December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

Turing Award
by madden＠mpi-sb.mpg.de 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Hi All, Further to previous cypherpunk discussions on cryptography, and on program checking/verification, the below announcement of this years Turing Award should be of interest (apologies if this is old news). Pete ================================================================= Dr Peter Madden, Email: madden(a)mpi-sb.mpg.de Max-Planck-Institut fuer Informatik, Phone: (49) (681) 302-5434 Im Stadtwald, W-66123 Saarbruecken, Germany. Fax: (49) (681) 302-5401 ================================================================= ----- Begin Included Message ----- >From seidel(a)cs.uni-sb.de Thu Oct 26 08:57:10 1995 Date: Thu, 26 Oct 1995 08:57:02 +0100 From: seidel(a)cs.uni-sb.de (Raimund Seidel) To: profs(a)sol.cs.uni-sb.de Subject: Turing Award Content-Length: 4661 ------- Forwarded Message ACM'S A.M. Turing Award, computing's highest honor, goes to Manuel Blum of University of California, Berkeley Date: Saturday, October 21, 1995 3:55PM BW1320 OCT 20,1995 15:22 PACIFIC 18:22 EASTERN ( BW)(ACM/TURING-AWARD/BLUM) ACM'S A.M. Turing Award, computing's highest honor, goes to Manuel Blum of University of California, Berkeley Business Editors NEW YORK--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Oct. 20, 1995--Considered the Nobel Prize of Computing, the A. M. Turing Award of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), will be given to distinguished computer scientist, Manuel Blum, of the University of California, Berkeley. The award will be presented to Blum at a special awards ceremony during the kick off of ACM's yearlong 50th anniversary celebration, February 14-18, 1996 in Philadelphia. Blum was honored with the Turing Award "in recognition of his contributions to the foundation of computational complexity theory and its applications to cryptography and program checking." computing devices, Blum's research has developed around a single unifying theme: finding positive, practical consequences of living in a world where all computational resources are bounded. Blum shows that secure business transactions, pseudo-random number generation, and program checking are all possible precisely because all computational devices are resource bounded. Blum is one of the founders of computational complexity theory, a field that is central to theoretical computer science, and one which deals with measuring the difficulty of performing computations. His work on machine-independent complexity yields a theory of computational cost that is relevant also to practical problems. Cryptographic protocols which are used in the transmission of sensitive information are secure because they can be shown to be information in a cryptographically encoded message without going through an inordinately complex computation that would be prohibitively costly and time consuming to perform. For computer programs it is very difficult to develop perfectly error-free programs. In this area Blum has shown how his techniques can be applied to make programs more reliable, and to check their results. Since this work is very fundamental one can expect that it will find application to many other practical problems, as well. "Manuel Blum is a profound thinker," said ACM President Stuart H. Zweben, chairman of the department of computer and information science at Ohio State University, "his seminal work, insights and approaches have brought about new avenues of research in the area of computational complexity and established foundations for what people can compute. Furthermore, his work has influenced other Turing Award winners to a significant degree." The ACM A. M. Turing Award is given annually for technical achievements in the field of computing which are deemed by a jury of leading professionals to be of lasting and significant importance to the computing community. It is accompanied by a prize of $25,000 contributed by AT&T. Dr. Blum is University of California at Berkeley's Arthur J. Chick Professor in Electrical Engineering and Computing Sciences, a Department in which he has served since 1968. Dr. Blum was born in Caracas, Venezuela in 1938 and began his academic career at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he received his B.S., Warren S. McCulloch, Hartley Rogers Jr. and Marvin Minsky. Dr. Blum is renowned for his work on computational complexity, automata theory, inductive inference, cryptography and program result-checking. During his career, Dr. Blum has received numerous awards, published 47 technical papers and advised 26 Ph.D. students. ACM, founded in 1947, is an 85,000 member international scientific and educational organization dedicated to advancing the art, science, engineering and application of information technology. ACM serves both professional and public interests by fostering the open interchange of information and by promoting the highest professional and ethical standards. This is accomplished through its many publications, conferences, special interest groups, chapters and network communications. --30---rg/ny* CONTACT: Terrie Phoenix (212) 626-0531 phoenix(a)acm.org KEYWORD: NEW YORK INDUSTRY KEYWORD: COMPUTERS/ELECTRONICS COMED REPEATS: New York 212-575-8822 or 800-221-2462; Boston 617-236-4266 or 800-225-2030; SF 415-986-4422 or 800-227-0845; LA 310-820-9473 BW URL: http://www.hnt.com/bizwire ------- End of Forwarded Message ----- End Included Message -----

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Smart Snoops
by nobody＠REPLAY.COM 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Wall Street Journal, October 30, 1995, p. B3. Netcom to Use Smart Switches For the Internet By Audrey Choi Internet provider Netcom On-Line Communication Services Inc. said it will use high-speed network switches from Cascade Communicaffons Corp. in a move to upgrade the speed and flexibility of its Internet services. Netcom's decision represents a significant endorsement for Cascade, a small Westford, Mass.-based company whose revenues have soared along the rapid growth of the Internet. In addition to Netcom, Cascade also is supplying switching devices, which control the flow of information across a far-flung computer network, to UUNet Technologies Inc. and Performance Systems International Inc. To prepare for an expected rise in the number of users, networking analysts say the Internet needs to move toward a more efficient architecture based on high-speed intelligent switches, like Cascade's, which not only allow large volumes of data to be transmitted quickly, but also offer Internet service providers the ability to track and manage the data being transported. Brad Meinert, senior analyst at research firm Input, says the tremendous growth of the World Wide Web, a graphics Internet interface, "is putting increased capacity demands for greater bandwidth on the Internet infrastructure." In the past, the Internet depended primarily on simpler router-based wide-area networks that provided access to users with dial-up modems and leased lines. Bundles of data moving over this kind of network is evaluated and processed at each router until it arrives at its destination -- a tedious process that can adversely affect time-sensitive applications, such as video conferencing. "We've been talking about an information super highway, but our infrastructure is really just dirt roads," said Daniel E. Smith, Cascade's president and chief executive. Mr. Meinert noted that "switching is clearly the next generation, which allows you to create the virtual network." Financial details of the Netcom deal weren't disclosed, but Cascade's Mr. Smith said the deals with the three major Internet providers initially represents "tens of millions of dollars" of business. UUNet said it has purchased $6.5 million worth of Cascade products. Cascade's switches provide the highest port density and highest network capacity, analysts say. Its switches range in cost from $25,000 to $250,000 and enable a far greater number of users to access the Internet through any one point. While a typical router may be able to handle 20 to 50 users, a single Cascade switch can accommodate 1,000 users, says Desh Deshpande, Cascade's founder and marketing vice president. Additionally, the management capabilities of the smart switches enable Internet providers to track how many data bundles a customer sends, where each bundle is at any point in time, and what priority on the network they should be given. -----

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Virtual Security Jitters
by nobody＠REPLAY.COM 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Financial Times, October 30, 1995, p. 13. Online bank era dawns By Louise Kehoe The Security First Network Bank established by Cardinal Bancshares -- a small Kentucky savings and loan institution is the first financial institution to conduct true online banking over the Internet. SFNB's pioneering effort may influence the growth of Internet banking. Larger financial institutions are watching for clues as to how consumers respond and to see whether the cyberbank can live up to its "Security First" name. Concerns about Internet security exacerbated by incidents in which supposedly secure software has proven vulnerable -- have made banks cautious. SFNB claims to have created a "virtual vault" for each customer account, using a "trusted" computer operating system from Hewlett-Packard the second largest US computer company, as well as encryption and user authentification software, and firewalls. "We have overcome the problem that has prevented banks from transacting over the Internet," said James Mahan, SFNB's chairman. Perhaps cyberbanking's biggest draw is that the SFNB is open 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Customers will be able to conduct standard personal banking tasks such as paying bills, transferring funds from one account to another and checking the balance of an account. Nor are there queues at the counters in the "virtual lobby" of the SFNB which are staffed by computer renditions of R2D2-style robots (http://www.sfnb.com) But waiting for images to download from the Internet over a modem may persuade users that a bus trip to their local bank is not such a bad idea. SFNB also faces competition from more than 20 US banks including Chemical Bank, Wells Fargo and First Interstate that have formed partnerships with Intuit, the leading personal finance software company, to enable users of the popular Quicken program to access information from their accounts and pay bills electronically. Services offering stock prices, information about mortgages, loans and retirement funds as well as insurance are flourishing. Some of the most innovative include BankAmerica's new Web site which opened a week ago with an invitation to users to "build your own bank". By filling in a form, users can tailor the information presented to fit their interests. A student, for example, might be presented with information about obtaining loans for college fees. Someone close to retirement age would automatically be routed to information more relevant to his interests. One of the largest mortgage lenders in the US, Bank of America, has also chosen to put an emphasis on property purchases at its Web site. Hyperlinks to real estate firms throughout the US enable users to search through lists of homes for sale and then to link back to the bank in order to apply for financing (http://www.bankamerica.com) Among the biggest attractions of the Internet for consumers, including consumers of financial services, is the ability to "shop around" so as to compare costs and advantages. The insurance industry is taking this to heart in a new service that goes live today. Insweb will enable consumers to seek quotes from a range of companies and brokers on life, home, car and medical insuranee. The service, established by a group of 25 insuranee companies and related organisations is the first "marketplace" on the Internet for insurance information and commerce. Insweb plans to enable users to purchase insurance online. In a pilot program next month, residents of the state of Utah will be able to buy car insurance via the Internet (http://www.insweb.com) ----- Internet Law Review is a monthy paid-for publication available electronically or on hard copy from December. Among other issues, it will cover IT-law and the Internet; commercial security and encryption, using contributors from North America and Europe. Subscription is $220 a year and details are available from <www.thinck.com/publications.html>. Meanwhile, details of this week's Internet Law Symposium in Seattle are available at <www.discovery.org/ils95>. -----

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ecash remailer
by sameer 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

To provide payee anonymity: Enterprising cypherpunk, Ed sets up the Ecash Remailer. Alice pays Bob e$15. Alice is anonymous. Bob sends Ed the e$15 Ed cashes the e$ into his ecash mint account, withdraws e$13.50 then pays Bob those e$14 .. Bob can now spend those e$ at will. Bob is now anonymous. This requires some trust-in-Ed, but Bob could be anonymous from Ed just as Ed is anonymous. Perhaps this is the scheme lucky mentioned. I will have to get an account and implement it. -- sameer Voice: 510-601-9777 Community ConneXion FAX: 510-601-9734 The Internet Privacy Provider Dialin: 510-658-6376 http://www.c2.org (or login as "guest") sameer(a)c2.org

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Re: Keyed-MD5, ITAR, and HTTP-NG
by Rich Salz 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

> Isn't this what the GSS-API is about? Couldn't HTTP-NG just convey GSS > "tokens", and do something about getting both sides to agree on which GSS > "mechanism" is to be used, and on what Principals are involved? Yes, exactly. Of course negotiation and naming are often the harder issues. It is a pity that HTTP-NG seems to be inventing protocol-specific crypto-systems, rather then designing a general one and then being its first customer. /r$

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Re: ecash remailer
by Rev. Mark Grant 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

On Tue, 31 Oct 1995, Hal wrote: > Also, I believe in normal use Digicash coins are marked as being for a > specific recipient. This is not certain since no details have been > released. And apparently it can be worked-around by the spender by > marking the recipient as just "@" (or some such string). Yep, it's optional. You can specify the account id of the recipient, in which case it's encrypted into the ecash message somehow, or you can leave it blank, in which case anyone can deposit it in their account. Or at least that's what the DigiCash people told me. I think it only works that way if you select email payment, when it gives you a box for the account id to pay to. Mark

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Re: payee anonymity
by tcmay＠got.net 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 3:35 PM 10/31/95, Hal wrote: >Another way payees could be anonymous would be to immediately spend their >received coins, and do so anonymously. This works for the online ecash >system. They simply pass the coins on without first exchanging them at >the bank. There would have to be something they wanted to buy that they ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ >could receive anonymously, though. > Such as other coins? (Since I hate cryptic one-liners, I'll elaborate. There seem to be enough "degrees of freedom" involved in exchange of digital coins such that payee and payer anonymity is achievable. "Coin mixes" using "shell game" methods seem adequate. One puts N coins in, gets back N coins, spot checks the validity of some of the coins by redeeming them, and everyone is happy. Fraud is contained to manageable proportions.) --Tim May Views here are not the views of my Internet Service Provider or Government. ---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---- 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: /dev/random for FreeBSD [was: Re: /dev/random for Linux]
by Mark Murray 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

> How about SetGID? We were going for 660 root.kmem. > > Bad idea; anyone who can run PGP could then get instant access to kmem Fooey. Of course. Scratch that plan. > cd /tmp > ln -s /dev/kmem foo > pgp -e tytso foo > rm foo > pgp foo.pgp Eeeeek! > ? "Gut feel" suggests to me that large ammounts of "predicted" input might > be worse than the normal sort of system noise you have been using. > > But keep in mind that what we're doing is XOR'ing the input data into > the pool. (Actually, it's a bit more complicated than that. The input > is XOR'ed in with a CRC-like function, generated by taking an > irreducible polynomial in GF(2**128). But for the purposes of this > argument, you can think of it as XOR.) So since you don't know what the > input state of the pool is, you won't know what the output state of the > pool. I chatted with a colleague at work, and he helped bend my mind right. I had the mistaken notion that adding lots of data would "overflow" and "dilute" the entropy to an attackable state. > Is this millisecond accuracy quantifiable in terms of bits of entropy? > if so, the ethernet is surely safe? > > Well, no. If you're only using as your timing the 100Hz clock, the > adversary will have a better timebase than you do. So you may be adding > zero or even no bits of entropy which can't be deduced by the adversary. In a 386 or a 486 (under FreeBSD at least) there is a 1Mhz clock available. How would _this_ be? On the Pentium there is the <whatsit?> register which will give the board's oscillator (or 90 MHz) I believe. > This is even worse in the PGP keyboard timing case, since the adversary > almost certainly can find a better time resolution to measure your > incoming packets when compared to the timing resolution that most > programs have. Far too many Unix systems only make a 100Hz clock > available to the user mode, even if you have a better quality high > resolution timing device in the kernel (for example, the Pentium cycle > counting register). Ah yes - _that_ register. :-) What then is a body to do? Preserve all _verifiable_ randomness like gold? Dish it out under some quota? A denial of service attack would be forever { cat /dev/random > /dev/null } Severely limiting most decent folk's chance at getting PGP to work. Right now I am considering making a piece of cheap hardware to deliver noise to a digital input. (Electronics is a stagnant hobby of mine) Interested? I may knock up a prototype in a month or so... > The problem is that in order to do this requires making assumptions > about what the capabilities of your adversary are. Not only does this > change over time, but certain adversaries (like the NSA) make it their > business to conceal their capabilities, for precisely this reason. Can they predict thermal noise in a cheap transistor? ]:-> > So I like to be conservative and use limits which are imposed by the > laws of physics, as opposed to the current level of technology. Hence, > if the packet arrival time can be observed by an outsider, you are at > real risk in using the network interrupts as a source of entropy. > Perhaps it requires buidling a very complicated model of how your Unix > scheduler works, and how much time it takes to process network packets, > etc. ---- but I have to assume that an adversary can very precisely > model that, if they were to work hard enough at it. This is a strong argument for some form of specialised noise source. I have read of methods of getting this from turbulent air flow in a hard drive (an RFC, I believe). > People may disagree as to whether or not this is possible, but it's not > prevented by the laws of physics; merely by how much effort someone > might need to put in to be able to model a particular operating system's > networking code. In any case, that's why I don't like depending on > network interrupts. Your paranoia level may vary. If I was running Fort Knox, I'd probably use Radioactive decay... (From my experience working at a cyclotron facility - these SOB's are _*RANDOM*_) M -- Mark Murray 46 Harvey Rd, Claremont, Cape Town 7700, South Africa +27 21 61-3768 GMT+0200 Finger mark(a)grumble.grondar.za for PGP key

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RE: This PROMISes to be odius
by nobody＠c2.org 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

>PR 10/18 0809 ORACLE INTRODUCES SOFTWARE TOOL FOR LAW ENFORCEMENT Oracle should shange it's corporate motto to: "Oracle, bringing Big Brother to life" or something similar. The problem with this sort of software is that it is virtually made to be abused. It is very, very obvious that the profit motive and the reassurances of LEO's have totaly blinded any shred of ethics the corporation might have once entertained. My reaction to this is simple. In the 70's, it was acceptible reasoning for computer professionals to not work in certain sectors of the industry because they didn't want to be a part of the "military industrial complex". The 90's version of that is simply not to buy products from vendors who engage in unacceptible practices. Oracle clearly falls in this latter catagory. I had been looking very strongly at specifying a DB made by one of Oracles competition due to experience with it's nightmarish installation procedures, but this pretty much clinches the deal where nothing else would. The funny thing here is that since this is just a current sale, and since there's allready plenty of technical reasons to look at competing products, I'd bet even money that over a relativly short amount of time I can offset ALL of the sales for this odious LEO product alone. I would encourage others to do the same.

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PGP 2.6.2 signator replacement bug fix
by Jim Castleberry 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Here's a fix for a minor bug in PGP 2.6.2. I reported it to pgp-bugs last February and they responded promptly, but it hasn't been propagated to the release - I suppose 2.6.2 is "in the freezer". Anyway, the bug can cause a crash and other folks might like to put in the fix, so here it is. Anyone have any others? Jim Castleberry jcastle(a)in-system.com Original bug report starts here: - ------------------------------------------------------------------------- I believe I've identified a bug in PGP 2.6.2. The bug occurs on my system: HP 9000/735, running HPUX 9.03 MIT PGP 2.6.2 Compiled with either the native cc or gcc 2.6.3 Optimization level doesn't change the behavior (from -O0 to +O3). pubring.pgp contains all the keys on the servers, plus a few unpublished keys and some additional signatures. When an existing signature is replaced by a newer one by the same signator, memory gets corrupted. On my system, this results in a program abort. The problem is in file keyadd.c, function mergesigs(). When a signature is (possibly) going to be replaced, user_from_keyID() is called to get a pointer to the signator's user ID (as a C string in the in-memory user hash table. Then that pointer is passed to check_key_sig(), which passes it to getpublickey(), which passes it to readpublickey(), which reads successive user ID strings into it while it searches for the desired keyID. But the hash table contains dynamically allocated strings that are only as long as the string they hold. So when a longer user ID is read into it, memory past the end of the C string is corrupted. That trashes a hash table entry ("struct hashent"), destroying pointers and resulting in an illegal memory access later in the program. The offending code in mergesigs() only gets executed when a signature is being replaced with a more recent one by the same signator. It only showed up because I updated my pubring with all new keys on the servers for the last 31 days, and one key has an updated sig on it: pub 1024/AB1F4831 1993/05/10 Robert Walking-Owl <rrothenb(a)ic.sunysb.edu> Robert Walking-Owl <robert.rothenburg(a)asb.com> Here's a context diff for the fix. The signator userid isn't needed by check_key_sig() or the functions it calls since the signator's keyID is given, and if the userid is NULL then readkeypacket() ignores it, so just pass NULL to check_key_sig() and use the signator C string in mergesigs() as-is. Jim Castleberry - - cut here ------------------------------------------------------------------- *** old/keyadd.c Wed Oct 5 20:48:11 1994 - --- keyadd.c Wed Feb 15 22:37:53 1995 *************** *** 196,206 **** status = check_key_sig(fring, KeyIDpos, KeyIDlen, userid, fkey, keypos, ! ringfile, signator, (byte *) & xstamp, &sigClass); PascalToC(userid); - - PascalToC(signator); if (!status) { fprintf(pgpout, LANG("Replacing signature from %s\n"), - --- 196,205 ---- status = check_key_sig(fring, KeyIDpos, KeyIDlen, userid, fkey, keypos, ! ringfile, NULL, (byte *) & xstamp, &sigClass); PascalToC(userid); if (!status) { fprintf(pgpout, LANG("Replacing signature from %s\n"), -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.2 iQEVAwUBMJZkDJYkAuN55UFhAQG8aQf/bsx7xlS9P9SBE8ysMEbjMkKwdf6yZSCt fd0xBsUbTIsIS2Gzlx0ux7N3HWqJm/og2EBqebhfEzQk9IUBK8sp8Kbv8GtbUWrj ai2b6/hxu2yXbtQEAmTDJLO3fQCZ6yjkydFYaz2n+HuRxN4h6TlWwIHzQWOBCxuK qzPENr+c4YgMCHMVLGnAHDgPA8G9J/xX3UIPKQJQnrpAJwlGf+LTOkWeA+/kMLiw aos108n6698mcsIxXzHltCVlCaYYY6meFMHzD4rGjXOCURTtKTSRx1dJ7WNSn+1N JNwJSnFXrsvJRodko0fjpYnCUDNEbmEQgDsJX80wTdDfI+JH2LM/+g== =jh+s -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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Nautullus Voice Encryption
by Karl Marx 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Hi! I don't know if any of you have heard of the voice encryption program called Nautullus, but the full version was supposedly released sometime ago. Can someone please point me to a site where it is available ? Thanks....

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RE: (cpx) Digicash tagged with payee?
by ljo＠ausys.se 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Hal Finney <hfinney(a)shell.portal.com> writes: >I have heard it claimed that when you make a payment with Digicash ecash, >the identity of the payee is encoded or embedded into the cash somehow. >This is an anti-theft measure (among other things, perhaps). The bank >checks that the embedded identity in deposited cash matches the account >name which is doing the deposit. Where have you heard that? Everything I've heard from DigiCash seems to indicate that no such "payee encoding" is performed. >My question is, how could this be done? How can the payor, at payment >time, without communicating with the bank, embed a payee name >irreversibly into the cash so that a thief cannot strip it out and >replace it with his own name? It is possible though with other (teoretical) protocols, such as Chaum, Fiat and Naor's off-line cash scheme (briefly described in Schneirer's book 'Applied Cryptography') and especially the (off-line) cash system, developed by Stefan Brands. In these systems, when Alice spends a coin at Bob's shop she has to respond to a random challenge, sent to her by Bob. This random challenge could possibly be a hash of Bob's identity and some other values. My impression though is that this is not a feature of the current implementation of ecash. >Off-list there has been some discussion about the role of certificates in >ecash, and in cash systems in general. It would be interesting to know >if this anti-theft provision of Digicash is actually provided by means of >a certificate. It is conceivable to think of the above mentioned methods in that way, yes /Lars Johansson ljo(a)ausys.se

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RE: CJR RETURNED TO SENDER
by jsw＠netscape.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

From: Jeff Weinstein <jsw(a)netscape.com> Subject: Re: CJR returned to sender Date: Mon, 30 Oct 1995 22:16:18 -0800 Organization: Netscape Communications Corporation Timothy C. May wrote: > > At 4:43 PM 10/26/95, Jeff Weinstein wrote: > > > The ITARs are currently keeping us(Netscape) from distributing > >our US-only products to people within the United States. We have > >asked for clarification from the government about network distribution, > >such as how much verification of location and citizenship of the > >recipient we must do, and have yet to receive a response. That > >makes it more than just an export issue, at least for us. > > And I agree that this is a much more important issue than whether a t-shirt > can get an OK for export or not. > > If the CJR for the t-shirt is ultimately granted, what useful information > will be derived, or what implications for Netscape's question will be > discovered? > > If the CJR for the t-shirt is ultimately denied, ditto? It will force the bureaucrats to make a decision, which will be the subject to much public scrutiny. Hopefully it will generate a stir in the press and inform many more people of the problems of the current system. --Jeff -- Jeff Weinstein - Electronic Munitions Specialist Netscape Communication Corporation jsw(a)netscape.com - http://home.netscape.com/people/jsw Any opinions expressed above are mine.

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InfoWar
by nobody＠REPLAY.COM 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

The Wall Street Journal, October 31, 1995, p. B1. It's Time You Became A Manager of Change, The Consultants Say [Excerpts] Rapid innovation and product introduction require a nimbleness lacking in many corporate bureaucracies. "There's an intrinsic need to improve your effectiveness at managing change -- whatever form it takes," says David Nadler, chairman of the New York-based Delta Consulting Group. Change-management boosters are also telling managers to learn about "knowledge management" as a means of achieving their new goals. Knowledge management attempts to make fuller use of internal information networks. The consulting units of Arthur Andersen, Ernst & Young and Price Waterhouse are peddling systems to collect, store and distribute knowledge. Andersen designates "knowledge managers" who monitor traffic through its Lotus Notes e-mail software and store valuable information on a CD- ROM. The disk contains 16,000 pages on everything from performance measurements to employee motivation. One problem with the system: "It's so difficult to tie knowledge-management systems to bottom-line improvement," says C. Jack Grayson Jr., whose American Productivity and Quality Center co-sponsored a knowledge-management symposium with Arthur Andersen. "That just feeds suspicions that it's just another fad." It's also difficult to get employees to contribute to the information pool [fearful their jobs may vanish after overt knowledge-transfer, hence, the appeal to managers for systems that covertly siphon knowledge and record grounds for dismissal]. ------ WSJ, October 24, 1995, p. A24. Privacy Laws Are Lax On New Technology, Federal Agency Says Washington -- Inconsistent privacy laws let companies sell sensitive information about consumers who use new communications technologies, the Clinton administration warned. In a report, the Commerce Department's National Telecommunications and Information Administration called on communications companies to tell customers if they plan to sell information about what they watch or whom they call, and to make it easy for customers to squelch the disclosure of sensitive information. Federal regulations allow people to ask their phone company to keep information confidential, but the rule generally doesn't apply to small phone companies or wireless phones, according to the report. Laws that prevent video stores from disclosing what movies customers watch don't apply to pay-per-view services by satellite-television providers. And while a 1986 law prevents on-line computer services from snooping into electronic mail, it doesn't prevent the services from selling information about who e-mailed whom, and what the topic was, the report noted. The Commerce Department stopped short of calling for legislation to close the gaps. But "if industry doesn't do it, consumers will demand that the government do it," predicted Larry Irving, assistant commerce secretary for communications and information. Industry representatives played down the privacy loopholes. Ronald Plesser, a Washington attorney who represents online services and direct marketing firms, said, "I know of no example of anybody trafficking in e-mail descriptions." A spokeswoman for Hughes Electronics Corp.'s DirecTV said, "We do not release names of customers that ordered movies. -----

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Re: FCPUNX:Macintosh [and perhaps other OS] Security Alert (fwd)
by Ray Arachelian 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

========================================================================== + ^ + | Ray Arachelian | Amerika: The land of the Freeh. | _ |> \|/ |sunder(a)dorsai.org| Where day by day, yet another | \ | <--+-->| | Constitutional right vanishes. | \| /|\ | Just Say | | <|\ + v + | "No" to the NSA!| Jail the censor, not the author!| <| n ========================================================================== ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Sat, 28 Oct 1995 11:12:00 -0400 From: Sal Denaro <Sal(a)panix.com> To: Ray Arachelian <sunder(a)amanda.dorsai.org> Subject: Re: FCPUNX:Macintosh [and perhaps other OS] Security Alert (fwd) > ---------- Forwarded message ---------- > Date: Sun, 15 Oct 1995 01:05:06 -0400 > From: Lucky Green <shamrock(a)netcom.com> > To: cypherpunks(a)toad.com > Subject: Macintosh [and perhaps other OS] Security Alert > > -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- > > A number of months ago, I discovered that various Macintosh "unused > diskspace" wipe utilities (Norton, Burn) fail to wipe the unused > slackspace at the end of the last block allocated to a file. This leaves > NumberOfFiles*512Bytes/2 = several kB of recoverable data on your average > drive. > I can verify that this is a cross-platform bug. The Dos/win3.1 and Win95 versions all have the same flaw. -- Salvatore Denaro sal(a)panix.com Spinning dreams with angel wings Yes, I use PGP torn blue jeans/a foolish grin

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Cryto article in SJ Mercenary
by Simon Spero 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

There's a full page equivalent article on encyption in today's San Jose Mercury News (12E-11E). The article concentrates on public key cryptography, and mixes some good stuff with some silly mistakes. The first page has about 4/5th of the article devoted to a big diagram showing how someone using public key encryption to cover a whole message, and sent it over the internet to someone in Argentina. All this without a mention of using symmetric cyphers, and without even mentioning ITAR. Another 1/8th of this page is given over to a bunch of cypher text that supposedly encodes the address of "Mr Cosmic Kumquat, SSl Trusters etc.." This address looks kind of familiar... but they seem to imply that the cyphertext is the output of an RSA encrpytion, not RC4. They then go on to discuss factoring, and explain the difference between the strength of algorithms in theory, and how Netscape became vulnerable due to "beginners mistakes" in the implementation, and how security is best assured by open disclosure, not security through obscurity. Simon ---- (defun modexpt (x y n) "computes (x^y) mod n" (cond ((= y 0) 1) ((= y 1) (mod x n)) ((evenp y) (mod (expt (modexpt x (/ y 2) n) 2) n)) (t (mod (* x (modexpt x (1- y) n)) n))))

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Re: /dev/random for FreeBSD [was: Re: /dev/random for Linux]
by Mark Murray 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

> In a 386 or a 486 (under FreeBSD at least) there is a 1Mhz clock available. > How would _this_ be? On the Pentium there is the <whatsit?> register > which will give the board's oscillator (or 90 MHz) I believe. > > What's HZ set at for FreeBSD? Most of the x86 Unixes have generally > used HZ set at 100, because the interrupt overhead on a x86 isn't cheap, > and so you want to limit the number of clock interrupts. There are two interrupts 100Hz and the other 128Hz (The second gets pushed into the +-1K region during profiling. > You can sample the timing clock, but it turns out to be rather expensive > to do so; several I/O instructions, which will require several delays if > they have to go through your 8 MHz ISA bus. We've moved away from using > the hardware clock on the 386 because of the overhead concerns. On the > Penitum, we use the clock cycle counter. Drat. Methinks I need to follow suit, but I value that 1Mhz... > Well, verifiable randomness really is like gold. It's a valuable > resource. On a time-sharing system, where you really want to equitably > share *all* system resources perhaps there should be a quota system > limiting the rate from which a user is allowed to "consume" randomness. True. VMS could probably do this. <Ducks bricks> > On the other hand, most Unix systems *aren't* great at doing this sort > of resource allocation, and there are enough other ways of launching > denial of service attacks. "while (1) fork();" will generally bring > most systems to their knees, even in spite of limitations of the number > of processes per user. Most Unix systems don't protect against one user > grabbing all available virtual memory. And so on.... Getting there (I think). > There's nothing special about /dev/random in this sense; it's just > another system resource which can be abused by a malicious user, just > like virtual memory or process table slots. True. Good policing never hurt. > This is a strong argument for some form of specialised noise source. > I have read of methods of getting this from turbulent air flow in a hard > drive (an RFC, I believe). > > Yes, ultimately what you need is a good hardware number generator. > There are many good choices; from radioactive decay, noise diodes, etc. The idea that I like the most so far is to generate noise, but filter it through an LPF to get frequencies less than (say) 500Khz. Put that through schmitt trigger to get decent squarewaves and then into an N-bit hardware shift register with some XOR feedbacks to mix this. Voila! Nice numbers on demand. Shouldn't cost more than a few <shekels>... > Short of good hardware sources, the other really good choice is > unobservable inputs. Hence, the Linux driver is hooked into the > keyboard driver, and the various busmice drivers. Those are really > wonderful sources of randomness, since they're generally not observable > by an adversary, and humans tend to be inherently random. :-) Doesn't work on servers in locked rooms... :-( With those, as long as the machines are secure, (ie plebs cannot watch and time raw packets) the network card is OK. The server may not be on transit ethernet AT ALL. M -- Mark Murray 46 Harvey Rd, Claremont, Cape Town 7700, South Africa +27 21 61-3768 GMT+0200 Finger mark(a)grumble.grondar.za for PGP key

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A final Huber-Spam: ON MONEY
by rah＠shipwright.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Note the URL. There's more there for them as wants 'em. Cheers, Bob Hettinga --- begin forwarded text Date: Tue, 31 Oct 95 21:32:44 0500 From: Robert Hettinga <rah(a)shipwright.com> Organization: Shipwright MIME-Version: 1.0 To: rah(a)shipwright.com Subject: 031692.html X-URL: http://khht.com/huber/forbes/031692.html http://khht.com/huber/forbes/031692.html> ON MONEY > > by Peter Huber > > Forbes, March 16, 1992 at Pg. 144 > > Copyright 1992 by Peter Huber. Electronic copies of this document > may be distributed freely, provided that this notice accompanies all > copies. > > ------- > > While Europe strains to give birth to a new currency, Boris Yeltsin > toils to resurrect a dead one. With private markets triumphant > everywhere else, however, the mystery is why governments still have > to manufacture money at all. > > It is still often taken for granted that the one thing private > markets cannot make is money itself: Only government can do that. > But new governments of young nations, especially nations with > turbulent histories, can't make money, either. Nobody quite trusts > them, and without trust the paper lovingly engraved at the > government mint is valueless. > > Until recently, people put up with a lot of government paper because > even bad paper was more convenient than the alternative, which was > barter. Every self-respecting capitalist knew that government paper > was a perishable good, that it always decayed, slowly in > Switzerland, fast in Brazil, and most just put up with it. But if > capitalists can produce candies that melt in your mouth, not in your > hand, why not currencies, too? > > Money, as I wrote here two years ago (FORBES, May 14, 1990), is just > another network, our oldest medium of systematic communication. And > new communications technologies are fast surpassing the old. The > paperless bank, unlike the paperless office, is at hand. > > When it works, the old-fashioned paper we call money reliably > records past effort and promises future return. It's all a matter of > communication among stable communities of productive people. This is > why individuals can issue currencies, too -- personal checks, IOUs, > that sort of thing. Once it's established of an individual that her > word is her bond, she can in fact issue private currency at will, at > least among people who know her. > > But the trouble with private currencies has always been their > informational overhead. Personal checks bounce, the "I" behind the > IOU absconds to Monaco, Macy's defaults on its bonds. Private paper > is also volatile; pegging current value requires specialized > information from Wall Street, or a bank in Oshkosh, or a trading pit > in Chicago. In the past, it's often been cheaper to put up with the > steady but modest thievery of a central bank, which peels off 3% > (will it soon be 6%?) of your dollar every year through inflation, > than to sort out whose private paper is worth what at any given > moment. > > Computers and fiber-optic communications are changing all that. Our > new central bankers can be concerns like TRW and Dun & Bradstreet, > which track who's solvent and who's a deadbeat and convey the > information instantly, at the touch of a button, wherever it's > needed. Our new mints and engravers can be companies like Visa and > AT&T, which clear millions of transactions daily, both here and > abroad. > > What enterprises like these supply are the informational ingredients > of money. They already are far better than Alan Greenspan at > stabilizing value by assembling baskets of private paper as varied > and diversified as the global economy. Information about who earned > a credit yesterday or who can be trusted to pay back a debt tomorrow > can be passed around as easily as a dollar bill. More easily, in > fact. > > Like religious liturgies conducted in some otherwise dead language, > transactions may still be denoted in dollars or yen, but these > vestiges of an earlier age will ultimately give way to a new > financial vernacular. If everybody paid for everything (wages > included) by credit card, for example, the accounts could just as > well be denoted in pork bellies, IBM stock, quarterpounders with > cheese, or (more likely) some very large basket of hundreds of > different private goods and services, tangible and intangible. > > The Lynch, for example, might be a share in a standard pool of > commodity receipts maintained by Merril Lynch. Nobody would fully > trust the Lynch, of course, even if backed by 100% reserves, but > nobody would have to. Nobody trusts his food supply to any one > farmer, either. You diversify, you assemble baskets of baskets, and > you constantly search for quality goods and reliable supply. Same > with money. When the network and the computers behind it are > powerful enough, no central authority can or should supply the > currency, and no one will pay annual tribute by way of inflation to > the government mint. And with private money, private fortunes will > no longer be held hostage to public ineptitude in the Kremlin or on > Capitol Hill. > > So back to Yeltsin and how we can help him. Despite the corrupting > influences of the regulatory collectivist on our own shore, > America's phone companies and banks are still the best in the world. > Yeltsin needs them, far more than he needs the International > Monetary Fund, Pizza Hut or Western investment in Russia's oil > industry. Modern telefinancial enterprises can deliver the real oil > of the economy: truly stable media of exchange. > > The biggest contribution Yeltsin can make to Russia's fiscal policy > is to make way for currency capitalists. No exchange controls, no > bank insurance, no loan guarantees, no criminal prosecution for > ordinary bankruptcy, nothing but basic, narrowly interpreted laws > against outright fraud. > > Will the new private banks sometimes fail? Of course they will. Will > widows then be ruined? Certainly. So what else is new? In Russia > today the only bank in town has failed miserably, and the one cold > comfort for widows is that the ruin is universal. Give it a try, > Boris. You have nothing to lose but your rubles. --- end forwarded text ----------------- Robert Hettinga (rah(a)shipwright.com) Shipwright Development Corporation, 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA (617) 323-7923 "Reality is not optional." --Thomas Sowell >>>>Phree Phil: Email: zldf(a)clark.net http://www.netresponse.com/zldf <<<<<

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Re: /dev/random for FreeBSD [was: Re: /dev/random for Linux]
by Martin Diehl 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Theodore Ts'o writes... >Yes, ultimately what you need is a good hardware number generator. ... >I'm not entirely comfortable with the proposal of using air flow >turbulance [sic] from a hard drive ... Two important observations about the use of a disk drive to get randomness: 1. In the case of some workstations, the local network provides the disk drive and there isn't a local hard drive at all. Hence, any timing of disk accesses will give you data that is influenced by the file server more than the disk drive. 2. When doing time domain measurements (Hewlett Packard had some good application notes on this subject), you must consider base clock jitter. Ill try to illustrate with a diagram: actual event: V V clock granularity: /...../...../...../...../...../...../ the problem is that no matter how small the basic clock unit is (symbolized by "/", above), you can't be sure how much of that unit has passed when the event (symbolized by "V", above) occurs. For example, on the original IBM PC, clock interrupts occurred about 18.2 times per second (55ms interval). In that architecture, you can't time an event and have an uncertainty of less than 2 times 55ms If you propose using a special hardware random generator, you have a different set of problems: 1. You need to buy and install hardware on many different platforms -- you don't always have access to do that. 2. Many earlier posts on this subject pointed out that removing bias was important. In that case, you need to continuously test and recertify the hardware random generator for randomness. In order to do that, you need to have so much knowledge about generating and testing random numbers in software that you might as well use a software solution in the first place. Good luck

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Perfect Forward Secrecy - is it worth it?
by Simon Spero 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Quick survey; how important is perfect forward secrecy to you? I've asked three people locally so far and gotten four different answers, so in the spirit of spreading divisiveness where'er I go, I'll try and get a few more opinions here :-) In general, schemes offering PFS require a extra PK-op, and an extra round-trip when compared to non-PFS schemes. This cost is incurred once per "session", but can add on the order of seconds to startup times. Should key-management schemes where PK is available always provide PFS, allow PFS, or not provide PFS? The amount of code needed to implement each choice point is similar, if you're using something like BSAFE. Simon --- (defun modexpt (x y n) "computes (x^y) mod n" (cond ((= y 0) 1) ((= y 1) (mod x n)) ((evenp y) (mod (expt (modexpt x (/ y 2) n) 2) n)) (t (mod (* x (modexpt x (1- y) n)) n))))

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Electronic Warfare
by frezza＠interramp.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Cypherpunks, With your indulgence I would like to post this short essay here, which was stimulated by a recent report posted on this list that was passed on to me. The essay just ran as an op-ed piece in this week's issue of Communications Week. I would like to thank and acknowledge the author off the original report as well as encourage the cypherpunk community to keep me posted on related issues. (I cannot keep up with the volume on this list and, hence, am not a subscriber.) Thank you, Bill Frezza Columnist Communications Week Network Computing Magazine frezza(a)interramp.com --------------------------------------------------------------------------- ELECTRONIC WARFARE WAGES ON - AND YOU'RE THE TARGET Although the flap over the Clinton administration's attempt to promote escrowed-key encryption systems like Clipper has temporarily faded, the war on electronic privacy continues. As proceedings at the Fourth International Conference on Money Laundering, Forfeiture, Asset Recovery, Offshore Investments, the Pacific Rim, and International Financial Crimes reveal, there has been no let up in our government's efforts to blockade the cyber-frontier. No, you won't learn much from the Wall Street Journal or the New York Times, written by journalist-generalists who have no clue about where this technology is heading. The Feds have become so skilled at manipulating the Old Media that stories about electronic privacy invariably center on the latest drug kingpin, pedophile, or domestic terrorist. Attacking these universally abhorred enemies of the people not only makes for good headlines but keeps privacy advocates off balance as they are forced to defend abstract rights using loathsome examples. But if you tune in to the Cypherpunks mailing list (majordomo(a)toad.com) you can get some excellent first hand reports from the front. In the relatively short period since the passage of the Bank Secrecy Act, which, among other things, obliges banks to file Suspicious Activity Reports on its customers, banks have become virtual deputies in the treasury department's war on uncontrolled financial transactions. And this war is increasingly spilling into cyberspace. The conference underscored the fact that, paradoxically, we are heading not toward more specific and well defined transaction monitoring regulations, but less. How so? The problem with making regulations precise is that what software algorithms can define, other algorithms can evade. Instead, regulation by "raised eyebrow" is becoming the norm. Federal bank examiners have been given significant latitude to invoke draconian penalties against uncooperative banks. Because bank officers have few due-process protections under this regime, it is no surprise that most of them have become sniveling toadies. The objective is to insure that banks "voluntarily" introduce even more aggressive, unpredictable, and intrusive monitoring than the government would ever dare mandate. And to make sure nothing slips through the cracks, human surveillance will be supplemented with artificial-intelligence agents that can perform pattern analysis on the aggregate flow of electronic transactions, flagging anything remotely suspicious. George Orwell would be impressed. Lest you think that all of this is motivated solely by the drug war, a visit to the Treasury Department's Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) homepage (http://www.ustreas.gov/treasury/bureaus/fincen/facts.html) should open your eyes. This battle is not just about drug prohibition, a crime the Treasury Department would have to invent if it didn't already exist. The real struggle is about the future of tax compliance, and it has you in its sights. A famous Revolutionary War era pamphleteer, writing under the pseudonym "Brutus", perhaps said it best 200 years ago when he wrote - "The national government through its taxing power will introduce itself into every corner of the city and country. It will take cognizance of the professional man in his office or his study; it will watch the merchant in his store; it will follow the mechanic to his shop and his work, and will haunt him in his family and his bed; it will be the constant companion to the industrious farmer in his labour; it will penetrate into the most obscure cottage; and finally it will light upon the head of every person in the United States. To all these different classes of people and in all these circumstances on which it will attend them, the language in which it will address them will be GIVE! GIVE!" What Brutus didn't know and what the cypherpunks foresee is that one day strong encryption will make it impossible to spy on our activities in cyberspace. Heightened conflict is inevitable. Expect the rhetoric to get a lot hotter as the government spinmeisters labor to keep us focused on public enemies while frantically trying to keep its hand in every citizens pocket and its eyes on every bankbook. # # # COPYRIGHT CMP PUBLICATIONS 1995 Bill Frezza is president at Wireless Computing Associates and co-founder of the online forum DigitaLiberty. The opinions expresses are his own. Frezza can be reached at frezza(a)interramp.com. ------------------------------------ | Wireless Computing Associates, Inc. | 704 Stoney Hill Rd., Suite 155 | Yardley, PA 19067 | ph 215-321-0929, fax 215-321-0490 | urgent Email: frezza(a)radiomail.net | bulk Email: frezza(a)interramp.com ------------------------------------

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Re: Need Mail-to-News gates
by Rich Salz 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

>Until I can write a script to pull all the newsgroups from the active >file and place aliases for them in sendmail, the only way to use it is The "gag" program that comes with my news/mail gateway software known as newsgate can do this automatically. email to rsalz(a)nntp.com for a copy.

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From Bill Frezza: Electronic Warfare
by Ray Arachelian 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Sun, 29 Oct 1995 11:33:54 -0500 From: Bill Frezza <frezza(a)interramp.com> To: sunder(a)escape.com Subject: Can you post this? Ray, If you feel it is apporpriate, can you post the attached column to cypherpunks? Since I am not a regular subscriber (I can't keep up with the traffic) I thought it would be best to pass it by you first. Thanks, Bill Frezza ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ To: Cypherpunks(a)toad.com Subject: Electronic Warfare From: Bill Frezza (frezza(a)interramp.com) Dear cyhperpunks, Attached is a column that will appear on the op-ed page of tomorrow's (10/30) Communications Week that was stimulated largely by a report filed here by one of your members. I thought you would find it interesting and thought provoking. I would like to thank and acknowledge whoever it was that filed that report as well as encourage you all to keep me informed about related political developments. (I just don't have the bandwidth to follow the cyhperpunks list in its entirty.) It is my hope to bring the important issues you raise here to the attention of the industry and the general public. Regards, Bill Frezza Communications Week ELECTRONIC WARFARE WAGES ON - AND YOU'RE THE TARGET Although the flap over the Clinton administration's attempt to promote escrowed-key encryption systems like Clipper has temporarily faded, the war on electronic privacy continues. As proceedings at the Fourth International Conference on Money Laundering, Forfeiture, Asset Recovery, Offshore Investments, the Pacific Rim, and International Financial Crimes reveal, there has been no let up in our government's efforts to blockade the cyber-frontier. No, you won't learn much from the Wall Street Journal or the New York Times, written by journalist-generalists who have no clue about where this technology is heading. The Feds have become so skilled at manipulating the Old Media that stories about electronic privacy invariably center on the latest drug kingpin, pedophile, or domestic terrorist. Attacking these universally abhorred enemies of the people not only makes for good headlines but keeps privacy advocates off balance as they are forced to defend abstract rights using loathsome examples. But if you tune in to the Cypherpunks mailing list (majordomo(a)toad.com) you can get some excellent first hand reports from the front. In the relatively short period since the passage of the Bank Secrecy Act, which, among other things, obliges banks to file Suspicious Activity Reports on its customers, banks have become virtual deputies in the treasury department's war on uncontrolled financial transactions. And this war is increasingly spilling into cyberspace. The conference underscored the fact that, paradoxically, we are heading not toward more specific and well defined transaction monitoring regulations, but less. How so? The problem with making regulations precise is that what software algorithms can define, other algorithms can evade. Instead, regulation by "raised eyebrow" is becoming the norm. Federal bank examiners have been given significant latitude to invoke draconian penalties against uncooperative banks. Because bank officers have few due-process protections under this regime, it is no surprise that most of them have become sniveling toadies. The objective is to insure that banks "voluntarily" introduce even more aggressive, unpredictable, and intrusive monitoring than the government would ever dare mandate. And to make sure nothing slips through the cracks, human surveillance will be supplemented with artificial-intelligence agents that can perform pattern analysis on the aggregate flow of electronic transactions, flagging anything remotely suspicious. George Orwell would be impressed. Lest you think that all of this is motivated solely by the drug war, a visit to the Treasury Department's Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) homepage (http://www.ustreas.gov/treasury/bureaus/fincen/facts.html) should open your eyes. This battle is not just about drug prohibition, a crime the Treasury Department would have to invent if it didn't already exist. The real struggle is about the future of tax compliance, and it has you in its sights. A famous Revolutionary War era pamphleteer, writing under the pseudonym "Brutus", perhaps said it best 200 years ago when he wrote - "The national government through its taxing power will introduce itself into every corner of the city and country. It will take cognizance of the professional man in his office or his study; it will watch the merchant in his store; it will follow the mechanic to his shop and his work, and will haunt him in his family and his bed; it will be the constant companion to the industrious farmer in his labour; it will penetrate into the most obscure cottage; and finally it will light upon the head of every person in the United States. To all these different classes of people and in all these circumstances on which it will attend them, the language in which it will address them will be GIVE! GIVE!" What Brutus didn't know and what the cypherpunks foresee is that one day strong encryption will make it impossible to spy on our activities in cyberspace. Heightened conflict is inevitable. Expect the rhetoric to get a lot hotter as the government spinmeisters labor to keep us focused on public enemies while frantically trying to keep its hand in every citizens pocket and its eyes on every bankbook. # # # COPYRIGHT CMP PUBLICATIONS 1995 Bill Frezza is president at Wireless Computing Associates and co-founder of the online forum DigitaLiberty. The opinions expresses are his own. Frezza can be reached at frezza(a)interramp.com. ------------------------------------ | Wireless Computing Associates, Inc. | 704 Stoney Hill Rd., Suite 155 | Yardley, PA 19067 | ph 215-321-0929, fax 215-321-0490 | urgent Email: frezza(a)radiomail.net | bulk Email: frezza(a)interramp.com ------------------------------------

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Please send cash
by fc＠all.net 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

I just picked this up from the Risks forum: > Date: Mon, 30 Oct 1995 16:14:59 -0500 > From: Drew Dean <ddean(a)CS.Princeton.EDU> > Subject: HotJava 1.0 alpha 3 security issues > > We have found several security problems in the 1.0 alpha 3 release of > HotJava from Sun Microsystems. The two most important problems are that > HotJava does not enforce the stated limits on where an applet can connect to > (an applet can talk to any place with which you have IP-level connectivity), > and HotJava is vulnerable to a man-in-the-middle attack, where someone can > watch your web-surfing, both seeing your requests, and the content that you > receive. Two of the Java attacks I outlined in this forum and got abuse for. > While HotJava prevents applets from actively opening connections that > violate the user-selected security policy, it allows an applet to accept > connections from anywhere. At this point, an applet only has to use any one > of a number of channels to communicate where it is, and have the remote end > do the active open. > > HotJava also allows an applet to set the proxy servers that the browser > uses. This opens up a huge hole for anyone concerned about the privacy of > their web surfing. Attacks 31-49 work here. > Please note that these bugs are specific to the 1.0 alpha 3 release, and are > _not_ bugs in the Java language itself, nor do they apply to Netscape 2.0 > beta 1J, which doesn't permit network connections. We have notified Sun of > these problems, and are presently writing a paper on these and other issues. > We will make more information available on our Web page after we hear back > from Sun. Drat - Sun doesn't offer awards. > > http://www.cs.princeton.edu/~ddean/java/ > > Drew Dean Dan Wallach > ddean(a)cs.princeton.edu dwallach(a)cs.princeton.edu Inquiring minds want to know. -- -> See: Info-Sec Heaven at URL http://all.net Management Analytics - 216-686-0090 - PO Box 1480, Hudson, OH 44236

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Re: Keyed-MD5, ITAR, and HTTP-NG
by Rich Salz 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

>GSS is often brought up on occasions like this. I have never seen an architectural >overview of what it is trying to achieve for me or how. When I am provided >with a clear definition of what it is I hope to arrive at a clear explanation >of why I'm not using it. Unfortunately the RFC process strips the rationale >part out of the specs. You don't understand it, but once you do you can explain why you're not using it? Do you really mean that, or am I misunderstanding? Many of the GSSAPI principals are in the Boston area: John Linn at OpenVision in Cambridge, John Wray at Digital in Littleton, Ted T'so and Marc Horowitz at MIT, etc. If you would like to have a discussion, face-to-face or phone, let me know and I will try to work something out. /r$

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