December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

Re: clipper and export
by Jonathan Rochkind 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

> > Is anyone else distrubed by the way that encryption export policy > and the > clipper chip seem to be linked {in administration policy, > and in the > press? > > Well, we helped made this connection happen! We, in the sense of the > overall letter-writing campaign...all those exhortations for us to > please get the Cantwell Bill moved along, those daily updates, etc. > EFF, CPSR, EPIC, and messages here on Cypherpunks and in other fora > (or forums). WEell, sure. And we all know that there _is_ actually a connection; liberalized export policies will make it hard for them to impose clipper as a standard without prohibiting other crypto. And I would assume they know this, and that's why {they wont' do it. And I would assume the privacy-freaks know this too, and that's why they support liberalizing export. But my concern is that no one seems to bring up the point that this is really _bad_ reasons for determining national policy regarding encryption export. The legislation that allows them to restrict export only does so on the basis of national security. _Not_ on the basis of "it'll make it easier to implement our domestic encryption policy". Everyone involved with the debate extensively realizes that this _is_ the basis on which the administration is determining export policy. But there seems to be no outcry abou{t it. I haven't even seen it brought up in any media, digital or print. And this is what I see is a problem. {Not only is {the government messing around with us here, but we seem to expect it so much that we dont' even bother to point it out or complain about it. I think we should be doing that. The public debate about export restriction should center on "is it actually a national security risk, and if it isn't, why not liberalize things?" Instead, there really is no debate, it's ob{vious that actual national security isn't even an issue in the Administration decision to {keep encryption export restrictions tight, and no one seems to think this is a problem! That's what I find disturbing.

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UNRELATED ABUSE OF BANDWIDTH
by Sandy Sandfort 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ SANDY SANDFORT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . C'punks, This is not a crypto post. It is a personal request, primarily directed to Cypherpunks in the San Jose area. It also skates perilously close to having "commercial" content. Please tune out now if any of this bothers you. My son-in-law wants to barter services in exchange for a good second-hand computer. He is an RC (Radio Controlled) airplane flight instructor. He can also offer other RC related services. His preference would be a Mac, but he would consider a PC clone. It doesn't have to be the most up-to-date model. He wants to use it for business applications, CAD and video editing. I also want him to have a modem so he and I can keep in touch. (I guess the crypto tie-in is that I'll expect him to use PGP.) If you are interested in the swap, send me e-mail, or call him directly. His name and number are: Walter Berggren 408-971-0110 Thanks for reading this message, S a n d y ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

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by the way NSA...
by John Young 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

This amplifies Perry's post on the annual intelligence black budget of $28 billion. NY Times, November 25, 1993: . . . the black budget is estimated to be nearly $28 billion this year. The money is hidden under falsified line items in the Pentagon's budget. The secret budget finances the National Security Agency, which conducts electronic eavesdropping; the National Reconnaissance Office, which builds spy satellites; the Central Intelligence Agency, and a host of military intelligence activities. . . . the CIA spends less than 15 per cent of the total espionage budget. Pentagon agencies spend almost all the rest. At the CIA, Mr. Woolsey voiced doubts about disclosing the sum, saying it would lead to a debate over its constituent elements. End quotes. And there is more than this budget covers. For all kinds of intelligence costs (and crypto business opportunities) see Jeffrey T. Richelson's The US Intelligence Community, 1989, ISBN 0-88730-226-2.

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EFF Analysis of Vice-President Gore's Letter on Cryptography Policy
by Stanton McCandlish 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

EFF Analysis of Vice-President Gore's Letter on Cryptography Policy ------------------------------------------------------------------- July 22, 1994 Two days ago, Vice-President Al Gore signaled a major setback in the Administration's Clipper program, and a willingness to engage in serious negotiations leading to a comprehensive new policy on digital privacy and security. Many questions remain about the future, but one thing is certain: Clipper is a dead end, and those of us who are concerned about digital privacy have won a new opportunity to shape a better policy. The Vice-President's letter to Rep. Maria Cantwell (D-WA) made it clear that while Clipper might have a small place in the telephone security market, it has no future in the digital world. "...[T]he Clipper Chip is an approved federal standard for telephone communications and not for computer networks and video networks. For that reason, we are working with industry to investigate other technologies for those applications.... We welcome the opportunity to work with industry to design a more versatile, less expensive system. Such a key escrow system would be implementable in software, firmware, hardware, or any combination thereof, would not rely upon a classified algorithm, would be voluntary, and would be exportable." Clipper does not meet most of these criteria, so, according to the Vice- President, it is a dead end. END OF THE LINE FOR CLIPPER -- LONG-RUN EFFORT TO DRIVE MARKET WILL FAIL The premise of the Clipper program was that the government could drive the market toward use of encryption products which incorporated government-based key escrow agents. A series of subtle and not so subtle government actions would encourage private citizens to use this technology, thus preserving law enforcement access to encrypted communications. Clipper was originally announced as the first element of a family of hardware-based, government key escrow encryption devices that would meet security needs for both voice and data communications on into the future. Clipper itself was purely a voice and low-speed data product, but other members of the Skipjack family, including Tessera and Capstone, were to be compatible with Clipper and were intended to lead the way from escrowed encryption in voice to escrowed encryption for data. Plans are already announced, in fact, to use Tessera and Capstone in large government email networks. At the time, the hope was that government use of this technology would push private sector users toward key escrow systems as well. Now, the announcement that the Administration is re-thinking plans for data encryption standards leaves Clipper a stranded technology. No one wants to buy, or worse yet, standardize on, technology which has no upgrade path. As a long-run effort to force the market toward government-escrowed encryption standards, Clipper is a failure. WE STILL MUST WORK FOR VOLUNTARY, OPEN, EXPORTABLE STANDARDS The fight for privacy and security in digital media is by no means over. Though the Administration has backed away from Clipper, and expressed willingness to talk about other solutions, we are pursuing serious progress on the following issues: * Improved telephone encryption standards For the reasons listed by the Vice-President, in addition to the inherent problems of making copies of all your keys available, Clipper is a poor choice for telephone encryption. Industry should develop a standard for truly secure and private telephones, make them available from multiple manufacturers worldwide, and make them interoperate securely with audio conferencing software on multimedia PC's. * Truly voluntary standards Any cryptographic standard adopted by the government for private sector use must be truly voluntary. Voluntary means, to us, that there are statutory guarantees that no citizen will be required or pressured into using the standard for communications with the government, or with others. No government benefits, services, or programs should be conditioned on use of a particular standard, especially if it involves government or private key escrow. * Open standards Standards chosen must be developed in an open, public process, free from classified algorithms. The worldwide independent technical community must be able to create and evaluate draft standards, without restriction or government interference, and without any limits on full participation by the international cryptographic community. * No government escrow systems Any civilian encryption standard which involves government getting copies of all the keys poses grave threats to privacy and civil liberties, and is not acceptable in a free society. * Liberalization of export controls Lifting export controls on cryptography will make the benefits of strong cryptography widely available to our own citizens. U.S. hardware, software and consumer electronics manufacturers will build encryption into affordable products once they are given access to a global marketplace. Today's widespread availability of "raw" cryptographic technology both inside and outside the United States shows that the technology will always be available to "bad guys". The real question is whether our policies will allow encryption to be built into the fabric of our national and international infrastructure, to provide significantly increased individual privacy, improved financial privacy, increased financial security, enhanced freedom of association, increased individual control over identity, improved security and integrity of documents, contracts, and licenses, reduced fraud and counterfeiting, the creation of significant new markets for buying and selling of intellectual property, and a lessened ability to detect and prosecute victimless crimes. These benefits are not free, however. EFF does recognize that new communications technologies pose real challenges to the work of law enforcement. Just as the automobile, the airplane, and even the telephone created new opportunities for criminal activity, and new difficulties for law enforcement, encryption technology will certainly require changes in traditional investigative techniques. We also recognize that encryption will prevent many of the online crimes that will likely occur without it. We further believe that these technologies will create new investigative tools for law enforcement, even as they obsolete old ones. Entering this new environment, private industry, law enforcement, and private citizens must work together to balance the requirements of both liberty and security. Finally, the export controls used today to attempt to control this technology are probably not Constitutional under the First Amendment; if the problems of uncontrolled export are too great, a means of control must be found which does not restrict free expression. CONGRESSIONAL LEADERSHIP TOWARD COMPREHENSIVE POLICY FRAMEWORK IS CRITICAL The efforts of Congresswoman Maria Cantwell, Senator Patrick Leahy, and other members of Congress, show that comprehensive policies on privacy, security and competitiveness in digital communication technologies can only be achieved with the active involvement of Congress. Unilateral policy efforts by the Executive branch, such as Clipper and misguided export control policies, will not serve the broad interests of American citizens and businesses. So, we are pleased to see that the Vice-President has pledged to work with the Congress and the private sector in shaping a forward-looking policy. We see the Vice-President's letter to Congresswoman Cantwell as an important opening for dialogue on these issues. The principles of voluntariness and open standards announced in the Vice- President's letter, as well as those mentioned here, must be incorporated into legislation. We believe that under the leadership of Senator Leahy, Reps. Cantwell, Valentine, Brooks and others, this will be possible in the next congress. EFF is eager to work with the Congress, the Administration, along with other private sector organizations to help formulate a new policy. EFF is also pleased to be part of the team of grass roots activism, industry lobbying, and public interest advocacy which has yielded real progress on these issues. FOR MORE INFORMATION CONTACT: Jerry Berman, Executive Director <jberman(a)eff.org> Daniel J. Weitzner, Deputy Policy Director <djw(a)eff.org> For the full text of the Gore/Cantwell letter, see: ftp.eff.org, /pub/Alerts/gore_clipper_retreat_cantwell_072094.letter gopher.eff.org, 1/Alerts, gore_clipper_retreat_cantwell_072094.letter http://www.eff.org/pub/Alerts/gore_clipper_retreat_cantwell_072094.letter

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Gore's "new and improved" key escrow proposal
by mpjohnso＠nyx10.cs.du.edu 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Just think how easy it would be to comply with software key escrow requirements: imagine a new PGP option -- +encrypt_to_escrow_agents=on The escrow agent's PGP public key could be shipped with every copy of PGP... naturally, every PGP user will be required by law not to override this option if the Vice President gets his way. --- sound of tongue being removed from cheek --- I have tried to think of a positive use for key escrow. The only thing that I have come up with so far is kind of like having local key escrow within one company, or something like that. Kind of like having a master key that fits all the offices in one wing of a building, or something like that. That could be good in some business uses, provided you could pick your own trusted master key holder. I don't think that is what Al Gore has in mind.

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Re: by the way...
by Claborne, Chris 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Perry writes: << For those who believe "the NSA can do ANYTHING" or some such, an article in the New York Times claims the annual black budget now seems to be hovering around $28 Billion per year, for ALL secret government work. >> That's all the money that you KNOW about :) 2 -- C --

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No Subject
by C331673%LBVM6.profs＠mdcgwy.mdc.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

This is my first post, so please be kind. I have what I I think, IMHO, is a simple question. If the government "outlawed" non-escrow keyed encryption, how would they get a conviction for a supposed violation? How could they prove in a court of law (assuming we would still have courts...) that a note that looks like nonsense, is in fact encrypted? If they decyphered it, how would they know/prove that the new "plaintext" is in fact plaintext that you started with? Could they write code that could fabricate notes from giberish? What if you encrypted a love letter and they 'decrypted' a drug deal? Also, on the national ID card issue, I was involved in bar codes (machine readable labels) and came across really small (grain of rice sized) transponders with ID number encoded. These could then be machine (transducer) readable. They were glass coated and had various industrial applications. I have since read that they have implanted them in pets to identify them if they run away. Next step would be implanting them in people. You would then have an absolute way to ID people (short of surgery). Police could carry transducers, wave it in your direction and know who you are. Cellular terminal could get whatever data they had on you. No way you could impersonate LD. No way to stay 'private'. Hang the transponder on the doorway of a bldg to monitor traffic. (OJ coulda proven his alibi....) Use it in the local supermarket to do biz with. Better then an ATM card, cuz you'll never lose it. A brave, new world awaits. Wadda you think? Conrad Walton Cwalton(a)delphi.com

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Re: Gore's "new and improved" key escrow proposal
by shamrock＠netcom.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Michael wrote: > >I have tried to think of a positive use for key escrow. The only thing that I >have come up with so far is kind of like having local key escrow within one >company, or something like that. Kind of like having a master key that fits >all the offices in one wing of a building, or something like that. That could >be good in some business uses, provided you could pick your own trusted master >key holder. I don't think that is what Al Gore has in mind. I think there is a use for key escow in our society. As someone else has suggested on this list, all internal communication of the government should use escowed keys. I propse us Cypherpunks as one of the escow agents. Defininity not what Gore had in mind. -- Lucky Green <shamrock(a)netcom.com> PGP public key by finger

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Re:
by shamrock＠netcom.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Conrad wrote: >Could they write code that could fabricate notes from giberish? >What if you encrypted a love letter and they 'decrypted' a drug deal? > That would be rather easy to acomplish with a secret algorithm. Still possible, but not quite as easy with a published one. I am sure it will be done. >Also, on the national ID card issue, I was involved in bar codes >(machine readable labels) and came across really small (grain of >rice sized) transponders with ID number encoded. These could then be >machine (transducer) readable. They were glass coated and had >various industrial applications. I have since read that they have >implanted them in pets to identify them if they run away. Next step >would be implanting them in people. You would then have an absolute >way to ID people (short of surgery). > I think this is the real problem that awaits us. While I do not believe that society is quite ready for it to be broadly deployed, I think that it inevitably will happen. First to monitor conviced criminals (to make sure that rapist really stays away from schools), then children (in case they get abduced), soon afterwards everyone else. And you know what? The public will _ask_ for it. Picture of happy shopper. "Citibank transducer (TM). Now nobody can use my account without my knowledge and best of all -- I don't have to remember to bring a card. I can't understand why not everyone is doing it." Jingle. -- Lucky Green <shamrock(a)netcom.com> PGP public key by finger

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Cypherpunks = soc.women.... ?
by rishab＠dxm.ernet.in 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

The Newsweek cover on sexism on the Net may have basis; there may be a need to discuss these issues; an occassional post on the subject may be useful on this list -- but 40k? Please move this to soc.women.attitudes or alt.fan.true-lies or something. Funny. Our resident editor, Perry, is usually pretty quick on the draw with scathing "what's this to do with crypto" messages. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Rishab Aiyer Ghosh "Clean the air! clean the sky! wash the wind! rishab(a)dxm.ernet.in take stone from stone and wash them..." Voice/Fax/Data +91 11 6853410 Voicemail +91 11 3760335 H 34C Saket, New Delhi 110017, INDIA

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Gore to Cantwell
by rishab＠dxm.ernet.in 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

I hope you've all seen the latest EPIC bulletin. Gore's letter to Cantwell: > "On the other hand, we agree that we need to take action this > year to ensure that over time American companies are able to include > information security features in their program in order to maintain > their international competitiveness. We can achieve this by entering > into a new phase of cooperation among government, industry > representatives and privacy advocates with a goal of trying to develop > a key escrow encryption system that will provide strong encryption, be > acceptable to computer users worldwide, and address our national ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ > security needs as well. Horses have blinkers on the sides of their eyes so that they look straight. Do politicians have eyes at all? ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Rishab Aiyer Ghosh "Clean the air! clean the sky! wash the wind! rishab(a)dxm.ernet.in take stone from stone and wash them..." Voice/Fax/Data +91 11 6853410 Voicemail +91 11 3760335 H 34C Saket, New Delhi 110017, INDIA

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Accessing the Cpunk WAIS archive
by rishab＠dxm.ernet.in 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

"Gary Jeffers" <vikram!CCGARY(a)MIZZOU1.missouri.edu> > http://pmip.maricopa.edu/crypt/cypherpunks/Cypherpunks.src > is the location of all the Cypherpunks' posts with index. I can > get to this place by placing a "www" in front of this instruction. Do an archie search for lynx or mosaic or some other decent browser. This is a WAIS indexed archive; no hyper links; you type in a keyword, and get a list of matching articles, and select one (or more) of them to look at. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Rishab Aiyer Ghosh "Clean the air! clean the sky! wash the wind! rishab(a)dxm.ernet.in take stone from stone and wash them..." Voice/Fax/Data +91 11 6853410 Voicemail +91 11 3760335 H 34C Saket, New Delhi 110017, INDIA

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Re: Gore's "new and improved" key escrow proposal
by wcs＠anchor.ho.att.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Eli writes: > Tim May said: > > Others here will have a clearer idea than I have, but I don't think a > > "software standard" is what is now being planned. Software-only > > solution cannot possibly have the security that's needed [...] > > My reading of the BSA blurb was that software key escrow really is > being planned: "software implementable [and] based on a non-classified > encryption formula". Yes, this sounds pretty silly. I don't see how > you could possibly prevent a rogue phone from interoperating with a > fascistic one. Guess I need to snarf the original document. Whit Diffie gave a talk at a recent Bay Area Cypherpunks meeting about the software-only master-key system that Dorothy Denning and friends are working with. He'd talked about it earlier, and it was discussed at a workshop at Univ.Karlsruhe they went to. Essentially, it's a fairly clean protocol for sending a session key and a master key, encrypted with a keymaster's public key, in a way that the recipient of the message (who knows the separately-negotiated session key) can duplicate the public-key-encrypted access-field chunk to verify it. The wrinkle that was noticed at the workshop was that you can use anybody's ID in the ID field, so there's a need for your master-key (which is already digitally signed by the keymasters) to include some verification; I don't remember the details, though it was fixable after some mild embarassment for the statists. As far as communications between rogue phones and conformist phones, it's actually stronger than Clipper turned out to be - if the conformist receiver *wants* to verify that the access-field is correct, it can, so you have to generate it correctly, while you could generate a fake Clipper checksum in ~2**16 tries and the receiver wouldn't know. For end-to-end communications, that's ok; if you and your friend are both non-conformists, you don't need to check access fields, and you gain a small setup-time advantage by not checking. But your cellular phone company will probably be Conformist, as required by Digital Telephony Initiative #N, and your bank may be as well (assuming the government continues to regulate banks.) Unlike tamperproof secret-design hardware, an open wiretap protocol can't force you to be conformist - but traditional government regulations have worked to keep banks and phone companies conforming in the past. Will they be able to get us to accept this abuse? Maybe. I hope Clipper put a bad enough taste in the public's mouth that they won't get away with it, but a hardware chip is a lot more concrete than "telecommunications software protocol standards" for many people. Depends on whether the government looks like they're "compromising" (which looks good and nice) or "continuing to push this trash even after they've lost" (which looks obnoxious, but they seems to be getting away with it quite well with National ID cards - they're on about their 5th attempt.) Bill # Bill Stewart AT&T Global Information Solutions, aka NCR Corp # 6870 Koll Center Parkway, Pleasanton CA, 94566 Phone 1-510-484-6204 fax-6399 # email bill.stewart(a)pleasantonca.ncr.com billstewart(a)attmail.com # ViaCrypt PGP Key IDs 384/C2AFCD 1024/9D6465

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Re: Voice/Fax Checks
by Hal 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Eric Hughes writes: >You can still use an account mechanism, but with an intermediary whose >business it is to aggregate small amounts as these proposed and clear >the total periodically. That's now one account setup for the >customer. How, though, would the ftp site which wants to know whether I'm "good for" the one cent charge to download PGP do so? Does it have to check with an agent on the net somewhere which will vouch for me? Aren't the communica- tion costs then the same as an online system? Or does it extend me the one cent as credit and hope that I really do have an account with that agent (or bank)? Then that seems like a basic off-line system. So I don't understand the role of agents in solving this problem. I find it confusing to imagine a situation where large numbers of goods are sold for very low prices. Will people tend to cheat, since it's easy to get away with it (all those systems offering you one cent credits), or will they tend to be honest, since the per-use cost is so low (but perhaps adds up over a month)? I suspect that nobody will pay if there is a way they can use the servers without paying, even though they are only saving a fraction of a cent each time. Maybe that's just my jaundiced view of human nature. Hal

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Re: Voice/Fax Checks
by Pierre Uszynski 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

A couple of pointers on current outfits trying to undercut the "transaction cost", none of them the ultimate we all root for, but nonetheless. hfinney(a)shell.portal.com writes > Robert Hettinga writes: > > >I've gotten stuck on > >exactly how to "*undercut*" the transaction costs of existing methods. Got > >any ideas? > > It's pretty clear that credit cards don't work for some of the transactions > people want to do: > [...] > It's not that easy for a mail-order shoestring startup to get the ability to > accept VISA cards. Because of the danger of fraud, the credit card companies > like to see a storefront and/or some previous history. Someone who writes a > nifty PGP shell and wants to sell it for $10 per will have this problem. It's actually getting easier. Small card service outfits have noticed the problem. They have looked at the danger of fraud, and when accepting a new company, still conduct a sufficient investigation (so they claim :-). They have also looked at the way small outfits operate. The result is that it seems it is now possible for "home businesses" like BBS's or software sellers to get cheaper service than store fronts. It comes out to something like $25 a month + 2.5-3% per charge ($0.20 minimum per charge, $25 minimum per month) + equipment, roughly, for VISA and Mastercard. As an example, in the San Francisco area, try ... errr... <grumble>... (Darn it, I buried that guy's card... try the phone book :-) > 3) People who don't like giving out their credit card numbers to an unknown > email address. Or to a small random unknown business... Which is a problem even if everybody could accept VISA, as you mentioned. Others already mentioned on the list the 1-900 phone based "netcash" <shrug> service described in July 1994 Boardwatch Magazine. You call the 900 number with your modem, you get a random string for it, and your phone company bills you $10 (info at netbank-info(a)agents.com) You then can get change (down to $0.25 strings), do on-line validation of transactions, and eventually redeem the strings, minus a 20% redemption fee. In addition to that one service, I already heard of two others that cater in particular to BBS's, similar system where you get billed $10 for a 900 call, and get a random string to use as a voucher. These two don't let you "get change" or any similar facility, but they let small businesses get rid of the "collection" process, for a fee. In all these cases, the fee is around 20-25%, so there may be space for competition (I don't have the coordinates for these, just know where to ask). That was/is actually the strong point of the French Minitel system (as much as I can't stand that piece of plastic ****): Minitel services are accessed (mostly) through 900 style numbers, and France Telecom handles all the billing and collection for the Minitel service providers, allowing charges as low as 7 cents per call to a service (most are much higher, WAY higher). We already discussed the "phone check" idea, even Western Union advertised it, and maybe even provides it :-) Clearly all these systems have disadvantages, and are some way from what some of us want, but they show that the current "billing" services are not standing still, and are working on this access barrier to credit card payment. Clearly too, they don't seem to be working in the direction we want. Pierre. pierre(a)shell.portal.com

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Re: Double DES calculations
by DAVESPARKS＠delphi.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Hal Finney wrote: > I'll give you one similar example, though. I think this is the technique > used in Pollard "rho" factoring. You have an iterated series, x=f(x), and > you want to know if it has any cycles, any values which are eventually > repeated. At first glance you might think that to look for a cycle of > length N you would have to store N values of the series and check each > value for a match, taking order of N in time and space. The Pollard tech- > nique instead runs two copies of the iteration at once, one twice as fast > as the other: x=f(x) and y=f(f(y)). Each time you just compare x and y > for a match. This takes about twice as long but uses no memory. The thread was concerning the vulnerability of Double-DES with an intermediate layer of IDEA in the middle. It was proposed that if IDEA could ultimately be TRIVIALLy cracked, then DES-IDEA-DES was no stronger than Double-DES. At that point I did some "back of the envelope" calculations on the cost of breaking Double-DES using a MITM attack. I'm not sure how "cycles" fit into DES. The brute-force technique I was hypothesizing involved trying all possible keys on the encrypt and decrypt sides, storing them the resultant 64 bit blocks (all 2^60 bytes of them), then comparing them. How would Pollard rho speed that up? /--------------+------------------------------------\ | | Internet: davesparks(a)delphi.com | | Dave Sparks | Fidonet: Dave Sparks @ 1:207/212 | | | BBS: (909) 353-9821 - 14.4K | \--------------+------------------------------------/

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Steve Winter Declares War in Cyberspace
by nobody＠kaiwan.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

I just FTPed this from the Fidonet archives over at ftp.fidonet.org. It looks as if, if this nut case has his way, we may have a "Waco in cyberspace". For those of you who "enjoyed" Ralph Stokes' Ruckmanite spam entitled "Beware of Roman Catholic Corruption" which brewed in the bowels of Fidoland for years before spilling over into Internet/Usenet, Steve Winter has the *POTENTIAL* to do far more damage. He owns not only a Fido node, but the entire "PRIME Net" structure, as well. His Internet address, BTW, is "Steve.Winter(a)f98.n18.z1.fidonet.org". Yes, the ".n18" means he's in Fidonet region 18, just like our old "friend" Ralph (the Mouth) Stokes <Ralph.Stokes(a)f1611.n375.z1.fidonet.org>. If those two were ever to team up... If you doubt the truthfulness of this, because of my need to post anonymously, feel free to FTP the file for yourself and have a look. The file can be obtained via anonymous FTP from ftp.fidonet.org as /pub/fidonet/fidonews/fnewsb29.lzh and you can verify this for yourself. Anyway, enjoy, beware, learn, or whatever: ********************************************************************** F I D O N E W S -- Vol.11 No.29 (18-Jul-1994) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- The FIDO Crucifixion by Steve Winter (1:18/98) Some of you out there have been giving me a lot of bad press lately. I don't really care because the bible tells me that false christian scum will try to deter me from my mission to correct the lies and Satan-influenced false teachings of deviant so-called pastors. I don't care. They can flay my skin, draw and quarter me and even take steps to censor me in FIDO, but I will carry on. Recently, I became aware of a new threat to the true church of Jesus,that being these people who call themselves "Pagans". They should more properly call themselves Heathens or even Satanists. Yes, I have investigated many of these new age BBSs and I have only one thing to say. THEY MUST GO!! The devil will not be allowed to exert domain where Jesus rules King. We shall persue these godless satanic groups until the last one has been exorcised or given over to the Lord for disposal. We must seek them out and destroy their places of depravity and destroy their rings of stone and their alters where babies are sacrificed to appease their lord and master Satan himself. Good Christians everywhere must join together to eradicate this unwholesome threat to the very fibre and existance of mankind, and we must do it NOW! I am asking the following of every Christian FIDO reader that can see this message to disrupt, destroy and do away with every pagan BBS in their area. Crash their their boards, and upload ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ viruses, what ever you need to do. These are scum of the earth ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ and if I had MY way these idiots would be swinging from lamp posts like Mussolini did after World War II. Let the dogs eat their flesh and the bones be crushed under the feet of the legions of God's people. If we all can get together on this ONE thing, we can eradicate this threat to mankind within 6 months. Call your local police and report these deviants. Report their crimes against children and if possible, infiltrate them so that we can accumulate a listing of these disgusting pawns of Satan. We must act now or surrender FIDO to the Satan controlled minions of the dark side of man. Crush them like the vermin they are. THIS IS WAR! FidoNews 11-29 Page: 7 18 Jul 1994

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Re: Card Playing Protocol? (fwd)
by Arsen Ray Arachelian 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Sat, 23 Jul 1994 01:19:02 -0400 (GMT+4:00) From: Arsen Ray Arachelian <rarachel(a)prism.poly.edu> To: "Roy M. Silvernail" <roy(a)sendai.cybrspc.mn.org> Subject: Re: Card Playing Protocol? On Wed, 20 Jul 1994, Roy M. Silvernail wrote: > The effect could be different. I use i there because I want to traverse > the deck from one end to the other, and exchange each card with a > randomly selected card from the unprocessed remainder. This algorithm > goes back to my 8-bit days, when speed was everything. Although some > cards might be handled twice (probably about 35%, but I haven't done the > math), each position in the deck is filled only once (except the last > one, which is forced from the other 53). > > A card in position X will, in its turn, be moved to a random position > between itself and one end of the deck. But that card is also subject > to being 'picked from behind' when an earlier card is exchanged. So any > given card may end up on either side of its beginning location. > > But I think there's something to what you're saying. I can't articulate > it, but I get a sense that the single-pass algorithm might have a > definable shape The issue is this: at the start a card has a 1/54 chance of being swapped with >ANY< card. The second card has a chance of 1/53 of being swapped with >ANY< card, the third, a chance of 1/52... the 50th card has a chance of 1/4, ... the 53rd card has a 1/2 chance of being swaped with the last card or remains in its place (swapped with itself.) So what I'm getting at is that the cards at one end of the deck have more "mobility" than the cards in the other end of the deck. The 1st cards have a more spread out distribution so they have LESS of a chance of being swapped out with the cards at the back of the deck. The cards at the back of the deck have a very tight space from which to be swapped. Therein lies the problem of sorting. As for SPEED, in the eight bit days, it would be faster to do a MOD with a CONSTANT number than with a variable. Why? Because the compiler can find ways of optimizing the MOD via right shifts and substractions rather than using repeated substraction alone. There was some challenge somewhere to come up with ways of dividing numbers via shifting and substraction some time ago. I'm sure the division for 54 is faster than a general integer divide by substraction. It's hard to figure out how to divide by 54 via shifting, however, it would do wonders for an eight bit machine. These days, some machines have integer/floating division right in the CPU that's just as fast or almost as fast. With FPU's, even faster than shifting. :-) Let's see... how do I break 54 down.... hmmm.. Okay, if we trash the jokers it becomes easier: 52/4 == 52>>2. This equals 13. Now 13 being a prime can't be divided... I guess this is one way of looking at the card value and stripping off the suite. However, having divided by 4, you saved yourself four times the work already. So you take your picked card C and substract C>>2 from it. If the result is positive, you've got a remainder to a division by 4. You then substract 13 until you would get a negative value if you did one more substraction. The left over value is the mod 54 (I think. Someone correct me if I'm wrong.) Anyhow, this is moot as you don't need to do this by hand anymore anyway.. :-) Besides, if you want to cheat a bit, you can always take lrand() &0x0000003F which would give you a range from 0 to 63, and if you should get a value larger than 53, you substract 54 from it. :-) Since all you want is a random number from 0 to 53, it doesn't much matter. I guarantee that this is faster than division on most of the common machines anyway. :-) > An interesting thought. Guessing a card's location is pretty tough, > though. I was thinking more of seasoned players noticing the absence of > patterns they had become accustomed to. I know I saw some definite > trends when I was an avid Cribbage player. Yes, but an AI could also be trained with these patterns. A neural network attached to a tracking engine that keeps track of his hand and guesses at his opponents hand and the "odds" of what cards can come up next against the odds of what he needs to win with isn't easy, but if done right, it can prove a formidable opponent for the beginer poker player. :-) It would be matched by seasoned players undoubtedly. However, what I'm getting to here is an automated digital cash paying/payed casio dealer. That is you could set up a telnet site where others can gamble against your computer. (I'll leave the legalities of this to others :-) If this machine is done the right way, even with mental poker and even if it can't cheat you, it's still a very good card shark. You could charge say, half a ghostmark or whatever per 10 games just to play, plus a minimum bet of one ghostmark per hand with doubling/raising/etc being allowed. Hell, if you really want to get sick, you can have the AI keep databases of the player's past patterns and how he ticks. Unless players use random anonymous packet bouncers, such AI's could be properly used to run a real cypherspace <g> casino. I'm sure if we look up some mobsters and give them this idea they'd be happy to implement it once digital cash appears in wide use. Of course we're talking about ten years in the future, or never if digi cash never makes it... Don't however think that this can't be done. There are chess games that "think" ahead. If programmed with the right set of fuzzy rules and given extensive databases as to the opponents past moves/prefrences/bluffs/etc, such an AI would be a great card shark. Of course our player may decide to write a better auto-player and have it play against another AI. :-) But hey, if we're going to have smart agents, their owners can be "backers" as there are for real gamblers out there already. :-) > In poker, each hand gets a fresh shuffle. Blackjack will exhaust the > deck to a certain point and then shuffle. Depending on the house, Yep.. the reason I asked was because in high school we played by almost no rules. We'd have games where the "odd" numbered cards were wild, picture cards wild, etc.... shit like that was common place... I guess it's bastardisation, but hey, it was fun and not for money. And we didn't reshuffle often. BTW: Idea to prevent dealer cheating while shuffling the deck: Alice Builds the deck from Ace of Spades to King o'Diamonds, encrypts it, shuffles it herself, passes it to Bob, who shuffles it again, and encrypts it, then passes it to Alice who picks her hand, etc. If the cards are shuffled between every hands, this would prevent an AI from keeping tack of the odds of unplayed cards.

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900 Mhz. cordless phone with encryption
by nobody＠shell.portal.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Can anyone recommend a good 900 Mhz. cordless phone with some sort of voice encryption or scrambling? My most important objective is maximum range from the base unit, but I'd also like some privacy, too. Thanks.

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wanted SueDNym messages
by Arsen Ray Arachelian 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

If you have copies of the posts posted by Sue D Nym, please pass them my way. I have a new toy I'm working on and I just fed it D*weiler's messages to it as archived by Rishab Aiyer Ghosh. I'd like to feed it Sue's message and see what it comes up with. Also send any other suspected or actual D*weiler messages. BTW: This new toy is now in Alpha testing. It's called M E D U S A's T E N T A C L E S. (I'm deliberatly munging up the names with spaces and such to get around your kill files as I belive this program may be of use to you, especially if you have our friend Det in your kill file. (I feel like I can't say the name of demon for fear of summoning it. :-) This is more like for the fear of killing this message. <g>) Thanx for your time.... Ain't Fuzzy Logic Grand?

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Re: wanted SueDNym messages
by Peter Murphy 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

But what's this MEDUSA's TENTACLES program meant to be? An artificial intelligence modelled on the personality of LD? <yeegawdz!> Peter.

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Re: Double DES calculations
by DAVESPARKS＠delphi.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Hal Finney wrote: > Most of the time-space tradeoffs that I can think of for a basic MITM > attack like this are pretty costly. For example, instead of trying all > the keys on both sides you could try just half the keys each time. This > would take only half as much space but up to four times the time. You > could also do some hashing to save space at the cost of false positives > and more time. Again, the point is not so much that double DES is weak, > but more that if its strength is solely due to space costs that gives much > less of a good feeling than if you had an algorithm that was strong both > in space and in time. Agreed, Hal. I was just pointing out the fallacy of saying that 2-DES would only take *TWICE* as long to break as 1-DES. While there are some tradeoffs that trade space for time, the one virtually constant factor is monetary cost. Whether it's 300 million drives running for 10+ days to crack the key, or 10 million for a year or so, the total energy consumed will be virtually the same. By my calculations, the energy costs alone would be over half a billion dollars per key. Not only that, but one of these hypothetical $1.5 TRILLION "monster crackers" can still only break 30 keys a year. (Good reason to generate temporary session keys!) Also, I neglected the "overhead" costs associated, such as periodic maintenance on all those drives. Drives in nearly constant use will need frequent maintenance, especially head cleaning, which is not a trivial task on 300 million drives. The only way I can see that this would be cost-effective is to locate it near a prison (for cheap convict labor) with a cheap power source nearby. That, or invent a cheaper storage medium than DAT. In the final analysis, though, you're right. I'd hate to calculate the cost to break 3-DES. Unless you're encrypting a high speed data link in real time, where utmost throughput is essential, I see no reason to not use that, or something equally strong. /--------------+------------------------------------\ | | Internet: davesparks(a)delphi.com | | Dave Sparks | Fidonet: Dave Sparks @ 1:207/212 | | | BBS: (909) 353-9821 - 14.4K | \--------------+------------------------------------/

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Dialogue With Detweiler
by rishab＠dxm.ernet.in 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Blanc, While your conversation with LD may be too much for the whole list (I for one have been ambushed by this sudden spurt in activity) as his posts are rarely less than 15k, I'd request you to archive them, so that they can be added to The Detweiler Files, available on ftp from someplace on Robert Hayden's site. They should be interesting. After all, students of information society unable to find a topic for their theses can always choose The Proliferation Of Pseudospoofing Tentacles, or The Sniffer Of Medusas. Seriously. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Rishab Aiyer Ghosh "Clean the air! clean the sky! wash the wind! rishab(a)dxm.ernet.in take stone from stone and wash them..." Voice/Fax/Data +91 11 6853410 Voicemail +91 11 3760335 H 34C Saket, New Delhi 110017, INDIA

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Re: Schneier
by rishab＠dxm.ernet.in 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

tim werner <vikram!werner(a)mc.ab.com>: > I ordered [Schneier's] book, when it first came out, from the local Borders book > store. When I went to pick it up, they told me that if I decided to buy it > I could not return it, since it was not a book that they would otherwise > not stock it > Today I was there checking out the computer books, and they had a copy on > the shelf, so I guess it was in enough demand that they decided to stock it. I found a few copies in a local bookshop the other day. When it first came out, I thought I'd have to order it, and was pleasantly surprised to find it already in stock. But then I buy books on discount from an academic distributor, so that was probably to be expected. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Rishab Aiyer Ghosh "Clean the air! clean the sky! wash the wind! rishab(a)dxm.ernet.in take stone from stone and wash them..." Voice/Fax/Data +91 11 6853410 Voicemail +91 11 3760335 H 34C Saket, New Delhi 110017, INDIA

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Cypherpunks = alt.tentacles
by rishab＠dxm.ernet.in 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

C'punks, I hate to do this yet again, I'm all for free speech etc, but today I got 600k of c'punk mail. I don't mind paying for the extra garbage that comes over my SLIP link, but when there's so much of it, I have to protest. I propose the creation of a new news group: alt.tentacles (and alt.medusa.detweiler) to discuss what's occupied 70% of the past few days mail. Take care, and avoid too much seafood. Rishab ps. I _am_ enjoying the discussion on alternatives to 3DES. When I can find it, that is. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Rishab Aiyer Ghosh "Clean the air! clean the sky! wash the wind! rishab(a)dxm.ernet.in take stone from stone and wash them..." Voice/Fax/Data +91 11 6853410 Voicemail +91 11 3760335 H 34C Saket, New Delhi 110017, INDIA

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