December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

"Eternity service" paper request
by Allen Robinson 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- To: cypherpunks(a)toad.com Date: Tue Aug 06 20:53:31 1996 A couple of weeks ago Hal mentioned Ross Anderson's Eternity Service paper (URL: http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk:80/users/rja14/#Lib) As Hal described it at the time: >The goal of the Eternity service is to make published information >permanently and ineradicably available, despite efforts on the part of >powerful attackers to destroy it. The attack model explicitly >includes governments. This has obvious relevance to current >controversies involving copyright, trade secrets, etc. [. . . .] >Anderson's basic concept is of a network of storage servers in widely >scattered jurisdictions. He uses cryptography so that although the >servers store data, no single computer knows exactly what is stored in >the encrypted files it holds. Keys to the data are spread across the >network using secret sharing techniques, with mutual cooperation among >the servers being necessary to decrypt files. (I believe the files >themselves are redundantly stored on individual servers, but they are >encrypted with keys which are split.) Anonymous communications are >used among the network of computers to reply to requests, so that >attackers can't tell which computer produced a requested document. At the time I thought this sounds quite interesting and filed the information away for a time when I would have an opportunity to get the paper and read it. I finally created that opportunity recently only to find the paper at the above URL in a format I have a *lot* of difficulty reading. I'm a little embarrassed to ask such a thing, but does anyone know a location where this paper resides in plain-vanilla ASCII? Many thanks. AR #%#%#%#%#%#%#%#%#%#%#%#%#%#%#%#%#%#%#%# "The road to tyranny, we must never forget, begins with the destruction of the truth." -- Bill Clinton, Oct. 15, 1995 at the University of Connecticut. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? Allen Robinson.........................sebago(a)earthlink.net PGP public key FE4A0A75 available from major keyservers fingerprint 170FBC1F7609B76F 967F1CC8FCA7A41F -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.2 iQCVAwUBMgf3H3sdZ07+Sgp1AQHEYQP/cthh/U8MwguYjuDJkrMNScwCaLrBm+rv 7SJS5Oogln7ItVfMDCUGISVNABCg4gr4taqW8OnStmegZxqsYJevLu5qYVTPvdWG wPDbBu2rHfHc6aHS1am727Vv9EJTb452tlDkXQuQApH4TUh9mYUe6oIxVenKSxNC jbPGgzxgvvo= =qhoi -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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Fixes to loop.c et al. for DES,IDEA,stego now done
by Ian Goldberg 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- As I mentioned before, the hooks to DES (and IDEA; with Nicholas Leon's patches) in loop.c and {mount,losetup}(8) are horribly broken. For example, the DES key you type in is totally ignored, and only the first byte of the IDEA key you enter is relevant. As well, the DES code was using PCBC mode, and IDEA was using ECB mode. I've fixed the key management (the key is based on a SHA1 hash of the pass phrase you enter), and changed both DES and IDEA to use CBC mode. Adding other encryption methods (Blowfish, for example) should be straightforward. In fact, I'm planning to add a facility for dynamically adding and removing general data transformation modules (maybe for 2.1...). In addition, I've implemented steganography (hiding a filesystem in the low bits of, say, an audio file), and fixed some assorted bugs in loop.c (incorrect variables were being used in some places, and a deadlock was fixed having to do with making a loop device on top of another loop device). The patches are available from: ftp://ftp.csua.berkeley.edu/pub/cypherpunks/filesystems/linux/index.html Since that site seems to be down a lot, there's an alternate site: ftp://csclub.uwaterloo.ca/pub/linux-stego/index.html Note that there's one file that contains crypto that users outside of the US and Canada must not download. See below for further details and instructions. Attached is the text version of index.html. Share and enjoy. - Ian - -----------------8<--------------------8<---------------- Encryption and Steganography for Linux This directory contains patches to the Linux kernel to enable encryption and steganography of filesystems. Encryption allows you to have a scrambled partition or file that, with the proper pass phrase, you can mount, just like a normal filesystem. Steganography allows you to hide a filesystem in the low bits of, say, an audio file. You can even combine these two to hide a scrambled filesystem in the low bits of an audio file (see the example, below). Installation instructions 1. Get a fresh copy of linux-2.0.11.tar.gz from your favourite site. 2. Patch it with the loopfix-2.0.11.patch file found in this directory. This fixes some bugs in the loop block device driver, and adds steganography support to it. Hopefully this will go into the standard kernel soon. 3. Now you want to add cryptography support. Due to a strange US regulation, this has to be split up into two pieces. The first piece, export-2.0.11.patch, doesn't actually contain any cryptograhy; it just contains the changes to the Makefiles and documentation, etc. to reflect the eventual presence of cryptography. You should get this file and patch it into the result of step 2. 4. If the site you are downloading these files from is in the US or Canada, you may only download the second piece, crypto-2.0.11.patch, if you are also in the US or Canada. If you are not, here's what's in the file, and where to get it: o The file contains the files drivers/block/idea.c, kernel/des.c, include/linux/idea.h and include/linux/des.h. o To get these files, go visit http://www.binary9.net/nicholas/linuxkernel/patches/ and get the patches des-1.0.patch and idea-1.0.patch. o Edit these patches and remove everything in them that isn't related to one of the four files listed above. o What you have left should be functionally equivalent to crypto-2.0.11.patch. 5. Take either crypto-2.0.11.patch or what you got from outside the US, and patch it into the result of step 3. 6. You now have a complete kernel. Compile as usual. You will also need an updated version of the mount and losetup commands in order to use this. To get these, download mount-2.5k from ftp://ftp.win.tue.nl/pub/linux/util/mount-2.5k.tar.gz. Then get the patch mount-2.5k.patch from this directory, and patch it into the sources. Compile and install. It would be really good if these patches to the kernel and to mount for steganography and encryption were made standard, and enabled by default. The reason for this is that it would be more suspicious for someone to have a "special" kernel with stego capabilities than to just have a regular kernel, configured in the default way. Sample encrypted and stego'd filesystem In this directory are two audio files. Alice-Bob.orig.au is a file I downloaded from http://www.iro.umontreal.ca/labs/theorique/Alice-Bob.html. The other file, Alice-Bob.au, is the same, except that it has an encrypted filesystem hidden in the low bit of each byte. You can listen to each of them, and see how much difference there is (it's just in the noise). To see the filesystem, get a new kernel and mount/losetup as descibed above. Also make sure you have loop devices in /dev/loop*, as described below. Then: # losetup -e stego /dev/loop0 Alice-Bob.au Use the low bits of each (b)yte, (s)hort, or (l)ong? (Use lowercase letters for little-endian; uppercase for big-endian.) b/s/l/B/S/L: [b] # mount /dev/loop0 /mnt -oloop,encryption=idea Pass phrase: What are we going to do tomorrow night, Brain? # ls -al /mnt total 220 drwxr-xr-x 3 root root 1024 Aug 4 10:47 ./ drwxr-xr-x 23 root root 1024 Aug 4 01:50 ../ drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 12288 Aug 4 10:46 lost+found/ - -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 71 Aug 4 10:47 passwords - -rw------- 1 root root 208247 Aug 4 10:47 world_domination_plans # umount /mnt # losetup -d /dev/loop0 Usage instructions First, make sure you have devices called /dev/loop0, /dev/loop1, ..., /dev/loop7. If not, make them as follows: # cd /dev # for i in 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7; do mknod loop$i b 7 $i; done # chgrp disk /dev/loop[0-7] # chmod 660 /dev/loop[0-7] A note on choosing pass phrases: Pass phrases can be up to 128 characters long. It's in your best interests to choose a good one. Make it long, and hard to guess. There are FAQs out there on how to choose a good pass phrase, I think. Finally, here is a copy of the file Documentation/filesystems/loop_crypt.txt: Encryption and Steganography for Linux - -------------------------------------- The "loop" block device driver allows you to "hide" a filesystem in a disk partition or in a regular file, either using encryption (scrambling the data) or steganography (hiding the data in the low bits of, say, a sound file). To use this, you will need updated versions of the "mount" and "losetup" commands. They are both in the mount-2.5k, which you can get from ftp://ftp.win.tue.nl/pub/linux/util/mount-2.5k.tar.gz but you will need to patch it with the changes from ftp://ftp.csua.berkley.edu/pub/cypherpunks/filesystems/linux/mount-2.5k.pat… Also, if you want to use DES or IDEA encryption and not just XOR (which, encryptionwise, is really terrible), you'll need to get the crypto patches to the kernel. If you're in the US or Canada, you can get them from ftp://ftp.csua.berkley.edu/pub/cypherpunks/filesystems/linux/crypto.patch Otherwise, check ftp://ftp.csua.berkley.edu/pub/cypherpunks/filesystems/linux/index.html to see how to get them. How to use it - ------------- Here are a number of examples: To create an encrypted floppy (using IDEA): Put a floppy in drive 0. # dd if=/dev/urandom of=/dev/fd0 bs=1k seek=8 # losetup -e idea /dev/loop0 /dev/fd0 Pass phrase: (type a pass phrase here, up to 128 characters) # mke2fs /dev/loop0 # losetup -d /dev/loop0 To use it again: # mount /dev/fd0 /mnt -text2 -oloop,encryption=idea Pass phrase: (type the same pass phrase) # cd /mnt (use the disk) # cd / # umount /mnt To make a DES-encrypted filesystem in a regular file: Decide on a filename and how big you want your encrypted filesystem to be. Suppose you choose /root/private/rndseed as your filename, and you want it to be 10MB (10240K). Create it as follows: # dd if=/dev/urandom of=/root/private/rndseed bs=1k count=10240 # losetup -e des /dev/loop0 /root/private/rndseed Pass phrase: (type a pass phrase here, up to 128 characters) # mke2fs /dev/loop0 # losetup -d /dev/loop0 To use it: # mount /root/private/rndseed /mnt -text2 -oloop,encryption=des Pass phrase: (type the same pass phrase) # cd /mnt (use the disk) # cd / # umount /mnt There is an additional "feature" (well, _I_ think it's a feature) by which you could mount the above filesystem on /root/private, even though a file in that directory is being used to store the filesystem itself. (Note of course that the encrypted file won't be visible when the filesystem is mounted, and that only loop files don't count as "usage"; if you're _in_ that directory, or some process has any file in that directory open, the mount won't work.) To hide an IDEA-encrypted filesystem in the low bits of an audio file: Let "penguin.au" be your sound file. # losetup -e stego /dev/loop0 penguin.au Use the low bits of each (b)yte, (s)hort, or (l)ong? (Use lowercase letters for little-endian; uppercase for big-endian.) b/s/l/B/S/L: [b] (.au files store 1-byte samples, so say "b" here) # dd if=/dev/urandom of=/dev/loop0 bs=1k seek=8 # losetup -e idea /dev/loop1 /dev/loop0 Pass phrase: (type a pass phrase here, up to 128 characters) # mke2fs /dev/loop1 # losetup -d /dev/loop1 # losetup -d /dev/loop0 And to use it: # losetup -e stego /dev/loop0 penguin.au Use the low bits of each (b)yte, (s)hort, or (l)ong? (Use lowercase letters for little-endian; uppercase for big-endian.) b/s/l/B/S/L: [b] (.au files store 1-byte samples, so say "b" here) # mount /dev/loop0 /mnt -text2 -oloop,encryption=idea Pass phrase: (type a pass phrase here, up to 128 characters) # cd /mnt (read secret info from files here) # cd / # umount /mnt # losetup -d /dev/loop0 Note: if you don't have /dev/urandom, do this: # cd /dev # mknod random c 1 8 # mknod urandom c 1 9 # chown root.root random urandom # chmod 666 random urandom Last update: 19960806 by Ian Goldberg <ian(a)cypherpunks.ca> This work derives from work by a number of people, including: Werner Almesberger <almesber(a)bernina.ethz.ch> Andries Brouwer <Andries.Brouwer(a)cwi.nl> Ian Goldberg <ian(a)cypherpunks.ca> Nicholas J. Leon <nicholas(a)binary9.net> Theodore Ts'o <tytso(a)athena.mit.edu> Eric Young <eay(a)psych.psy.uq.oz.au> - -----------------8<--------------------8<---------------- -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.2 iQCVAwUBMgfZsEZRiTErSPb1AQGf9wP8Cu0h79vowZVME3dJGhCQM8AbelCOHEck O51uZ6o5Fwv3mPsZ0E15IyYns1mLYT4slWQ2VY2vEoTsT6pM4og+45/ZP3aRJh5i mBgNulbRvxf/eqlmDBT6433JFrdAVAWHwGcMFTUXewHQJZ3x4WyIzvk1hHv++OGo jn96Pbr71Qs= =13QI -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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Apple people on the list
by jya＠pipeline.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

I'd like to hear Tim, too, in this Big Apple. RealAudio, perhaps. Tim's views are far more substantial and worthwhile than those play-it-safe Pro-Code dronings. And his pith should go out far and wide, around the world, not only out there on its edge. Vinnie, Robert, All Appledom, do your global duty, don't miss this chance to leapfrog the small-beans promoters of the crypto industry. What would you offer to set off Tim's simmering crypto-anarcho-volcano, make it heard round the planet?

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Re: e$: Watching the MacRubble Bounce
by Christopher Hull 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

> >I, for one, would appreciate the chance to hear Tim May present >"crypto-anarchy" and "crypto-privacy" -- in a much more coherent fashion > >Vinnie is putting the "Mac Crypto" conference together in his spare >time using "borrowed" facilities in a way that stays below Apple's >"radar horizon". Ah, so I'm not the only one who makes nefarious use of R&D4 (Burning Man, Mike Jittlov, and other pseudo-events) ;-) Looking forward to it. > >As for the "Mac is dead," I'll leave that to another time and place. The press is a little difficult to believe when they come out with nonsense like "Apple is finally upgrading an aging product line". Excuse me? Yes, the last new Mac one could buy was the IIfx? San Jose Mercury News, A Division of Microsoft Press. (I wonder if I should extend the Shakespeare award beyond the net). -Chris .. But there *are* a million monkees on the net, .. and I still aint seen no Shakespeare! <me> ... ... smtp: nozefngr(a)apple.com .. page: 1.800.680.7351 .. http: http://virtual.net/Personal/nozefngr/ .. icbm: lat37*21'.lon121*5' .. .. the kabuki project: http://remarque.berkeley.edu/kabuki/

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Mac Crypto/ internet commerce workshop registration
by Vinnie Moscaritolo 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----BY SAFEMAIL 1.0----- Attention: I have setup a webpage to handle registrations for the Mac Crypto/ internet commerce workshop. http://webtuff.apple.com/~opentpt/crypto.html please signup and book your airlines and hotel as soon as you can. I am still looking for presenters, if you plan to talk, please drop me an outline, pronto ciao -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----BY SAFEMAIL 1.0----- Version: 2.6.i iQCVAwUBMggHRfMF2+rAU+UdAQEocwQAi347wC62qlgoV0E8nL2E57beK0Uo3fjo 0ZYSYSwu0zOdF9gqGyBfM0ZEHFGh9CEiJik3JCKww4B4Pl6HVWjm9Ay1DN4IqdOo fvanrRRJXcBi00HnyaJmjq9jIrsGoH6nZ3sxM58yaldm/6iVuKezhgBprPF0WwOr aq9NPOZaePg= =Zm8+ -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- Vinnie Moscaritolo Apple Developer Tech Support http://www.vmeng.com/vinnie/ Fingerprint: 4FA3298150E404F2782501876EA2146A

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Re: Digital Telephony costs $2
by Bill Stewart 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 11:34 PM 8/5/96 -0800, you wrote: >What is unclear, however, is WHY they "had to" build a card that couldn't do >full-duplex. I mean, would there have been a problem implementing that? Or >was this just another one of those stupid design decisions which could have >been easily fixed if it had been realized in time? 1) Costs money - especially critical if you're trying to either - get a new product accepted by the market (when they were becoming popular) or - compete in a me-too market (after they became popular and costs came way down.) 2) DSPs tend to be really tight on resources, especially RAM, which you need to do multiple programs at once. $5-10 DSPs are especially tight. They're starting to come with mini operating systems. 3) They probably didn't think of Internet Telephony as a market - They were PC folks, and while _we_ all knew about the Internet, it was probably 1/4 as big as now and earlier on the hype curve - It's only been recently that soundcards have been ubiquitous enough for people to assume they're there for a product like Internet phone - 28.8 modems are fast enough. 14.4 are marginal. 9.6 is _really_ marginal. 4) Most of their market wants other things - MIDI, game noises, talking applications, occasional recording and sound processing. Voice crunching is mostly used for answering machines and fancy voice-response telephony units "Press 1 if you want to Press 2." >> It also has the advantage >>that the data is being moved through your CPU, so encryption is >>an easy add-on, rather than having one combined modem/voiceblaster >>card which doesn't have any hooks for crypto or other processing. >Well, I assume that if implemented as a new type of modem card, the >processor can be used to do the data transfer. If you're doing the voice crunching and A/D conversion and telephony all on the modem card, with everything tightly integrated to fit in your tiny cache, why put in hooks for the processor to intervene? >>Given that the "3KHz" is almost universally transmitted over 64kbps >>digital channels, there's really no point in pushing past 33.6 with >>analog-based coding; better to just do ISDN. > >The local phonecos still want to overcharge for ISDN, however. Major >bigtime problem. ISDN looked great back in about 1980 when the fastest >common modem was 300 baud, but it's lost much of its lustre competing >against 33.6 kbps. Maybe if ISDN were available at a premium of $5 per >month or so... Depends on the telco. Here in PacBell's fiefdom, home ISDN costs only a bit more than two voice lines, and you get two lines out of it. Local calls are a penny or four a minute daytime, free at night. This may change soon - the telco is appalled to find out that computer people think "it's free at night" means "it's free at night" :-) There's getting to be enough ISDN support that an ISDN-based phone program might find some market - especially if it can use higher sampling rates and ADPCM compression to get better sound out of 56-64 kbps than a regular phone can, and maybe you could support a shared-whiteboard program as well. Still need to do something about echo control, though. However, I wouldn't recommend writing a free encrypted ISDN telephone program, though - you wouldn't be able to export that on the Internet. But a phone program that lets users plug in their own algorithms for echo control, with an API that supports exchanging parameters - now _that_ would be a phone program. # Thanks; Bill # Bill Stewart, +1-415-442-2215 stewarts(a)ix.netcom.com # <A HREF="http://idiom.com/~wcs"> Defuse Authority!

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Re: SSNs (was Re: Interna
by pjn＠nworks.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

(There is a really good joke in my response. Try to figure it out. Be the first one on your block to realize what the numbers mean) In> Anyone know what J. Edgar Hoover's SSN was? Yeah, 276-77-3737 P.J. pjn(a)nworks.com ... Hey, Worf! I hooked Data up to a modem... Wanna see? ___ Blue Wave/QWK v2.20 [NR]

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Stealth cookies
by Bill Stewart 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 03:48 PM 8/5/96 -0400, Anne Eisenberg <aeisenb(a)duke.poly.edu> wrote: >All of the discussion on the list to do with >cookies is related to Netscape. Does this mean that if one switches to >Microsoft Explorer one can avoid the problem? Many thanks. MSIE also does cookies. Netscape 3.0b5 has a nice option to let you choose whether to accept a cookie or not. However, what's the problem you're trying to solve? Sites have several ways to find out information about you, which they can use immediately or coordinate with other things 0) Stuff the site knows about itself, like contents and time 1) Stuff you tell them by filling in forms 2) Your IP address (not always very useful...) 3) Information your browser sends (somewhat adjustable.) 4) Information your browser sends that a site asked you to keep for it (i.e. cookies.) For the most part, this doesn't leak a lot of information; even cookies can only pass things the sites already knew between sessions. The cookie spec is well-designed, only allowing cookies to be retrieved by the machine or domain that set them in the first place. However, there's a way to cheat the cookie spec; I don't know if this was intentional, but it was realized quickly by the market :-) The issue is that your browser sends along an HTTP_REFERRER variable, which points to the last page you visited before the current page. It's useful for sites to find out where their pages are being referenced, and they may (legitimately) want to only give out information if you're coming from one of their previous pages. This does also mean that a page (www.alice.com/interesting.html) can hand its name to another page or program (www.bob.com/cgi/count-stuff.pl) by including an inline reference to it. But that site can send your browser a cookie marked bob.com, which is accessible by _it_, not by the referring page. This means that if you later connect to www.carol.com/foo.html, which references bob's count-stuff program, bob.com can retrieve the bob.com cookie that has information about your connection to alice.com. If alice.com and bob.com store some identifying information (e.g. alice.com records a connection from 192.9.200.1 at 12:34:59 UTC, and bob.com records a connection from 192.9.200.1 at 12:35:01 UTC, and bob.com stores a reference to that in the cookie (either storing the information directly, or more likely, storing a record-id number referencing a database entry, and carol.com and bob.com similarly share a reference, then alice, bob, and carol can coordinate what happened in the two sessions. Maybe Bob just knows that there's market correlation between viewers of Alice's Brownie Company and Carol's Congressional Consulting, or maybe they also share the credit card number, flavors, and addresses you gave alice.com with the search criteria you gave carol.com to find you've been donating special brownies to that congresscritter you've been lobbying. Without the cookie hack, the ability to correlate is limited to the common information that you've given the two sites, which tells them that some Netcom user with Mozilla 3.2b7.7 did it, which isn't enough to run a targeted campaign donation request or send out the FBI or whatever. Doubleclick.com is the site that's wellknown for exploiting the feature, and their web site is interesting. If you're using 3.0b5, try different combinations of accepting or rejecting cookie requests.... # Thanks; Bill # Bill Stewart, +1-415-442-2215 stewarts(a)ix.netcom.com # <A HREF="http://idiom.com/~wcs"> Defuse Authority!

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Re: Apple people on the list
by shamrock＠netcom.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 16:15 8/6/96, John Young wrote: >What would you offer to set off Tim's simmering crypto-anarcho-volcano, >make it heard round the planet? Bottle o' Scotch (my private stash). Free Ecash account. -- Lucky Green <mailto:shamrock@netcom.com> PGP encrypted mail preferred. Defeat the Demopublican Unity Party. Vote no on Clinton/Dole in November. Vote Harry Browne for President.

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Re[2]: SSNs (was Re: Internal Passports)
by Steve Coltrin 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Simon Spero <ses(a)tipper.oit.unc.edu> wrote: >one silly thought: lots of people use cypherpunks as the username and >password for all those websites that want an id. What about a cypherpunks >3-2-4 number for those cases where an SSN isn't appropriate. Anyone know >what J. Edgar Hoover's SSN was? According to one of "George Hayduke"'s books, Richard Nixon's was 567-68-0515. -spc

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Talking about Crypto Anarchy
by tcmay＠got.net 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

I'm going to use John's comments as a jumping off point for some things I probably should have said a while ago. At 11:15 PM 8/6/96, John Young wrote: >I'd like to hear Tim, too, in this Big Apple. RealAudio, perhaps. > >Tim's views are far more substantial and worthwhile than those play-it-safe >Pro-Code dronings. > >And his pith should go out far and wide, around the world, not only out >there on its edge. > >Vinnie, Robert, All Appledom, do your global duty, don't miss this chance >to leapfrog the small-beans promoters of the crypto industry. > >What would you offer to set off Tim's simmering crypto-anarcho-volcano, >make it heard round the planet? As I think I made clear, there is little either Vinnie or Bob have "failed" to do. I'll explain this below. It is true that I am not much of a fan of Bob's writing style, with nuggets of truth buried in bloviations about sacks of grenades, rubber rafts, shaking trees, pieces of the true cross, ad nauseum, but, then, "style" is something I tend to react to perhaps more than most. (Not the variations in style of the hundreds of folks who post here, but the florid excesses so common in "neo-journalism," where it seems the writers are paid by the word--as perhaps they are--and wrap their few nuggets in stock phrases and cutesy pastiches of Chandler, Wolfe, Gibson, Joyce, and the whole Sick Crew. Back to important issues. Let me summarize: 1. A while back there was an announcement (I thought by Vinnie, but he denied it to me) of a "Mac Crypto" mailing list. This announcement, which I no longer have (not in my own archives, and not in the few CP archives that seem to still be reachable on the Web) mentioned that the list would focus on "real" cryptography, and _not_ on political issues (including, presumably, the main topics that have motivated my contributions for the past several years, and longer). Fair enough, as the owner/maintainer of a list is free to set his policies. I of course did not join this list, as I don't think a list which only discussed quadratic residues and elliptic curve methods is exactly my cup of tea...there are plenty of textbooks and other lists for this. 2. So, when Vinnie sent me his "Mac Crypto Needs You!" mini-rant, my natural conservatism toward such things kicked in. I am not, as must be clear now, one of those "Rah rah rah! We need to evangelize crypto!" folks. I take a neo-Calvinist position on such things. Hustling memes is distasteful to me. (Some will say my posts here are an attempt to sell my ideas. Fair enough, but this is a forum I find acceptable.) 3. I told Vinnie I was not interested, that giving a "pep talk" to Mac developers is not my thing, and that if my views on politics, crypto anarchy, the undermining of governments, money-laundering as a tool of liberation, etc., were not deemed acceptable for his list, then I would not feel welcome at Apple Computer talking about the same. (In his reply, he said he'd never said any such thing about politics not being welcome on Mac Crypto....I could have sworn I saw such a thing, but, like I said, I can't find this message anywhere I've looked.) 4. Blah blah blah. That is, you saw my longer article I sent to Vinnie, explaining why I was not too interested. I won't repeat the points here. 5. I thought the subject was closed, as Vinnie then said that perhaps I was _not_ the right person after all. I agree with this. I am not an "evangelist," at least not one in the mold of the ever-bubbly Guy Kawasaki. Nor am I in the mold of a Robert Hettinga. Maybe I'm more like H.L. Mencken, or, at least I'd like to be. Evangelists disgust me. I can't read anything Kawasaki gibbers about, nor can I read the neo-journalism of "Spencer Katt," "Mac the Knife," or "Robert X. Cringely." (If you don't recognize these names, these are the terminally-hip gossip columnists and "rumormongers" of the three leading trade rags. The style is pretty similar to that used by Brock Meeks, Robert Hettinga, and the like.) Now on the the Big Issue. 6. I've given up on discussing crypto anarchy in short talks because nearly nobody in the audiences I've done it for has the foggiest notions of what I'm talking about, and I've found no short, sweet, simple methods of getting across the implications. Many audiences have no idea of how public key encryption even works, let alone how digital money might work. (Thus, panel discussions on "cryptography" bog down almost immmediately on basic issues. There's no way to get to the "juicy" stuff when 20 minutes is spent trying to educate an audience about what a prime number is!) Consider how long it takes a new subscriber on this list, one who presumably heard about this list from a background of some familiarity with the idea of encryption, to get to the point of understanding what the terms and phrases in my sig mean. I'd say it takes at least several weeks, with detours into Schneier to read up on the basics, and some mental effort to think through how anonymous remailers work, what digital money might mean for tax collection, etc. Even at the Hacker's Conference, which I last attended in 1993, the discussions of cryptography were deeply unsatisfying to me. My panel, on crypto, bogged down in trying to get across to a technically pretty competent audience the implications of strong crypto. Clearly, the hour or so we had was not enough, and people could only get the barest glimpses. 7. In several radio talk shows I have done, the same is true. Given that there just isn't enough time for a careful explication of the necessary background, the discussion and the questions from callers to the show stay at the most basic level. While I am not dismissing the importance of basic questions, it's clear that the discussion can never move on. Thus, discussions tend to never get beyond the "think of crypto as envelopes...would you want your messages all on postcards?" level. (This envelope-postcard analogy is of course due to Phil Z., and he seems more comfortable than I in giving this kind of talk over and over again.) 8. Even articles in "Liberty" and "Reason" magazines (plus more obscure magazines like "Extropy") have to spend most of the article explaining the basics, ending with a glimpse into a few topics of more recent vintage. Mostly, it is hopeless to get into "crypto anarchy," when the article is about how public key encryption works. (Note: This observation is part of a larger issue about the difficulties of building on past work. It is why so many fractious debates never get beyond the opening salvos...over and over again. The debate over nuclear power (or gun rights, or...) comes to mind, and I have, as with crypto anarchy, given up on trying to "convince" groups of the truth of my views: nearly everyone I talk to is so ignorant of the basics of radiation, containment, half lives, ionizing radiation damage, alternatives, etc., that all discussions bog down at the most basic of levels. When I used to have the energy--and the foolishness--to bend someone's ear about nuclear power for a couple of hours, I could _sometimes_ see the glimmerings of a change in positions, the flicker of a change in preconceived notions. Mostly there was only blankness and hostility. I get the same reaction when I try to explain the techno-libertarian implications of strong cryptography.) 9. So, while John Young and others might want like that my "pith should go out far and wide, around the world, not only out there on its edge," the plain fact is that it can't go out in a talk lasting only a few hours, or, much more likely, lasting less than an hour. Certain after dinner speakers are adept at getting one or maybe two simple points across in a talk--usually with some judicious humor to drive the point home--but I am not one of them. Maybe one of you is, but not me. In any case, getting "one or two ideas across" is not of much interest to me. (I've also seen David Chaum struggle to just get the basic idea of "credentials without identity" across to a tecnical audience...even when he concentrates on only getting a single facet of his ideas across, the light bulbs just don't go off in the heads of the audience members...at least this was what I witnessed.) I know there are some lawyers and law professors on this list, so the analogy to law might be useful. To wit, can a lawyer or professor be expected to really explain to a lay audience some complicated subject? Or is a series of ground-laying lectures needed first? While there are presumably lawyers willing to give pleasant after-dinner speeches on, say, "tort reform," I suspect that very little information is conveyed to lay audiences. (And, as I've said, I am not a talented dinner speaker.) 10. Finally, I am not a "motivational coach." I don't give pep talks to people at companies to help them save their companies, or their platforms. Thus, I am not interested in giving a "go out and win one for the Gipper!" pep talk at Apple. I hope this makes things clearer. And bear in mind that I actually _did_ spend a vast amount of my time putting together a compendium of my thoughts and ideas in my "Cyphernomicon." [ URL: http://www.oberlin.edu/~brchkind/cyphernomicon/ ] At more than a megabyte, and with various chapters on crypto anarchy, anonymous markets, remailers, and all sorts of implications, it is the fullest embodiment of my thinking extant in any one place. Some say it would make for a start on a book, but I can't see any publishers rushing to publish such a book (one publisher asked me to "submit a proposal" for a book on how to use PGP...this is the level of what publishers want from me...needless to say, I discarded his business card immediately). And so it goes. I'm not interested in giving a pep talk to Apple or its developers, I outlined my reasons in other messages. And I don't believe there's any way to adequately explain the collection of ideas I call "crypto anarchy" in much less than a lecture series. Even if someone were to sponsor or arrange such a lecture series, as has been done for things like nanotechnology, I'd have to think long and hard about committing to this. My inclination is to tell those who ask for such a talk or lecture series to "RTFM." Regards, --Tim May Boycott "Big Brother Inside" 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, Licensed Ontologist | black markets, collapse of governments. "National borders aren't even speed bumps on the information superhighway."

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Re: Stop the presses -- Anti-terrorism bill not that bad
by Duncan Frissell 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 05:16 PM 8/5/96 -0400, hallam(a)Etna.ai.mit.edu wrote: >Making that argument defeats your case. Irespective of the framers >of the constitution nobody in Congress or the Administration believes >that you have a right to take up arms against the government. Have you checked with Helen Chenoweth (R-Idaho) or B1-Bob Dornan (R-Orange County) about this assertion. Not to mention our former black radical friend from Oakland in Congress. I bet you could find a fair number of supporters for the concept of the "right of revolution" in Congress and other parts of the government. Better hunting on Usenet, of course. When former Idaho congressman and senator Steve Syms was first running for Congress, his slogan was "Traditionally, Americans have had three means of preserving their freedoms. The jury box, the ballot box and -- when those failed -- the cartridge box." In addition it seems to me that a certain "Mobe" leader and campus revolutionary made it as far as the White House (or was he just spying for the Company at the time?). (Mobe = Student Mobilization Committee to End the War in Vietnam) Try not to say "no one believes X". That statement can always be falsified and usually with thousands of counter examples. DCF "Article 1 Section 1 of the Constitution of the State of Oregon - All power is inherent in the people and it is their right to alter or abolish the government whenever they believe it necessary or appropriate to do so." >From memory but that's the substance of what it says.

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Re: Censorship through proxy
by jim bell 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 06:12 PM 8/6/96 -0700, Timothy C. May wrote: >Sing Sing (the country is now a prison, so...) is one of the states we >should think about targetting for "special attention." Not in the sense of >violence, but in the sense of offering help to freedom fighters, those who >want to use stego, web proxies, etc. > >I wonder what would happen if "Computers, Freedom, and Privacy '98" was >held in Sing Sing? A friend of mine, who occasionally visits Singapore on business, told me this Singaporean joke: "Singapore is a fine place. There's a fine for this, and a fine for that,..." Jim Bell jimbell(a)pacifier.com

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Re: Stealth cookies
by jfricker＠vertexgroup.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 12:10 AM 8/6/96 -0700, you wrote: >John F. Fricker wrote: >> Solution? >> >> 1) Don't put your name in the netscape configuration (d'oh) > > No, no, no. Netscape navigator does not reveal your name or >put it into cookies. The only way to get your name or other >personal information about you into a cookie is for you to type >it into a web site, and have that site send you back a cookie. > > The only time we reveal your name is in e-mail headers, and >when doing anonymous FTP when you have manually disabled the default >of sending 'mozilla@' as the anon ftp password. > > --Jeff > Oh I was just being paranoid I guess. There used to be JavaScript that would automatically send email from a page. something like <html> <body onLoad="document.mailme.submit()"> <form method=post name="mailme" action="mailto:john@vertexgroup.com?subject=user address"> <input type=hidden name="userAddress" value="done"> </form> </body> </html> But even if that still works it would be a good trick to associate it with a cookie.

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Re: Corporate e-mail policy
by nobody＠REPLAY.COM 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

I used to work for a company which had a surprisingly liberal policy about e-mail.The gist of it was: "Private e-mail will not be read by anyone other than the recipient. The only exceptions to this are: 1) Systems personnel may examine mail messages to determine if the mail system is working correctly; [e.g., checking mail logs against users' mailbox contents to verify delivery] 2) [basically said e-mail would be treated like any other system files in the event of a criminal investigation, etc.]" The policy specifically required authorization from the line VP for either of these actions, and reinforced that the systems people were to treat the e-mail as administratively confidential data. The only time I heard of anyone even asking for e-mail was when a project manager wanted a copy of a message that a sponsor sent to one of his subordinates, who was on vacation. The systems folks cited the policy, the line VP backed them up, and the manager went away empty-handed. (He wound up calling the subordinate at her hotel and browbeating her into authorizing the computer center folks to forward a copy of the message to the manager. But that's another story.)

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THAT BRIT AGAIN
by Sandy Sandfort 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ SANDY SANDFORT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . C'punks, Phillll came up with an excellent weasel this time. He's offered to "bet" on the Foresight Exchange. The relevant part of their FAQ says: How is FX different from a bookie? Besides the obvious fact that FX isn't real money, it differs from placing bets with a bookie in that FX is a market. In other words, it really isn't a bet at all. Instead of putting his money where his mouth is, Phillll has decided to put his mouth where his mouth is once again. Nice try guy. S a n d y ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

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Internal Passports
by tcmay＠got.net 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 1:01 AM 8/6/96, Duncan Frissell wrote: >The SS resists issuing new numbers in spite of widespread duplication and >theft. Soon people will find themselves denied the right to work in this >country unless the SS reverses this reluctance. If your SS# is stolen and >used "too many times" in a future worker verification program, you're >screwed. And there won't even be any welfare for you. > >Use Alta Vista to find the SS Number FAQ. There's more stuff. BTW, I attempted to comply with the law in a recent request posted to ba.jobs.offered and scruz.general: I solicited workers for some brush clearing on my place, but advised them to only apply if--appearing to be Hispanic, Latin, Mexican, or otherwise unOfficial--they provided proof of their legal ability to work for me. Personally, I don't care. In fact, when employing gardeners and yard works I prefer Mexicans. But the law says, these days, that I must verify the legality of workers *if* they appear to be dark-skinned, Mexican, Latin, or the like. I say "if" because there are no requirements in general for white-skinned, Anglo workers....no work permits, no proofs of citizenship (such a document is currently lacking in the American pantheon...I, a mixed descendant of Mayflower colonist and Scandinavian immigrants, lack such "proof"). Predictably, I got e-mail threatening me with legal action (ha!) and claiming me to be a racist. I promise not to ask my potential employees for legal proof of their right to work if the Feds and Sacramentans promise not to make it a law that I check such things, and if the laws are not written such that I am a felon for not asking for such documents from a dark, dusky Mexican but not from a blonde- or red-haired ubermensch. (Jews I haven't figured out...some seem to pass the "no documents required test" and some I want to demand Green Cards for...ironically, it may be "discrimination" for me to request that these "dusky" folks supply proof of their permission to work in these Beknighted States. A strange world we live in.) --Tim May Boycott "Big Brother Inside" 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, Licensed Ontologist | black markets, collapse of governments. "National borders aren't even speed bumps on the information superhighway."

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Re: Stop the presses -- Anti-terrorism bill not that bad
by Duncan Frissell 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 07:38 PM 8/6/96 -0400, hallam(a)Etna.ai.mit.edu wrote: >which such a claim was made. As for the UK laws, there is >practically no defense against a libel claim that one can >file in court. There is absolutely no basis on which to >justify them. This is why the Singapore government uses them >as a form of censorship. There was a recent US appeals court decision in which an attempt to enforce a UK libel judgment was rejected on First Amendment grounds. The court refused to allow the application of UK law here. DCF

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Anonymous Remailers at work
by Bill Stewart 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

One of the big problems with remailers is getting them deployed widely. How can we create a demand for the service that will encourage people to both (a) deploy them and (b) think of them as good rather than bad? Aside from cypherpunks, spammers, and everyone using anon.penet.fi, there aren't really a lot of people familiar with them. I've recently run into a couple of business problems at work that could be solved by (slightly modified) remailers. 1) Manager performance review, suggestion boxes, and questions to visiting honchos - there are several departments that are using "email to the secretary who'll take your name off and forward it" to handle this problem. Remailers are an obvious solution. (More obvious if we weren't using (gack, phfft!) Microsoft Mail :-) It would probably be worth modifying the remailer to use a permit-list as well as a block-list for destinations and maybe sources, so that companies don't get surprised by outside spammers, and people can get used to using the things at work. Distribute the thing as an OmbudsKit or whatever. You'd obviously want the default to be non-logging. 2) Sending sensitive email across the real Internet - between customers, and for those days that the departmental dialup mail server or remote LAN access isn't working and you need to send something from home or on the road. A standard remailer would do the job, though you'd probably want to add a permit-list, and you might want to add logging and/or return receipts. Mail to pgprelay(a)foobar.com and it distributes it.... (Requires putting a key somewhere well-known, like in DNS or on the key servers.) (Hmmm - an alternative implementation is to use a CGI script to do the mailing and use SSL; some companies may find this easier to deploy, depending on their firewall configurations.) (Does it make sense to deploy something like this as a standard feature of an IPSP gateway system like John's?) Any other reasons to install anonymous remailers at work, and things you'd do to make them more attractive or less scary to corporate network administrative types? # Thanks; Bill # Bill Stewart, +1-415-442-2215 stewarts(a)ix.netcom.com # <A HREF="http://idiom.com/~wcs"> Defuse Authority!

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No Subject
by Scott Schryvers 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

NBC News at Sunrise has just announced the discovery of alien life on the planet Mars. The lifeform that became extinct more than 2 billion years ago was found as a fossil in a meteor that originated from mars and landed on earth. The fossil found was a primitive germ life form. PGP encrypted mail preferred. E-Mail me for my key. Scott J. Schryvers <schryver(a)radiks.net>

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Re: Freeh slimes again: Digital Telephony costs $2 billion now ...
by Duncan Frissell 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 07:59 PM 8/6/96 -0700, Bill Stewart wrote: >I haven't been able to find the reference, but a month or two ago >there was an article on the net or in a newspaper about the targets >of wiretapping - how many wiretaps were for drugs, gambling, tax evasion, >and of course terrorism. The number of wiretaps for bombs and guns >was something low like 80 in the last 5-10 years - about 1/10%. > (Did anybody else see this article??) Gilmore has a chart on wiretap use in various crimes in his Brain Tennis match on Wired: http://www.hotwired.com/braintennis/96/32/index0a.html DCF

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Re: Censorship through proxy
by Duncan Frissell 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 06:12 PM 8/6/96 -0700, Timothy C. May wrote: >Sing Sing (the country is now a prison, so...) is one of the states we >should think about targetting for "special attention." Not in the sense of >violence, but in the sense of offering help to freedom fighters, those who >want to use stego, web proxies, etc. I've been thinking of starting a "How to Defeat a Government page to pull together some of the anti-Sysadmin resources on the Net. "Your government -- just a rouge sysadmin." >I wonder what would happen if "Computers, Freedom, and Privacy '98" was >held in Sing Sing? It would be smaller going out than coming in. Singapore's retired president tried to get William Safire into town for a "debate" about whether he was still running the place via his son. Safire didn't take the bait. He joked about it in his column. DCF

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Re[2]: SSNs (was Re: Internal Passports)
by Steve Coltrin 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Simon Spero <ses(a)tipper.oit.unc.edu> wrote: >one silly thought: lots of people use cypherpunks as the username and >password for all those websites that want an id. What about a cypherpunks >3-2-4 number for those cases where an SSN isn't appropriate. Anyone know >what J. Edgar Hoover's SSN was? According to one of "George Hayduke"'s books, Richard Nixon's was 567-68-0515. -spc

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Phone tapping in India
by Arun Mehta 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

"The Pioneer" headlined on August 6, 96: "CBI can tap at whim -- Agency has 6 bugging machines" (The CBI is effectively the Indian equivalent of the FBI) Apparently, these machines costing Rs. 7.5 million = $200,000 each, can each tap 7 phones in a 25-km radius, and were bought from a Hyderabad-based company, Fidelity Systems. Apparently, all that is needed to tap a phone is for the sleuths to dial the number through the machine, which then automatically starts and stops recording all conversations carried out with that number, as well the numbers dialled by the target. As it is, the law on wiretapping is draconian in India: on the occurrence of an emergency, or for "public safety", a designated government officer can direct that "any message or class of messages to or from any person or class of persons, or relating to any particular subject, brought for transmission by or transmitted or received by any telegraph, shall not be transmitted, or shall be intercepted or detained or shall be disclosed to the government." (This is from the Indian Telegraph Act of 1885(!), and applies to e-mail and BBSes as well). But with these new machines, even this designated officer can be bypassed. Under a box titled "Beware of blank calls", the newspaper mentions that when the sleuths ring your number to start tapping, you get a "blank" call (which one is quite used to here -- if that were enough evidence, the whole of India is being tapped!) What technology is this? If it indeed works this way, what is to prevent any large company or rich person from procuring the same hardware? Apparently, the purchase was authorised by former prime minister Rao, who is now complaining that his own phone is being tapped (serves him right). Arun Mehta Phone +91-11-6841172, 6849103 amehta(a)cpsr.org http://www.cerfnet.com/~amehta/ finger amehta(a)cerfnet.com for public key

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****Developer Recants Hostile Java Applet Story 08/06/96
by reagle＠rpcp.mit.edu 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA, U.S.A., 1996 AUG 6 (NB) -- By Patrick McKenna. Finjan Software of Israel, which earlier said its Java security software detected what the company called a publicly available hostile Java applet at a game site on the World Wide Web, has issued a statement changing its earlier claims. In the first story on the Java applet labeled "hostile" by Finjan, Newsbytes reported early Tuesday that the Java applet in question is part of a game available on the Web and connected to America Online. Shmulik Suhami, spokesperson for Finjan, told Newsbytes at the time, "We were contacted by one of our users who detected a hostile Java applet and we have confirmed the user's experience." Newsbytes reported Sun Microsystems' JavaSoft division reply as saying, "This issue is totally and completely bogus. Security features built into Java do not allow an applet to read or write to another computer without issuing a warning message and this applet in question is not a hostile Java applet. An individual at AT&T, acting independently of the company, developed the applet. We suspect a file for the applet was placed on a second system and that is probably why Finjan's software incorrectly read it as a hostile application. Actually, this is a flaw in Finjan's software. There is no bug or hostile application at all." In its early story, Newsbytes also quoted a JavaSoft spokesperson as saying, "What is going on is that the person's applet called an audio file from a second machine and Java's security features are so strong and restrictive that an exception is raised whenever a second machine is called. Finjan's software appears to have read the call to the second machine as a hostile bug." In recanting its initial claims, Finjan released the following statement: "We want to issue a clarification on the media alert we sent out yesterday describing a potentially suspicious Java applet. We were perhaps mistaken to describe the applet discovered as a 'hostile applet,' since we did not know if it did anything damaging to a person's system. The activity of applet described was harmless. We misunderstood the extent of the security exception based on information we received. Though in principal the way the app was created could constitute a risk, in practice this was a relatively harmless breech of security, which the Java Security Manager dealt with appropriately." (19960805/Press Contact: Mary Jo Wagner, Successful Marketing Strategists, tel 510-644-3837; E-mail Address: maryjo(a)successful.com; or Paul Karr, KVO, 415-961-1550)

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