December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

Re: Orange book, the NSA, and the NCSC
by jim＠Tadpole.COM 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Keep yourself on the NSA watch list, send email to someone(a)docmaster.ncsc.mil every once in a while. :-) Jim

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Re: My comments to NIST
by Phil Karn 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Thank you. Sternlight didn't like it, but what else is new? :-) Phil

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Re: Easy cracking
by Marc Horowitz 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

>> The same kind of thing happened at Sun, except with the >> secure rpc stuff. Had a guy send mail saying, "I know your >> two primes." Sun replied, "No way." (And lauged internally.) I'm not sure this is how it happened, but the person (maybe there's more than one?) who did this is a cypherpunk, who will identify himself if he wants. He also wrote a paper on this. The first version of the paper had the private key at the top of the first page, but it got removed because certain spooks got upset. Marc

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Hacking ClipperPhones
by rjc＠gnu.ai.mit.edu 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

"Cypherpunks Hack Hardware" It seems logical that when the ClipperPhones come out, they will have some kind of vocoder chip in them. (I doubt the (co)decoding will be implemented on the Clipper chip itself) If so, cypherpunks can take advantage of this situation. By hacking up a daugherboard, the phone's vocoder/modem/sampler can be exploited and interfaced to a PC (possibility via something as simple as a null modem cable or centronics). After that, the software hackers can do their job. If the ClipperPhone becomes popular and the daughterboard is cheap to build ($25-50), it would serve as a massive hardware platform for cypherpunks phone software. The alternative is to produce our own vocoder/sampler boards, but I doubt we could approach the economy of scale that AT&T can, plus we get to ride on the back of their advertising/marketing by having them sell the basic hardware. (then we just release a hack for it) What do you think? -Ray -- Ray Cromwell | Engineering is the implementation of science; -- -- EE/Math Student | politics is the implementation of faith. -- -- rjc(a)gnu.ai.mit.edu | - Zetetic Commentaries --

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Re: Disturbing statistics on wiretaps
by smb＠research.att.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

smb(a)research.att.com writes > The same is true of e-mail over the Internet--there is no > statutory exclusionary rule that would prvent its > admissibility in court. It is at least theoretically possible, > however, to exclude illegally seized communications of these > sorts using a "pure 4th Amendment" (nonstatutory) exclusionary > rule. > > Don't hold your breath, though. > > Do you really think that? One could argue, fairly strongly, that th e > rules set forth in the ECPA have created an expectation of privacy, > and that a violation of that expectation would be exactly the violat ion > of the 4th Amendment that the Supreme Court addressed in the 1967 > decision that led to the original wiretap provisions in the Omnibus > Crime Control and Safe Streets Act. What's your point? One can argue all sorts of things. Are you saying you have reason to believe an argument of this sort is likely to be a winner? Me, I just work from what I know about 4th Amendment caselaw. I realize that you know more about the relevant case law than I do. It would be pretty sad if you didn't. But I'm not completely ignorant of either this subject in particular, or constitutional law in gneral, and I like to learn more. I'm asking to be educated, and I don't like to rely on assertions by authority. I advanced what I thought was a fairly strong argument against your point. Further, the wording of the statute seems pretty clear to me. 18 USC 2515: Prohibition of use as evidence of intercepted wire, oral, or electronic communications Whenever any wire, oral, or electronic communications has been intercepted, no part of the contents of such communication and no evidence derived therefrom may be received in evidence in any trial, hearing, or other proceeding in or before any court, grand jury, department, officer, agency, regulatory body, legis- lative committee, or other authority of the United States, a State, or a political subdivision thereof if the disclosure of that information would be in violation of this chapter. As I read it, if the government doesn't follow the wiretap rules, the evidence thereby obtained can't be used. What have I missed? --Steve Bellovin

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Re: Disturbing statistics on wiretaps
by wcs＠anchor.ho.att.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

In cypherpunks, allan(a)elvis.tamu.edu (Allan Bailey) writes: > I don't think e-mail over the Intenet will ever be used in court > since anyone capable of reading the RFC would be able to forge email. > So, anyone could claim that the email being used as evidence is a > forgery _and_ be able to prove it by doing it or demonstrating it. Different standards of proof apply to different kinds of court cases. Criminal cases need "proof beyond all reasonable doubt"; civil cases tend to need "preponderance of evidence". Forging email is similar to forging typed documents - sometimes cases will heavily use evidence like analysis of individual typewriter characteristics (which was more useful when people had real manual typewriters than with laserprinters), other cases won't examine those details unless one side or the other claims the document isn't theirs or is forged (and remember, this is typically subject to perjury if you're caught lying.) If you're being accused of a serious crime with severe penalties, like murder, an assertion that you didn't type/email something will be taken seriously, and probably lead to more analysis; if they can't *really* prove you sent it, that can be grounds for appeal. But if you're being accused in a civil lawsuit with only monetary damages, like libel/slander or whatever the legal form was in the case where somebody on a computer network disparaged a company's stock and the directors sued when stock value dropped, the assertion may be listened to, but even if there aren't enough log-files to strongly support the assertion that you didn't say it, the jury may decide there's enough evidence to find for the plaintiff, especially if you were a user of that computer network and didn't go net.screaming that you'd been impersonated. (On the other hand, after you lose the libel/slander/etc. suit, if the government decides to charge you with perjury for saying it wasn't your email, the log-files and lack of provability become much more relevant.) Of course, if you're accused of a minor offense with major penalties, e.g. political crimes like drug possession or trespasses like the E911 document copying, lack of proof will be treated as evidence that you know something about DRUGGZZZ or HACKING and are therefore EEEVILL and your penalties will be tripled :-( # Bill Stewart wcs(a)anchor.ho.att.com +1-908-949-0705 Fax-4876 # AT&T Bell Labs, Room 4M-312, Crawfords Corner Rd, Holmdel, NJ 07733-3030 # # goin' where the climate suits my clothes ....

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Re: Disturbing statistics on wiretaps
by George A. Gleason 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

And of course it should be remembered that there is still an old drug-war thing on the books which allows 72 hours' interception without a court order. Now depending on how that's interpreted, 72 hours are a lot of conversations. This stuff can be used for background intelligence and investigation where it never winds up in court but is used to get information to be used in other ways. "It's what they don't tell you..." -gg

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Re: Hacking ClipperPhones
by George A. Gleason 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Re your suggestion of a cypherpunk daughterboard to substitute for Clipper in "secure" phones etc.: I have a sneaky suspicion that AT&T won't be quite so cooperative. They constantly do things in such a way as to make it darn hard to do anything with their products except exactly what they intended to do. It might be worth a try though... OTOH anything that creates more demand for AT&T phones is a not-good thing in my view... we need an entirely competing product, and preferably cheaper than an AT&T clipperphone + daughterboard, for obvious competitive reasons. There are plenty of telephone manufacturers in the world. Some are relatively small shops in Asia which make European knock-offs for the Asian operating companies. I know of another one in Portugal which at least ten years ago was favorable to doing mildly custom stuff. If nyone here is seriously interested in competing cryptophones, I'd be willing to find an appropriate telephone set manufacturer who makes quality phones and is willing to put in a daughterboard socket or other useful mods. -gg(a)well.sf.ca.us

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Re: Disturbing statistics on wiretaps
by Mike Godwin 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Steve Bellovin writes: > I realize that you know more about the relevant case law than I do. It > would be pretty sad if you didn't. But I'm not completely ignorant of > either this subject in particular, or constitutional law in gneral, and > I like to learn more. I'm asking to be educated, and I don't like to > rely on assertions by authority. This is both a fair comment and a fair request. Sorry for being irritable yesterday. > I advanced what I thought was a > fairly strong argument against your point. Further, the wording of the > statute seems pretty clear to me. 18 USC 2515: > > Prohibition of use as evidence of intercepted wire, > oral, or electronic communications > > Whenever any wire, oral, or electronic communications has > been intercepted, no part of the contents of such communication > and no evidence derived therefrom may be received in evidence in > any trial, hearing, or other proceeding in or before any court, > grand jury, department, officer, agency, regulatory body, legis- > lative committee, or other authority of the United States, a > State, or a political subdivision thereof if the disclosure of > that information would be in violation of this chapter. This is not an accurate presentation of 2515, Steve. "Electronic communications" was not added to 18 USC 2515 by ECPA. The statutory exclusionary rule applies only to wire and oral communications. > As I read it, if the government doesn't follow the wiretap rules, > the evidence thereby obtained can't be used. What have I missed? You've missed the actual language of 18 USC 2515. I don't know where you got this one. --Mike

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Triple DES products hitting market
by Anonymous 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

excerpted from: Communications Week No. 473, September 27, 1993 page 36 Cylink Triples Encryption by Sharon Fisher Sunnyvale, Calif. - Cylink Corp. has announced an encryption product that improves security by encrypting data three times using current standards. The Cylink product uses the Data Encryption Standard, which defines a 56-bit key for scrambling messages to prevent access by unauthorized users. DES was adopted in 1977 as the U.S. federal standard for data encryption. Skirting DES Limitations Some users have expressed concern, however, that DES' 56 bits cannot prevent a determined attacker from using more powerful hardware and software to crack the code. The Cylink product addresses the problem by using DES to encrypt the data more than once, according to company officials. Cylink's Cipher/Decipher-HSi offers triple-DES, which encrypts DES data three times, and gives the 56-bit key the effect of a 112-bit key, according to the company, based here. The triple-DES approach makes the Cylink product more secure than the government's proposed Clipper system, which uses an 80-bit key, the company said. Users could get the triple-DES effect by manually encrypting data three times, but the process would take three times as long as single DES encryption, Cylink noted. Cidec-HSi uses improved circuit technology that performs the three encryptions without taking that long, the company said. Cidec-HSi works at speeds of up to 2.048 million bits per second and is available with a wide variety of interfaces, Cylink said. It also includes a public key management system, which lets users exchange keys so that they can read each other's messages. The device also offers an optional embedded channel service unit, which can be connected directly to the public T1 carrier network, the company said. Cylink said it can retrofit current Cidec-HSi systems so they can benefit from the new triple-DES technology. AT&T Compatibitlity The company said that Cidec-HSi meets compatibility standards for use with AT&T's Accunet T1.5 and Extended Superframe Format services. Cylink can be reached at 735-5800.

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Re: saturation tactics?
by ssteele＠eff.org 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Nate asks: >BTW, what is the snail-mail address to send these letters to? Willam B. Robinson United States Department of State Bureau of Politico-Military Affairs Office of Defense Trade Controls Washington, DC 20522-0602 George suggests: >yeah, here's a cheaper version. Write to the arms excport license people >and pester them with questions: I'm a BBS operator, what should I do?; I'm a >businessperson travelling overseas and need my crypto to comm with the home >office what should I do?; all this kind of thing. Swamp them with letters. >Every person and every circumstance which even remotely fits. > >An alternative version which would require more guts and perhaps a serious >conscientious decision about whether it's worth making this an act of civil >disobedience, is to write to them and say, "I'm a BBS operator, not an arms >merchant, and on the strength of my 1st-A rights I'm not going to censor my >board or get a license..." or "I'm a businessperson who travels & takes my >cryupto out of the country on my laptop to comm with the home office; I'm >not an arms dealer either and I don't intend to get a license..." And >again, there is strength in numbers here. I like the first idea. As an attorney (stop with the hissing out there!), I feel a need to remind you that these State Department guys are serious. They can really make your life miserable -- just ask Phil Z. I strongly suggest that you keep that in mind before openly suggesting that you intend to export encryption. I agree that the export laws stink. I'm hoping we can get the law nixed without anyone going to jail. Shari

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unsubscribe
by jhall＠lambda.msfc.nasa.gov 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

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Triple DES Wanted
by thug＠phantom.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

I'm looking for a Triple DES file encryption program that takes arguments in the same form as /bin/crypt or /usr/bin/des. Is there a /bin/3des out there somewhere? Has anyone come across 3des.c? And if so, can you point me in the direction where it may be found. Thanks.. If no such program exists, I think it would be very useful to the cypherpunks community if it were made available. I'd also like to see a similar stand-alone version of IDEA (/usr/bin/idea?), but since it is patented, that's probably not going to happen, which is why I'm looking for something like /bin/3des. l8r, thug

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Re: Disturbing statistics on wiretaps
by Matt Blaze 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Mike Goodwin writes: >Steve Bellovin writes: > > >Here's the actual language of 18 USC 2515 (note the omission of >"electronic communications"): > > >Sec. 2515. Prohibition of use as evidence of intercepted wire or oral >communications > >Whenever any wire or oral communication has been intercepted, no part of >the contents of such communication and no evidence derived therefrom may >be received in evidence in any trial, hearing, or other proceeding in or >before any court, grand jury, department, officer, agency, regulatory >body, legislative committee, or other authority of the United States, a >State, or a political subdivision thereof if the disclosure of that >information would be in violation of this chapter. >--Mike Out of curiousity, what's "wire communication" for the purpose of this statute? How does that differ from electronic communication (other than, perhaps, non-voice data traffic sent via cellular telephone)? Thanks -matt

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Re: Disturbing statistics on wiretaps
by Perry E. Metzger 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Mike Godwin says: > Sec. 2515. Prohibition of use as evidence of intercepted wire or oral > communications > > Whenever any wire or oral communication has been intercepted, no part of > the contents of such communication and no evidence derived therefrom may > be received in evidence in any trial, hearing, or other proceeding in or > before any court, grand jury, department, officer, agency, regulatory > body, legislative committee, or other authority of the United States, a > State, or a political subdivision thereof if the disclosure of that > information would be in violation of this chapter. How does the statute define "wire" communication? Perry

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Re: Subterranean Clipper Chip Blues
by J. Michael Diehl 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

According to Jim Thompson: > > Subject: Subterranean Clipper Chip Blues > > PC/Computing, October 1993 > Page 468 (opposite inside back cover). > Note: _abc_ indicates italics. > > Illustration: several computers with keyholes in the screens. > Clinton's smiling face rises from the White House, as a long > arm reaches out with a key... > Anyone out there with a color scanner??? PLEASE scan this puppy! Distributing .gif images represents the next generation of Electronic Propaganda! So, if anyone has a scanner, please scan this one and make if available to us. Thanx in advance. J. Michael Diehl ;^) |*The 2nd Amendment is there in case the mdiehl(a)triton.unm.edu | Government forgets about the 1st! <RL> Mike.Diehl(a)f29.n301.z1 |*God is a good Physicist, and an even .fidonet.org | better Mathematician. <Me> al945(a)cwns9.ins.cwru.edu|*I'm just looking for the opportunity to (505) 299-2282 (voice) | be Politically Incorrect! <Me> Can we impeach him yet? |*Protected by 18 USC 2511 and 18 USC 2703. PGP Key = 7C06F1 = A6 27 E1 1D 5F B2 F2 F1 12 E7 53 2D 85 A2 10 5D

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Re: Clipper specifics
by cme＠ellisun.sw.stratus.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

I'd be surprised if they allow you a month or two for more comments. My current fantasy about Clipper is that the NSA did a deal with AT&T, demanding removal of DES chips in favor of Skipjack, getting AT&T to buy into a limited delay in product introduction with the gov't promising to get the Skipjack standard in place by Summer so that the AT&T phones weren't held up too long. That's all out of my own head, but it hangs together. Does anyone know specifics about AT&T's prior plans? Was there a DES version? - Carl

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Re: Orange book, the NSA, and the NCSC
by jim＠Tadpole.COM 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Been to "the fort" twice, once on 'official business', once on a joyride around the 'campus'. :-) ("See them big sat dishes? Don't want to get too close to them, marines with guns up there.") The visitor's center has a small, but facinating museum of crypto stuff, everything from enigma-style machines to a device that does I-don't-remember-how-many-but-it-was-huge gigaflops on a hand-rolled chip made on site, to a device for intercepting (and decrypting) microwave transmissions. Not much satilite stuff. Pretty cool. The guards all wear big (loaded, I checked) guns. You're issued a little badge to carry around your neck. Get too far from your escort, or in a room without your escort, and they get really upset (from what I was told, I didn't try). Across the highway is a state camp for delinquent boys. Jim

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Re: Easy cracking
by smb＠research.att.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

>> The same kind of thing happened at Sun, except with the >> secure rpc stuff. Had a guy send mail saying, "I know your >> two primes." Sun replied, "No way." (And lauged internally.) I'm not sure this is how it happened, but the person (maybe there's more than one?) who did this is a cypherpunk, who will identify himself if he wants. He also wrote a paper on this. The first version of the paper had the private key at the top of the first page, but it got removed because certain spooks got upset. ?? As far as I know, Sun's secure RPC uses Diffie-Hellman with a 192-bit modulus. LaMacchia and Odlyzko solved the discrete log problem for that size, but there's no single private key to disclose. For those who are interested, the reference is @article{nfscrack, author = {Brian A. LaMacchia and Andrew M. Odlyzko}, journal = {Designs, Codes, and Cryptography}, pages = {46--62}, title = {Computation of Discrete Logarithms in Prime Fields}, volume = {1}, year = {1991}, xnote = "11211-900629-12TM" }

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soda.berkeley.edu
by pmetzger＠shearson.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Hi folks. I just tried doing an anonymous ftp to soda.berkeley.edu and it failed. Has something happened? Perry

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Re: Clipper specifics
by wcs＠anchor.ho.att.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

> Their spokesagency, NIST, has said that it will be illegal to encrypt > on top of Skipjack or to mung the LEEF. Pre-encryption is not > mentioned, AFAIK, and would be borderline impossible to detect anyway. Actually, it won't be illegal, unless they get CONgress to pass some laws, but they may be able to do some contractual constraints on it as part of the process of getting your Skipjack products approved, either through the current process of export approval, or through the approval process described in the proposed FIPS (which basically says "Whatever NSA wants"); they could even place restrictions on selling Clipper chips to unapproved companies. It *will* violate the FIPS, if the FIPS gets approved, so you won't be able to sell SkipJack/LEAF products to the government unless they're capable of operating without post-encryption. That doesn't mean they won't buy dual-mode products that are switchable between secure and FIPS modes, though obviously the politics of the situation don't make that real likely :-) An interesting question is whether the export or manufacturing approval processes will ban the use of Clipper/etc. in programmable devices, either explicitly user-programmable ones, or devices in which the PROMs are easily replaced. It costs a little, but using flash-EPROM in a secure phone would make firmware upgrades easy, and that could include a LEAF-masking option.

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Re: Easy cracking
by Brian A. LaMacchia 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Subject: Re: Easy cracking From: smb(a)research.att.com To: Marc Horowitz <marc(a)GZA.COM> Cc: jim(a)Tadpole.COM (Jim Thompson), cypherpunks(a)toad.com, honey(a)citi.umich.edu Date: Wed, 29 Sep 93 14:32:27 EDT >> The same kind of thing happened at Sun, except with the >> secure rpc stuff. Had a guy send mail saying, "I know your >> two primes." Sun replied, "No way." (And lauged internally.) I'm not sure this is how it happened, but the person (maybe there's more than one?) who did this is a cypherpunk, who will identify himself if he wants. He also wrote a paper on this. The first version of the paper had the private key at the top of the first page, but it got removed because certain spooks got upset. ?? As far as I know, Sun's secure RPC uses Diffie-Hellman with a 192-bit modulus. LaMacchia and Odlyzko solved the discrete log problem for that size, but there's no single private key to disclose. The discrete log problem is "brittle" -- you have to do a lot of precomputation work for any particular modulus, but once you've done that work finding individual discrete logs is easy. We had received a "challenge number" from someone at Sun (i.e. they gave us g^x mod p, and we had to find x). We included both numbers in our paper. Interestingly enough, although Sun used a 192-bit prime, the comments in the source code refer to p as a 128-bit prime. Also, g=3 for the Sun RPC system, and code comments refer to g as a primitive root modulo p. But 3 isn't a primitive root modulo this particular p. We suspected that someone at Sun decided 128 bits was too short, and increased the length of the modulus to 192 (still too short) without changing the comments and verifying the primitivity of g. --bal P.S. I've put a PostScript version of the paper up for anonymous FTP, if you're interested in the details. Get the file martigny.ai.mit.edu:/pub/bal/field.ps

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Re: soda.berkeley.edu
by peb＠PROCASE.COM 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Name (soda.berkeley.edu:peb): anonymous 331 Guest login ok, send your complete e-mail address as password. Password: 230-The disk drive which holds our anonymous FTP directory is dead; we are 230-unable to support anonymous FTP access until it is alive again. 230- 230 Guest login ok, access restrictions apply. ftp> dir 221- 221 Server shutting down. Goodbye. 421 Service not available, remote server has closed connection

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Sun Secure RPC
by pmetzger＠shearson.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

So if Sun Secure RPC has been cracked this wide open, why hasn't sun taken any action? Indeed, why hadn't I heard before? I would have expected this paper (which I am now reading) to have been disseminated far and wide... Perry

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Address/phone number for Micotronics?
by nate＠rodin.VIS.ColoState.EDU 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Does anyone out there have the Address and phone number of Micotronics? -nate -- +-------------------------------------------------------------------- | Nate Sammons email: nate(a)VIS.ColoState.Edu | Colorado State University Computer Visualization Laboratory | Finger nate(a)monet.VIS.ColoState.Edu for my PGP key | #include <std.disclaimer> | Always remember "Brazil" +----------------------+

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