December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

Paper on Network Security
by John Young 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

We posted news* a few days ago of a white paper by the OURS organization on network security. We have put it at: http://jya.com/recsec.htm (63 kb) OURS is an our-gang of gorilla industries such as Bellcore, Chase, LDS(!), Compaq, DEC, EDS, EXXON, IBM, Intel, MIT, Microsoft, Motorola, Novell, Oracle, Princeton, Security Dynamics (!), Societe Generale, Texaco and Ziff-Davis. Mother of all GAK-enfeebled alliances. The report was prepared by an Information Protection Task Force of OURS members assisted by Amex, ICL, Mergent and TIS. It's a fair overview of what mega-corporations fear of network vipers and what they pray will exorcize the Edenic mayhemics. Sorry, it's a bit too long for E-mail. * That original news report is at: http://jya.com/oursay.txt

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Re: Blue Box Plans & hacker bbs's
by Bill Stewart 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 08:09 PM 10/20/96 EDT, you wrote: >I know this is my second question in a short period of time...but anyone >got or know where to get any good blue box plans?? I cant find shit on >the web, and I need some good hacker telnet bbs's. Someone please give >me either. goto alt.2600. Around here we generally can afford to pay our phone bills :-) Also, the network's signalling has changed, and the basic Captain Crunch Whistle doesn't work many places any more - most of the signalling is digital out-of-band rather than inband audio. Phreaking isn't impossible (or there wouldn't be as many people chasing the Dread Pirate Mitnick), but at this point you actually need to know what you're doing to succeed at it, and merely having plans for a device you don't know well enough to emulate in code on your PC isn't going to buy you much. # Thanks; Bill # Bill Stewart, +1-415-442-2215 stewarts(a)ix.netcom.com # You can get PGP outside the US at ftp.ox.ac.uk Imagine if three million people voted for somebody they _knew_, and the politicians had to count them all.

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AOL/remailer testing
by Raph Levien 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Hi cypherpunks, It has come to my attention that there may be problems sending mail from the anonymous remailers to AOL accounts. I'd like a volunteer with an AOL address to recieve a test messages sent by me, and report back to me which mails got through and which didn't. Thanks very much in advance. Raph Levien

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Apologies and Clarifications -
by cypher＠cyberstation.net 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

First of all, I would like to sincerely apologize for my personal attacks on Perry. It is the first time that I have ever done that and I apologize for wasting you time and mine in that regard. He is obviously going to try to pontificate and rehash the old forever. Accordingly, to paraphrase Chief Joseph, "from where the sun now sits, I will fight Perry Metzger no more, forever." I further apologize for any offense that you feel that I may have caused. As to other matters: Instead of replying to the attacks being fabricated by Perry and other I have opted to recapitulate the matter at hand as perspicaciously as my limited abilities permit. As we know, Shannon was not a prolific writer. We also know that IT has not advanced very far during the 50 years since Shannon's nascent ground breaking work. Why? Because of the very issues that are at the heart of this matter. The differences between black, white and all the multitude hues of grey in between. I am extremely skeptical, and believe many readers may be too, of people that go around flaunting their understanding of Shannon, entropy and its application in absolute unequivocal mathematical terms. I hold that such a position, except in terms of delimiters, does not reflect an understanding of Shannon's impartations but au contraire, it is evidential proof that they do not have any real appreciation of Shannon at all. That is in no way intended to denigrate Shannon's very important contribution to our endeavors. I embrace the predicate that Shannon in terms of mathematical certainty has only defined the boundary conditions of the playing field within which we must play our games. If we stray outside that field, we are errant in the absolute sense. If we however play within those mathematical certain boundaries, we may be in error for other reasons, but Shannon cannot be cited as the casual agent. The recondite "parti pris" hijacking of the definition of the term OTP on the basis of conflict with Shannon is ludicrous, when such usage is apodictically within Shannon's delimiters. I have witnessed several definitions of an OTP which I maintain are entirely consistent with Shannon. Among such are: An encryption where any ciphertext may in fact be an an encrypted expression of any plaintext of the same or lesser length; or an encryption where the only information obtainable from the ciphertext is the maximum plaintext length; and so forth. All of these definitions have the essential quality that at the bit level, they can be reduced down to the equation: Pb xor Ub = Cb where Pb is a Plaintext bit, Ub is an Unknown bit and Cb is the resultant Ciphertext bit. Of course the combining form is normally XOR, but could be table lookup, modulo additive, or other. The important thing is that so long as only Cb is known, it is impossible to determine either Pb or Ub. If somehow the Ubs can be subtracted or cancelled out, as for instance by any discoverable reusage of Ub, even in a derivative form, then you may be able to recover some or all of the Pbs. The assertion that an Ub must be an Rb, a truly Random bit, is irrelevant ideology unless there exists the means to convert the Unknown bit, Ub, into a Known bit, Kb. That is the sublime basis of the IPG algorithm, which is to generate a stream of "unknown bits" which cannot be analytically reconstituted in the absence of the OTP generator key, and possibly other related key like parameters. The additional caveat of course is that the key cannot be guessed, nor can it be derived from brute force methodologies, both of which are patently impossible with the IPG algorithm. You do not have to be a Stephen Hawking to comprehend why that is a fact; each of you, with possible minor exceptions, will be able to discern that because it quickly becomes self evident as you ply the algorithm. There are those who will advance the contention that the ciphertext cannot in fact represent any possible plain text. That is incontestably true. In fact with reasonably long ciphertexts, say for example an encrypted FAX, unlike a hardware sourced OTP, there will only be one meaningful plain text that can be derived from the resultant ciphertext. Does that mean that a given ciphertext might not represent any plain text of that same, or lesser, length? One would think so, since it obviously cannot. The problem being though, is exactly how do you go about proving that any given plain text cannot be represented by a known ciphertext. There are two prongs to such a proof, both of which must be substantiated in any specific case at hand:. 1. Inclusionary Proof - the one most frequently advanced alone, which simply stated says that since each encryptor stream may represent any possible encryptor stream of that same length, then the ciphertext may be the XOR product of any plaintext of same said length. Obviously, a hardware sourced OTP DOES meet that proof. Also. it is patently evident that the IPG software OTP DOES NOT meet the inclusionary proof test. 2. Exclusionary Proof - which is equally valid, and simply stated consists of two propositions: A. Can any plaintext be encrypted with the OTP? Obviously the answer is YES for BOTH both hardware sourced OTPs and the IPG software sourced OTPs. B. If 2.A is true, is it possible to exclude any plaintext possibility? Obviously in the case of hardware sourced OTPs, no plain text can possibly be excluded. What about the IPG software OTPs? . One method that you could theoretically be used to exclude a possible plaintext for the software OTP, would be to by brute force try all possible keys, until the correct one is obtained. That however, would be difficult to say the least, as a matter of fact it is impossible: If every subatomic particle in our known universe was a Googol, 1 with 100 zeroes after it, of Cray T3E computers - and each of them had been brute forcing a partition of the possibilities at the rate of 1 Googol of them per picosecond which could not be done - but assume that it could - and they had been doing so since the Big Bang say 20 billion years ago - and they were to continue to do so for the next 20 billion years, that is beyond the life expectancy of our solar system/galaxy, and perhaps the universe, then approximately 10^322 of the possible OTPs would have been tried. Thus it would still take 10^34000 times as long as that to try all of the possibilities - that is they would have tried only one part in 1 with 34000 zeroes after it - not theoretical infinity by any means, but a very, very large extra-astronomical number. Brute force is patently impossible. . Another possibility might be to guess it - anyone recognizes that would not be practical, and how would you know that you were right. All of the IPG OTP generator, aka Encryption, keys are themselves OTPs. . Another possibility would to be to analytically exclude the invalid possibilities. As stated previously, and as you can discover for yourself, this reduces itself back down to to the exact equivalent of the brute force method set out above. With the algorithm, there is no difference between analytically exclusion and brute forcing - they are one and the same. So in fact, any known ciphertext may indeed be an encryption of any plaintext of that same, or lesser, length, because you cannot prove that it is not a specific plaintext. Some will contentiously assert that the key and other parameters might be hacked. While we include within the system facilitators that reduce that risk to a minimum, and to near zero if you use simple precautions, it is true that the hacking possibility exists. However, that possibility exists for RSA, PGP, hardware sourced OTPs, or any other form of security or encryption. We are better positioned in that regard than others but in terms of the human element, as we all know, there is no such thing as perfection. With warmest regards, Don Wood

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Alice in Cypherspace
by David Lesher 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

I found my copy, if the person asking last week still needs it.... -- A host is a host from coast to coast.................wb8foz(a)nrk.com & no one will talk to a host that's close........[v].(301) 56-LINUX Unless the host (that isn't close).........................pob 1433 is busy, hung or dead....................................20915-1433

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Dimitri
by David Lesher 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Dr.Dimitri Vulis KOTM sez: > Sounds like a crontab job, or Timmy May, or both. THIS sounds like our friend SternFUD. {Who, BTW, is back attacking folks in the pgp groups..} -- A host is a host from coast to coast.................wb8foz(a)nrk.com & no one will talk to a host that's close........[v].(301) 56-LINUX Unless the host (that isn't close).........................pob 1433 is busy, hung or dead....................................20915-1433

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Re: Wrap Up: Conference on Law Enforcement and Intelligence
by frantz＠netcom.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 11:13 PM 10/20/96 -0600, C Kuethe wrote: >On Sun, 20 Oct 1996, Bill Frantz wrote: >> (3) The devil is in the details. I still am not convinced that MacPGP has >> enough sources of entropy for its IDEA key generation. (But I am not >> convinced that it doesn't either.) I put integrating Jon Callas's entropy >> manager into MacPGP as a high priority. > >Tell me more... I use macpgp. I just built some new keys tonight, a 2048 >bit monster. PGP wanted 1496 bits of rand info... where is it's entropy >"Hole" > >And what is the "Entropy Manager"? When you build RSA keys in PGP it uses keyboard timings to acquire "true randomness" or entropy. This kind of randomness is related to quantum mechanical uncertainty. It probably has enough entropy to safely generate RSA keys by the keyboard technique it uses. In addition to RSA keys, it generates symmetric IDEA keys whenever you send a message. It uses keystrokes accumulated during normal operation and saved in a file called randpool (or something like that) to generate these keys. Since you almost never enter keystrokes during the normal operation of MacPGP, I am concerned that randpool does not have enough entropy. Entropy Manager is a program Jon Callas of Apple is working on. It uses well-known sources of entropy in the computer to build up a pool of entropy for use by programs that need it. The last I heard, it was nearly ready. I would trust it more than the ported PGP since Jon has examined sources available in the Macintosh specifically. ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Bill Frantz | Tired of Dole/Clinton? | Periwinkle -- Consulting (408)356-8506 | Vote 3rd party. I'm | 16345 Englewood Ave. frantz(a)netcom.com | Voting for Harry Browne | Los Gatos, CA 95032, USA

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Re: Usenet and Re: extortion via digital cash
by Bill Stewart 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

> As an already existing, widely >disseminated and easily used message pool, Usenet is very valuable to us. >I'm concerned that it may not last though. Many people now complain about >how low the signal to noise ratio is [...] So, if it gets too bad, might it >just fade away? Or, if it remains but becomes unpopular, will it be easy to >restrict if we use it for anonymous messages? I haven't read all of Usenet in 10+ years :-) But it keeps growing, and if you're trying to piggyback anonymous messages on it, then it's great to have VOLUME, VOLUME, VOLUME, as the talk.bizarre folks put it. On the other hand, there are technical difficulties with using the current modes of Usenet for real applications, and volume may make it worse. Usenet used to work by flooding - every message goes to every machine, so it's not suspicious your machine receives an Anonymous Message. Most machines had multiple users (Unix, after all), and didn't log who accessed what files in the news spool (which you could do directly as well as through your newsreader.) Now, however, most users use NNTP to fetch news articles from their ISP, and the number of machines receiving the whole Nx100MB/day flood is probably smaller, though perhaps businesses and universities are putting up with it, and perhaps the usage patterns are different outside North America. Fetching material by NNTP is probably logged by many ISPs, and can also be detected by sniffers in the places where security is weak enough for them, which probably includes many major ISPs. So it's easier to detect who's reading alt.anonymous.messages, especially if some government agency subpoenas logfiles. azur(a)netcom.com (Steve Schear) wrote: >In the U.S., at least, attempts to enforce identification of Internet users >or anonymous posters to newgroups and such are likely to meet with stiff >legal resistance. The Supreme Court has ruled that anonymous use of >protected speech (e.g., political handbills) must be permitted. No legal resistance at all, if it's done by ISPs or businesses or individuals - only if the government tries it does it get into "protected speech" territory. There may be market resistance, and the Internet and Usenet are fundamentally worldwide cooperative efforts, so if the protocols support anonymity, then participants in the nets can choose to have their systems cooperate with or refuse to cooperate with anonymous messages, and you'll find some people doing each one. This may mean that small-ISP.net and xs4all.nl will permit anonymous users and aol.com, compuserve.com, and proxy.gov.sg will demand Internet Driver's Licenses to let your postings through, while nihilism.net won't allow any non-anomymous messages. Spontaneous order is like that. And the US government could probably get away with sponsoring Internet access for Real American Citizens and Green-Card Holders that requires positive identification because you can file your tax forms over it, as long as they don't prevent anonymous messages on _some_ part of the net. # Thanks; Bill # Bill Stewart, +1-415-442-2215 stewarts(a)ix.netcom.com # You can get PGP outside the US at ftp.ox.ac.uk Imagine if three million people voted for somebody they _knew_, and the politicians had to count them all.

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Re: [crypto-philo]OTP or DES?
by Bill Stewart 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 02:45 AM 10/20/95 -0500, walrus <walrus(a)tcgcs.com> wrote: >I would argue that the security of an OTP is >derived not from the fact that it really is secure, but from the fact that >it is claimed to be an OTP. The meaning of "Security" depends on your threat model. Are you worried about - having your message noticed? - having your message decoded? - being able to deny a possible decoding of your message? Whether your message noticed or not depends a lot on the environment; in some places "pure noise" is not noticeable, while in others it really stands out (posting it to a text newsgroup, for instance.) If you simply remove the "----- BEGIN PGP" etc. headers/trailers from a PGP message, it's still got a well-defined format, including magic numbers indicating what kind of data is in each block, block length indicators, etc. They're both noticeable to someone who's trying to find them and strong evidence that something is a PGP message. That's why there's a Stealth-PGP, though even it's not perfect. As far as "Secure" meaning "They can't decode the message", if you use a One-Time-Pad more than once, you can lose (viz. VENONA.) If you use a pad that's not true random numbers, but is some simple LFSR or LCM PRNG, or some random English-language book, it's pretty easy for skilled cryptanalysts to decode it. If you use something that has a well-defined structure as a pad, and the Bad Guys notice your message and decode it, it's not credible to say "oh, no, it's just a one-time pad, the fact that there's one chance in 2**168 of that particular series of random numbers matching the output of triple-DES shouldn't influence you any, Judge".... You're gonna go to jail. What gives you deniability with OTPs is that they _can't_ produce a meaningful message that's any more probable than any other meaningful message of the same length, so you can argue that it really says "BUY MORE" instead of "RUN AWAY" or "ATTACK!!" and even if they guess you're lying, they can't tell what the true message was. # Thanks; Bill # Bill Stewart, +1-415-442-2215 stewarts(a)ix.netcom.com # You can get PGP outside the US at ftp.ox.ac.uk Imagine if three million people voted for somebody they _knew_, and the politicians had to count them all.

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lambda 2.11 - Short-circuits in Burma
by -Jerome Thorel- 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

netizen's --> Lambda Bulletin 2.11 <-- contents + Short-circuits in Burma + Medical privacy and PGP + New York's CDA on tracks * * * * * SHORT-CIRCUITS IN BURMA The military regime in Burma decided last month to ban information technology use and possession, in order to sustain its new iron fist on dissidents and members of the National League for Democracy. Among other news here's a message sent through the mailing list of the US organisation CyberPOLIS. ---fwd message--- >>From: George Sadowsky <George.Sadowsky(a)nyu.edu> >>Subject: Re: Burma Bans modems >>RANGOON, BURMA, 1996 SEP 27 (NB) -- Burma has made owning, using, >>importing or borrowing a modem or fax machine without government >>permission a crime, punishable by up to 15 years in jail, according to a >>report by United Press International. >>Burma's military government has imposed what's called "The Computer >>Science Development Law" which empowers the Ministry of Communications, >>Posts and Telegraphs to specify what exactly can be restricted, UPI >>reports. >>UPI quotes the government-run newspaper New Light of Myanmar as saying >>the same punishment is prescribed for anyone who sets up a link with a >>computer network without the prior permission of the ministry, or who >>uses computer network and information technology "for undermining state >>security, law and order, national unity, national economy and national >>culture, or who obtains or transmits state secrets." >>UPI reports that in July a diplomat, Leo Nichols, died in prison after he >>was sentenced to a lengthy term for illegal possession of fax machines. >>It's clear from this action that the SLORC, i.e. the "State Law and Order >>Restoration Committee" (sic!) understands full well the benefits and >>importance of the Internet and other forms of electronic communication to >>open societies, and is determined to deny these benefits to its citizens. >>Given its recent history and the quasi-imprisonment of Daw Aung San Suu >>Kyi, this new action is perfectly consistent with the government's >>previous abysmal record. >>Countries who would deny open Internet access to its citizens might well >>pause to consider if they wish to be associated with the current >>government of Myanmar in doing so. ... c y b e r P O L I S ----------------------------------------------- C o m m u n i c a t e T h i s C u l t u r e ( Christopher D. Frankonis -- baby-x(a)cyberpolis.org ) ---end of fwd message--- ------------------- FURTHER INFOS According to other sources--international press reports and electronic forums like Usenet's *soc.culture.burma*--it turns out that Ms Aung San Suu Kyi, 1991 Nobel Peace Prize and NLD leader, saw her telephone line cut on Friday, Sept. 28 on the evening. That was the beginning on a widespread crackdown on dissidents and a ban of NLD meetings. University Street, where Ms Suu Kyi lives, was blocked to avoid demonstrations. Hundred of citizens and NLD supporters were detained, some were released by mid-October. The Web site http://freeburma.org is a well known relay for the Burmese diaspora, especially the daily newsletter BurmaNet, which offers a rich compilation of dissidents' communiqués and Western newspapers articles and editorials. Ms Suu Kyi writes a daily letter from her home in Rangoon which is published in the Japanese newspaper Mainichi Shimbun (in japanese, http://www.mainichi.co.jp) - a translation appears daily in soc.culture.burma. It seems that the letter (surely copied on an audio tape) continues to be shipped ouside the country to be published in the Tokyo-based newspaper. Furthermore, other reports claimed that Burma doesn't have any official connection to the Internet. It seems to be true, but a Burmese and US resident found that the domain name "mmnic.net" (mm for Myanmar) was reserved by the Burmese governement in February, 1994. The operation was made possible with the help of the Internet provider Asia Pacific NIC based in Tokyo, Japan. A spokesman confirmed he reserved the domain on the behalf of Burma's State, and that it was dedicated to a future Internet connection. * * * * * MEDICAL PRIVACY AND PGP ---fwd message--- >Sender: dfickeisen(a)cpsr.org (Duane Fickeisen) > Subject: cr> Health Info Database Misused > >An AP story from Tampa Bay appearing in the Palo Alto Daily News asserts >that a public health worker took a laptop and disks with confidential >lists of people with AIDS and HIV home and to a gay bar to check out the >HIV status of potential dates and offered to look up names of people his >friends were interested in dating. One person asserted that he had warned >friends away from potential dates, telling them that their names were "on >the list." Another claimed that people interested in dating him backed >away after the health worker talked to them. The County Health Department >has fired him, although he claims he did nothing wrong. The former health >worker also owns and lives in a funeral home. The state had permitted such >databases to be removed from offices and taken home until they changed >their internal rules two weeks ago. > >Raises anew questions about privacy and confidentiality of records, >security, and misuse/abuse of information for personal and private gain. >This ought to be raised up as an example of abuse in response to the >announced plans for a national health information database. > >Duane H. Fickeisen, Interim Director >Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility ---end of fwd message--- As far as I can remember, Phil Zimmermann, speaking during the international encryption conference in Paris on Sept. 25, mentioned this story to explain how easy it was to have his privacy on personal medical records beached. And that to encrypt this sensitive information may be the ultimate solution. Zimmermann is president of PGP Inc., which develops computer security software based on his popular program Pretty Good Privacy (http://www.pgp.com) * * * * * NEW YORK's CDA ON TRACKS ---fwd message--- >============== >VTW BillWatch #61 > >VTW BillWatch: A newsletter tracking US Federal legislation >affecting civil liberties. BillWatch is published about every >week as long as Congress is in session. (Congress is in session) > >BillWatch is produced and published by the >Voters Telecommunications Watch (vtw(a)vtw.org) > >Issue #61, Date: Thu Oct 17 01:17:52 EDT 1996 > ... > >FREE NOV. 3RD SEMINAR ON NY STATE INTERNET CENSORSHIP BILL > >To learn more about this free cybercast seminar see http://www.vtw.org/speech/ > >New York state recently passed a bill that criminalizes expression >online that is currently legal in print. When it goes into effect on >November 1, World Wide Web pages, Usenet postings, and email lists that >fall under the law may become subject to criminal prosecution, as might the >Internet providers that host them. > >But don't panic! VTW and the Netly News (http://www.pathfinder.com/Netly/) >are putting on a seminar to educate you on the history of the bill, the ins >and outs of it and what you should ask your own lawyer, as well as the >status of any pending legal challenges. > >Who should attend? >------------------ >Anyone who publishes information on the Internet, including through >World Wide Web pages, Usenet, Email lists, or interactive chats. >Attorneys whose clientele include any of the above. >Journalists whose beat include the Internet or online services. >....and you! ... >Who will be there? >------------------------------- >Speakers marked as "invited" have told us they intend to come, but have >informed us of potential conflicts that same day that might interfere with >their attendance. > >Live speakers . Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-NY) invited: Opening remarks . >Shabbir J. Safdar, President (VTW Center for Internet Education) . >Steve Barber, Legislative Counsel (VTW): How will this bill affect you, and >what you should ask your own attorney . >Ann Beeson, Litigation Staff (ACLU) invited > >Speakers available online through interactive chat >Diana Jarvis, Staff Counsel (VTW Center for Internet Eduation) >Stephen Filler, Law Offices of Stephen C. Filler invited ... >Where and when is this seminar? >------------------------------- > >The seminar will be held at Outernet, Inc, home of bway.net at, > >Outernet, Inc. >626 Broadway, Suite 3-A >(Very close to the Broadway/Lafayette stop on the F train) ... ---end of fwd message--- -------------------------------- the lambda bulletin, 2.11 http://www.freenix.fr/netizen =+= the lambda bulletin -> www.freenix.fr/netizen =+= =-= Jerome Thorel, Journalist, Paris (Planete Internet Editor) =-=

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Re: Blue Box Plans & hacker bbs's
by Pyros Everflame 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Check out these sites: L0pht heavy industries <a href="http://www.softaid.net/nuke/marks.html">Mad Dingo's Bookmarks</a>

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RE: Goodbye
by jbugden＠smtplink.alis.ca 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Blanc Weber <blancw(a)microsoft.com> wrote: >It all depends, as usual, on the individuals involved - on the quality >they bring to the subject, to the list, to the enterprise. >Interesting question: what do elite sophisticates *do*, once they've >reached their pinnacle? Harlan Ellison suggests one possibility in his 1967 story titled: The Prowler in the City at the Edge of the World. James

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RE: Q.E.D. reply to petty MESSger
by jbugden＠smtplink.alis.ca 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Deadwood <ipgsales(a)cyberstation.net> wrote: >To paraphrase John Dean, the truth will always come out and your >ass braying will never stop that truth. >Don Wood Be careful of what you wish for. You may just get it. James

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Crypto Raid
by John Young 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

In a coincidence with the Biham/Shamir smart card attack, AP reports October 20 on an Israeli raid of News Datacom Research for $150 million tax fraud, allegedly because locally developed crypto products were smuggled out of the country. News Datacom develops and markets encryption systems for pay-TV based on Shamir's work, and he is a part-owner. Recall that Markoff's story on DFA cited Bahim's experience with pirate-TV and smart-card tampering. FiTi ran stories last May about the company's financial derring-do, which we've placed with the AP report at: http://jya.com/keylok.txt We've also put the Biham/Shamir DFA post and NYT article at: http://jya.com/dfa.htm

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List of reliable remailers
by Raph Levien 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

I operate a remailer pinging service which collects detailed information about remailer features and reliability. To use it, just finger remailer-list(a)kiwi.cs.berkeley.edu There is also a Web version of the same information, plus lots of interesting links to remailer-related resources, at: http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~raph/remailer-list.html This information is used by premail, a remailer chaining and PGP encrypting client for outgoing mail. For more information, see: http://www.c2.org/~raph/premail.html For the PGP public keys of the remailers, finger pgpkeys(a)kiwi.cs.berkeley.edu This is the current info: REMAILER LIST This is an automatically generated listing of remailers. The first part of the listing shows the remailers along with configuration options and special features for each of the remailers. The second part shows the 12-day history, and average latency and uptime for each remailer. You can also get this list by fingering remailer-list(a)kiwi.cs.berkeley.edu. $remailer{"extropia"} = "<remail(a)miron.vip.best.com> cpunk pgp special"; $remailer{"flame"} = "<remailer(a)flame.alias.net> cpunk mix pgp. hash latent cut post reord"; $remailer{"mix"} = "<mixmaster(a)remail.obscura.com> cpunk mix pgp hash latent cut ek ksub reord ?"; $remailer{"replay"} = "<remailer(a)replay.com> cpunk mix pgp hash latent cut post ek"; $remailer{"ecafe"} = "<cpunk(a)remail.ecafe.org> cpunk mix"; $remailer{'alpha'} = '<alias(a)alpha.c2.org> alpha pgp'; $remailer{'nymrod'} = '<nymrod(a)nym.jpunix.com> alpha pgp'; $remailer{"lead"} = "<mix(a)zifi.genetics.utah.edu> cpunk mix pgp hash latent cut ek"; $remailer{"nemesis"} = "<remailer(a)meaning.com> cpunk pgp hash latent cut"; $remailer{"exon"} = "<remailer(a)remailer.nl.com> cpunk pgp hash latent cut ek"; $remailer{"vegas"} = "<remailer(a)vegas.gateway.com> cpunk pgp hash latent cut"; $remailer{"haystack"} = "<haystack(a)holy.cow.net> cpunk mix pgp hash latent cut ek"; $remailer{"ncognito"} = "<ncognito(a)rigel.cyberpass.net> mix cpunk pgp hash latent"; $remailer{"lucifer"} = "<lucifer(a)dhp.com> cpunk mix pgp hash latent cut ek"; $remailer{"jam"} = "<remailer(a)cypherpunks.ca> cpunk mix pgp hash latent cut ek"; $remailer{"winsock"} = "<winsock(a)c2.org> cpunk pgp hash cut ksub reord"; $remailer{'nym'} = '<config(a)nym.alias.net> newnym pgp'; $remailer{"balls"} = "<remailer(a)huge.cajones.com> cpunk pgp hash latent cut ek"; $remailer{"squirrel"} = "<mix(a)squirrel.owl.de> cpunk mix pgp hash latent cut ek"; $remailer{"middle"} = "<middleman(a)jpunix.com> cpunk mix pgp hash middle latent cut ek reord"; $remailer{'cyber'} = '<alias(a)alias.cyberpass.net> alpha pgp'; $remailer{"dustbin"} = "<dustman(a)athensnet.com> cpunk pgp hash latent cut ek mix reord post"; $remailer{'weasel'} = '<config(a)weasel.owl.de> newnym pgp'; catalyst(a)netcom.com is _not_ a remailer. lmccarth(a)ducie.cs.umass.edu is _not_ a remailer. usura(a)replay.com is _not_ a remailer. Groups of remailers sharing a machine or operator: (cyber mix) (weasel squirrel) The winsock remailer does not accept plaintext messages. The alpha and nymrod nymservers are down due to abuse. However, you can use the cyber nymserver. The nym.alias.net server will be listed soon. See http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~raph/n.a.n.html for details. 403 Permission denied errors have been caused by a flaky disk on the Berkeley WWW server. Hopefully, this is fixed by now. The penet remailer is closed. Last update: Mon 21 Oct 96 6:48:54 PDT remailer email address history latency uptime ----------------------------------------------------------------------- jam remailer(a)cypherpunks.ca *-***-****** 21:15 100.00% cyber alias(a)alias.cyberpass.net +-*++-****** 35:41 99.99% dustbin dustman(a)athensnet.com --+++--+-+++ 1:18:22 99.97% exon remailer(a)remailer.nl.com -##+##**### 5:20 99.95% winsock winsock(a)c2.org ---__----.-- 11:50:31 99.90% squirrel mix(a)squirrel.owl.de --++--+++++ 2:21:46 99.88% lead mix(a)zifi.genetics.utah.edu +-+++-+++ ++ 43:41 99.56% balls remailer(a)huge.cajones.com * ********** 8:52 99.21% middle middleman(a)jpunix.com ._- --+--++ 2:53:38 98.98% replay remailer(a)replay.com +- * *+***** 10:30 98.49% haystack haystack(a)holy.cow.net +-*#+# +*## 7:47 94.62% mix mixmaster(a)remail.obscura.com --++++++ 2:07:07 51.53% extropia remail(a)miron.vip.best.com ------- 10:39:07 50.37% History key * # response in less than 5 minutes. * * response in less than 1 hour. * + response in less than 4 hours. * - response in less than 24 hours. * . response in more than 1 day. * _ response came back too late (more than 2 days). cpunk A major class of remailers. Supports Request-Remailing-To: field. eric A variant of the cpunk style. Uses Anon-Send-To: instead. penet The third class of remailers (at least for right now). Uses X-Anon-To: in the header. pgp Remailer supports encryption with PGP. A period after the keyword means that the short name, rather than the full email address, should be used as the encryption key ID. hash Supports ## pasting, so anything can be put into the headers of outgoing messages. ksub Remailer always kills subject header, even in non-pgp mode. nsub Remailer always preserves subject header, even in pgp mode. latent Supports Matt Ghio's Latent-Time: option. cut Supports Matt Ghio's Cutmarks: option. post Post to Usenet using Post-To: or Anon-Post-To: header. ek Encrypt responses in reply blocks using Encrypt-Key: header. special Accepts only pgp encrypted messages. mix Can accept messages in Mixmaster format. reord Attempts to foil traffic analysis by reordering messages. Note: I'm relying on the word of the remailer operator here, and haven't verified the reord info myself. mon Remailer has been known to monitor contents of private email. filter Remailer has been known to filter messages based on content. If not listed in conjunction with mon, then only messages destined for public forums are subject to filtering. Raph Levien

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Prof Shamir arrested
by Tom Womack 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

A few column inches in the British Independent had Prof Avi Shamir (who I guess is the S in RSA) arrested in Israel, on (I believe) suspicion of involvement in a substantial fraud. Tom We will do what we have always done when we've had our back to the wall; we will turn round and fight.

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Re: Anonymous Auth Certificates [was: Re: Blinded Identities]
by hal＠rain.org 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

From: Carl Ellison <cme(a)acm.org> > >> >Steve Shear <azur(a)netcom.com> writes: > > > >[much cut] > >> > >> I've been charged with developing an Internet service which needs to assure > >> its clients of anonymity. However, we fear some clients may abuse the > >> service and we wish to prevent the abusers from re-enrollment if > >> terminated for misbehavior. (In your example, it would be the person(s) > >> trying to discover the service host via flood). > >> > >> My thought was to base enrollment on some sort of 'blinding' of their > >> certified signature (e.g., from Verisign) which produces a unique result > >> for each signature but prevents the service from reconstructing the > >> signature itself (and thereby reveal the client's identity). I'm calling > >> this negative authentication. > > The mistake is to think of using ID certificates (like those from Verisign) > in the first place. They don't mean anything. > > You want an authorization certificate, such as produced by SPKI. You need > to know what a key is authorized to do, not what name is associated with > the key. (Sorry about quoting so much, but I liked Steve Shear's succinct problem statement.) I don't see how authorization certificates solve this problem. How would you determine if someone was qualified to receive an authorization certificate? And what would you do to make them stop using the service if they abuse it, and to stop them from getting new authorization certificates? Thanks, Hal

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European Commission on "Illegal and harmful content on the Internet"
by wfgodot＠iquest.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- A recently released European Commission Communication on "Illegal and harmful content on the Internet" may prefigure the nature of coming European Union regulatory initiatives concerning the net. This Communication was in response to a 27 September resolution by the Telecommunication Council on "preventing the dissemination of illegal content on the Internet, in particular child pornography." The document reportedly reflects what will be ongoing work to "present practical measures in time for the next Telecommunications Council on 28 November 1996." The Communication describes its aims as: firstly to describe briefly the different types of illegal and harmful content, secondly to examine the technical context in which action can be taken to deal with illegal and harmful content, and finally to suggest a number of practical measures designed to be rapidly implemented Among the points of interest, it states with emphasis that "additional international cooperation is required to avoid 'safe havens' for documents contrary to general rules of criminal law." With respect to anonymous communications it discusses proposed "measures to close known loopholes and improve traceability and that anonymous remailers record details of identity." As is typical of these agendas, the devil will be in the evolving details of enforcement. It looks like 1997 will be a busy year for proponents of greater state control over internet content both here and abroad. If they can conjure up enough sufficiently compelling bogeymen, it could be a very successful one for them as well. The HTML version of this document can be found at: <http://www2.echo.lu/legal/en/internet/content/communic.html> Links to RTF and Word versions along with the accompanying press release and related documents can be found at: <http://www2.echo.lu/legal/internet/html> - -Michael -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.3a Charset: cp850 iQCVAwUBMmaw0tGJlWF+GPx9AQGMLgP+JC5Lyd0NZDukq8AWipUNcDUgb6m16iUN 3smYcPdPYvsUDSWznx7ZQsklQV0oz9u5Ru7s8VoOQfA2wqSoiai3LiUiJg5WkfOg HTAbvVQCeoUaRmkmmbFJSzfqVzGB4VkJRCE4htPmmqYhCwwmMjooTi3bAClySGTD 7YcLjv0pC5w= =4EZY -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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Washington Post editorial on global Net-censorship (10/21/96)
by Declan McCullagh 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Mon, 21 Oct 1996 07:35:27 -0700 (PDT) From: Declan McCullagh <declan(a)well.com> To: fight-censorship(a)vorlon.mit.edu Subject: Washington Post editorial on global Net-censorship (10/21/96) While the Washington Post may be in thrall to the national security establishment on encryption policy, it has done more to highlight the dangers of Net-censorship than any other newspaper. Check out today's editorial, attached below. Also, the In the Loop column in today's Post reports that the poorly-named "Nixon Center for Peace and Freedom" is hosting a $10,000-a-table banquet called the "1996 Architect of the New Century Award Gala" on November 11. This year's architect? "None other than that champion of democracy and human rights the inimitable Lee Kuan Yew, former prime minister of Singapore." The same fellow I wrote about in a HotWired column recently: http://www.hotwired.com/netizen/96/36/index4a.html The unknown user, who has the email address an511172(a)anon.penet.fi, posted hundreds of messages to the soc.culture.singapore newsgroup under the name of "Lee Kwan Yew," the retired prime minister of Singapore. The messages are short and unimaginative, yet apparently are just enough to piss off the thin-skinned Singaporean officials. One post reads: "We are small and vulnerable. Without regulations, we will be like Hong Kong, oops, fuck, bad example, they are actually doing quite all right. - SM Lee Kwan Yew, Republic of Singapore." I just called the Nixon Center and spoke to Tricia Williams, the assistant to the president. She told me: "You would need to speak to Mr. Sines, the president. I'm not involved in planning that." More later, if he returns my phone call. -Declan **************** CENSORSHIP IN CYBERSPACE Monday, October 21 1996; Page A18 The Washington Post WHEN IT COMES to communication and censorship, the issues don't change much from one medium to the next. The latest reminder comes with a mini-gust of consternation that hit the World Wide Web a few days ago when, after prolonged outcry, the proprietor of a Sweden-based web site called the Gallery Grotesque closed it down. The site had been displaying gruesome images for two years and had attracted alarm most recently by posting several grisly photographs of a murder scene. Those who attempted to visit the web site after it was closed were greeted with a message from the owner that included all the classic reasons for allowing speech even when it's violent or disturbing. The "gallery," the message explained, had been designed to display true images of "a debauched, self-indulgent society"; it had gotten several million "hits," or visitors, over its life; "myriad external pressures" had been brought to bear, and it was now closing "at a time of my own choosing" because "the concept has been fully explored." Finally, to those "repulsed or angered" by the images, it added, "Consider this: The insanity still continues; only the messenger has been quelled." Whatever you make of the issues of judgment or perhaps self-dramatization involved here, the arguments closely resemble the familiar ones about information and its responsible use that have been going on for centuries. Meanwhile, the Internet experiences of such countries as China and Singapore offer a more sobering demonstration that the new technology may not change the landscape of freedom of speech vs. censorship as much as many had hoped. When the Internet with its global reach first became accessible in countries with otherwise tight information control, human rights and pro-democracy activists foresaw a virtual end to isolation for their colleagues in closed societies, just as fax machines had buoyed Chinese student protesters a decade ago. Some talked of a global "archive of banned books" that could be accessed from any point in the world, thus rendering book-banning by individual nations pointless. Unfortunately, governments interested in maintaining censorship quickly have found ways to use the technology to their benefit. Though decentralized and ungovernable, the Internet is also highly transparent: No one can be sure who is watching, and most messages leave tracks. The governments of China, Burma and Singapore have been cited as making use of this characteristic of the medium, announcing heavy penalties on those who access unauthorized sites, and, in Iran particularly, constructing elaborate technological fire walls to allow their citizens to tap some but not all of the Web's information. The fire walls may prove rickety, and, even with the restrictions, activists may discover over time that access to e-mail and the Web brings more advantage than danger. Even so, the lesson remains: Technology may alter the dimensions of the problem of censorship, but it doesn't take the problems away. ###

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Re: OTP
by paul＠fatmans.demon.co.uk 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

> Can you explain to me how your one time pad algorithm is any better than > encryption something with, say, RC4 or any other cipher using a key that > is the same length as the seed for your PRNG? Well for a start there is no possible cryptanalytic (rather than brute force) attack on a one time pad, the system can be mathematically proven to be secure with a very simple bit of statistics. Soemthing like RC4, even if the key were totally random and unpredictable, and had as much, or more state than the message can still be cryptanalysed possibly, although it is unlikely... Datacomms Technologies web authoring and data security Paul Bradley, Paul(a)fatmans.demon.co.uk Paul(a)crypto.uk.eu.org, Paul(a)cryptography.uk.eu.org Http://www.cryptography.home.ml.org/ Email for PGP public key, ID: 5BBFAEB1 "Don`t forget to mount a scratch monkey"

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Re: [crypto-philo]OTP or DES?
by paul＠fatmans.demon.co.uk 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

> It is quite easy to take the bits of the des-encrypted message, and > calculate the OTP key nessasary to decrypt the message into your real plan. > It would seem you could build a key to have your message say anything of > equal length. Why then must a true OTP be based on a true RNG? Because one > of the actual possible keys of a real OTP is indeed the encrypted des > message, you can claim that it is an otp and no-one can prove otherwise. > They can say "But we cracked your des key and can decypher this message!" > and you say "nope i used an OTP, that is a false message, here is what it > really says! The fact that by PURE coincidence that OTP could be decrypted > using that particular key means nothing, because a true OTP can generate > that bit sequence. Not quite, It is so unlikely that any DES key would exist to turn a one time pad encrypted message into an intelligible plaintext with no errors, proper linguistic structure etc. that it just wouldn`t wash. I shiver at the idea of calculating the probability (my statistics is a bit rusty) but it is a pretty damn small probability given that the set of all possible DES ciphertexts is a smallish subset of all possible binary values (if memory serves correctly, I may be off the mark here though). This may work with a stream cipher (which is pretty similar to a OTP apart from not being provably secure because the entropy of the key is greater than or equal to that of the message) where you can have any possible binary value as your ciphertext... However, for a block cipher, this would appear to me to be impossible for most ciphertexts. Datacomms Technologies web authoring and data security Paul Bradley, Paul(a)fatmans.demon.co.uk Paul(a)crypto.uk.eu.org, Paul(a)cryptography.uk.eu.org Http://www.cryptography.home.ml.org/ Email for PGP public key, ID: 5BBFAEB1 "Don`t forget to mount a scratch monkey"

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Re: Question: OTP
by paul＠fatmans.demon.co.uk 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

> This whole thing seems crazier each time I think about it. > basically my question is: given that he picks his key securly does he have > an OTP if the plaintext is shorter than the key? > Bob Yes, if he were just to modular add the key to the plaintext (or XOR them) he would have an OTP if AND ONLY IF the key were real random, however, he doesn`t do this, he uses the key to seed an array or linear congruential generators, which have been cryptanalysed to hell and back. Basically, ALWAYS, and I mean ALWAYS dismiss anyone trying to sell an OTP, they are totally impractical, he`s just using technobabble to get around the fact that his system is actually a stream cipher and is of no value because it has been broken within days of being announced. Datacomms Technologies web authoring and data security Paul Bradley, Paul(a)fatmans.demon.co.uk Paul(a)crypto.uk.eu.org, Paul(a)cryptography.uk.eu.org Http://www.cryptography.home.ml.org/ Email for PGP public key, ID: 5BBFAEB1 "Don`t forget to mount a scratch monkey"

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Re: Q.E.D. reply to petty MESSger (fwd)
by paul＠fatmans.demon.co.uk 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

> > IPG Sales writes: > > [approx. 300 lines of ramblings deleted] > > Mister, if we printed out your last message on fluffy paper and folded > it together a number of times, then maybe we would end up with something > that a poor woman would call a one-time pad. Period. Clap clap whistle clap....... Aha, wit still survives on the cypherpunks list!!!! Truly inspired. Datacomms Technologies web authoring and data security Paul Bradley, Paul(a)fatmans.demon.co.uk Paul(a)crypto.uk.eu.org, Paul(a)cryptography.uk.eu.org Http://www.cryptography.home.ml.org/ Email for PGP public key, ID: 5BBFAEB1 "Don`t forget to mount a scratch monkey"

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Re: Don't ask why, thank you.
by C. H. Lim 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Well said ! Users please take note about abuse of system.

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Reno at FCBA
by John Young 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Communications Daily, October 19, 1996 U.S. Attorney Gen. Janet Reno offered to "set the record straight" at FCBA lunch Thurs... U.S. Attorney Gen. Janet Reno offered to "set the record straight" at FCBA lunch Thurs. on why controversial issues of encryption and digital wiretapping "deserve support" of communications industry. She said law enforcement community agrees that encryption is "critical" to citizens who want to protect sensitive data but "our ability to protect life and property is threatened" if people use encryption that can't be accessed by law enforcement officials: "The only solution is encryption that allows data recovery." She said it's "important to understand" that digital wiretapping "doesn't expand the government's ability to conduct electronic surveillance." ----- If any citizen has access to a full transcript of the AG's talk, please post here or send it to us by fax to 212-799-4003.

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