December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

Re: Status of Cypherpunks list sites?
by John Young 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Okay, mace me, I'm still posting to toad, and receiving from it, along with dupes from cyberpass, and TAing the latency. Toad's stuff comes right through, fast, while it's +/- all over the chart from cyberpass -- up to eight hours delay at times, even a day later, with answers to vital controversies coming before the issue is shown to be misunderstood squat. Excuse cyberpass dis for disarray, but toad's speed is handy when you've nothing to say and want to instantly scream it very clearly to yourself and the empty void rather than face the horror of fixing insyntax. And, praise elvis, not all vaporings that come from toad makes it past molassel cyberpass, although most eventually oozes in. Null stench especially pops up from world-sucking toad, the kind that makes one's own East Coast voidance smell not so bad. Until the West Coast wakes up and sez jesus cork that, we're fetal lunged here. Still, if Tim's right to call for toad discon, its reliable speedy drip drip drip of 24-hour addictive invective will be sorely missed when it presents a last time middle web and hops off into the swamp leaving only one's own dig-itch digit to sniff and howl how awful.

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Encrypted talk
by Jason Burrell 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Does there happen to be a talk program out there that will allow more than two people to talk at once, and allow them to speak securely with strong cryptography, and will actually compile under Linux? Thanks.

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Re: A problem with anonymity
by David Murray 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- At 05:15 PM 9/1/95 -0700, you wrote: >At 10:45 AM 9/2/95, David Murray wrote: >>[Akerlof, if I remember my economics right (and I am confident that I will >>be corrected if I don't) analysed a market for used cars. ... >>... So the only cars for sale would be lemons :-)] > >I haven't encountered this example, but it clearly misses some important >real-world issues. ... >Like a lot of simple game-theoretic models, the application to the real >world is quite different. True. But it does make the point that, in a perhaps surprising way, the bad can drive out the good. [I certainly don't want to get into any kind of normative v. postive methodological debate.] The lesson is not that "You can never find a decent used car", but that, in a market with particular characterisics (particularly with regard to what information is available to whom), lemons drive out the good. This just means that owners of good used cars offer them for sale in a market where pre-purchase checks are possible, etc.. But this is to concentrate on the example, not on the substance... >But I certainly agree that crypto will reignite interest in analyses of >such game theory questions. Another way of viewing anonymity vs. >non-anonymity is that knowing the True Name of a party with whom one trades >is just _one element_ of a transaction. By no means is it essential. I guess I was using True Name somewhat unusually. I didn't mean "True Name= state approved unique identifier of a human being" so much as "True Name<> easily discardable/transferrable/sellable digital pseudonym". I certainly did not mean to imply that net.commerce is impossible, or that it would only take place on the basis of True Names, however defined. Rather I was commenting that one pervasive feature of non-net.commerce is the ability to track down someone that owes you something and sue them/beat it out of them. You can't do this to a digital pseudonym. As you rightly pointed out, you can't do this to someone who escapes to South America, or to the guy who runs the market stall that won't be there tomorrow. So you take a bond, or you take your chances. I still think that, because of the (perfect) ease with which net.rep's are transferrable/cash-in-able, the chances you take in the digital domain are so much higher as to be (almost?) qualatatively different. >>If you can't rely on the unsecured promise of a digital pseudonym, and you >>can't accept reputation as 'security', how do you extend credit? > >I am willing to extend some amound of credit to PrOduct Cypher, Black >Unicorn, etc., based on their past reputation and on the fact that I can >show to others the transactions into which their pseudonyms entered and >thus expose them if they default. Now _how much_ I'm willing to extend is >of course a more complicated issue, but the principal is still there: a >purely digital pseudonym, with no possibility of being tied to a True Name, >can still be extended credit....I just said I would do so. This would, of course, allow PrOduct Cypher (for example) to cash in on hir rep. [Hir - never thought I'd see myself use it: ughhhhhhh <shiver>]. But, unlike the unscrupulous stall owner, who would have to sell the gold watch before he decamped, PC could sell hir rep before the rip-off had been done. This would be a sort of division of labour - rep-builders and rep-exploiters. In cybersapce, you could never tell whether you were dealing with the rep builder (buying a good car) or a rep exploiter (buying a lemon). Yes the rep-exploitation would be a one-shot thing. Within seconds of the sting PC's name would be mud. [And, yes, you could probably tell whether it was one of those two you were dealing with - if it asked for credit, it wouldn't be 'corn or 'pher :-)] But it is the _possibility_ of the scam that would shape the market. By the way, my final question was not rhetorical. I _do_ think methods of extending credit to pseudonyms will be developed. I just think they will be based on (possibly new) types of security interest. An old type of security interest (perhaps the oldest) could be used right away - the pledge. If Bob Pseudonymous pledges $100 worth of digital certificates, I would be glad to lend him $100 (well, perhaps $80 - gotta secure the interest:-) Cryptography might develop other ways of protecting the interests of creditors, while preserving the anonymity of debtors. In fact, I'm certain it will. And I'm just as sure the law/mercantile practice will assist in the process. And like you, I believe it is not only possible, but preferable, that this is done without the interevention/'assistance' of the state. Cheers, Dm -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.2 iQCVAwUBMEftjllo3j8JHzalAQE1OwP+IQTX2hUfJXI8Q7ojgFcKbnvxRLngSyDp rLm0wjZvMoiLwCqwhqn6F3ypTJBD0pS1ZT7ql+rnnEsYtQ75Xu0iJFbnnIY4whNh gB1plcImYms88Rt7VEuCjHZeAMHcV3tPZL9DHQVHZXMwqWKCeyBaImVaEosJTwZj IuZ4HHCi+GE= =V7vf -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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The legitimate needs of law enforcement
by nobody＠REPLAY.COM 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

In 1938, five years after taking power, the Nazis enhanced the 1928 law. The Nazi Weapons Law introduced handgun control. Firearms ownership was restricted to Nazi party members and other "reliable" people.

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The first days of our last days
by Anonymous 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 12:00 PM 8/19/97 -0400, you wrote: >A theat to him perhaps. What ever happened to self defense I wonder? The police are supposed to handle it, or something. Call 911 here while a criminal shoots your kids, while the ass on the other end asks questions until they hear a shot go off, and silence creep in. That's why people use firearms. >Not unless he joins the book people in the woods. :) I ask for the honor of memorizing 1984. >A few years back when the anti-gun crap started in NYC, they had all sorts >of save the kids propaganda stories and projects: such as trade your gun >for a toy, and stories like 8 year old shot dead by drug deal for >threatening to use water pistol. Now they have new Communist/Socialist/Fascist propaganda and other programs around the U.S.. Ever hear of that shit with kids turning in toy rifles, weapons of destruction, for books? I read books as a child, and still, i had toy rifles. Of course the kids were spewing out the Usual UN Globalism, totalitarian, and disarmament shit. "I think dat guns are bad, they kill people." the question is: What people? As far as I see it, fascists, and freedom-thefters. >Jim Bell was arrested for thinking >differently than is allowed. No different than being declared insane and >sent to the Gulag for "re-education" for disagreement with the party, the >glorious party. Not having lived in communist or fascist countries, the >sheeple are asleep. Obvious from the cry of freedom from McVeigh, destroying the minions of the fascists, and of course only being shown as a child killing monster. >My parents having left a socialist state (read fascist) for freedom, I >find freedom fleeting. The same scum that ran the communist block are >here running our country. Sure they were born here, but their spirit and >beliefs are the same as the scum that were in power in the old country. Knowing friends of relatives who lived in East germany, they have many stories to tell. >How much money are we to bleed to them in taxes (read plural, as in >income, realestate, hotel, parking, gas and electric, telephone, taxes on >tax returns, etc.)? How soon before breathing taxes? Fucking Taxes? I believe one of americas founders (a faggot, by word of Patrick Oonk, a Nazi) once asked this about britain putting taxes on breathing. Soon after, we fought back and eventually sent those murdering sons of bitches running. That day will live in my mind as being the day we all said ENOUGH!!!! >Living Taxes? Speaking Taxes? Let's not pretend. We work for them. >It's mandatory work. Our work pays their goals. Doesn't matter if you >work for Mickey D's or Mickey Soft. You pay Big Uncle. You work for Big >Uncle's benefit. It's not enough to fear Big Uncle. You must love big >uncle. One may not even hold anti-government views for fear of being in >contempt of court and be judged against. No wonder the suicide rate is up. >How soon before they stop teaching highschool kids about the revolution >for fear it will happen again? How soon before they edit the constitution >and pretend it was always that way? How soon before we'll need passports >to travel between one part of the country and another? Between one 'burb >to another? Well, we alread have shit like this. >How soon before we have to register every computer out there? How soon >before we have to register every phone and phone card? Every pencil and >knife and fork and other sharp objects? How soon before night curfews? >How soon before Victory Coffee and Gin? How soon to food rations? How >soon to electricity rations and water rations and net access rations? How >soon before ex-communist Russia has more freedom than we? Now. >They've already silenced us, they've already taken our guns, they've >already thrown us in jail for feeding others, for speaking, thinking and >protesting, and demanding privacy, they've already stripped our privacy, >they've already murdered us, they've already licensed everything we can do >and can't, they've already filled the streets with jackbooted gun and >nightstick toting thugs who wear blue and use bathroom plungers as means >of interrogation. May those cops burn in the pits of hell. >What next? And how soon? Telescreens? Thought Police? Junior Scouts? Eastasia and Eurasia? INGSOC, Death-Worship, and Neo-Bolshevism? How long before we get helicopters looking in windows? How long before Two-Minutes hate? How long before we have the Party? how long before we have the Sex restrictions? How long before our children become blind followers? After all, communism's laws are 1. infiltrate the school system 2. sit back and watch. How long before we all become enslaved, without knowing? Soon. very Soon. LOCK AND LOAD. Shoot to kill. Sometimes, we fight back, even if there is no hope. Why? Because it is better to die on our feet than to live on our knees. The first days of the last days of freedom are now. Will we win? I say yes. Fascists say no. The war is underway. FreedomMonger "It is better to die on our feet than to live on our knees."

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Re: A problem with anonymity
by terrell＠sam.neosoft.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

> >Subject: Re: A problem with anonymity >From: monty.harder(a)famend.com (MONTY HARDER) > >TC> This is one thing that _bonding_ is designed to partially ameliorate. One >TC> posts a bond which is greater than the amount being carried, or at least is > > A variation of a bond is an escrow agent.... > > Overload Alert: I use "escrow" here in the more mundane sense of > the folks who collect your real estate taxes and homeowners' > insurance from you 1/12th at a time along with your mortgage > payment, for instance. > > If the buyer has a =nonymous= agent to recieve the payment, which is >only released to the seller upon proof(s) of performance (whether in >lump sum or on a schedule of staged payments tied to specific milestones >in a long-term project) then the buyer has someone to go after in the >event of such shenannigans. > >TC> There are still scams and manouvers to thwart this reputation capital >TC> scheme. The agent planning to "defect" (default, split, abscond, renege, >TC> etc.) can try to pile up as many pending transactions as possible, >TC> anticipating that the various transactees will be unaware of each other. > > And the escrow method dynamically scales to meet this threat, whereas >the bond is static. > > Of course, the escrow agent will extract his pound of flesh, just as >any other form of insurance. Such is the nature of life. > Actually, you guys are trying to repeat the whole history of the law merchant (today's commercial law). The basic problem was how can a buyer in one city acquire goods from a seller in another through agents acting at a distance when neither knows the other and neither is willing to risk loss on the transaction. The use of bankers, as either trusted or bonded third parties, acting as escrowees under the control of a letter of credit was the result. Buyer, B, deposits money with the bank, E, with insructions to release the money on proof of receipt of the goods. E gives B a receipt and a written promise to pay. B trades the promise to pay to Seller, S, in exchange for the goods. S, who either trusts E or has access to his bond, is willing to accept E's promise to pay, which he then negotiates. The result is that B and S have a secure transaction without trusting each other, and E gets rich. Notice, we don't care about the reputation or identity of either B or S, and a very few trusted or bonded Es can facilitate many many transacrions. Incidentially, you all are using the word "escrow" correctly. An escrow is an arrangement in which property is deposited with an escrowee to hold until the happening or failure of a contingency, at which time he delivers the property according to the escrow instructions. House sales, in which the seller deposits a deed and the buyer deposits the purchase price pending proof of title is only one kind of escrow. +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ Buford C. Terrell South Texas College of Law 1303 San Jacinto, Houston, TX 77002 (713)646-1857 terrell(a)sam.neosoft.com +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+

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Re: Macintosh Users: "SpeedDoubler"
by ethridge＠Onramp.NET 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Tim May wrote: >For you Macintosh users, I thought I'd share with you my experiences with >SpeedDoubler, a new utility that (effectively) doubles or even triples >performance of many applications that still are heavily dependent on 68K >code (as opposed to purely PowerPC code). > > ... > >All I can say is that I'm very happy. > >--Tim May Just wanted to echo Tim's sentiments. I purchased SpeedDoubler yesterday (fifty-something dollars at Computer City) and the speed improvements i've seen on my PowerMac 7100/66 are impressive. It's definitely worth the money. allen

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None
by nobody＠neva.org 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 08:38 PM 8/18/97 -0700, you wrote: >Things like the doublespeak of "mandatory voluntary" programs, the probable >illegalization of tools to protect communications, and the "New World >Order" machinations. (These being the behind the scenes pressures being >applied to European and Asian governments, vis-a-vis Wasenaar, OECD, the >secret meetings, the Orwellian language the governments are adopting to >describe "trusted third parties (who actually provide keys to the >authorities without telling the customer)," etc.) I myself would never escrow my keys to anyone, regardless. As far as I see it, giving sensitive things like that to anyone but yourself is asking to be screwed. >Not to mention the "felonization" of increasing numbers of things. Physical >things that were bought fully legally are now "contraband." Except to cops, >who are buying them in ever-increasing amounts. The sheeple, though, cannot >be trusted to own the things the cops own freely. And I'm talking about >more than just "compliance tools" (aka toilet plungers). Maybe we'll see a ban on assault plungers in a few years. We may have to register our assault plungers as well. >Read the archived traffic of the list in the period surrounding the burning of the >illegal religion in Waco, Texas. Or the traffic after a wife and son were >killed by the cop criminal Lon Horiuchi (whom some militia members have >placed a bounty on FWIW, I wish someone would put a bounty on the murdering bastard marines who killed an innocent american defending himself against heavily armed fascists. If we were half the damn great country we were in the beginning, he'd be plinking with an M-16A2, fu! lly auto. So if those bastards even twitched in the dark, they'd be ripped open like the pigs they are. >I think you, "B.," have just gotten a lot more nervous that what many of us >are advocating is in fact warfare against the State. I get e-mail from >folks who were once active on the Cypherpunks list saying, in various ways, >that they can no longer be as visible about their participation in the >list, for multiple reasons. Government fascism and investigation. >Second, the apparent state of war between Cypherpunks and governments. >After recent actions by freedom fighters to bomb stooge facilities, >governments are treating "militias" as quasi-criminal organizations. They treat everyone like a criminal organization. >(There >are many nuances to this point. In the U.S., I don't think such >organizations have been outlawed, as the Constitution remains a protection >of sorts. Yeah, an original version still goes underground each night. It seems to me soon Mr. KlinToon might replace it with a replica, so he can light a joint with it. "Ahhhh, thar's nuthin' like freedom to light uh joint!" >But many have been investigated, and, as John Young noted >recently, the IRS treats membership in certain organizations as a threat. >And there is Clinton's Anti-Terrorism Act, which explicitly makes certain >kinds of financial and other activities illegal, even by Americans, which >involve support of "terrorist" organizations. So remember, in the future, speaking nicely about the cypherpunks may get you a free midnight raid by the military, being used illegally on U.S. soil. >It is not inconceivable that, >following outlawing of strong crypto in various countries, that the >Cypherpunks group gets classified as an organization or group which >supports terrorist goals, which is almost certainly true.) Well, I guess that fascist countries like France, China, Russia, Burma, etc. will consider us bombmakers. >Third, some of those who make the most extreme calls for the killing of >Feds, the bombing of government operations in various nations, etc., are >using remailers. Isn't this exactly what remailers are likely to be used >for? If they aren't shut down and raided first, by freedom and privacy thefting Sons of bitches. How about a "Defensive Weapons for Remailer users (except for Ratprick Oink)" charity. >Fourth, the arrest and prosecution of Jim Bell, with tax evasion and a >minor stink bomb case turned into a "federal case" because of his >controversial views. So soon people like Phil Zimmerman, who believes in privacy for all, will be raided and stolen in the middle of the night, much like in 1984. >This has obviously angered and radicalized many. Some >of us have stocked up on more asault weapons and shotguns, placed alarms >around our property, and we are expecting a "raid." Well, luck be with you and shoot to kill people. >As I have said, if >black-clad ninja raiders try to hit me, I'll assume they're "home invaders" >and will open fire. (A Sheriff's Deputy once told me that even saying I >would defend my home against unwelcome intruders constituted a "threat" and >that he might order a detachment to visit my compound. So far, two years >later, he hasn't made good on _his_ threat. And now I'm more ready for him >than ever.) Time to make like Bob Marley and shoot the sheriff. So now defending your home, something so basic of human rights its unabridgable, the right to live, essentially, is now illegal? Fuck them all!! >So when "DeathMonger" calls for the killing of >Feds, who am I to suggest this discussion be squelched? Forcible >censorship, once tried, often makes it effectively impossible for _any_ >kind of guidance or advice along these lines. (This is an utterly >predictable outcome of attempts to censor.) Many fascist god-fearing quivering sheeple feel differently. >Finally, and to recap some of these points, when the Cypherpunks list and >group first started, many did not take the "collapse of government" >promises too seriously. Now, with even Louis Freeh and Janet Reno saying >that strong crypto represents a major and urgent threat to governments >(they call it "law enforcement" and "tax collection," and also talk about >threats of unregulated gambling, unregulated access to medical data, >uncontrolled communication between cult members, and so on), it seems that >the dangers of crypto anarchy are being more widely trumpeted. It's only dangerous, no, deadly, to fascist freedom-thefters like Freeh and "Flaming Davidian" Reno. To freedom lovers, it's another tool of freedom, like guns, constitutions, and bombs. Yes, BOMBS have won freedom, and guns as well. As long as we excer! size our right to defend freedom, our current gooberment will continue to crush those rights. Guns were made for defense, especially towards tyrants. >So, "B.," stop apologizing for reading the list. You're already a marked >man in their eyes...and search engines can already identify the True Name >who is posting the last year or two as "Zooko Journeyman." In a couple of >years, all search engines will have "known aliases" macros to automatically >ferret out the web of pseudonyms linkable to a poster. You can run, but you >can't hide. All the more reason to arm yourself. If you can't hide, then fortify yourself in your home, armed to the teeth to deter invader maggots like swat teams, Marines and BATF agents. >And "democracy" is spinning out of control, being used by authoritarians to >convert the world into a security state. Restrictions on travel, new drug >laws, laws against images and words on the Net, and thousands of new laws >every years. The best solution? Nuke D.C., the current constitution, and reinstate the old one, start from scratch. We've messed up the system, and it's time to start all over again. >A frontal assault, using strong crypto to aid in the attacks by freedom >fighters and to destablize authority, makes more sense. When a government >official decrees that citizen-units may no longer do certain things which >were once quite legal and quite common (such as owning a gun for defense), >that official must expect certain repercussions. Dead bodies of the soulless minions who inhabit fedral buildings, moving us toward Globalism. >We're in a state of war with the statists and tyrants. It's what Jefferson >and the other Founders expected to happen, and now the watering with the >blood of patriots and tyrants is happening. A text file: Using this analogy, the Constitution is the fence, my sovereignty is my property. The contract has been moved more and more into my "property". Do I protect the fence? No, I move it back to where it was. Even if I have to kick my neighbors ass to do it. But I see it slightly differently. The fence hasn't been moved. It's been torn down and ripped apart. On my side of the fence is me, my family and my possesions; including a nice big banana tree. On the other side of the fence is a 400lb gorilla, just eyeing that banana tree. As the fence gets erroded by weather, insects and rodents, the gorilla is getting bolder and bolder. My solution is a) shoot the gorilla (100% effective, but somewhat drastic) or b) rebuild the fence, kill the insects and poison the rats. So to keep my bananas, I'm forced w/rebuilding the fence, or if that fails, shoot the gorilla. I'd rather rebuild the fence, as that gorilla can be mighty entertaining, but if the fence is coming down faster than I can rebuild it, the gorilla is history. So I ask you: Can we rebuild the fence or is it time to take aim? >It's what the Founders expected. Get used to it. Agreed. >If crypto anonymity tools were available to the Founders, they'd have used >them against the British. Likewise, strong crypto is already being used by >the freedom fighters in Palestine against the Zionist Occupation >Government. That PGP 5.0 is being used by Hamas should send chills through >the ZOG in Jerusalem, and is probably why Cypherpunks is about to be >classed as a "terrorist group." To israelis, anyway. >(What happened to the Jews in WW II was terrible, of course, but that was >no excused for forcibly evicting vast numbers of "sand niggers" so as to >make room for Jewish settlers. Their sons and grandsons will now end up >paying the price, as freedom fighters drive them into the sea. Broken eggs >and all.) Much like how some schills on the list blasted someone for weeping over the death of McVeigh. "You can't be serious, he murdered innocent kids!" "I hope McVeigh fries. Same to his friend Terry. I Hope the writer of that fries. Along with those in government. Can we rebuild? I doubt it. Therefore, sincerely, LOCK AND LOAD. FreedomMonger "There's something wrong when modern military weapons can't be used by americans, but military weapons in 1776 were used daily by citizens." Military uniforms aren't even speed-bumps for bullets entering them.

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Re: A problem with anonymity
by tcmay＠got.net 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 2:27 PM 9/2/95, Buford Terrell wrote: >Actually, you guys are trying to repeat the whole history of the >law merchant (today's commercial law). The basic problem was how >can a buyer in one city acquire goods from a seller in another >through agents acting at a distance when neither knows the other >and neither is willing to risk loss on the transaction. Which might be why I specifically cited this last night in an article in this thread: "(Think of various trading situations where one has no idea of the True Name of the other parties: cash-and-carry transactions, flea markets, many international trade arrangements, etc. As we have discussed in past discussions of anarchy, the international trading regime is essentially an anarchy, in that no Higher Authority exists to resolve disputes in a top-down way...the so-called "Law Merchant" evolved to resolve disputes in such trading situations.)" Benson's "The Enterprise of Law" is of course a libertariant outlook on these matters. (I should mention that Michael Froomkin says he doesn't think much of it, but I found it useful, especially as it confirmed my views on these matters! :-}) --Tim May ---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---- Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, tcmay(a)got.net 408-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero Corralitos, CA | knowledge, reputations, information markets, Higher Power: 2^756839 | black markets, collapse of governments. "National borders are just speed bumps on the information superhighway."

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Re: Cyphernomicon, and a section on Escrow and Reputations
by tcmay＠got.net 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 9:13 AM 9/2/95, Dar Scott wrote: >After several tries I was not able to get this. Has anyone made it >available in an alternate location? > >Dar >(list newbie) > >=========================================================== >Dar Scott Home phone: +1 505 299 9497 > >Dar Scott Consulting Voice: +1 505 299 5790 <--- >8637 Horacio Place NE Email: darscott(a)aol.com >Albuquerque, NM 87111 dsc(a)swcp.com > Fax: +1 505 898 6525 >http://www.swcp.com/~correspo/DSC/DarScott.html Help me out here, Dar... You list a Web site in your sig, so presumably you have the right tools to browse the Web. And I listed two Web sites that have the Cyphernomicon. What am I missing? Browsing the Web versions, especially the HTMLized version by Rochkind at http://www.oberlin.edu/~brchkind/cyphernomicon/ is a much better way to read it than by downloading the text version. Nevertheless, if someone wants to copy the CP-FAQ file to their ftp site, I have no real objections at this time. --Tim May ---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---- Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, tcmay(a)got.net 408-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero Corralitos, CA | knowledge, reputations, information markets, Higher Power: 2^756839 | black markets, collapse of governments. "National borders are just speed bumps on the information superhighway."

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Forbes article on Financial Cryptography is coming
by Robert Hettinga 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Coming soon to a newstand near you... I hear the article will include pictures of cypherpunks and FC97 attendees like Ian Goldberg (FC97 workshop leader), Adam Shostack (FC97 workshop instructor), Sameer Parekh, and Steve Schear. Not to mention actual financial cryptographers like David Chaum and Ron Rivest. :-). Cheers, Bob Hettinga --- begin forwarded text X-Sender: rah(a)mail.shipwright.com Mime-Version: 1.0 Date: Tue, 19 Aug 1997 18:12:03 -0400 To: e$(a)thumper.vmeng.com, dcsb(a)ai.mit.edu From: Robert Hettinga <rah(a)shipwright.com> Subject: Forbes article is coming. Sender: <e$(a)vmeng.com> Precedence: Bulk List-Software: LetterRip 2.0 by Fog City Software, Inc. List-Unsubscribe: <mailto:requests@vmeng.com?subject=unsubscribe%20e$> List-Subscribe: <mailto:requests@vmeng.com?subject=subscribe%20e$> I just got called by a fact checker from Forbes. She said that the article on financial cryptography that Josh McHugh is doing is one of two being considered for the cover of the next issue. Having some fun now, as Mr. Martin used to say... Cheers, Bob Hettinga ----------------- Robert Hettinga (rah(a)shipwright.com) Philodox e$, 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA "... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity, [predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire' The e$ Home Page: http://www.shipwright.com/ --------------------------------------------------------------------- Where people, networks and money come together: Consult Hyperion http://www.hyperion.co.uk info(a)hyperion.co.uk --------------------------------------------------------------------- Like e$? Help pay for it! See <http://www.shipwright.com/beg.html> Or, for e$/e$pam sponsorship, <mailto:rah@shipwright.com> --------------------------------------------------------------------- --- end forwarded text ----------------- Robert Hettinga (rah(a)shipwright.com) Philodox e$, 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA "... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity, [predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire' The e$ Home Page: http://www.shipwright.com/

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Cypherpunks Santa Cruz -- Great Party!
by tcmay＠got.net 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

I want to update the general list on how well our "Cypherpunks Santa Cruz" party/meeting went last Saturday. Apologies to those who get this twice, as I just sent it out to the folks on the mailing list of interested folks I keep. (Not all of them are readers of this list, so....) It was a great success, from all indications, and we'll be doing it on a regular basis. "Meet locally, communicate globally." --Tim >Date: Sat, 2 Sep 1995 11:03:33 -0700 >X-Sender: tcmay(a)mail.got.net >Mime-Version: 1.0 >To: (Recipient list suppressed) >From: tcmay(a)got.net (Timothy C. May) >Subject: Cypherpunks Santa Cruz -- Great Party! > > >This is a report on the Cypherpunks Santa Cruz party/meeting held last >Saturday at my house. For those of you on this list (52 at last count, >obviously not all locals) who missed it, it was considered by many who >commented to me to be a great success. > >Some highlights: > >- I counted 23 attendees, from as far away as Oregon (Greg Broiles) and San >Luis Obispo (Jeff Simmons), and with a bunch of folks from Marin and the >Greater Bay Area. > >- We got rolling around 5, when the first cars started filling up my >parking area. Things kept going 'til 5 in the morning (!), when the last >stragglers departed and those staying the night found their futons and >crashed. > >- Not too much was formally done. We had a round of introductions (and I >provided name tags, which were purely voluntary, in that anyone could >volunteer not to wear them and hence not be remembered by others...most >wore them). Later, after the barbecue, Bob Fleming and Cherie Kushner >described their work on micropower, ultrawideband radio "localizers." While >not strictly "crypto" related, there are overlapping themes (privacy, >surveillance, and even some of the math overlaps). > >- Mostly it was a chance for our local community of folks interested in >these issues to mingle and make contact. I expect we may have a larger >focus than just "crypto" (although Cypherpunks have always had a larger >focus than just cryptography, of course). Especially as there are folks >doing some neat stuff on the Web out here in Santa Cruz. > >- Two folks from my local ISP attended (Jay and Marc), and they have some >thoughts on possibly hosting the Cypherpunks archive site on their system, >and other ideas. They stayed until nearly 5 a.m., talking with us about >networking, Web pages, etc. > >(Santa Cruz has long been a hotbed of computer activity, especially of the >more independent sort. So the good turnout from local folks could be very >promising for Cypherpunks themes. Interestingly, Linus Torvaldis (sp?), of >Linux fame, had just been in town a couple of days before.) > >I want to avoid opening the meeting up too broadly, to, for example "anyone >interested in computers," as this would produce unpredictable turnouts and >lots of folks who want to learn to use Windows, or need help in dBase, etc. >Better to keep an ostensible focus on "Cypherpunks" themes, with forays >into related areas. > >Some people commented to me that they hope the meetings/parties are >monthly, but I suspect every other month may be more reasonable...after >all, a monthly meeting would mean another one only 3 weeks from today, and >I can't see this happening. > >Anyway, I expect to announce another one for sometime in October. I also >may be having a "PenSFA" party at my place in early November (11/11 is >being considered), and may merge the two. It's a good opportunity for >mingling. > >Another attendee offered the possibility of having a Cypherpunks Santa Cruz >meeting/party at her house, so some rotation to other venues may start to >happen. I think the notion of having these things at private houses is >better than trying to get space at a local company, for example. Parties in >houses are more intimate, less formal, and don't require the "corporate >approvals" that are sometimes needed. Besides, I'm offering my house and >have no contacts at local companies. > >I expect to be able to host a lot of these things, and if some others >volunteer as well, we'll be set. (I expect attendance will not equal the 23 >at this "first" meeting, for obvious reasons. This means meetings/parties >could even be held in apartments or condos. But I'm not suggesting this, >only noting it.) > >So, thanks for coming! > >--Tim May > ---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---- Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, tcmay(a)got.net 408-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero Corralitos, CA | knowledge, reputations, information markets, Higher Power: 2^756839 | black markets, collapse of governments. "National borders are just speed bumps on the information superhighway."

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SET discused in Risks Forum
by Robert Hettinga 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

--- begin forwarded text Date: Tue, 19 Aug 1997 15:42:21 -0400 From: pj ponder <ponder(a)mail.irm.state.fl.us> Subject: SET discused in Risks Forum To: set-discuss(a)lists.Commerce.Net Mime-Version: 1.0 Sender: set-discuss-owner(a)mail.irm.state.fl.us Precedence: bulk +----------------------------------------------------------------------+ This message was addressed to: set-discuss(a)lists.commerce.net +----------------------------------------------------------------------+ -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Just got this on the Risks Forum (usenet comp.risks; html: http://catless.ncl.ac.uk/Risks) I apologize if this has been posted here already and I missed it. - ----------------------- from comp.risks: ------------------------------- Date: Sat, 16 Aug 1997 16:20:14 -0700 From: smartcard(a)sprynet.com Subject: SET risk The Secure Electronic Transaction (SET) process is proposed by the credit-card associations to secure credit-card usage on the Internet. It consists of a 28-step process using a standard digital certificate. It relies on vendor software to provide security. These include an electronic wallet program in the originator's PC, merchant review software at the merchant's bank, card transaction processing software at the card issuer bank and merchant software in the merchant's server. The SET process claims to be better than using a credit card on the Internet. However, the SET process has three serious exposures - confirmed with IBM and HP/Verifone. The process does NOT know who is presenting the certificate. The process does NOT know if merchant employees have redirected the certificate through another merchant. All of the critical software is directly accessible by the card users, merchant employees and bank employees. Historically, these individuals have been the prime source of fraud in credit card transaction systems. There are more than 50 other card security products available for Internet usage. They are generally simplier, faster, and avoid the SET exposures identified above. Internet transaction users might try the viable alternatives. jerome svigals, smartcard(a)sprynet.com -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: PGP for Personal Privacy 5.0 Charset: noconv iQCVAwUBM/n5lF4ZsVsZPDGdAQFdwgQAu8IZGp153xgyJs5km/ah7KYtMmwT8k4d Pqo1I5qV532thAIjL8y5uGwxraTTQjxOcWTwvP7Y+Z+wh1467nAElYY1t4VPEB1m K0nZ/3r7kDelj5Jp6H2fTPdBdHWrEj5m/XrTmhVYb0dkQSxW1gFN39y+7AGeBQsO ctgUfEJY2tU= =188u -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- ------------------------------------------------------------------------- This message was sent by a majordomo-based automatic list manager. Subscriptions to and archives of this list are available to any person or organization. For further information send a mail message to 'set-discuss-request(a)lists.commerce.net' with 'help' (no quotations) contained in the body of your message. --- end forwarded text ----------------- Robert Hettinga (rah(a)shipwright.com) Philodox e$, 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA "... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity, [predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire' The e$ Home Page: http://www.shipwright.com/

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No Subject
by dsc＠swcp.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Timothy May wrote concerning Cyphernomicon, >You list a Web site in your sig, so presumably you have the right tools to >browse the Web. And I listed two Web sites that have the Cyphernomicon. > >What am I missing? Thanks for the advice. Here are the two missing pieces. The first is financial, but might be really psychological. I buy PPP service locally and it is hard for me to casually browse with the meter runing in the corner of the screen even at less than a penny a minute. (And any document that mentions David Friedman probably needs study and that takes more time.) The second is that even at the wee hours of the morning I kept getting refusals from www.oberlin.edu and I couldn't get past the table of contents. I had hoped to collect these as I browse 'em to avoid delays (14.4), hicups and online time in later reading. (I didn't even try the large html--I suspect my browsers will gag on it.) The third of the two reasons is some vague notion of taking it to lunch or of anotating the file or the hard copy. In case it wasn't clear--I couldn't get a peep out of netcom. My plan is to try oberlin again and if that bogs down, try getting the copy at the location mentioned by Lou Poppler--or any other location mentioned this weekend. Or respond to advice on the best times to try netcom. I appologize for the implicit assumption in my question about alternate sites that people had your permission to copy the file to their ftp sites and am pleased that you explicitly gave that blessing in your recent mail. Thanks, Dar (list newbie) =========================================================== Dar Scott Home phone: +1 505 299 9497 Dar Scott Consulting Voice: +1 505 299 5790 <--- 8637 Horacio Place NE Email: darscott(a)aol.com Albuquerque, NM 87111 dsc(a)swcp.com Fax: +1 505 898 6525 http://www.swcp.com/~correspo/DSC/DarScott.html My preference for attached files are in this order: AOL, Mime, Binhex4, PGP, UUencode ===========================================================

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Cyphernomicon for ftp
by Jeff Simmons 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

I remember the trouble I had finding a text copy of the Cyphernomicon ... So until someone posts it on a site with higher bandwidth, it's available at: ftp.goblin.punk.net/pub/docs/cypherpunk.faq.gz or cypherfq.zip We're talking 400K+ over a 28.8 modem, so don't expect much in the way of speed ... -- Jeff Simmons jsimmons(a)goblin.punk.net

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Crypto '95 report
by Hal 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

This was the first year I attended a Crypto conference (although for the last two years I have "crashed" the evening rump session, where less formal 5-10 minute presentations are given). A number of list members were present and it was good to meet a lot of new people. I was a bit disappointed that few of the technical sessions were in areas that I am interested in or that seem to have bearing on CP issues. I have read many of the Crypto proceedings and this year the pickings seemed to be unusually slim. Richard Schroeppel gave a very clear presentation on an implementation of elliptic curve cryptography for a diffie-hellman-like key exchange. This is a two-dimensional variation from the regular integers that are used in most of the number theory based crypto, and has some advantages. This new implementation is actually faster than regular DH for apparently the same security level. It looks like elliptic curve crypto is on the threshold of coming into widespread use. I believe the patent situation is one of the main reasons. There were several papers on secret sharing, something we have discussed here as an alternative to escrow for handling lost keys. Amir Herzberg et al had a method for "resharing" a shared secret periodically and securely, so that if an adversary was stealthily sneaking in and learning shares occasionally, he would be put back to square one when the secret resharing phase occured. Only the trustees are involved, not the original secret holder, and the secret does not have to be reconstructed during the resharing. Bruce Dodson presented some results on using the Number Field Sieve factoring algorithm. Their implementation looks to be the fastest available now, considerably better than the Quadratic Sieve that was used for RSA-129. I belive they estimated 1000 MIPS years would have been enough for NFS to do RSA-129 compared to the 6000 MIPS years for QS. They are now going to try another challenge number, RSA-130. (RSA has challenge numbers every 10 digits in size (or maybe it was 5): RSA-140, RSA-150, etc.) There was one paper on electronic cash, by Okamoto. His technology is distinguished by allowing divisibility - you can take a $10 and divide it into 2 $5's without going back to the bank. However he has always had a problem that your various pieces of cash are linkable, although not traceable to the user who withdrew them. His new method uses smaller amounts of data. I was encouraged to see some progress on the linkability issue: for the first time (that I have seen) he admits it as a problem; he now has it so that theoretically the linkability is only within a single divided piece of cash (so that if you didn't divide you wouldn't have linkability). Actually the overheads are too large for this to by quite true, but it is a step in the right direction. He also included elimination of linkability as a future goal. Unfortunately his oral presentation was extremely shallow, mostly describing what electronic cash was. There was also a paper on "fingerprinting", the encoding of hidden information into a document so that if the doc is leaked it can be traced to the leaker. The talk wasn't very clear but I was able to glean enough that I now believe that this is possible whereas I didn't before. I was discouraged to see a whole session on key escrow. One presenter described key escrow as a whole new area of cryptography, analogous to the discovery of public key crypto when all that was known previously was conventional key. Now there are three areas. The academic crypto community seems to be greeting key escrow enthusiastically as a new technical challenge. The rump session had some good stuff, I thought. Matt Blaze et al had a paper on "Master Key" cryptosystems, a variation on escrow where the government can read all the messages using a certain cryptosystem. They pointed out the similarity to the trap door concept used in public key cryptography and concluded that an efficient master key system would be an efficient public key system. If you believe that the latter can't exist then it follows that the master key versions can't exist either. Bruce Schneier gave a talk summarizing the sketchy information known about Skipjack (the cipher in Clipper), including some FOIA'd docs. These included some comments from design reviews by Mycotronix on earlier versions, which included references to F and G boxes or tables. This is the first I had heard of this and helps explain why people thought S-1 was Skipjack or a hoax, since it had F and G tables. (I hadn't felt that the number of rounds and key/block sizes were sufficient coincidence to preclude independent invention.) A new crypto library was announced from AT&T. It is written in C and has a bignum lib (arbitrary size) and the usual crypto suspects, although I think not RSA presuambly due to patent issues. On a reasonably modern PC it could do an RSA 1024 bit signature in 900 milliseconds. Email to lacy(a)research.att.com with subject CRYPTOLIB to be informed on when it will be released and how to get it. Dhem and Quisquiter described CASCADE, a smart card system with voice recognition for ID rather than the PIN usually used. http://www.dice.ucl.ac.be/~dhem/cascade/. This talk was hard to understand due to the language differences. Eric Hughes, co-founder of the cypherpunks, announced the formation of Cypherpunk Laboratories, a California non-profit corporation. It is intended to be a common resource for people motivated by freely available strong cryptography tools. Among other things it will offer scholarships and prizes to students who create relevant work and papers, consider establishing an online journal focusing on implementations of crypto, and work on software development. One project Eric mentioned was to create a replacement for PGP. Ron Rivest proposed probabilisitic key escrow, which he described as "translucent" crypto. The idea is that with every message you send there is a Law Enforcement Access Field, but there is only some probability p that it is readable, and you can't tell if it will be readable or not. This way you don't lose as much privacy but criminals can't take the risk that maybe they'll be unlucky and this particular message will be readable. Shamir had an interesting paper on preventing "flooding" attacks. A server may check for signatures on incoming messages to reject bogus ones (only certain sigs are valid) but just doing a signature check may take too long if it is really being flooded. Shamir came up with a kind of signature which can be quickly probabilistically checked, based on a variation on the Rabin cryptosystem. You can do almost all the work using single precision and it should be very fast. I will write this up if anyone is interested. Our own Wei Dai, at 19 the youngest author, has spent his summer vacation developing with Josh Benaloh at Microsoft an improved modular reduction algorithm, which unfortunately will be patented (or at least they will try). BTW a number of people from Microsoft were in attendance at Crypto, including other list members. Obviously this crypto stuff is considered very important at MS. One of the more interesting talks I thought was from cypherpunk Doug Barnes, on "identity agnostic" electronic cash. This is basically an idea for creating a Magic-Money-type electronic cash server without violating Chaum's cash patent. What you do is to run the server and publish a spec it will follow. All the server does is do an RSA signature on the raw data it receives and decrement the user's account accordingly. The user has a choice of doing blinding or not on the signature. Chaum's patent covers the blinding, so if the user wants to do that he should be sure to license the patent or live somewhere it doesn't apply (or ignore it if he figures he's too small potatoes for them to care about). But the server isn't responsible for checking all this. It just does RSA sigs, which is prior art as far as Chaum's patent goes. Users can blind or not, it doesn't care. It is "identity agnostic" as Doug says. The implication is that with an RSA license you could run this kind of bank (online cash) and ignore Chaum's patents, while a horde of end users violate the patents but take safety in numbers and get anonymity. Lawyers like to go after big targets but the servers aren't violating anything. The other things I enjoyed in the conference were the non technical talks by Bob Morris (senior), retired NSA, and later Adi Shamir. Morris said, with what I thought was peculiar emphasis, "never underestimate the amount of time, money, and effort your opponent will put into breaking your encryption." He was supposedly speaking in the context of the German (and Allied) mistakes during WWII, but I got the impression he was talking about today, and in fact warning of NSA efforts to spy on people. He went on to describe the many ways mikes and antennas can be planted or used - he looks at a telephone and sees a microphone, and the hand cord is an antenna. All in all a rather chilling talk from someone who obviously can't say as much as he would like to. Shamir had some interesting anecdotes about the invention of RSA. He emphasized what amateurs the three of them were, claiming this was probably an advantage. Some of the other talks I enjoyed without following all the details were the cryptanalysis ones. A lot of systems were broken or weaknesses found. Most were not ones I was familiar with but it just emphasizes how hard it is to really come up with something strong. All those bozos on sci.crypt with their "break this" challenges would benefit from seeing some of these results. All in all there were several interesting results even if the percentage seemed smaller than usual. Hal Finney

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INFOTECH WEEKLY - August 18, 1997
by Robert Hettinga 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

--- begin forwarded text X-Authentication-Warning: nickkean.ihug.co.nz: p46-chch2.chch.ihug.co.nz [207.214.13.46] didn't use HELO protocol Date: Wed, 20 Aug 1997 13:02:50 -0400 From: Blair Anderson <"Blair Anderson"@nickkean.ihug.co.nz> Organization: Techno Junk and Grey Matter [http://www.isdn.now.co.nz] MIME-Version: 1.0 To: dcsb(a)ai.mit.edu Subject: INFOTECH WEEKLY - August 18, 1997 Sender: bounce-dcsb(a)ai.mit.edu Precedence: bulk Reply-To: Blair Anderson <"Blair Anderson"@nickkean.ihug.co.nz> Summary Report on New Zealand encryption export restrictions under Wassanar/COCOM international agreements... http://www.infotech.co.nz/spreports/asaint.html -- Blair Anderson mailto:blair@technologist.com "get a piece of the click" Electronic Commerce, Encryption and Electronic Rights Management Techno Junk and Grey Matter mailto:Benefit@isdn.now.co.nz Corporate Technology Consultants 50 Wainoni Road, Christchurch, New Zealand phone ++ 64 3 3894065 fax ++ 64 3 3894065 Web Page(s): http://www.isdn.now.co.nz/INDEX.HTM -------- Caught in the Net for 25 years ----------- For help on using this list (especially unsubscribing), send a message to "dcsb-request(a)ai.mit.edu" with one line of text: "help". --- end forwarded text ----------------- Robert Hettinga (rah(a)shipwright.com) Philodox e$, 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA "... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity, [predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire' The e$ Home Page: http://www.shipwright.com/

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Nautilus 1.0 under OS/2 Warp?
by Mixmaster 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Has anyone run the Nautilus 1.0 secure telecom software in a DOS box under OS/2? When I've tried it, it starts up, audio saying "welcome to Nautilus" comes out of my speakers, and I'm prompted for a passphrase. The problem comes when it tries to connect to the modem. It comes back and says "Remote failed to connect" followed by "Resetting modem...". Then the software exits. It never even takes the phone line off the hook. Other DOS comm software works just fine in a DOS box, so why not Nautilus?

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RE: David Downey asks to be shot
by David Downey 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Wow, I'm really moving up in the world. Now I've officially been classified as an enemy of the people. Cool! Where's my award money? ______________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com

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Re: anyone know what this "top secret" code does? Re: anyone know what this "top secret" code does?
by anon-remailer＠utopia.hacktic.nl 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

hallam(a)zorch.w3.org (Phillip M. Hallam-Baker) wrote: > The code looks more than a casual hoax. Its not Skipjack, but that > does not mean its not NSA originated. Its probable that many of the > people who designed skipjack don't know its skipjack. If you read > the code carefully it is obvious why its not skipjack, an S2 > algorithm is referenced explicitly. [...] > Regardless about whether or not it is skipjack it challenges one of > the basic assumptions of many cipher designers, namely that the > amount of diffussion should be maximized at each round. I am now > very much less than convinced that this is in fact an issue. The S1 > design with its narrow diffussion provides very strong guarantees > that one round cannot undo the work of the previous one. > S1 must therefore be considered to be a significant contribution to > the cryptographic community. It has challenged a fundamental tenet of > faith which has so far been accepted without argument. It is thus > paradigmatic in that it may lead to a new method of cipher design. Does anyone remember the scenario someone suggested awhile back that hypothesized a scheme by the NSA or other TLAs to encourage the use of WEAK crypto? It involved spreading a lot of F.U.D. about PGP and other strong crypto methods, followed by the discovery/leak of a supposedly "strong" crypto algorithm to replace it. This may not be it. It may just be a trial balloon to gauge the reaction of the crypto community to an anonymous, "gift from heaven" crypto algorithm. But at least be aware of what COULD happen. One tactic that might be tried is an intentional "leak", followed by a flurry of legal actions designed to make it look like the "leak" was going to cause some real damage to their cryptanalysis efforts, due to it being "unbreakable", or whatever. Of course, anything "leaked" would be crippled in some undetectable manner so as to provide a back door...

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VoicePGP Query
by Deranged Mutant 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Due to some acct. problems I lost most of the mail snet to me betw. May and September. I saw a post in a newsgroup about VoicePGP betas being available, though only for Mac and WIn'95... is this true? And if so, will there be a Win 3.11 or OS/2 or DOS version out eventually? I don't intend to get Win '95 for as long as I can avoid it (and this is NOT the start of an OS flame war...) Also, what's the status of PGP 3.0? Thanks, Rob

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Re: Anonymous Remailers
by nobody＠REPLAY.COM 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Robert A. Costner wrote: > > In Georgia, while we have won a temporary injunction and assume we will see the law fully struck down, EFGA is still involved in lawsuit against the state over internet anonymity. I actually don't contemplate another affidavit in this case, but it may happen. If I need to write another affidavit in support of the remailer, I will only have about two weeks to get it done. Don't write an affidavit, write an indictment. Say, perhaps, an indictment of our founding fathers for their use of anonymity, as well as tacking a "use of crypto in commission of a crime" charge on to the indictment. You can site Paul Revere's use of cryptography ("one if by land, two if by sea) to implicate the whole bunch in a drug dealing child pornography ring. Perhaps you might even want to trace the founding fathers' use of anonymity and strong-lantern encryption to the moral corruption existing today. LanternMonger "The founding father of drug dealing child pornography rings."

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Re: MIT distributing PGPfone -Reply
by terrell＠sam.neosoft.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

>PGPfone was out of the U.S. less than 3 hours after first appearing >publically at the MIT site. > >As I noted in a previous message, MIT takes various steps to ostensibly >protect against export, but there is clearly no practical means of stopping >export once the software has been received by someone. > >I got my copy of PGPfone 16 hours after its public release, via an >anonymous person who posted it on the Cypherpunks list through an anonymous >remailer. Of course that list is distributed to more than 20 foreign >countries, so "export" happened that way, as well as by other means. > >--Tim May > As tim May's .sig should say: "National borders are not even speed bumps on the information highway." Buford C. Terrell 1303 San Jacinto Street Professor of Law Houston, TX 77002 South Texas College of Law voice (713)646-1857 terrell(a)sam.neosoft.com fax (713)646-1766

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Re: PGPfone over Appletalk
by Hal 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

From: "Rev. Mark Grant" <mark(a)unicorn.com> > Can someone tell me how to run PGPfone over Appletalk ? The > documentation says that support has been added for this release, and > there's a preferences box to check to use it, but there's no information > I can find in the documentation on how to initiate a call over > Appletalk.. it just says to enter a telephone number to dial. If I > press 'Connect' without entering anything it hangs up the Mac. > > How do I tell it which machine I want to connect to ? I changed the preferences box setting, but then I exited and restarted the program so that it came up in "appletalk" mode. This is probably the step you are missing. I did this on two different machines, and then when I clicked connect it no longer tried to open the modem, instead it put up a dialog box allowing me to click on the machine running the other PGPfone. I did that and it connected OK. There is a nice audio simulation of an old-fashioned telephone bell ringing. Unfortunately my appletalk "network" consists solely of my power mac and an old 68030 mac laptop, the latter apparently being underpowered for PGPfone. The voice quality changed occasionally as the software adaptively tried different coders, and the powermac instance of the program finally printed a message saying that the list of coders had been exhausted. Hal

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Quickly checking signatures
by Hal 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Let me describe Shamir's method for quickly doing a probabilistic signature check. Since this was a rump session paper he didn't have it written up. Shamir uses a variation of the Rabin system. The Rabin encryption system is similar to RSA, but instead of exponents which are relatively prime to the predecessors of the factors of the modulus, the exponent used is 2. This requires somewhat different techniques. A message M is encrypted by doing M^2 mod n. The decryption is then done by taking the modular square root. There are a few technical hitches that occur here but nothing major. Similarly a message M is signed by calculating its modular square root S such that S^2 = M mod n. Note that with Rabin you can't just sign any arbitrary number as that may allow the factors to be revealed. However this is not a major problem because practical systems in use today sign specially padded hashes, not arbitrary numbers. Now Shamir uses a slight modification to this. Normally we have: S^2 = M mod n This can be written as: S^2 = M + C*n for some C, which is simply the definition of modular equality. Now, what he suggests is that instead of sending S as the signature of M, you send C. This is justified on 3 grounds: - C is the same size as S - C has the same security as S (knowing M and n you can derive C from S and vice versa) _ C and S are equally easy to generate However, by sending C as the signature of a message M it allows a fast screening to be done. The idea is that the message should be accepted if M+C*n is a perfect square (because then S can be derived as the normal square root - that is how you get S from C as mentioned above). And this is something that can be checked quickly. In number theory there is a notion of a "quadratic residue" modulo some number. If a number is a quadratic residue that simply means that it has a square root, that it is the square of some other number using the modulus. With a prime modulus half of the numbers are quadratic residues and half are not. For example, with modulus 7 the q.r.'s are 1, 2 and 4 and the non q.r.'s are 3, 5, and 6. It turns out that testing whether a number x is a quadratic residue modulo a prime p can be done by calculating x^((p-1)/2) mod p. This will be 1 if and only if x is a q.r. Now, the key idea is this: if a number is a perfect square then the result of taking that number modulo a prime must be a quadratic residue. This means that we can quickly determine that C is a perfect square by checking whether C mod p for various random small primes p is a quadratic residue. By picking p to be a single precision prime of say 16 bits, the q.r. calculation can all be done without using multiple precision arithmetic and so it will be very fast compared to actually checking a signature. So, the procedure for the check is as follows: given n, M and C, choose a small prime p and calculate M+C*n mod p. Then raise this to the (p-1)/2 power mod p and see if the answer is 1. If it is, we give a "provisional" acceptance to the signature. If it is not, we reject the signature; it cannot be valid. This test may be repeated a few times with different values of p to improve the rejection of bad signatures. Once we have taken the input numbers mod p the rest of the arithmetic can be done with ordinary single precision integer variables. (One thing I overlooked is the possibility that M+C*n will be a multiple of p. In that case M+C*n mod p will be 0 and this is a provisional pass.) Of course checking the signature the old-fashioned way just takes a single multi precision multiplication, which won't be all that slow. So this puts a limit on the number of p's you can check this fast way before it becomes slower. Also, you'd have to choose the primes at random as otherwise an attacker who knew your p's could conjure up a C which would produce a quadratic residue for some small number of known p's. Hal

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