December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

Re: "Gentlemen do not read each other's mail"
by Alan Pugh 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

>It isn't clear to me that the Constitution grants "rights" to the government >that aren't already possessed by the people themselves. Would that even be >possible? "Powers" maybe, "rights," maybe not. the constitution is an amazingly consistant document internally. take a slow read through it and you will see that you are absolutely correct. when 'people' are being referred to, the term used is 'rights'. when it is a governmental organization (state or federal), the term used is always 'powers'. amp

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Re: Denning's misleading statements
by jf_avon＠citenet.net 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

>At 03:12 PM 1/28/96 -0500, Ben Samman. wrote: >>There's quite a few folks in the Yale CS department that are pro-Clipper >>or fence sitters. They justify it in class by claiming that law >>enforcement needs these abilities if LE is to remain effective. What research grant pays theses guy's salaries? JFA Reality IS, Existence Exists. -John Galt

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Re: more RANTING about NSA-friendly cpunks
by jf_avon＠citenet.net 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

"Vladimir Z. Nuri" <vznuri(a)netcom.com> said: <much snipped text all over the place> >my point is that, what is anyone's evidence that what happened to >Zimmermann (i.e. NOTHING WHATSOEVER other than an investigation that >ended with NOTHING) would not happen to whoever tried to "export" >whatever algorithms they pleased??? >if people are going to pretend that the ITAR crypto sections have >TEETH, then please >give a disclaimer that YOU HAVE NO EVIDENCE. I have no problem with >people getting "paler shades of white" from all their imagined bogeymen. >Zimmermann SHOWS that any claim that the ITAR has "teeth" APPEARS TO >BE GROUNDLESS. >you can argue all you want about HYPOTHETICAL situations, but the >REALITY is that nobody has ever gotten any nastiness from any >ITAR-crypto prosecution. >if cpunks want excuses to cower in terror of the ITAR (such as e.g. >TCM seems to advocate), you will find endless justification from >your rampant fantasies. I do not think that wether PZ or anybody else was prosecuted in *this* case means that ITAR does not have teeths. The most important thing in order to understand a situation is to put yourself in the other guy's shoes. If I would have been in the govt shoes, maybe I would have let down the case too. It does not mean that I wouldn't attempt any case like this anymore... Theses peoples are not stupid. They might be statists, but they are intelligent statists... PZ case could have been presented as borderline, and could have made a precedent not in their advantage. Non-objectivity of a law never prevented the govt to "enforce" it. JFA Power tends to corrupt, absolute power corrupts absolutely.

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Re: "German service cuts Net access" (to Santa Cruz)
by jf_avon＠citenet.net 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

olmur(a)dwarf.bb.bawue.de writes: > Free speech ends where other people can reasonable claim that their > feelings are badly hurt. Ask yourself what standard in implied in this sentence... Is it "Man as a life-loving rationnal animal" or "Man as an ever sobbing, unable to cope, emotionnally controlled animal" ??? JFA "I always tried to live in order to be able to *fly* another day." -Gen. Chuck Yeager

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FV Demonstrates Fatal Flaw in Software Encryption of Credit Cards
by Nathaniel Borenstein 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

[My apologies in advance if you see several copies of this message. I am posting this fairly widely due to the severity and importance of the problem described.] As you may already have heard via the popular press, First Virtual Holdings has developed and demonstrated a program which completely undermines the security of every known credit-card encryption mechanism for Internet commerce. This is a very serious matter, and we want to make sure that the Internet community is properly informed about the nature of the problem that we have uncovered, and the manner in which we have made the information known. In this (unavoidably lengthy) post, I will try to explain the nature of the problem and its implications for Internet commerce. In deference to those who are not technically oriented, the detailed explanation of how the attack works will be the LAST part of this message. First of all, let me be perfectly clear about the nature of the problem we have exposed. It is NOT a bug in a single program, and it is therefore NOT something that can be fixed with a "patch" or any other kind of software upgrade. Instead, we have demonstrated a very general attack that undermines ALL programs that ask users to type a credit card number into their home computer. We have tested the program and confirmed that it undermines the security of the credit card encryption software from Netscape and Cybercash, and we expect that it will work similarly for ANY future software based on the encryption of credit card numbers on the desktop. Quite simply, we believe that this program demonstrates a FATAL flaw in one whole approach to Internet commerce, and that the use of software to encrypt credit card numbers can NEVER be made safe. For consumers, we recommend the following simple rule: NEVER TYPE YOUR CREDIT CARD NUMBER INTO A COMPUTER. We should also be clear about the Internet commerce mechanisms that are NOT affected by this problem. First Virtual is unaffected because we never ask the user to put a credit card number at risk by typing it into a computer. Hardware-based solutions can also be devised that are immune to this attack, including solutions based on smart cards and solutions based on "card swipe" machines in the home. We believe that current digital cash solutions are also not vulnerable to this attack, although some variants of digital cash may be vulnerable to a similar form of attack. Commerce mechanisms based on the use of telephones or fax machines to transmit credit card numbers are also unaffected by this kind of attack. Other proposed commerce mechanisms should, from now on, be evaluated with this kind of attack in mind. The bottom line: INTERNET COMMERCE CAN BE VERY SAFE, WITH SEVERAL DIFFERENT MECHANISMS, BUT ENCRYPTING CREDIT CARDS ON THE DESKTOP IS NOT ONE OF THE SAFE MECHANISMS. It's important to understand why we have taken this step. Obviously, as the long-time leaders in Internet commerce, the last thing we would want to do is to undermine general confidence in Internet commerce. However, we realized that many people believed that credit card encryption was a safe and easy path to Internet commerce, and that very few people understood how easily it could be undermined. Upon investigation, we were frankly startled to realize just how easy it was -- a single programmer got the first version of our program running in about a week. Aside from our obvious interest in promoting our own commerce mechanism, we felt that we had an ethical obligation to bring this problem to the attention of the consumers, banks, and other financial institutions who could conceivably suffer catastrophic losses if software encryption of credit card numbers became widespread. We also realize that we have an obligation to do everything possible to avoid helping any unscrupulous people who might seek to utilize this flaw for malicious purposes. We have accordingly been extremely responsible in how we have handled our discovery. We first demonstrated and explained our program to vital organizations such as CERT (the Computer Emergency Response Team) and the ABA (American Banking Association). Only after many such private disclosures, none of which revealed any defense against our technique, did we publicly disclose the existence of this program. In addition, we have taken several steps to "cripple" our demonstration program, all of which will be discussed below. Furthermore, we have NOT made the program itself generally available. We are currently demonstrating it to selected financial institutions and government agencies, and will provide copies of the program only to CERT and a few other independent security-minded organizations. We have also alerted Netscape to the problem as part of their "bugs bounty" program. At some future date, we might conceivably distribute the program, in binary form on CD ROM, to selected financial institutions. The source code will always be very closely guarded. Unfortunately, however, the general method of attack is extremely easy to duplicate, and we don't know of any good way to alert the public to the problem without explaining it. THE TECHNIQUE Our basic approach was to write a computer program that runs undetected while it monitors your computer system. A sophisticated version of such a program can intercept and analyze every keystroke, mouse-click, and even messages sent to your screen, but all we needed was the keystrokes. Selectively intercepted information can be immediately and secretly transmitted via Internet protocols, or stored for later use. First Virtual's research team has built and demonstrated a particular implementation of such a program, which only watches for credit card numbers. Whenever you type a credit card number into your computer -- even if you are talking to "secure" encryption software -- it captures your card number. Our program doesn't do anything harmful with your credit card number, but merely announces that it has captured it. A malicious program of this type could quietly transmit your credit card number to criminals without your knowledge. The underlying problem is that the desktop -- the consumer's computer -- is not secure. There is no way of ensuring that all software installed on the consumer's machine can be trusted. Given this fact, it is unwise to trust ANY software such as a "secure" browser, because malicious software could have easily been interposed between the user and the trusted software. The bottom line for consumers is that, on personal computers, INFORMATION IS INSECURE THE MOMENT YOU TOUCH A KEY. We have dramatically proven that security ends the moment you type sensitive information into your computer. The vulnerability lies in the fact that information must travel from your keyboard, into your computer's operating system, and then to your "secure" application. It can be easily intercepted along the way. This kind of insecurity is very frightening, and has implications far beyond credit card theft. However, credit cards embody and demonstrate the kind of information that is MOST vulnerable to this kind of attack. Credit card numbers are far more vulnerable to this kind of attack than most other forms of information because of the following particular characteristics of credit card numbers: -- Credit card numbers are easily recognized by simple pattern recognition. -- Credit card numbers are "one way" financial instruments, with no user-level confirmation or verification required for their use. -- Credit card numbers are of direct financial value. In short, credit card numbers are an almost perfect example of how NOT to design a payment instrument for an insecure public computer network such as the Internet. DETAILS: HOW TO TOTALLY UNDERMINE SOFTWARE ENCRYPTION OF CREDIT CARDS First Virtual's demonstration credit-card interception program, once installed, observes every keystroke that you type, watching for credit card numbers. It recognizes credit card numbers with almost perfect accuracy, because credit card numbers are specifically designed to match a simple, self-identifying pattern, including a check digit. Our program is even smart about punctuation and simple editing functions, so that nearly any credit card number that you type into your computer is immediately recognized as such by this program. When our program spots a credit card number, it immediately plays a warning sound and pops up a window on your screen, including an iconic representation of the type of credit card that you have just entered, along with a clear explanation of what has just happened. The current program works only on Microsoft Windows (Windows 3.1, Windows NT, and Windows 95), but we believe that it would be simple to implement on Macintosh and UNIX systems as well. The program doesn't exploit any "holes" or bugs in the operating system. It uses existing, necessary operating system facilities which are part of the published Windows API, and which are necessary for the implementation of screen savers, keyboard macros, and other important software packages. First Virtual's intent is to educate the public, certainly not to endanger it. For that reason, our program incorporates four important precautions intended to prevent any possibility of harm: 1) Our program is not self-replicating. While a malicious program exploiting the same security flaw could easily be embedded in a virus, spreading itself all over the world, that was not our goal. Instead, the program must be deliberately and manually installed on each computer on which it is to run. 2) Our program always puts up an icon on your screen when it is watching your keystrokes. This is certainly not necessary, and it is clear that a malicious program would be unlikely to do this. 3) Our program is easy to remove from your computer, and even offers an "Uninstall" button to the user. Obviously a malicious program would hide itself as well as possible, and make itself as hard to remove as possible. 4) Our program never transmits your credit card over the Internet. While a program using this approach could transmit your information to a criminal in a totally untraceable manner, we would never do anything like that. In fact, we erase your credit card number from our program's memory before we even tell you that we've seen it, thus making sure that the credit card number can't even be retrieved by an inspection of our program's memory. It is frankly difficult to overstate the severity of the problem demonstrated by our program. A clever criminal could use viral techniques to spread a malicious program based on the same approach, and would be no more likely to be caught in the act than the authors of any of the computer viruses that plague the world today. Once it detects a credit card number, a criminal program could use any of several techniques to send that number to the original criminal without providing any way to trace the criminal's receipt of it. (If you're skeptical about this claim, we'd prefer to talk with you privately, as we've never seen the "best" methods for doing this spelled out in public, and we would prefer to keep it that way.) Altogether, this means that if millions of credit card numbers were being typed into Internet-connected personal computers, a criminal could obtain a virtually unlimited supply of card numbers for his own use. In fact, for all we know this could already be happening today. The first visible sign of such an attack, if it were well-executed, would be a gradual rise in the overall rate of credit card fraud. POSSIBLE SOLUTIONS First Virtual believes that the flaw we have uncovered is fatal. In the foreseeable future, all commerce schemes based on software encryption of credit cards on the desktop are completely vulnerable to this sort of attack. The basic problem is that software encryption of credit cards is predicated on the notion of "trusted software". On the consumer computing platforms, however, general purpose operating system functionality makes it unwise to assume too strong a level of trust in such software. No operating system with anything less than military-grade security (B2) is likely to be safe from an attack such as this one. This does not mean that Internet commerce is dead. Any scheme that is not based on self-identifying one-way financial instruments such as credit cards will be essentially unaffected by this problem. Moreover, even credit cards may be made safe on the Internet using one of two approaches: secure hardware add-ons and the First Virtual approach. First Virtual's Internet Payment Systems never places the consumer's credit card number on the Internet. Instead, the consumer provides it to us by telephone when the account is opened. After that, all purchases are made using a "Virtual PIN". Virtual PINs are essentially Internet aliases for underlying payment mechanisms such as credit card numbers, but with several kinds of added security. Virtual PINs are free-form text, with no recognizable pattern, which makes them much harder to detect with the kind of attack we have just demonstrated. Moreover, Virtual PINs are only usable in conjunction with First Virtual's unique email verification process. No payment is made until the consumer confirms an email query, which means that defrauding First Virtual is a multi-step process that is extremely difficult to automate. (For more details, we recommend our paper, "Perils and Pitfalls of Practical CyberCommerce", available via ftp from ftp://ftp.fv.com/pub/nsb/fv-austin.txt.) The bottom line, once again, for those of you who have read this far: NEVER TYPE YOUR CREDIT CARD NUMBER INTO A COMPUTER. There's simply no other way to keep credit cards safe on the net. The program we have demonstrated completely undermines the security of all known programs that claim to handle credit card numbers safely on the Internet. -------- Nathaniel Borenstein <nsb(a)fv.com> Chief Scientist, First Virtual Holdings FAQ & PGP key: nsb+faq(a)nsb.fv.com

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Re: PAC_man
by jim bell 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 12:05 PM 1/28/96 -0500, John Young wrote: > 1-28-96. TWP: > TWP has a followup on the AOL raid, mostly a police story > grisler on the cyber-prowling horny-cats. Has ICU of the > terminal logoff by a 13-year-old nerd. The fuz posted a > call-in for anon tips: > > "You know how many we've gotten from our on-line hot > line? Not one. It's like they have this fantastic world > they operate in, and we are seen as intruders or > something." > ICU_ded Maybe, they're catching on, huh?!?

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Over-reacting?
by jim bell 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 05:42 PM 1/28/96 -0800, Timothy C. May wrote: > >Folks, > >When people decide to copy other mailing lists on messages they send to >Cypherpunks (or vice versa), we often get flooded with insults and spams >from people who don't share our views. (While I have nothing against trying >to recruit others to our views, in my opinion this is best done by >judicious writing of essays for _them_, tuned to their interests, and not >in mindless spamming of every list that might have a passing interest in >some of the topics.) > >We already have enough traffic here, and don't need replies from a bunch of >other lists, be they libertarian lists, digital commerce lists, human >rights lists, or java lists. > >The latest example of this is the rantfest invvolving these players: I really don't know why I'm being "killed" by May in this way. He cites a rant by a local (Portland, Oregon) crackpot named "Jack Hammer." I even took the time to apologize for his existence, while I do claim a certain lack of responsibility: Basically, I'm being targeted because Hammer can't stand my essay. (Whether May will even see my apology is in doubt, I suppose...) While May certainly has the right to "killfile" whomever he wishes, it might be a bit more logical to do this in a graduated fashion, "killing" Hammer and then waiting to see if the rest of us follow in his habits.

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[noise/rant] Re: Anonymous trashing of Jim Bell
by Alan Olsen 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

[Some people will object to this thread, and rightly so. This is very off topic. I understand it is off topic. But it needs to be said... If you don't want to read this, hit 'n' or equivalent now. I also request that responses to this be made in private e-mail and not to the entire list.] [Also note that I stripped off the references to the Libertarian list and the Democracy now list and avoided the urge to add the psychoceramics list.] Jim, I used to take your postings at least semi-serious. I ignored the ad hominem as much as I could and tried to concentrate on the validity of the arguments. I had difficulty with many of your ideas, but I have that problem with many people so it was not a big deal... Then I met you at the Portland Cypherpunks meeting. You blew whatever credibility that you had with me at that time. At that meeting you made claims that were fantastic and beyond belief. You gave no evidence to support those claims, just relying on some sort of future "proof". (Sorry, but the burden of proof in these sort of cases lies on the claimant, not the rest of the audience.) Assassination politics is immensely credible compared to your plan to disable electronic equipment. (And that is saying alot.) Assassination politics suffers from a number of problems. The biggest being its difficulty in being implemented. Such a system would suffer from Federal agents posing as hit men, outright fraud, and attempts to destroy the system from within and without. I have seen nothing that makes me believe it could ever be put into place. I have yet to see you address any of the flaws without resulting to flames and rant. Unfortunately, you would rather attack your critics than deal with the flaws in your beliefs. The following is an example... At 08:30 PM 1/26/96 -0800, jim bell wrote: >At 01:54 AM 1/27/96 +0100, Anonymous wrote: >>Jim Bell writes: >> >>>While this would normally be my cue to offer up my "Assassination Politics" >>>idea, which (if presumed to be correct) would stabilize "anarchy" and >>>prevent "lawlessness and social disorder" (at least as normally seen by the >>>average reader) I think that under the circumstances that would be redundant >>>here. >> >>I'm not *sure* that your Assassination Politics trip is the worst piece of >>tripe I've ever seen on the list, but if it's not, it's right up there. > >I notice that you responded through an anonymous remailer, and didn't even >use a nym. This is strange. If anything, the people who criticize my idea >seem to be under the illusion that it is _I_ who should be embarrassed for >proposing it, and in fact vociferously promoting it. "Those of you" who >object to it should be the ones who are "proudly" taking the "moral high >ground" and thus should be happy to identify yourself and defend your position. There are reasons why an individual would do that. Maybe they did not want to create a nym just to respond to one message. Maybe they thought that you would recognize their other nyms. Maybe it is someone you know. Whatever the reason, it does not diminish their arguments. >Even if, arguably, you invented the fiction that you feared for your life >trying to argue with people like me, nothing prevents you from developing a >stable nym and arguing your position using it, secure in the knowledge that >your body is safe from attack. Your arguments would still be subject to >sudden death, however. You think very highly of your arguments, but have shown nothing that would make me believe that you could actually do that without resorting to ad hominem attacks. In fact the poster brings up some interesting questions which you totally ignore, due to your unwavering belief in your pet theory. All you do is flame him, instead of dealing with the immense flaws in that theory. >>Those of us who are anarchists > >What?!? You imply that you are an anarchist, yet you don't approve of a >system which might not only produce anarchy, but in fact in record time? >Well, EXCUUUUUUUUSE MEEEEEE! Sorry to put you out of a "job." Not all anarchists believe in killing others. Sorry, but there are as many variety of anarchy as there are anarchists. As for the results of "Assassination Politics", you have yet to show that it would produce any results whatsoever, or if it is even possible to implement. In fact, I cannot see a way that it can be put into place without everyone involved being put in jail. >> are often that way because we think the *means* the State uses are evil, >>not to be excused by any amount of mumbo-jumbo. > >I think the state's ENDS are evil, too, not merely their MEANS. Yet you never explain why it is valid to use evil to fight evil. It is this lack of willingness to discuss the details of your beliefs that make people unwilling to take your ideas seriously. >> And you gleefully propose to let us *all* in on the immoral game of >>murdering those who annoy us sufficiently. > >Actually, if you followed my arguments carefully, you will notice that my >position is most accurately described by pointing out that I _could_not_ >keep you from participating in this "immoral game", even if I wanted to. Or not participating... Jim, if annoying people were a qualification for murder, you would need to watch your back pretty damn carefully. But it is not a qualification yet... You have yet to show, however, how your plan could ever be enacted. If it was possible to enact, you would probably be in jail for "conspiracy to commit murder" or some similar charge. Anyone who assisted in such a plan would also risk such charges. The feds are pretty ruthless in ferreting out people who try an hire hitmen. Especially from private citizens. the only people who are able to hire hitmen and get away with it are the heavily funded or the government themselves. Setting up an organization to compete with these groups will not be viewed favorably. >For the record, I suspect some people who are total pacifists view the rest >of us, those willing use use violence to defend ourselves, as "immoral." This is not as easily defendable as self-defense. If you were shooting the politico yourself, then I might agree. But you are not. You are hiring someone else to do your dirty work for you. If you were actually helping out in the slaughter, then i might have a bit more respect for your argument. As it is though, I find it about as toothless as those who eat meat, but are too squeamish to go hunting themselves. >>I'll pass. > >Others won't. The digestibility of your plan has little relevance to its possible adoption... >>You know, if I were constructing an agent provacateur, I'd want a persona >>who's willing to be loudly clueless with ideas that show minimal or >>non-existent awareness of basic human hopes and fears, like security from >>random hit-squads. I'd have him go on and on with his ideas, until >>eventually they can splashed all over headlines and used to discredit the >>whole realm of privacy protection. > >Aha! You're implying (actually, implying is an understatement here) that I >am an "agent provocateur." Naturally, it would be useless to deny this >(although, for the record, I will deny it), because anybody who was >convinced of its truth wouldn't expect me to tell the truth anyway. Nope. The poster is claiming that you are *TOO CLUELESS* to be an Agent Provocateur. You are missing the point. >But hey, let's put it up for a vote. How many people out there believe that >I am an "agent provocateur"? C'mon people, don't be shy, you've seen my >prose. What do the rest of you think? I don't think you are any such thing. I believe that you are convinced of the rightness of your ideas and no amount of rational discourse will sway you from that belief. Being a fanatic does not make you evil or an Agent Provocateur. It does make you less credible though... >>But no, I don't think you're an agent. > >Good! I'd hate to argue with a person who didn't realize I am SERIOUS. You seem to miss the point that the poster was making, but no worry... >> More fool you, you're willing to do the government's disinformation work >>for it without even thirty pieces of silver or a 401K. > >To be perfectly honest, I did a lot of soul-searching in early 1995 about >whether I should publicize my ideas. No, it wasn't because I was AFRAID >that it might happen. I _WANTED_ it to happen. Every little bit. Every >government on the face of the earth, to come crashing down in a heap. >Complete, total, absolute anarchy. (But not the "anarchy" that most people >are pre-programmed to think of...) No more governments, no more borders, no >more taxes, no more holocausts, no more wars, no more politicians. Forever >and ever and ever. > >Rather, I was fearful that by publicizing the idea, I might end up >PREVENTING it from occurring. You know, by giving the governments advance >warning about what was going to happen, I might actually help them prevent it. > >That worried me, a lot. But eventually, I made my decision. After a huge >amount of thought that some day I might be inclined to relate. However, if >I'd REALLY wanted to PREVENT this, I would have alerted the government >secretly, so that they could manipulate things behind the scenes, secretly, >to prevent this "crypto/digicash/internet anarchy." _That_ I did not do. >I publicized it, allowed it to be criticized and therefore "perfected" (not >that it's "perfect, by any means!) it, and I'm now promoting it the best way >I know how. And with all due modesty, it's getting a pretty good reception, >considering how extreme and drastic it initially might appear. > >Part of my reasoning was that unless I engaged in the absurd conceit of >believing that I was, cumulatively, smarter than everyone currently in the >government, I had no choice but to conclude that the government was already >aware of the potential problem. And if that were the case, they were, at >that very moment, working desperately to PREVENT what I wanted, desperately, >to ACHIEVE. > >At that point, I made the choice of forcing the government's hand. The above speaks for itself. (I could say that this is one of the looniest things I have read in a while, but I do take the Psychoceramics list... It is pretty high up there.) It is definitely hard core crankdom of the purest form. If you were a threat to the Government, even a small one, you would have been picked up and put away. You seem to forget that this is an open mailing list. Many of the people who read this list are Government employees. (I am willing to bet that a sizable percentage work in some variety of law enforcement.) They know what you believe and what you are agitating for. But you are not a threat because you are not credible. No one is going to adopt your ideas because every time you open your mouth, you make yourself look like a loon. Not only do you make yourself look like a loon, but every organization and group you associate with looks bad. If you really desire to make your views accepted, you need to look at how you present yourself to others. Willingness to analyze your own belief structures and refine them is a first step. Ability to take criticism is a second step. Without that, your ideas will be taken as the views of an unwavering fanatic. You will not sway many people with fanaticism. >>At this point I recommend to you the 12-step program I explained to Vladimir. >> >>Signed, >>A Friend > >Recommendation: If you really want to be taken seriously, use your real >name or at the very least generate a stable nym. Preferably, with messages >signed by the nym's public key. Without it, you are a silly, unbelieveable >ass. Even with it, you may STILL be a silly, unbelieveable ass, but at >least people would pay more attention to you. I think that you have little to nothing to say about being taken seriously. If you continue to go off on pseudo-science rants at meetings at the drop of a hat, no one will take you serious there as well... Alan Olsen -- alano(a)teleport.com -- Contract Web Design & Instruction `finger -l alano(a)teleport.com` for PGP 2.6.2 key http://www.teleport.com/~alano/ Is the operating system half NT or half full?

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Re: Escrowing Viewing and Reading Habits with the Governmen
by Alan Horowitz 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

> > Do you really think that the FBI foreign counter-intelligence squad has > > nothing better to do than keep a database of who is reading Che Guevara > > memoirs? > > Yes. > > Heck, I remember this was a big issue about 15 years ago. Try asking > someone who was active in library science in the late 70's, early 80's. I did. They said you're wrong. Shall we start a CP flame-war of unattributed allegations from librarians who will recall what *they thought* the FBI is interested in?

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[FACTS] Germany, or "Oh no not again"
by Thomas Roessler 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

I had the prosecutor's spokesman on phone today. The result is that someone gave a hint to the prosecutors which explicitly mentioned Zundel, T-Online and Compuserve. Consequently, the prosecutors *had* to start investigations against Zundel, T-Online and Compuserve. In particular, they are right now *checking* whether providing internet access is a criminal offence due to the possibility to gain access to `inciting material' (the German word is `Volksverhetzung') via the Net. This means that it is not even clear whether the investigations against internet providers will be dropped or not; in fact many people believe that these investigatinos *will* be dropped. My personal guess about all this is that some net.citizens are trying to have the prosecutors engaged in absolutely absurd investigations (or, even better, achieve a court room clash on this subject) to get some clarification of the legal situation of the Net in Germany. Quite similar to the RSA T-Shirt story in the States. ,-) tlr

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Re: Escrowing Viewing and Reading Habits with the Governmen
by tcmay＠got.net 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 8:12 PM 1/29/96, Alan Horowitz wrote: >> > Do you really think that the FBI foreign counter-intelligence squad has >> > nothing better to do than keep a database of who is reading Che Guevara >> > memoirs? >> >> Yes. >> >> Heck, I remember this was a big issue about 15 years ago. Try asking >> someone who was active in library science in the late 70's, early 80's. > > > I did. They said you're wrong. Shall we start a CP flame-war of >unattributed allegations from librarians who will recall what *they >thought* the FBI is interested in? I'm not interested in a flame war about librarians and the FBI, but will tell you what I know: the "Library Awareness Program" was very real. It reached public awareness in the mid- to late-80s, and was the subject of numerous news reports. The various librarian unions blew the whistle on this. As I recall, new stantards about access to materials by patrons, and privacy expectations, were issued. Ah! Once again I thank Alta Vista. A simple search on "Library Awareness Program" revealed 20 hits on the Web. Here is an excerpt from one of the hits: ------ WHAT'S NEW, Friday, 3 June 1988 Washington, DC 1. THE NATIONAL SECURITY ARCHIVE FILED SUIT AGAINST THE FBI yesterday to force the release of documents relevant to the FBI's "Library Awareness Program" (WN 9 Oct 87). The documents were requested under the Freedom of Information Act eleven months ago. The FBI at first denied the existence of the program, and now contends it is confined to the New York area, but librarians from all over the country report FBI visits. Meanwhile, the FBI has not provided a single document either to the National Security Archive, or to the American Library Association, which filed a similar FOIA request. People for the American Way is assisting the National Security Archive in its lawsuit. 2. THE FBI'S "LIBRARY AWARENESS PROGRAM" is not an effort to raise the literacy of its agents. Even as President Reagan was lecturing to students at the University of Moscow on the virtues of a free society, his new FBI chief, William Sessions, before a Senate Committee, was defending the FBI's attempts to recruit library employees as snitches. Sessions released an unclassified version of a top-secret FBI report that must have been ghost written by Art Buchwald. Entitled "The KGB and the Library Target: 1962 - Present," it includes examples of suspicious behavior, such as an individual who "is observed departing the library after having placed microfiche or various documents in a briefcase without properly checking them out of the library." .... --- 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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FV's Borenstein discovers keystroke capture programs! (pictures at 11!)
by dmacfarlane＠zip.sbi.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Is this the most transparent media attention grab or what? FV's "Chief Scientist" writes a killer application to destroy Internet commerce and it is really only a keystroke capture program with a bit of credit card number recognition code tacked on. I don't think this has any "implications for Internet commerce". If you run any number of virus protection programs on your computer, and you get your software from reliable sources, you never need worry about clandestine number snarfing. I readily admit that there is a larger issue about viruses and being able to trust your software, but the presentation from FV of this announcement as a "fatal flaw" in internet commerce is remarkably disingenuous. They are really saying, "We have the only safe approach" quietly between the lines. And before pm. says it, this has very little to do with cryptography. Skeptically yours, David Macfarlane.

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The Big Lie
by drose＠AZStarNet.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Timothy C. May wrote (with some judicious editing): , I took it as a fact that the >so-called Holocaust actually happened. I saw pictures of death camps, >interviews with survivors, etc. > > It seems more likely that >the pictures were faked, > >, I suspect the >stories are true that the Holocaust was part of Truman's "Big Lie." > Good Lord! We've all enjoyed Tim's rants, but this takes the biscuit. What's next? A denial of the athletic abilities of Negroes? --Dave Rose

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Re: Escrowing Viewing and Reading Habits with the Government
by Ted Garrett 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 08:54 PM 1/27/96 -0800, you wrote: >According to >Director Freeh, "If we had had this program in place when Timothy McVeigh >was a child, we could have detected his interest in ANFO and picked him up >for reeducation, or at least recruited him for the CIA's Lockerbie team." ^^^^^^^^^^^ Please tell me this was not an actual quote. The term re-education scares me more than anything, as it's the term typically used by authoritarian dictatorships for their tortures and murders.

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Germany, or "Oh no not again"
by Deranged Mutant 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

------- Forwarded Message Follows ------- Date: Sun, 28 Jan 1996 19:30:21 -0500 (EST) Reply-to: educom(a)elanor.oit.unc.edu From: Educom <educom(a)elanor.oit.unc.edu> To: "EDUCOM Edupage Mailing List" <edupage(a)elanor.oit.unc.edu> Subject: Edupage, 28 January 1996 [..] GERMAN PROSECUTORS TARGET INTERNET RACIAL HATRED The Mannheim, Germany, prosecutor's office has launched an investigation of CompuServe and Deutsche Telekom's T-Online service for inciting racial hatred, a crime in Germany. At issue is online access to a Web site run by a neo-Nazi extremist in Canada who uses the Internet to distribute anti-Semitic propaganda. The legal reasoning, according to a prosecutor's office spokesman, is that "because it's available over the Internet, it also can be called up in Germany. Then the scene of the crime is all Germany." Although the investigation is now limited to CompuServe and T-Online, there are also several hundred small companies that provide Internet access in Germany. (Wall Street Journal 26 Jan 96 B2) [..] Edupage is written by John Gehl (gehl(a)educom.edu) & Suzanne Douglas (douglas(a)educom.edu) Voice: 404-371-1853, Fax: 404-371-8057. Technical support is provided by the Office of Information Technology, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. *************************************************************** EDUPAGE is what you've just finished reading. (Please note that it's "Edupage" and not "EduPage.") To subscribe to Edupage: send a message to: listproc(a)educom.unc.edu and in the body of the message type: subscribe edupage Emmitt Smith (assuming that your name is Emmitt Smith; if it's not, substitute your own name). ... To cancel, send a message to: listproc(a)educom.unc.edu and in the body of the message type: unsubscribe edupage. (Subscription problems? Send mail to educom(a)educom.unc.edu.) --- "Mutant" Rob <wlkngowl(a)unix.asb.com> Send a blank message with the subject "send pgp-key" (not in quotes) for a copy of my PGP key.

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None
by Mr. Nobody 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

In article <ad32cd9601021004af4e(a)[132.162.233.188]> jrochkin(a)cs.oberlin.edu (Jonathan Rochkind) writes: > 3) I believe that FV works by assigning the user some sort of id number. > They send the id accross the net, FV has a database with "FV-ID" <-> > credit-card-number correspondences, the merchant sends FV the id, FV bills > your card and pays the merchant. Now, if I'm correct about how FV works, > we could clearly write a program that searches your HD for FVs data files, > extracts your FV-ID from it, and steals it. It could be a virus, it could > send the FV accross the net, whatever. We could then use your FV-ID to > make fraudulently make purchases through the FV system that would be billed > to you. This is essentially the same attack as FV "demonstrates" against > software encrypted credit cards over the net: that is, the "You have an > insecure system and if we can put evil software on it, we can get you." > attack. This sounds like a fatal security flaw in FV's system! We need to publicize this fact widely to prevent innocent people from using their FV accounts from computers or over the network.

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Re: FV Demonstrates Fatal Flaw in Software Encryption of Credit
by Peter Trei 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Someone claiming to be "Nathanial Borenstein" writes: > As you may already have heard via the popular press, First Virtual > Holdings has developed and demonstrated a program which completely > undermines the security of every known credit-card encryption mechanism > for Internet commerce. [...] I started reading this thinking it was actually something important. All it describes is a keyboard monitor, which greps for CC#s, and which could be spread by an (unspecified) virus, and sends the output to a crook over the net by some (unspecified) mechanism. So, what else is new? [...] > Nathaniel Borenstein <nsb(a)fv.com> >Chief Scientist, First Virtual Holdings >FAQ & PGP key: nsb+faq(a)nsb.fv.com It's sort of interesting that "Nathaniel Borenstein" has a PGP key, but failed to clearsign this message, which loudly trumpets it's great import. Considering the lack of actual content, I feel compelled to warn readers that this may be a forgery, designed to make him look like he's scaremongering. strictly speaking for myself Peter Trei ptrei(a)acm.org Peter Trei Senior Software Engineer Purveyor Development Team Process Software Corporation http://www.process.com trei(a)process.com

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Re: Time codes for PCs (fromn German Banking)
by JR＠ns.cnb.uam.es 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

From: SMTP%"jimbell(a)pacifier.com" 27-JAN-1996 03:43:05.83 >A peripheral I've long wanted to see, commonly available: ACCURATE time, >broadcast to the millisecond/microsecond/nanosecond, available from sources >as varied as TV VIR's, FM subcarriers, and other sources, available as an >easy input (via a peripheral card) to a computer. > Yup! Do you think it is really possible? If I remember well speed of light is 300.000 Km/s. That means that light takes around 1 ms. to cover 300 Km. If you use a satellite, antenna, whatever to broadcast a timing signal, the accuracy will depend on when do you receive it, and that in turn on your distance from the source. By the time the signal reaches you it may be several milliseconds old (and thousands of microsenconds and millions of nanoseconds). We are so used to think of TV, whatever as an instantaneous broadcast medium that we forget that there are speed limits in the Universe. And you can't exceed them by just paying a ticket. Note that this was a best case scenario: using the speed of light to transfer the information and using the shortest path. In reality most waves won't travel as fast in the air, and will depend on atmospheric circumstances. >I have a 12-year-old Heathkit "Most Accurate Clock" that I assembled myself, >and had the foresight to install it with its computer interface option. >(receives 5, 10, or 15 MHz signals broadcast from Boulder, Colorado, >containing "exact" time.) > Just remember that the best you can get would be microseconds if you're in a 300 meter radius, or milliseconds on a 300 Km. And possibly nanoseconds at 0.3 m. Even then you need to know exactly (i.e. with an accuracy of between centimeters to a few Km depending on the timing you want) your position. And depending on the media you use, possibly the atmospheric conditions in between the emisor and your receptor. Then remains the cypherpunk part on all this: how can you trust the *signal* your receptor receives? How do you know no one is interferring it or sending an inaccurate or false one? So you need a GPS... And a timing source that can be trusted. You'd wantthe signal not to be tamperable or at least to be able to detect when it has been tampered. And that on a broadcast system. A system owned by someone who you may not trust (say a private TV channel, radio or satellite). So you may want to have several sources, and to be able to verify that the signals you receive all come from their respective sources. Yum! a nice problem to think about. One factor is that you wouldn't expect changes in public sources used by sensible systems since those could not pass unnoticed and might raise big protests. But you still have the MITM attack to consider... Oh well, it's too late now. See ya... jr

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Re: FV Demonstrates Fatal Flaw in Software Encryption of Credit Cards
by mka＠pobox.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 15.07 1996-01-29 -0500, Nathaniel Borenstein wrote: >NEVER TYPE YOUR CREDIT CARD NUMBER INTO A COMPUTER. This problem is greatly exagerated. The software simply won't be running in the average users machine. If the program propagates like a virus, it will soon be catched and killed by the anti-virus utilities that any responsible user is already running on a regular basis. If you have to start the program for it to do its magic, then just don't start it. Todays computer users should know that running software you don't trust is generally a bad idea. That's how you get a virus in the machine in the first place... Come on Nathaniel, admit it, it's a scam to sell FV's expensive services! matts

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Re: Here's how you put your key on the keyservers...
by jim bell 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- At 07:39 AM 1/29/96 -0500, Ted Garrett wrote: >-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- > >I got a message in response to a request I made to someone for their public >key. I wanted to check the signatures that they included with their posts >to cypherpunks, but their key was not on the keyservers. The key they >included was completely unsigned, and when I use it to validate their >previous posts as well as the message they sent which included the key, the >signatures come back as bad, the contents of the file changed. Names are >appropriately withheld (I hope). At this point, I think it would be appropriate to declare that I am the person Ted was communicating with, and the one he is referring to and (correctly, as I recall my own posts) quoting. I am, yes, a real newbie, and I appreciate the indirect lesson in "nettiquette" he is showing by not identifying my private email to him. I'm identifying myself for a number of reasons: 1. I REALLY am a newbie (at least to most of Internet, and common usage of PGP, etc.), and haven't learned much of the ways of Internet. (with a strange, short, early exception, which I will relate in another message if anybody has any interest in Internet history.) 2. I want to solve the problems Ted presumably correctly identified in my signing. (I use freebie Eudora, and WPGP, etc.) I only started signing my posts when I got a copy of WPGP by Gostl, and it made things much easier. 3. I did not want to make it difficult for him to fight off a potential MITM attack while, at the same time, complying with "nettiquette", especially seeing as how my key is not (yet) in any keyserver, which is obviously MY fault, not his! I want him to be able to point (and, repost, with my full permission) any messages allegedly from me that he receives by private email, so that others might check the signature too with their own software. This permission to him applies to any prior messages I've sent him, too, ideally so that anyone else can check the signature status against my sig. Ted may be right; there may be a MITM attack. More likely, it's a case of galloping NEWBIE-ITIS on my own part, sorry. Earlier, when I just began using WPGP to sign Eudora stuff, I was told that my signature didn't match. On the other hand, I was told by others that this is a common flaw of signing messages, having to do with line lengths. When I first started sending messages, I didn't use the "Wrap" selection of Eudora (under the EDIT selection), meaning that my lines were as long as the paragraphs were typed. Most people didn't seem to notice, I guess, because it took somebody a few weeks to eventually complain. After that, I RTFM'd and adopted the practice of WRAPping my paragraphs to limit their length to "reasonable" values. (although I would appreciate somebody explaining to me why this DAMN EUDORA can't seem to correctly re-wrap a paragraph after modification. Hell, Wordstar Version 3.0 for CP/M (shows you how long _I've_ been into computers!) reformatted paragraphs just fine back in 1982 on a 12.5 MHz Z-80 (ask me how I did this and I'll tell you a LONG story!) 3. Ted began to suspect a "MITM attack." While I'm a newbie, I'm well aware this is "man in the middle" and am aware of the potential (dangerous!) implications. Needless to say, I can't even say for certain that such an attack isn't happening. Yes, I am on no keyservers, yet, but I will try my best to follow his kind instructions and accomplish this feat. And yes, I am reminded that I need to sign my OWN public key, which (being a f______ newbie), I haven't even done yet! (This message will contain, however, BOTH my 1024-bit and 2047 bit public keys, unsigned, and I will sign the whole message with my 1024-bit key. I'd sign it with BOTH, but I don't know if WPGP will even do this. I'd sign a second copy with the 2047-bit key, except that would be wasting bandwidth. > As I understand the bcc: definition, only >I and the first smtp server this message hits should know who it's to. I >don't know if anyone else reading this mailing list needs this info, but >just in case... here's my reply to the message. > >At 10:03 PM 1/28/96 -0800, you wrote: >>Sorry, I'm a newbie to Internet, and also the Internet usage of PGP. I just >>participated in a local keysigning meeting, so maybe my key will find its >>way to a server. I wrote that. >Don't worry about being a 'newbie'. Everyone starts somewhere. However, >your key will usually not 'find its way' to a server without you >specifically sending it. Thanks; I sorta assumed that, but until recently my usage of PGP was between me and my friends who knew me by face and voice, and who have my keys from hand-carried floppy disks that I gave them myself. > The keyserver I usually use is accessed by sending >a mail message which fits the following format. As far as I know, all the >keyservers use this format to add or update keys in their databases. You >only have to send it to one keyserver, and it will propagate to all the >others. I have indented the text so that no handlers decide to interpret it >as a new message. Okay, thanks for the details. > >- - To: pgp-public-keys(a)pgp.iastate.edu >- - Subject: ADD >- - >- - -----BEGIN PGP PUBLIC KEY BLOCK----- >- - Version: 2.6.2 >- - >- - [key deleted to protect the innocent] >- - >- - -----END PGP PUBLIC KEY BLOCK----- > >>I'm sorry to have to admit that I don't even know how to do this! Newbie >>alert! Again, I wrote that. >If you don't admit you don't know something, nobody will usually tell you >how to do it. Also, you should sign your own key. That will make it harder >to forge, I think. Okay, up until now I've generally given out my key in messages, and signed the entire message with the key. > The reasons were spelled out in a couple of the web >pages I read, but I've forgotten them. It has something to do with either a >denial of service attack or a man in the middle attack, or both. The >command to do this is: Someday I'm gonna understand this stuff! > >pgp -ks 0xHEXKEYID > >Honestly, I've only just begun to use pgp myself. Also, you should add your >e-mail address to the user-id of your key. The command to do so is: > >pgp -ke 0xHEXKEYID > Again, much appreciated. I hate to RTFM. Lazy bum, I. >You will be asked if you wish to add a user id to the key. Say yes, and >give it your e-mail address. What this does is it allows people who are >using pgp-enabled mailers to directly encrypt messages to you without >choosing your key manually. > >The reason that I have not encrypted this message to you using the key you >provided is that when I extracted the key and re-checked your message, the >signature was no good. I've found that (using eudora) I must turn off the >word wrap feature of my mailer to allow for good signed messages out. Of >course, having said this, I'll probably not get a good signature on this >message. Let me know if it signs ok. I didn't check the signature of his message, admittedly. Guess I need to give him some feedback, huh? >Now, I have a question. Which attack(s) is/are a person vulnerable to when >distributing an unsigned public key in the open? Could this actually be a >complex man-in-the-middle attack? Am I paranoid? Unfortunately, the more I learn about encryption, the more "paranoid" I get! Of course, I have a few more reasons than most, but... [I deleted Ted Garrett's signature. My own will follow my own two public keys.] My 1024-bit key. - -----BEGIN PGP PUBLIC KEY BLOCK----- Version: 2.6.2 mQCNAi1zvWcAAAEEAKmSqngLWK2N2gOJKPtjF9VCfSkXY+XUZBRCbbFU71uH/dLX C2Uq6wFS8alRgMc3rp90JnnJ/6eJqXwMjCunogwucWOaU7S/w+OwjOG9fUqsXIA6 2j25Wtjce65mbp0TKLAzwMb/P/Qq7BlclqhuKzfVBH7dIHnVAvqHVDBboB2dAAUR tBFKYW1lcyBEYWx0b24gQmVsbA== =G3LA - -----END PGP PUBLIC KEY BLOCK----- My 2047-bit key. - -----BEGIN PGP PUBLIC KEY BLOCK----- Version: 2.6.2 mQENAzDCFH4AAAEH/15sMvnnK1BIvLkxQsKwUHP7dKNFbKrQOtOoyLOFTk4/0Zlr gXkKw6NciDYaOKwW9dsIL3N3rjAlWtioQ/gg+5vMNoJOQXpp95mKBzpWYLeaB8MF Km6H/NGWISx5cz06NOGutWcaezO/S4xm8ay7W8HaZ4EmHQdXtSKIAL41PBQyyuhR wIKX+QwsAgKS1LALr9MuW7nXL6/h139QeNRAR+ubXyftoklFHC+HF+jcTTDuNjmU 4p7BEMp9cmYHh6WEYTZyOz5F8/8gtEbPA0IKsQH1LGdf+2APLqMdciuU8ALZA+ZM bbaBaxshqHbYfCQ8+ATCrBjsU0nO8RKjhSx91vkABRG0DUphbWVzIEQuIEJlbGw= =uncA - -----END PGP PUBLIC KEY BLOCK----- James Dalton Bell. Klaatu Burada Nikto Something is going to happen.... Something... Wonderful! -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.2 iQCVAwUBMQ1PZ/qHVDBboB2dAQE+AAP+MP5hM2j1Z3z+7cdZ/U12qH/uu6Dq2NEP LgKJ8Nm0idN7oiBZpYD2zuT22mhsIhCJzzmC3XIBiyX1AP4voDqrIwgLmvPgogcp Cr9p75xi2/UqV1mrYIWeHG4KJc+/x5V4PxeYg5iz0jjnLKN1mzmnjPRDqAOaaBhK 08MMgOkqxFs= =jU9M -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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Page one, NY Times, 29 January 1996
by Matt Blaze 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

One of those microscopic bottom-of-page-one ads from John Young: "BOYCOTT ESPIONAGE-ENABLED SOFTWARE", with phone number and email address to contact for more information. I'd be curious as to what the response has been like. -matt

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Re: FV Demonstrates Fatal Flaw in Software Encryption of Credit Cards
by Rich Salz 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

>It's considerably more than that. Please read on. No, Nathaniel, it is not. You watch keystrokes and record the ones you're interested in. This technique has interesting possibilities, but all your PR screaming won't make it anything more than what it is. How interesting are these possibilities? It's hard to say. Don't run software you don't trust. Well, most of the people on this list probably already know that. I betcha a good-sized portion of the computer-using populace knows this, but actively (or passively) defers the choice to someone else. You must trust something. You folks trust the telephone (never gets tapped, right) the postal service (of course mail never gets stolen) banks or credit card companies (which never have problems). And then, on top of that foundation of sand you build a commerce system with MIME and SMTP (sendmail is the most bugfree program ever written). I used to think you were aggressive techies, now you're just greedy bastards who will seemingly stop at nothing; Stef's blatant attempts to ensure MIME's use in IETF-PAY was not an exception, but the first salvo. You make me sorry I invented safe-tcl and made FV possible. /r$

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Re: "Gentlemen do not read each other's mail"
by jim bell 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 02:15 PM 1/29/96 -0500, Alan Pugh wrote: >>It isn't clear to me that the Constitution grants "rights" to the government >>that aren't already possessed by the people themselves. Would that even be >>possible? "Powers" maybe, "rights," maybe not. > >the constitution is an amazingly consistant document internally. take a slow >read through it and you will see that you are absolutely correct. when >'people' are being referred to, the term used is 'rights'. when it is a >governmental organization (state or federal), the term used is always 'powers'. Thank you for verifying concurring. I haven't read the Constitution in a few years, so I was a bit hazy, but I think I managed to hit the nail reasonably well on the head.

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<fwd> FV's crypted credit card "attack"
by vin＠shore.net 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Date: Mon, 29 Jan 1996 15:43:53 -0500 Subject: IP: FV's position on Merc article Date: Mon, 29 Jan 1996 10:44:26 -0500 (EST) From: Nathaniel Borenstein <nsb(a)nsb.fv.com> ================ As you may already have heard via the popular press, First Virtual Holdings has developed and demonstrated a program which completely undermines the security of every known credit-card encryption mechanism for Internet commerce. This is a very serious matter, and we want to make sure that the Internet community is properly informed about the nature of the problem that we have uncovered, and the manner in which we have made the information known. In this (unavoidably lengthy) post, I will try to explain the nature of the problem and its implications for Internet commerce. In deference to those who are not technically oriented, the detailed explanation of how the attack works will be the LAST part of this message. First of all, let me be perfectly clear about the nature of the problem we have exposed. It is NOT a bug in a single program, and it is therefore NOT something that can be fixed with a "patch" or any other kind of software upgrade. Instead, we have demonstrated a very general attack that undermines ALL programs that ask users to type a credit card number into their home computer. We have tested the program and confirmed that it undermines the security of the credit card encryption software from Netscape and Cybercash, and we expect that it will work similarly for ANY future software based on the encryption of credit card numbers on the desktop. Quite simply, we believe that this program demonstrates a FATAL flaw in one whole approach to Internet commerce, and that the use of software to encrypt credit card numbers can NEVER be made safe. For consumers, we recommend the following simple rule: NEVER TYPE YOUR CREDIT CARD NUMBER INTO A COMPUTER. We should also be clear about the Internet commerce mechanisms that are NOT affected by this problem. First Virtual is unaffected because we never ask the user to put a credit card number at risk by typing it into a computer. Hardware-based solutions can also be devised that are immune to this attack, including solutions based on smart cards and solutions based on "card swipe" machines in the home. We believe that current digital cash solutions are also not vulnerable to this attack, although some variants of digital cash may be vulnerable to a similar form of attack. Commerce mechanisms based on the use of telephones or fax machines to transmit credit card numbers are also unaffected by this kind of attack. Other proposed commerce mechanisms should, from now on, be evaluated with this kind of attack in mind. The bottom line: INTERNET COMMERCE CAN BE VERY SAFE, WITH SEVERAL DIFFERENT MECHANISMS, BUT ENCRYPTING CREDIT CARDS ON THE DESKTOP IS NOT ONE OF THE SAFE MECHANISMS. It's important to understand why we have taken this step. Obviously, as the long-time leaders in Internet commerce, the last thing we would want to do is to undermine general confidence in Internet commerce. However, we realized that many people believed that credit card encryption was a safe and easy path to Internet commerce, and that very few people understood how easily it could be undermined. Upon investigation, we were frankly startled to realize just how easy it was -- a single programmer got the first version of our program running in about a week. Aside from our obvious interest in promoting our own commerce mechanism, we felt that we had an ethical obligation to bring this problem to the attention of the consumers, banks, and other financial institutions who could conceivably suffer catastrophic losses if software encryption of credit card numbers became widespread. We also realize that we have an obligation to do everything possible to avoid helping any unscrupulous people who might seek to utilize this flaw for malicious purposes. We have accordingly been extremely responsible in how we have handled our discovery. We first demonstrated and explained our program to vital organizations such as CERT (the Computer Emergency Response Team) and the ABA (American Banking Association). Only after many such private disclosures, none of which revealed any defense against our technique, did we publicly disclose the existence of this program. In addition, we have taken several steps to "cripple" our demonstration program, all of which will be discussed below. Furthermore, we have NOT made the program itself generally available. We are currently demonstrating it to selected financial institutions and government agencies, and will provide copies of the program only to CERT and a few other independent security-minded organizations. We have also alerted Netscape to the problem as part of their "bugs bounty" program. At some future date, we might conceivably distribute the program, in binary form on CD ROM, to selected financial institutions. The source code will always be very closely guarded. Unfortunately, however, the general method of attack is extremely easy to duplicate, and we don't know of any good way to alert the public to the problem without explaining it. THE TECHNIQUE Our basic approach was to write a computer program that runs undetected while it monitors your computer system. A sophisticated version of such a program can intercept and analyze every keystroke, mouse-click, and even messages sent to your screen, but all we needed was the keystrokes. Selectively intercepted information can be immediately and secretly transmitted via Internet protocols, or stored for later use. First Virtual's research team has built and demonstrated a particular implementation of such a program, which only watches for credit card numbers. Whenever you type a credit card number into your computer -- even if you are talking to "secure" encryption software -- it captures your card number. Our program doesn't do anything harmful with your credit card number, but merely announces that it has captured it. A malicious program of this type could quietly transmit your credit card number to criminals without your knowledge. The underlying problem is that the desktop -- the consumer's computer -- is not secure. There is no way of ensuring that all software installed on the consumer's machine can be trusted. Given this fact, it is unwise to trust ANY software such as a "secure" browser, because malicious software could have easily been interposed between the user and the trusted software. The bottom line for consumers is that, on personal computers, INFORMATION IS INSECURE THE MOMENT YOU TOUCH A KEY. We have dramatically proven that security ends the moment you type sensitive information into your computer. The vulnerability lies in the fact that information must travel from your keyboard, into your computer's operating system, and then to your "secure" application. It can be easily intercepted along the way. This kind of insecurity is very frightening, and has implications far beyond credit card theft. However, credit cards embody and demonstrate the kind of information that is MOST vulnerable to this kind of attack. Credit card numbers are far more vulnerable to this kind of attack than most other forms of information because of the following particular characteristics of credit card numbers: -- Credit card numbers are easily recognized by simple pattern recognition. -- Credit card numbers are "one way" financial instruments, with no user-level confirmation or verification required for their use. -- Credit card numbers are of direct financial value. In short, credit card numbers are an almost perfect example of how NOT to design a payment instrument for an insecure public computer network such as the Internet. DETAILS: HOW TO TOTALLY UNDERMINE SOFTWARE ENCRYPTION OF CREDIT CARDS First Virtual's demonstration credit-card interception program, once installed, observes every keystroke that you type, watching for credit card numbers. It recognizes credit card numbers with almost perfect accuracy, because credit card numbers are specifically designed to match a simple, self-identifying pattern, including a check digit. Our program is even smart about punctuation and simple editing functions, so that nearly any credit card number that you type into your computer is immediately recognized as such by this program. When our program spots a credit card number, it immediately plays a warning sound and pops up a window on your screen, including an iconic representation of the type of credit card that you have just entered, along with a clear explanation of what has just happened. The current program works only on Microsoft Windows (Windows 3.1, Windows NT, and Windows 95), but we believe that it would be simple to implement on Macintosh and UNIX systems as well. The program doesn't exploit any "holes" or bugs in the operating system. It uses existing, necessary operating system facilities which are part of the published Windows API, and which are necessary for the implementation of screen savers, keyboard macros, and other important software packages. First Virtual's intent is to educate the public, certainly not to endanger it. For that reason, our program incorporates four important precautions intended to prevent any possibility of harm: 1) Our program is not self-replicating. While a malicious program exploiting the same security flaw could easily be embedded in a virus, spreading itself all over the world, that was not our goal. Instead, the program must be deliberately and manually installed on each computer on which it is to run. 2) Our program always puts up an icon on your screen when it is watching your keystrokes. This is certainly not necessary, and it is clear that a malicious program would be unlikely to do this. 3) Our program is easy to remove from your computer, and even offers an "Uninstall" button to the user. Obviously a malicious program would hide itself as well as possible, and make itself as hard to remove as possible. 4) Our program never transmits your credit card over the Internet. While a program using this approach could transmit your information to a criminal in a totally untraceable manner, we would never do anything like that. In fact, we erase your credit card number from our program's memory before we even tell you that we've seen it, thus making sure that the credit card number can't even be retrieved by an inspection of our program's memory. It is frankly difficult to overstate the severity of the problem demonstrated by our program. A clever criminal could use viral techniques to spread a malicious program based on the same approach, and would be no more likely to be caught in the act than the authors of any of the computer viruses that plague the world today. Once it detects a credit card number, a criminal program could use any of several techniques to send that number to the original criminal without providing any way to trace the criminal's receipt of it. (If you're skeptical about this claim, we'd prefer to talk with you privately, as we've never seen the "best" methods for doing this spelled out in public, and we would prefer to keep it that way.) Altogether, this means that if millions of credit card numbers were being typed into Internet-connected personal computers, a criminal could obtain a virtually unlimited supply of card numbers for his own use. In fact, for all we know this could already be happening today. The first visible sign of such an attack, if it were well-executed, would be a gradual rise in the overall rate of credit card fraud. POSSIBLE SOLUTIONS First Virtual believes that the flaw we have uncovered is fatal. In the foreseeable future, all commerce schemes based on software encryption of credit cards on the desktop are completely vulnerable to this sort of attack. The basic problem is that software encryption of credit cards is predicated on the notion of "trusted software". On the consumer computing platforms, however, general purpose operating system functionality makes it unwise to assume too strong a level of trust in such software. No operating system with anything less than military-grade security (B2) is likely to be safe from an attack such as this one. This does not mean that Internet commerce is dead. Any scheme that is not based on self-identifying one-way financial instruments such as credit cards will be essentially unaffected by this problem. Moreover, even credit cards may be made safe on the Internet using one of two approaches: secure hardware add-ons and the First Virtual approach. First Virtual's Internet Payment Systems never places the consumer's credit card number on the Internet. Instead, the consumer provides it to us by telephone when the account is opened. After that, all purchases are made using a "Virtual PIN". Virtual PINs are essentially Internet aliases for underlying payment mechanisms such as credit card numbers, but with several kinds of added security. Virtual PINs are free-form text, with no recognizable pattern, which makes them much harder to detect with the kind of attack we have just demonstrated. Moreover, Virtual PINs are only usable in conjunction with First Virtual's unique email verification process. No payment is made until the consumer confirms an email query, which means that defrauding First Virtual is a multi-step process that is extremely difficult to automate. (For more details, we recommend our paper, "Perils and Pitfalls of Practical CyberCommerce", available via ftp from ftp://ftp.fv.com/pub/nsb/fv-austin.txt.) The bottom line, once again, for those of you who have read this far: NEVER TYPE YOUR CREDIT CARD NUMBER INTO A COMPUTER. There's simply no other way to keep credit cards safe on the net. The program we have demonstrated completely undermines the security of all known programs that claim to handle credit card numbers safely on the Internet. -------- Nathaniel Borenstein <nsb(a)fv.com> Chief Scientist, First Virtual Holdings FAQ & PGP key: nsb+faq(a)nsb.fv.com Vin McLellan +The Privacy Guild+ <vin(a)shore.net> 53 Nichols St., Chelsea, Ma. 02150 USA Tel: (617) 884-5548 <*><*><*><*><*><*><*><*><*>

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Re: FV Demonstrates Fatal Flaw in Software Encryption of Credit Cards
by jrochkin＠cs.oberlin.edu 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Congratulations to FirstVirtual for having taken key-capture techniqures that everyone has known about forever, and skillfully propagandizing it as a 'fatal flaw in software encryption' playing on the technophobia of the masses, who are afraid of computers already ("INFORMATION IS INSECURE THE MOMENT YOU TOUCH A KEY". snork), to engeder widespread fear in encryption ("ENCRYPTING CREDIT CARDS ON THE DESKTOP IS NOT ONE OF THE SAFE MECHANISMS"), thereby (hopefully) enhancing market share of FV, which doesn't use encryption. 1) I remember Mr. Borenstein saying a year or two ago, something like "We have nothing against encryption; we're just using a non-encrypting technique for the moment, becuase it can be quickly, easily, and safely deployed by us. Eventually, we'll probably use encryption." Apparently, this propaganda piece marks a change of strategy. 2) This is the first net distributed "security alert" distributed that I've noticed, with almost no real content. No one who knows a bit about computer security learned anything they didn't already know from that "alert". Rather, it was distributed in the _form_ of a CERT-like alert, but with the purpose and effect that is almost solely marketting of FV. I'm sure we can expect many more now that FV has pioneered the propaganda-as-alert technique--people are really scared about virus and security risks, since they know nothing about them, and will pay a lot of attention to them (witness "Good Times")--much more attention then they'd normally pay an advertisement. This masquerading advertisement is akin to the advertisements masquerading as editorial content that you see in many magazines not respectable enough to prohibit such things. 3) I believe that FV works by assigning the user some sort of id number. They send the id accross the net, FV has a database with "FV-ID" <-> credit-card-number correspondences, the merchant sends FV the id, FV bills your card and pays the merchant. Now, if I'm correct about how FV works, we could clearly write a program that searches your HD for FVs data files, extracts your FV-ID from it, and steals it. It could be a virus, it could send the FV accross the net, whatever. We could then use your FV-ID to make fraudulently make purchases through the FV system that would be billed to you. This is essentially the same attack as FV "demonstrates" against software encrypted credit cards over the net: that is, the "You have an insecure system and if we can put evil software on it, we can get you." attack. True, we wouldn't have your credit card number, and we couldn't order stuff from LL Bean billed to you. We could just order stuff from FV merchants. So maybe it's marginally better. Maybe. But I can't see any way FV could be immune to an attack of this sort. I believe that all they do is give you a first virtual ID number sent accross the net (in the clear!) in lieu of your card number. With an insecure PC as an assuption (and it is probably a good one, actually), I can't see how FV could be immune from an attack of this sort. If Mr. Borenstein or anyone else thinks it is, please explain how. Sigh.

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