely password and store each result on a huge tape.) Unfortunately, I don't have time right now to follow up with a sample exploit program or anything. Sorry 'bout that. Microsoft should have used a real crypto-quality hash function (e.g. MD5), instead of trying to synthesize one from multiple concatenations of DES. The technical details on the attacks follow. Call the bytes of the password P_0 .. P_13, the 16-byte key K_0 .. K_15, and the response R_0 .. R_23; and call the challenge C and the static 8-byte server key S; K is generated by DES encrypting S with P, and R by DES encrypting C with K. I know C,R and want to find P_7 .. P_13. First, try all possible values of K_14, K_15; the right value can be recognized when C_16 .. C_23 encrypts to R_16 .. R_23 under K_14, K_15, 0, 0, 0, .. Now that we know K_14, K_15, I can try the likely values of P_7 .. P_13; wrong values can be quickly discarded by trial encrypting S under P_7 .. P_13 and noting whether the last two bytes of the ciphertext equal K_14, K_15. Each remaining guess for P_7 .. P_13 gives me a candidate for K_8 .. K_13; I can check all K_7 possibilities to see if there's any for which C_8 .. C_15 encrypts to R_8 .. R_15 under the K_7 .. K_13 candidate. If there is such a K_7, the guess for P_7 .. P_13 is almost certainly correct; if not, try another candidate for P_7 .. P_13. If there are N likely values of P_7 .. P_13, this recovers the true value of P_7 .. P_13 with about N trial encryptions. Note that there is no salt used; in fact, if I'm willing to do N precomputed trial encryptions, recovering the true value of P_7 .. P_13 takes N / 2^16 work. Once I've found P_7 .. P_13, if I'm willing to do M precomputations [where M is the number of likely values of P_0 .. P_6], then recovering the true value of P_0 .. P_6 can be done with about M / 2^8 trial encryptions. (If I'm not willing to do precomputations, it'll take M trials.) Did that make any sense? - --- [This message has been signed by an auto-signing service. A valid signature means only that it has been received at the address corresponding to the signature and forwarded.] -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.2 Comment: Gratis auto-signing service iQBFAwUBMQQYSioZzwIn1bdtAQFKkAGAqcC2ZoZsSHEUiqU8envvqHLI9vfi4xnf aexUGBX10peIeh3TSzq9RcMU2c8FxT45 =xQGr -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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Re: CIA Stashes and Looted Gold?
by nobody＠REPLAY.COM 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

U.S. Hid Weapons In Austria Vienna, Austria, Jan 21 (AP) -- Fearful of a Soviet takeover after World War II, the United States hid at least 79 weapons caches in Austria for anti-communist partisans. According to the newspaper Kurier, a U.S. congressional committee monitoring CIA activities found documents on the weapons caches that had not been known to the Clinton administration. A report Saturday in the Boston Globe prompted Hunt to inform the Austrian government, Kurier said. The Boston Globe report said CIA agents stashed the weapons while the U.S. military conducted loud military maneuvers. However, Fritz Molden, a former Austrian journalist, said Sunday that the secret weapons depots were established at the initiative of the Austrian government led by Chancellor Leopold Figl, and planning for them began in 1948. He claimed that some depots were also placed in the Soviet occupation zone in eastern Austria. Molden told the APA he had acted as a liaison between the Americans and the postwar Austrian government. However, it was not clear why the information was not handed down to subsequent governments. -- Austria demands details on secret US arms depots Vienna, Austria, Jan. 21 (Reuter) -- Austria's leadership Sunday demanded the United States supply details of 79 secret U.S. arsenals scattered across Austria. "The Americans should give us a plan indicating where the weapons depots are, how serious they have to be taken and what dangers they pose," Chancellor Franz Vranitzky said. Speaking on television Sunday, Vranitzky cautiously indicated the possibility of secret stockpiles from the other occupation forces -- France, Britain and the Soviet Union. "Approaching the other three occupation powers and asking them whether they too still have secret depots on Austrian soil will be dealt with in a very pragmatic and sensible way," Vranitzky said. The chancellery said the U.S. government was working on an exact list detailing the locations of the depots, and U.S. Ambassador Hunt promised to furnish details as quickly as possible. The television said experts assume each of the arsenals contained sufficient weapons and explosives for 150 anti-communist guerrillas and could also contain significant amounts of gold. Austrian television said that while the U.S. foreign ministry had assured Austria it would act as soon as possible, the CIA, which alone knows the exact locations of the arsenals, has remained silent on the issue. -- Postwar leaders acted with U.S. on arms caches Vienna, Austria, Jan. 22 (Reuter) - Austria's postwar leaders cooperated with the United States to stockpile arms around the country in a top-secret operation to safeguard against a Soviet attack, an ex-resistance fighter said Monday. Fritz Molden, who acted as a liaison officer between the resistance and the allied powers, said that if the Kremlin had discovered the plan to organize an anti-communist underground, Soviet troops would have immediately annexed eastern Austria. "It was all top secret. There were no archives, no papers made, no protocols written," Molden told Reuters. Molden said he was surprised that Austria's current political leaders were unaware of the arsenals. Details had appeared in two books, one of which he wrote 16 years ago. Austrian media speculated that the arsenals were part of a wider anti-communist strategy by the United States, which feared Soviet expansionism following the end of World War II. Newspapers cited the Gladio operation in Italy, set up as a secret Cold War resistance group in the 1950s to fight any Warsaw Pact invasion. Austrian experts estimated the depots held enough weapons and explosives for 150 anti-communist guerrillas and might also contain gold. They said likely sites included graveyards where digging would have gone unnoticed. Molden said arms were transported on U.S. trucks and trains into Vienna, which was surrounded by the Soviet eastern zone, and then secretly passed on to Austrians who risked their lives stashing the weapons away. He suspected most arsenals in western Austria were handed over to the Austrian army and gendarmerie after 1955 and that the arms sites in eastern Austria might now also be empty. --

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[Fwd: Re: Netscape + Verifone]
by Jeff Weinstein 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Howard Melman wrote: > > On Mon Jan 22, 1996, Perry E. Metzger wrote: > > > REDWOOD CITY, CA - Netscape Communications Corp. and Verifone > > Inc. will devise a system to make electronic payments on the internet > > more secure. > > > > Anyone know anything about this? > > Reported in today's Wall Street Journal > > http://update.wsj.com/update/edit/w-netsca.html > > Basically Verifone's credit card processing technology > (credit card verification) will be bundled with Netscape's > Commerce server. > > Netscape also announced that the software will use new > encryption technology being developed by MasterCard and > Visa. I don't know what this quote means: > > That technology would break sensitive information like > credit-card data into 1,024 bits of information, instead > of the 128 bits used currently, theoretically making it > much more difficult to steal. This is typical "the reporter doesn't understand the difference between RSA and symetric cipher key sizes" reporting. What it really boils down to is that export software can use larger key sizes for certain application specific encryption. For example if you limit what is being encrypted to fixed length financial information such as credit card numbers and ammounts you can use keys larger than 40 bits. --Jeff -- Jeff Weinstein - Electronic Munitions Specialist Netscape Communication Corporation jsw(a)netscape.com - http://home.netscape.com/people/jsw Any opinions expressed above are mine. Subject: Re: Netscape + Verifone From: melman(a)osf.org (Howard Melman) Date: 22 Jan 1996 12:05:53 -0800 Approved: usenet(a)netscape.com Newsgroups: mcom.list.cypherpunks Organization: Local Mail/News Gateway References: <199601221912.OAA07923(a)jekyll.piermont.com> Sender: daemon(a)tera.mcom.com On Mon Jan 22, 1996, Perry E. Metzger wrote: > REDWOOD CITY, CA - Netscape Communications Corp. and Verifone > Inc. will devise a system to make electronic payments on the internet > more secure. > > Anyone know anything about this? Reported in today's Wall Street Journal http://update.wsj.com/update/edit/w-netsca.html Basically Verifone's credit card processing technology (credit card verification) will be bundled with Netscape's Commerce server. Netscape also announced that the software will use new encryption technology being developed by MasterCard and Visa. I don't know what this quote means: That technology would break sensitive information like credit-card data into 1,024 bits of information, instead of the 128 bits used currently, theoretically making it much more difficult to steal. Howard

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No Subject
by jf_avon＠citenet.net 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- To: cypherpunks(a)toad.com From: jf_avon(a)citenet.net date: jan 22 1996 Hi! I read the work Cypherpunk often in alt.security.pgp and alt.privacy I had no idea what it is. So I hit Lycos and it led me to various, but unfortunately unclear articles. So, here is my question: what is cypherpunk? I suppose, from the adress, that it is some type of mailing list. If yes, could anybody send me the "how to subscribe" file? Thanks. JFA -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.2 iQCVAwUBMQQtqgOWptJXIUrtAQHUOwQAr5vF68AwsnWE39eMKhy6Vj67ke0JkjRM GN8q+6hSO5egg7l/T7XZidrnHDa7hpK0xJ8SoUJXAgG6oIpGJZcjzS3FqgxVeFiL lVONV/ac1PQt0cDDTQ2kTdFEYWOCAGJBRjVa0tO4W2CKY1IavqrQ+23cJkDxVh8e O1a/X1n5TVA= =HSGk -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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Re: NSA vacuuming down Internet traffic
by jim bell 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 11:07 AM 1/22/96 -0600, Rick Smith wrote: >My first job, twenty years ago, involved a prototype speech >recognition system under contract for Rome Air Development Center (a >traditional cover for TLA research). The machine was supposed to go >beep whenever a specified word or phrase was heard over the input >voice stream. We joked about testing for the term "Russian Spy" but >settled on looking for "Kissinger" instead. That let us run tests by >listening to news broadcasts of the time. We built custom boards with >Schottky TTL and a blazing fast 120ns cycle time. Times change, eh? > >Rick. >smith(a)sctc.com secure computing corporation Don't tell me, let me guess: 20 years ago, if you had told anyone about this project, you would have had to kill them. Now, 20 years later, after a few levels of re-classifications and de-classifications, all you have to do is to sneer in our general direction. <G>

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[noise] Internet censorship in the workplace
by Pete Loshin 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

A front-page article today in Network World about censoring access to sex-related Internet resources at the office. Apparently, at Texaco, "a woman vehemently opposed to pornography" has been assigned to review logs showing who's been looking at what. Workers who log onto remote sites from Texaco to disguise their interests have not been fooling this individual. -Pete Loshin pete(a)loshin.com

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Re: Query over PZ
by dmandl＠panix.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 12:00 AM 1/23/96, tallpaul wrote: >Anonymous User had a question over PZ's politics. > >PZ has posted to the list and thus has, I believe, his address available to >list subscribers. > >How did PZ answer the question privately when Anonymous User posed the >question to PZ on private e-mail? > >If Anonymous User did not first pose the question to PZ privately, why did >he post it to the list publically? Seems to me Ms. Anonymous wasn't taking it seriously, but was posting the news clip here for our amusement, or to show the kind of shabby work some journalists do, or to scare us by demonstrating how insane rumors get started. I can't imagine that anyone who knows the address of the cypherpunks list and can use an anonymous remailer could take a ridiculous claim like that seriously. --Dave. -- Dave Mandl dmandl(a)panix.com http://www.wfmu.org/~davem

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