December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

Re: Spread-spectrum net (vulnerability of)
by doug＠netcom.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

jkreznar(a)ininx.com (John E. Kreznar) said: >Are you taking into account that as the power is dropped, coherent >communication can compensate by dropping the data rate Very low power transmitters are actually legitimate, at least in some bands, so you don't have to drop the signal to the point where it'd merge seamlessly with ambient noise. However I doubt that extremely low power transmitters will accomplish what is desired. I also wonder whether extremely low data rates are desired. >> There are other approaches...phase-sweeping...phase-conjugation... >Do you have a reference for these? Neither appears in the index of any of the >books in my spread-spectrum library. Maybe they're not spread-spectrum? Different topic. Try "phase conjugate mirrors" in optical and physics journals. I'm not positive that this would be good enough to help avoid detection. Doug

1 0

Re: Breaking DES
by doug＠netcom.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

>When I use a hash table, it is never a substitute for storing the >actual value of the thing I'm hashing. Its always just a way of >rapidly FINDING the underlying object. I have to store the underlying >object in order to compare to it. As an example, in a hashed symbol >table, I store the actual symbols. Instead of storing the underlying value, I am assuming that it is *thrown away*, and recalculated whenever there is a collision. This cuts down on the expense of this disk drives, at the cost of increasing runtime by roughly a factor of 7 (log_base_256(2^56)). I didn't include that cost in my previous estimates because I was doing a very rough back of the envelope calculation, but I accept that it should be included. >> Impractical? Your response to Karl implied that it was *impossible*. > >The two are very similar in our field. Cracking RSA with a 2000 bit >key is merely impractical, not impossible, where "impractical" is >defined as completely beyond human ability. It's a question of where you draw the line. A budget of one hundred billion dollars and a runtime of say a year, I'm willing to call "impractical". A budget of 10 trillion dollars and a runtime of 100 years, I'd be willing to call "impossible". The 2000 bit key is over everyone's threshold. Doug

1 0

Re: Native American Encryption?!
by lefty＠apple.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

> I remember hearing many years ago that one of the branches of the armed >aervices during WWII used a native American -- Cherokee? Apache? -- >language to communicate. The Japanese (the story goes) went nuts trying to >crack the code -- unsuccessfully. It was Navajo. > Two questions: > 1) Can anyone give me a reference for this story (assuming it's true)? There was a recent (i.e. within the past year) article in Smithsonian magazine on the "code talkers". I believe only one or two of them are still surviving. This sort of thing doesn't constitute what would properly be called a cipher; it's either a code, or perhaps a species of steganography. -- Lefty (lefty(a)apple.com) C:.M:.C:., D:.O:.D:.

1 0

Native American Encryption
by A little like having bees live in your head. 13-Oct-1993 1306 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

>>If nothing else, adding encryption on top of the Navajo >>language makes known-plaintext much more difficult. > >Navajo has no written language. Not so. There has been a written form for Navajo for the last few decades (at least). It uses the Roman alphabet but the mapping of sound-to-character is not the same as for English. Vowels aren't even a, e, i, o, and u, which certainly doesn't help speakers of English trying to form syllables. To my eye, it more closely resembles modem noise on an ASCII terminal than anything else, but it does exist. (no, I can't read it) Navajo code talkers spoke with Navajo words, but not with Navajo meanings. Parts of speech that should be nouns became adjectives, etc. Navajo Elders who heard the code talkers commented "It sounds like Navaho, but it doesn't make any _sense_!". -Ya-ha'-tey! Bill Yerazunis

1 0

Dangers of skipping too many messages
by tcmay＠netcom.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Folks, part of the list volume problem is apparently that a lot of us are skipping a lot of the messages. Sounds paradoxical, but hear me out. Someone asked about the Indian code talkers used in World War II, and suggested they might be Apache or Cherokee. Well, to date, about half a dozen responses have all pointed out they were the famous Navajo code talkers. Nice to see such knowledge. But the responses seem to indicate no awareness that several others have already answered the question. And this is not a "response cluster" phenomenon, as the answers have been straggling in for a few days. (However, it may be that some folks are way behind in their reading and fired off an answer when they read the first question.) I don't have an answer to either of these problems (people skipping messages, people behind in reading), but both appear to be symptomatic of an overloaded list. Eric H. tells me we're well over 500 subscribers now. Gulp! --Tim May -- .......................................................................... Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, tcmay(a)netcom.com | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero 408-688-5409 | knowledge, reputations, information markets, W.A.S.T.E.: Aptos, CA | black markets, collapse of governments. Higher Power: 2^756839 | Public Key: PGP and MailSafe available. Note: I put time and money into writing this posting. I hope you enjoy it.

1 0

multiposts...
by Stanton McCandlish 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Many apologies for the multiple posts that emmanated from eff.org yesterday. I noiced that both mine and Danny's showed up twice. No idea what caused it, but it does not appear to be doing it now... -- Stanton McCandlish Electronic Frontier Foundation Online Activist & SysOp "A nation that is afraid to let its people judge the truth and falsehood of ideas in an open market is a nation that is afraid of its people." -JFK -=> mech(a)eff.org NitV-DC BBS 202-232-2715, Fido 1:109/? IndraNet 369:111/1

1 0

Electronic Production Costs
by Hastings＠courier8.aero.org 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

When I mentioned the cost of the Julieboard at $125 wired and tested, I said that volume (say 1,000,000 units) would bring the cost down. I didn't mean to say that I could build one board from parts myself for less than $125. Using a commercial manufacturing assembly line on the final product should lower the cost, figuring efficiency and volume discounts on the components, and getting the Hell out of Ontario with its high income and value added taxes will make a big difference.The Julieboard performance/price ratio was unheard of a few years ago when I looked at the A&A Williams synthesizer. The author/designer of Julieboard says he has done frequency-hopping spread spectrum designs, and the next project he publishes for the ham radio market could be a digital transceiver. Kent - <hastings(a)courier8.aero.org> "Ask not for whom the bill tolls."

1 0

Dangers of skipping...my solution for now
by tcmay＠netcom.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Earlier I wrote about the dangers of skipping too many messages, of a kind of "response cluster" when the same question gets answered many times. Somewhat making their point, several people have responded to me privately saying they try to answer questions in e-mail and then let the questioner summarize the responses in public, if he wishes. Advantages of this approach: - reduces repetitive answers (saves list bandwidth) - questioner can synthesize from all answers Disadvantages: - others may want to see the answers and may, under this approach, flood the list with "me too" lines (seen in many newsgroups, when "send answer in e-mail" gets met by "Hey, I'd be interested, too" follow-ups). - others may not know the question has already been answered, resulting in much wasted time (e.g., 30 private e-mail messages all addressing the Navajo code talker question). (Aside: there's a standard game theory example on how often one should help...it works better in game theory than in practice.) Finally, to me the most serious problem with moving more responses to private e-mail is that the discussion group aspect of the list gets lost. So I still don't have an answer. However, as an experiment, I plan to try to move as many of my responses off the list proper as possible. Things that are clearly of interest to a reasonable fraction of the entire list, I'll still post to the list. (Note again, as many of us have described, the Extropians list software allows threads to be ::excluded, as well as authors, so repetitive traffic can be reduced. It takes a minute or so to send off the ::exclude, so many of us prefer to just hit the "D" key promptly. Still, a portent of things to come.) -Tim -- .......................................................................... Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, tcmay(a)netcom.com | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero 408-688-5409 | knowledge, reputations, information markets, W.A.S.T.E.: Aptos, CA | black markets, collapse of governments. Higher Power: 2^756839 | Public Key: PGP and MailSafe available. Note: I put time and money into writing this posting. I hope you enjoy it.

1 0

FLAME: breaking DES
by an42035＠anon.penet.fi 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

I have been following this argument, and I cannot let this post slide without comment. As near as I can tell, Karl pointed out an attack which shows that double encrypting really doesn't buy you much security over single encrypting. Perry has chosen to ridicule this for impracticality. (Incidentally, I notice a slight error in a followup post by Karl, undoubtedly a typo on his part. The number of chosen plaintexts needed by differential cryptanalysis is 2^47 and not 10^47. While still a large number at more than 100 trillion, it is at least much smaller than 10^47!) This fact seems to have eluded Perry, despite his apparent expertise. There are other meet-in-the-middle attacks, such as the one Chaum and Evertse use against a DES variant (fewer number of rounds), described in "Cryptanalysis of the DES with a reduced number of rounds" at CRYPTO '85. The meet-in-the-middle attack Karl posted is by Merkle and Hellman, from the 1981 paper "On the Security of Multiple Encryption", Communications of the ACM. Strange, but I don't recall Perry asking if Merkle and Hellman were worried that others might think they beleived this. Incidentally, the complexity of factoring a 2000 bit number is on the order of 2.4 X 10^43 steps. >Whenever Perry Metzger defends an opinion of his well, somebody whines. >Whenever Perry Metzger disagrees with someone's arguments, someone else >crys "unfair! He's using his WITS on me!" >Whenever Perry Metzger has to stop and demonstrate something as simple as >arithmetic to end an argument, someone cries "foul! sarcasm! Hey, he's not >playing nice!" Well, if Perry were to have the BALLS to make impracticality arguments against the experts who actually created the protocols and methods, instead of taking cowardly pot-shots, maybe we wouldn't think he's full of shit. The attack is impractical, and if Perry weren't so strung out he could have written a coherent post stating despite the cleverness of the attack, it is out-of-reach with today's technology, with some calculations showing this. In the 1980 paper by Helleman "A Cryptanalytic Time-Space Tradeoff", Helleman suggests it is possible to pre-compute and store 2^56 results, and use this information to lookup keys. Cost: estimated at $5 million. (Although this is for singly encrypted text). Funny, but I don't recall any dissenting papers by Perry on this subject. He didn't ask if Helleman really wanted people to think he beleived this. >Y'all need to develop slightly thicker skins. Perry's efforts could serve to >raise the thought level of other posters to this list, if they'd stop reacting >to each prod with an irritated swipe back at the prodder. First off, Perry Metzger had treated this list to such CYPHERPUNK (?) gems as: 1) his dripping sarcasm 2) posts about theories on government, anarchy, and nazis 3) riduling posts obviously mistakenly sent (one such post with several ^H in it) 4) mailing list vs. newsgroup and how he can handle 300 mails a day and get work done 5) posts on the wide variety of services banks offer in New York 6) posts on the former libertarian orientation of Rep. Dana Rohrbacher 7) other pointless garbage If Perry wanted to raise the thought level of other posters, he would quit posting such bilge. Ah, but then, he wouldn't be posting at all! If he would take his BULLSHIT to private email, this list would improve vastly. If I missed the cypherpunk content in the above examples, point it out. He has a rather inflated ego and is quick to insult others: >You don't know anything about hashing, then. So if Perry feels that "you can lead a horse to water but can't make him think" he could perhaps pull his head out of his ass, wipe the shit from his eyes and ears, buy a fucking clue at the nearest store, and shut up. ------------------------------------------------------------------------- To find out more about the anon service, send mail to help(a)anon.penet.fi. Due to the double-blind, any mail replies to this message will be anonymized, and an anonymous id will be allocated automatically. You have been warned. Please report any problems, inappropriate use etc. to admin(a)anon.penet.fi.

1 0

Re: FLAME: breaking DES
by lefty＠apple.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

According to <an42035(a)anon.penet.fi> > >Well, if Perry were to have the BALLS to make impracticality arguments >against the experts who actually created the protocols and methods, >instead of taking cowardly pot-shots, maybe we wouldn't think he's >full of shit. Firstly, these are bold words coming from someone posting through an anonymous remailer. Secondly, what do you mean "we", kimosabe? I can only imagine that you're referring to yourself and your intestinal parasites. -- Lefty (lefty(a)apple.com) C:.M:.C:., D:.O:.D:.

1 0

Midwest Cypherpunk Meeting
by jdblair＠nextsrv.cas.muohio.EDU 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Are there enough Cypherpunks in the Midwest to have a meeting, no matter how small? I've been following the list (rarely posting) for quite a while now, but I'd like to discuss these issues in person, and maybe feel a little less isolated here in Ohio. E-mail me back directly if there is any interest. John Blair jdblair(a)nextsrv.cas.muohio.edu

1 0

!FLAME: breaking DES
by holland＠CS.ColoState.EDU 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

OK, I sort of wanted to break up the constant flaming on this thread, so I thought I would introduce my own (admittedly ignorant) way to break DES. 1. Start with a full keysearch of all 2^56 possible DES keys. 2. If you have plaintext to work with, compare each sample decryption with the plaintext. 2a. If you don't have plaintext, I would try washing the decryptions through a pattern searching algorithm that would include a dictionary, patterns from compression programs like PKZip, machine language instructions, and any other possible form of communication that can be represented as a binary string. At least that's how I would do it. If anyone has any suggestions, corrections, etc. I wouldn't mind hearing them. Doug

1 0

Re: pornography & the ``cypherpunk cause''
by doug＠netcom.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Edward Elhauge <ee(a)lever.com> said: >A counter-example might be: > 1) Someone breaks down my door while I am eating. As per California law >there is a REBUTABLE PRESUMPTION (embedded in statutory law) that my life is >in danger and that deadly force is justified. Consequently, my response to the >situation is ruled justifiable homicide. Doesn't this need to be phrased more cautiously? As I understand it, you need to demonstrate to the jury that you feared for your life, and someone breaking down your door is not enough for that. Unlike in some other states, in California it is essential that there be a clear threat to your life. > 2) Someone breaks down my door while I am eating. A feeble minded guest >of mine shouts out "I don't think he's armed." Consequently, the police find >that the man is either not armed or had a water pistol. I might do 5-10 for >manslaughter or 2nd degree murder. The phrasing of this makes me think that you and I have the same impression of the law, but that you just were a bit terse in phrasing #1. >Your example doesn't involve a law that requires knowledge or a state of mind >to be guilty. Laws about the transport of illegal information do! I tend to be concerned about arguments that don't take the infamous "ignorance of the law is no excuse" into account. That is, one needs to make a clear distinction between ignorance of the law and ignorance of the action itself. There have been times in this particular thread when I wasn't clear whether people were making that distinction. Doug

2 1

RSA crap
by Godzilla's Home Boy 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Howzsa battles going. What are the chances of getting caught using pgp out of this country? I have friends in Russia, I'd like to use more than ordinary encryption getting to them.

1 0

Re: Spread-spectrum net (vulnerability of)
by doug＠netcom.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Matthew J Ghio <mg5n+(a)andrew.cmu.edu> said: >Switching frequencies rapidly to prevent triangulation is still the best >defense. Think from the point of view of the spotters. They can look at a broad-spectrum scan, gradually eliminate known sources, and end up homing in on the remaining high power signals. Doug

2 1

DES: breaking, attacking
by Karl Lui Barrus 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- On the method Douglad Holland posted about breaking the DES... an interesting property of DES is that of complimentation. That is, if encryption of plaintext P under key K produces ciphertext T, then encryption of plaintext P' under key K' produces ciphertext T', where the primes (') mean bitwise complement. If: T = DES(P ,K) then T' = DES(P', K') Cryptanalysis can exploit this if two pairs are available such that T' = T or P' = P. What this boils down to is a 50% reduction in work. So now instead of taking 10 billion years it'll just take you 5 billion :-) Complexity wise, it's just 2^55 steps instead of 2^56, so it may not buy you too much. A more interesting attack I read of is a probabilistic attack against DES. Suppose you encrypt sensitive data, and change keys once a month. I can attack you by trying as many decryptions as possible within the month. Sure, I am not guarenteed success, but the point is that if I do this month after month, I have a decent chance of success at some point during the year. And if the information you encrypt is valuable, once success during the year is all I'll need. An upcoming book on cryptanalysis details this attack; the author calculates success rates given various estimates for hardware (speed and number) and frequency of key shifting. It is quite arresting: even if you change keys every week, if I can muster enough computer power to give me a 1% chance of success, the chances are "good" that at some time during the year I'll succeed in decrypting a message. For example, if I can be guarenteed of breaking your DES encrypted message in a year (say I can mount a brute force attack that does 2^56 encryptions and takes a year), there is an 8% chance the key will be recovered in one month. So even if you change your key every month, I have an 8% chance of success. If your key is needed to conduct financial transactions and you are a bank, I can profit greatly from one success. So basically, DES is looking more and more disadvantaged with its relatively small key size (64 bits, of which 8 are predictable parity bits). Karl Barrus <klbarrus(a)owlnet.rice.edu> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.3a iQCVAgUBLLzEJ4OA7OpLWtYzAQHE7AP7BpG0k0bOjLbTPJbiaMzEFSZuquo/te0w EeD4cC22jru8jXCEtM6AUHp94UJucAXDzY7szDhNlcMY5uv0OIXaFyoohPxBDEw5 CxKKUt0TxpqFdGwwkW8jpPMoBtZa8rGu/yPEZJ9CmcuHDANbEnVlQ9w8weMTWDHD qqCSlsuziOs= =hS3G -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

1 0

Re: RSA crap
by Godzilla's Home Boy 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

I don't want to give the program pgp 2.2 to russians, since i got it from them!

1 0

Re: Spread-spectrum net (vulnerability of)
by swc＠uc1.ucsu.edu 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

PCS is coming. It will support data communications at moderate rates to and from portable (handheld) units. We may achieve some gains by simply using PCS with encryption. You (I don't know who:-) may object: every PCS unit will have an ID will hich will be traceable to a person. But this need not be so. What if XYZ cmpany were to buy thousands of PCS units to issue to its independent agents and accept billing responsibility for all of them? XYZ could use anonymous account registration and pseudonyms from there on out. Thus the telcos and PCS operators get paid (by XYZ corp.) without having to know who the individual unit users are. XYZ can cut off an anonymous user who fails to pay his bill by telling the telcos/PCS operators to stop accepting calls from that ID (nobody needs to know who the deadbeat connected to that ID is). As long as there is sufficient prepayment by unit users to XYZ, that meritorious company can avoid losing its shirt to repeat deadbeats who keep registering (anonymously) for new accounts, running up big bills and not paying. What important point am I missing here? Thanks in advance to all the professional flamers out there who will make it clear to me :-) ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Stuart W. Card, Consultant, Card & Associates -- Research & Development Box 153 RR 1 Newport Rd Utica NY 13502 315-735-1717 / FAX -8469 swc(a)uc1.ucsu.edu or cards(a)top.cis.syr.edu "Who is John Galt?"

3 2

Re: New aproach in pgp-randomizer!!!
by Mike Ingle 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

blaster(a)kiae.su writes: >Hello! >Today I saw paraphysics randomizer in pgp: >pgp -kg was run; >it ask me about user id and passphrase; >then it run generation (it wrote like this: ............ ++++); >But, as we see, it did not ask about key typing!!! The most intresting >pgp generate key pair and rendseed.bin-file. I thinck this is related to >new topsecret paraphysics randomyser (today is 13.10.93).:) >Some words about technical ditails: >Hardwate - i486; Software - MS-DOS 3v30 (I boot from protected floppy and >ran good antivitus utility before keypair generation). PGP 2v3a was run. >I have expiriance in pgp (i maintain pgp-keys server). >I keep keypair and randseed file and try to repiad this fantastic result, >but paraphysic energy is go out :). >Mr. Zimmermann, I hope, that this was really paraphysic (or my mistake:(), >because the trust to crypt-program is very unstable thing. This is not a bug. PGP times your keystrokes when you type your key id and passphrase, using the timing information for randomness. If it gets enough randomness from these keystrokes (i.e. if you type a long id and passphrase), it does not need you to type randomly because it already has enough random material to generate the key. You can re-create this by choosing a short (384-bit) key, typing a long id and passphrase, and typing slowly so that PGP gets a good random byte from each keystroke. This does not make the key predictable or cause a loss of security. ------------------------------------------------------------------------- an42035(a)anon.penet.fi, writer of "FLAME: breaking DES": anon wrote: (a rather crude and profane personal attack against Perry Metzger, which I have no intention of echoing) Anonymous personal attacks usually say more about the attacker than about the target. This one is no exception. You have a lot of nerve to talk about Perry's "balls" when you don't even have the "balls" to sign your name to your flame against him. This attack is at about the same cowardly level as most bathroom-wall graffiti. P.S. Go ahead and flame me. My address is "mikeingle(a)delphi.com", make sure you spell it right. The longer and more venomous your flame, the bigger idiot you reveal yourself to be for wasting all that time in taking an anonymous potshot at someone.

1 0

Dining Sternlight Net
by cman＠IO.COM 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

The Dining Sternlight Net ========================= Objective: ---------- To create a system of communication among N parties that features sender and recipient untraceability, while frivolously expending Usenet bandwidth. Protocol (Net formation): ------------------------- N participants (up to 25) post the following to alt.fan.david-sternlight: Subject: Join DS Net BEGIN DS NET <128-bit hexadecimal random number> <pgp public key> END DS NET Net moderator (initially mccoy(a)binky.cc.utexas.edu) posts a close of entries message containing a full list of net participants, along with their random numbers and PGP keys. Moderator will also chose a Net Name, which will be employed by participants to indicate what net they are participating in. Hereafter Subject lines will read: <Net Name> <Post Type> <Round> A MD5 digest hash of the postings to cypherpunks dated by toad.com between midnight and noon of the day following close of entries is generated. Random numbers are encrypted using DES with the lower 56 bits of the hash as key, thus creating the "Ordering Value" of each participant. The "Ordering Values" of the participants will be posted by the moderator with Post Type "Net Order", but the values can be checked by all. Protocol (Message passing): --------------------------- Participants all generate and save Int(N + (N * .2)) * 1024 random bits, which are encrypted using the PGP public key of the person whose Ordering Value places them immediately before theirs, except for the participant with the lowest Ordering Value, who encrypts with the PGP key of the participant with the highest Ordering Value. The encrypted block is posted to alt.fan.david-sternlight with Post Type: "Pass Left" Participants now build the "Difference Block" from their saved random bits and the random bits they retrieve from the newsgroup encrypted with their public key. The block is initially constructed by XOR of the saved bits with the bits retrieved in the "Pass Left" posting. The Difference Block is to be viewed as a collection of 1K sub-blocks. Participants will randomly choose one of the blocks to attempt to transmit their message, by XOR of their message with the bits of the selected sub-block. The resulting block is posted to the newsgroup with Post Type: "Difference". After retrieving all of the posted Difference Blocks, anyone can XOR the blocks together and view the "Result Block". Moderator will post official results with Post Type "Results", which will be conveniently separated into separate messages. If the 1k sub-block selected by a participant does not yield their original message in the Result Block they have suffered a collision. All participants who collide should not overlay a message in the following round. After observing the following round, participants who have collided select randomly from the empty blocks of that round, and attempt to send again. Wash, Rinse, Repeat. Additional Aspects: ------------------- To send a private message, participants should encrypt with the public key of the indended recipient. All participants who have not collided in the previous round must post a message (even if it is just random gibberish). If the net must be re-formed for any reason, the remaining participant with the Ordering Value closest to the MD5 digest of the last complete round of Result Blocks following the announcement by the previous moderator that the net must be reformed, or following three days of no postings by the moderator to alt.fan.david-sternlight. Although it was initially decided to announce this on both cypherpunks and the newsgroup, to maintain the proper degree of rude shock and befuddlement on alt.fan.d-s, we recommend that the protocol simply commence. Brought to you by: ------------------ The letter K, the number 2^644 - 1, and the Austin Cryptographer's Workshop. Acknowledgements: ----------------- The ACW wishes to thank Katz's Deli for providing the caffeine and bagels which made this project possible.

1 0

cypherpunk mindfucking
by an12070＠anon.penet.fi 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

there is some serious mindfucking going on recently with pseudo addresses in postings to the list. it has reached critical mass. i've been monitoring the list for some time. _pure_ cypherpunks, go back through your archives to discover the stinky irregularities. send the instances to the list and cc: me. something needs to be done about the fucking perversions. we are being mindfucked by traitors. a _large_ amount of list traffic is originating from a _few_ real identities. you know what they say about 90% of everything being crap, eh? 90% of the crap here is poison "from above". you want to know why there are too many postings? too much out-of-order crap? a lot of bizarre & abusive flames? strange newbies? _desperate_ opposition to changing the list status quo? heh. guess. it's called "damage control". the frauds are among us. they are under a lot of stress lately <evil grin> in fact, a lot of vomit from one or _two_ depraved persons through different sites, with lax authentication, say netcom.com, crl.com, anon.penet.fi, or io.com could look a lot like a "clique" eh? and if "they" were to do their cybermasturbation in public, it might look like "elitism" eh? there is quite a bit of jacking around lately... yeh, paranoid rants are really the only problem! heh. gee, i wonder how _long_ this has been going on ... since the beginning, i'm sure. that's the point. do not be afraid of "status". be sickened by it. you know why "leadership" is a bad word around here? heh, do a grep for "qualified personel" or "the agenda" or "a traitor, a hypocrite, a lackey" or "Clique" or "newbie" or "Bamberg" because there is nothing but mindfucking. "we can all pretend the agenda is what we favor" thanks to everyone who has sent me mail. keep it coming. i intend to get to the ugly bottom of this if i have to. there is a putrid rotten stench here, i pray to GOD that others will finally smell it. i'm getting closer. i'm breaking it _wide_ open. the pretenders and traitors will be shot. the Cause has been stalled. the Cause will conquer. the Cause will live on. beware of anyone who tells you to throw away your Cypherpunk archives. they are a record of treason. C.R.A.M. ------------------------------------------------------------------------- To find out more about the anon service, send mail to help(a)anon.penet.fi. Due to the double-blind, any mail replies to this message will be anonymized, and an anonymous id will be allocated automatically. You have been warned. Please report any problems, inappropriate use etc. to admin(a)anon.penet.fi.

2 1

Re: cypherpunk mindfucking
by jrk＠sys.uea.ac.uk 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Used to be that it was only Usenet that got pestered by children at the start of every academic year. Now they're getting wise to mailing lists. Inevitable, I suppose. Do the owners of this list have any policy on kicking people off? Or is it better to just ignore them, lest, like antibiotic-resistant bacteria, they learn to disguise themselves more effectively? -- ____ Richard Kennaway __\_ / School of Information Systems Internet: jrk(a)sys.uea.ac.uk \ X/ University of East Anglia uucp: ...mcsun!ukc!uea-sys!jrk \/ Norwich NR4 7TJ, U.K.

1 0

Glitches in PGP Messages
by VACCINIA＠UNCVX1.OIT.UNC.EDU 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

And now for something completely different, a question. Lately I have been the recipient of PGP encoded messages which look like this: ------Begin PGP Message------- ssdfkighjsdw'kjojnhsfkassofka[ofk[oaekfowwjkg[owlketglks[orkg[wpokloekfgtfoweo sadifhjwpiejfowjieffgoweito[ikweo[gikw[oekjg[owkjgokjweljkgw[jfowjhygwrkoettf[ sadfflo sadkpjfpajf[oqwkfo[qkfo[qekf[oekqffoekfg[wekfgoejfgoiwqekjkff;lqfpkqwep sd;kljfgfgv'pkisjdfgf'pskjmdgvmeduwelgl;wleiogl;ed;h,./rthledky,elky;elrth;rel ------End PGP Message-------- PGP gives me an error message if I try to decrypt this ciphertext. However, if I edit the ciphertext beforehand (connecting the two truncated lines) , the ciphertext can be decrypted. Is this just a glitch in the transmission? What would cause a text line to be disrupted onto two lines? I suppose it could occur during downloading or when it is sent thru the NET. My friend uses MacPGP 2.3. This has happened the last two times I have gotten my buddies messages. Any ideas as to what the possible causes of this simple glitch could be? Thanks. Scott G. Morham ! The First, Vaccinia(a)uncvx1.oit.unc.edu ! Second ! and Third ! Levels of ! Information Storage and Retrieval ! DNA, ! Biological Neural Nets, ! Cyberspace

2 1

DES: breaking, attacking
by koontzd＠lrcs.loral.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

>From: Karl Lui Barrus <klbarrus(a)owlnet.rice.edu> >interesting property of DES is that of complimentation. That is, if Thats complementation. T is the complement of T'. T is not complimenting T' on a new pair of shoes. >An upcoming book on cryptanalysis details this attack; the author >calculates success rates given various estimates for hardware (speed >and number) and frequency of key shifting. Whose book? There is a recent paper on brute force DES breaking: ripem.msu.edu:/pub/crypt/docs/des_key_search.ps, which discusses pipelined DES chips capable of doing 50 Million DES iterations per second. (I believe the rate is conservative, and can be increased by 50 percent.) The point being that any concept of time to attack DES found in print is in danger of being inaccurate shortly after publication. Also DES runs 1,000 - 2,000 times faster in hardware than software implementations (although someone sent mail saying they had a CRAY MP software version). NSA tried to get DES decertified for unclassified government data in 1987-88. I would guess they either saw the handwriting on the wall or have a key breaking machine. The machine in the paper cited above could break a key in 3 1/2 hours for $1 million in hardware costs, or a few minutes for $10 million worth of hardware. There are several criteria involved in cost/protection. NSA is still discouraging the spread of DES. Enough people using DES everywhere would make it harder to pick who they target, or require lots of key breaking machines to search for keys to lots of traffic. Assuming that an adversary had a machine capable of doing a search in 3 1/2 minutes that he could dedicate to finding your key, how often would you have to change keys to make it not worth while? If he was very interested in your traffic, it becomes a question of volume - can he decrypt all the traffic you generate in 24 hours in a 24 hour interval? A dedicated target search with unlimited money would make DES totally insecure. If on the other hand they have to wade through lots of encrypted traffic (Because there is no Law Enforcement Access Field ala clipper) from various parties, and it all needs to be decrypted, the cost/benefit ratio goes to hell. The real world falls somewhere in between. Hardware key attack machines can be defeated by using variants of the cryptographic algorithm they attack. Most variations of DES have been shown to be cryptographically weaker (Biham-Shamir, "Differential Cryptanalysis of the Digital Encryption Standard", (Chap 4), Springer-Verlag 1993). The Biham-Shamir book does point to at least one method of modifying DES that doesn't weaken it, incidently closing the complementation property. A lot of people have been using triple DES for years. There are several other schemes, or algorithms that are supposed to be harder to break for that matter. DES has had the lions share of non-government attention in the last several decades.

1 0

spread spectrum net (punk net)
by hiscdcj＠lux.latrobe.edu.au 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Hiyas, I've been discussing this with my friend who came up with the idea, and he said that if anyone wants to discuss this whole concept with him, feel free, he just doesn't have a huge mailbox, so he hasn't subscribed to the list. His address is: jon(a)werple.apana.org.au mention 'punk.net' which is his term for the concept. I prefer it to the current subject of 'spread spectrum nets' or whatever is the current vogue. Also, anyone know how to set up aliases under elm? Or is the list in general happy with this discussion taking place under the aegis of cypherpunks(a)toad.com ???? I'd set up an alias file under elm to handle this, and then we could boot off cypherpunk (maybe post a weekly digest or something) but the man page for elm is missing on this site (derrr...) Dwayne. (Dwayne Jones-Evans IRC: ddraig ) ( SCA: Cynon Yscolan ap Myrddin, Stormhold, Lochac, West) PGP public key available. finger me. be gentle. internet---> hiscdcj(a)lux.latrobe.edu.au

1 0