December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

17 Dec '03

C-punx I really didn't mean to send that last message to the list. I had stiffened my resolve not to rise to the obvious troll bait, but a minor seizure of some sort resulted in the send command being issued instead of the cancel command. . . By way of making up for it I thought that some of you might be interested in knowing that AAAS is having it's annual meeting in Baltimore this year and of interest to those pondering alternative means to bruting cryptosystems are the sessions below: DNA Computing, Friday Feb. 9, 8:30 - 11:30 am Organized by Richard Lipton, Princeton University Quantum Computation, Friday Feb. 9, 2:30 - 5:30 pm Organized by Seth Lloyd, MIT C. J. Leonard ( / "DNA is groovy" \ / - Watson & Crick <cjl(a)welchlink.welch.jhu.edu> / \ <-- major groove ( \ Finger for public key \ ) Strong-arm for secret key / <-- minor groove Thumb-screws for pass-phrase / )

1 0

Re: 767 MHz Alpha, opinion_mode_enabled (fwd)
by Ray Arachelian 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

I 'spose it's gettin' to be time that we ditched them 512 bit keys and them 40 bit keys. :) The very existance of a 2.6GHz CPU - yes freon cooled is more than enough... =====================================Kaos=Keraunos=Kybernetos============== .+.^.+.| Ray Arachelian |Prying open my 3rd eye. So good to see |./|\. ..\|/..|sunder(a)sundernet.com|you once again. I thought you were |/\|/\ <--*-->| ------------------ |hiding, and you thought that I had run |\/|\/ ../|\..| "A toast to Odin, |away chasing the tail of dogma. I opened|.\|/. .+.v.+.|God of screwdrivers"|my eye and there we were.... |..... ======================= http://www.sundernet.com ========================== ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Wed, 17 Sep 1997 11:08:40 -0500 From: "Kirk R. Erichsen" <KirkE(a)LOSNINOS.ORG> Reply-To: AlphaNT(a)beauty.mke.ra.rockwell.com To: AlphaNT(a)beauty.mke.ra.rockwell.com Subject: Re: 767 MHz Alpha, opinion_mode_enabled According to trade reports, the 21264 will be available at 800MHz by mid 98 but the die size (a .25 micron die) will need a signficant shrink to make the speed practical (heat and power consumption will be monsterous). It will need a die shrink to a .15 or .18 process in order for 800MHz + Alpha CPUs to be inexpensive enough to produce in volume. A smaller die size increases the number of chips that are "good" per waffer and decreases the finished chips power consumption and heat dissipation. Other methods for dealing with CPU speed (which don't address power or heat directly) include using CMOS alternatives like BiCMOS and Gallium Arsenide. Gallium Arsenide is very expensive, and the element Gallium is a rare earth element, so high production using it is not possible. As for the existing Digital freon "lab" chips, the 1.2GHz frequency has actually been surpassed twice already, with some reports saying that the last test with a non-production (beta 21364?) chip reached 2.6GHz. I don't know if at that frequency the processor was at sub-zero (in Celsius) temperatures, but it was at least a liquid nitrogen machine. One question no one seems to ask is "how fast were the external buses to memory and cache running on these testbeds?" Xray lithography has already produced (in very limited quantity) operable memory and processors with die sizes of below .000001 microns, a size that could accomodate about 1000 21264 processors in a package that would appear to be little more than a single "chip." The problem with implementing Xray lithography is that almost none of the existing process tools for producing chips can be used. The precise photo lithography masks (most of which are used with ultra-violet light) don't work anymore (Xray just goes right through) forcing you to use alloys of lead, bismuth and zirconium in the masks, a considerably more expensive and complex method. Ionizer units and other tools would have to be built for dealing with incredibly low tolerance. When Xray lithography is finally implmented, there will be a quantum lead in the frequency (multi GHz) while simulataneously reducing power consumption and heat dissipation. SMP and massively parallel machines will be portable boxes that will weigh only slightly more than the case and screen (if the TFT panel itself does not fall prey to light weight projection glasses) force it to be. The other option for new memory and processor devices is to "grow" them. Nanotechnologies that may be available in the next 10 years could allow microscopic machines in combination with biologic engineering could produce processors and memory of sizes at or below those of Xray lithography, with significant implications in other industries as well. One issue very rarely addressed in trade mags is the system bus speeds for the system bus (or any seperate cache, memory and I/O buses). Without a fast external bus speed, the system cannot necessarily provide more usable performance, particularly when memory becomes bottlenecked and saturated even at todays low frequencies. High internal CPU frequency does can not provide a linear increase in performance in and of itself. At about 400MHz, you have reached the maximum frequency an electrical bus can run. The next option for connecting the system bus to the processors is through optical buses. Optical buses don't suffer from the interference and noise that electrical buses do, and can operate at up to many thousands of GB without the error rates. Optical buses will connect all cache, memory and storage devices (directly without I/O adaption) in multiple segments with parallel access to all devices. The problems with doing this are the speed of the embedded switches which convert electrical signals into optical pulses are currently much too high in latency. A die shrink, the use of a high speed silicon or GA switch (or some new Selenium technology) could make the speed between electrical and optical buses practical. The other implication of more advanced methods for producing memory and processors is that the sluggish mechanical disk drive becomes totally obsolete. Massive non-volatile memory storage could be added to a system directly off the memory bus without the need for additional I/O buses. Hologramic optical storage devices (which store data as an image in 3D space) will replace most of the mechanical drive based multi-terrabyte installations with multi exabyte storage that will be 1000 smaller than existing storage devices. The entire world could place all its currently existing data and archives into a hologramic memory device the size of a lunch box. If it all sounds far fetched, its been proven possible already. Lets give it 10 years. At 10:41 AM 9/17/97 -0400, you wrote: >I talked with a tech from DEC here in Massachusetts and yes, I can >confirm that they did get 1.2 Gig but it was cooled with a liquid >nitrogen containing fan system, which cooled the chip considerably, but >not below freezing point. The FPU was very bad at this temp though Kirk R. Erichsen LAN Manager/Communications

2 2

Webernet Madne$$
by nobody＠REPLAY.COM 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Wall Street Journal, November 3, 1995 Wall Street is in the throes of Internet mania. Or is it Internet madness? Investors have poured into Internet-related stocks in the past couple of days, pushing some Web darlings such as Spyglass and Netscape Communications to dizzying new heights. "People are blindly investing in anything that says Internet," said Willian Bluestein, an analyst at Forrester Research in Cabridge, Mass. "Everyone wants to buy into the craze," says John Sebrich, who works with mutual-fund investor Mario Gabelli. ... What is the big stampede all about? During the past week or so, some of the highest-profile, highest-flying Internet stocks have actually reported profits, a development the Street wasn't expecting until next year at best. ... "The reason Intuit's moving up is the realization that if you had to do the banking industry over again, you wouldn't use brick and mortar," said Neal P. Miller, manager of Fidelity Investments' New Millennium Fund. "I think the size of this Internet thing is just dawning on everyone," he said. Neil Weintraut said, "Money managers are realizing that there is tremendous strength behind this. It's not just a technology chasing a marketplace." ... [and more gush] ______________________________________________________ Web and Wild [Chart] ______________________________________________________ Percent Yesterday's Change Company Close This Week ______________________________________________________ Spyglass $70.50 +70% Uunet Technologies 67.00 +41% Netcom Online 68.63 +30% Performance Systems 21.25 +30% Intuit 82.75 +21% Netscape 98.25 +21% ______________________________________________________ ----- European Firms Join Research Group In Bid to Guide Internet Development By Douglas Lavin Paris - - Afraid of being frozen out of the booming interest in the Internet, 20 European companies joined together to form the European arm of an Internet research group. The World Wide Web Consortium's European branch will work with the U.S. Web consortium on such global issues as electronic commerce, but it will also work on such international issues as the use of languages other than English on the Web, the multimedia portion of the Internet. "We must assure that the beautiful springtime of the World Wide Web is not also the autumn of the French language," said Elisabeth Dufourcq, France's secretary of state for research at a conference here to announce the creation of the European branch. Several large European technology firms, including Oy Nokia of Finland and Siemens AG of Germany, who are hoping to play a major role in the development of the Internet here ponied up $150,000 to join the consortium. Particularly well-represented are telephone companies who see the Internet as a threat to their ability to control national voice and data networks. Among the European members of the consortium, announced at a conference on the Web here, are British Telecommunications PLC and the national telecommunications companies of France, Germany, Italy and Belgium. All five companies either offer or are planning to offer Internet access. One of the group's key tasks is to ensure that improvements made by such rival companies as Netscape Communications Corp. and Microsoft Corp., both members of the U.S. consortium, don't create separate parts of the Internet that can only be read by Microsoft or Netscape software. Membership in the European consortium, which is to be based at the French national computer-research institute, Inria, also shows a remarkable degree of interest in the Web by the French business and government establishment, which only a year ago dismissed the Internet as a American version of France's Minitel network, but now is avidly promoting the Internet's growth. Among the members of the consortium from France are Assurances Generale de France, the insurance company; Electricite de France, the electricty company; Cie. des Machines Bull, the computer maker; Aerospatiale, the aerospace concern; and Thomson-CSF, the arms manufacturer, all of them state-controlled, as well as such private concerns as Alcatel-Alsthom SA and Groupe Michelin. Inria, which already has taken over some Web research work from CERN, the nuclear-research organization in Switzerland where the Web was created in 1989 by Tim Berners-Lee. Mr. Berners-Lee, now at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, is heading both the U.S. and the European research consortia. [End] ----- Nuclear research > munitions research > controlled crypto > controlled commerce > economic espionage > ten thousand-year reign of the PGP-DigiBank-MIT-CERN crypto-commo-libertarian nerds. Phill, what's the admission code to W3 world domination?

2 1

public random numbers
by JMKELSEY＠delphi.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- >Date: Fri, 03 Nov 1995 00:44:02 -0800 >From: tcmay(a)got.net (Timothy C. May) >Subject: Re: video as a source of public randomness > >At 6:23 AM 11/3/95, JMKELSEY(a)delphi.com wrote: > >>This seems like a potential source of a stream of public random >>bits. If these can be authenticated and matched, this kind of thing >>can be useful in a lot of protocols. For example, if there is some > >I'm not sure what you mean by "public random bits"...I don't plan to share >my random bits with anyone, nor do I see any need for "public" random bits >(except for some well-known situations involving statistical testing, for >which certain PRNGs are actually preferable to "real" random numbers). Imagine there is a stream of totally random bits over which neither Alice nor Bob has any control. We can use this to make a lot of interactive protocols non-interactive. Suppose we have a protocol where we need a random challenge from Bob. Alice sends a message to Bob starting the protocol, stating that the public random bit stream is currently at bit i, and committing to use the n-bit string starting at position (i+t) as the challenge. The t parameter here needs to be large enough to ensure that Bob receives and logs the message before the public random bit stream outputs bit i+t. Alice proceeds with the protocol, using the n-bit string starting at bit (i+t) as the challenge. She sends the resulting message to Bob. No interaction was required of Bob--he merely had to log the times of the messages, and keep track of the public random bits. This could be really useful implementing noninteractive digital cash schemes, I think, because the merchant wouldn't have to send anything back. (The merchant can also be very hard to track down by following the messages, since these messages of Alice's can be encrypted under his public key and posted to a newsgroup or something, though this implies really large values of t.) Naturally, this only works if Alice and Bob get the same random string, and if it's not possible for anyone to alter the public random bit string either one receives. For large-scale applications, the way to do this is probably to put a hardware RNG into a communications satellite, and devote one channel to continuous digitally-signed packets of random data. For smaller-scale or underground applications, it might be sufficient to use some digitized transmission that would probably not be worth the trouble for an attacker to alter, even if one could. For example, if we used the entire digital video feed off some major satellite, it would be enormously expensive to take control of that for any length of time, to attack some protocol. To prevent simple attacks, we can hash the digitized input, and we can make each shared random packet dependent on previous packets by some relation like random_packet[i+1] = SHA1(random_packet[i],SHA1(digital_video_packet[i])). >And so there's no confusion, when I said "like a noisy channel (t.v. >channel, for example)" I meant a snowy, noisy picture such as one gets with >rabbit ears on top of the set, especially when the channel is an unused >one. It is unlikely in the extreme that any attacker could deduce the snowy >pixel values used in the distillation of entropy. I was just thinking of the unintended entropy in the stuff going on on the screen. Static would mess this idea up, though there are some ways to recover. >But back to the subject of "public random bits." Could you elaborate on >what you mean by this? (I assume you don't mean a one time pad that Alice >and Bob share, since that is really a separable issue from video as a >source of randomness. Only one of them will generate the pad, and will then >securely communicate it to the other.) No, of course not. Public random bits can be used in the derivation of a shared key, to prevent replay attacks in key-exchange protocols, but you certainly wouldn't want to use the public random bits directly as key material! >--Tim May Note: Please respond via e-mail as well as or instead of posting, as I get CP-LITE instead of the whole list. --John Kelsey, jmkelsey(a)delphi.com PGP 2.6 fingerprint = 4FE2 F421 100F BB0A 03D1 FE06 A435 7E36 -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.2 iQCUAwUBMJqtkUHx57Ag8goBAQGWRgP1HES4nQiWRx0P31bi94g5MI8pSEwf5CZu 0RlWLyCl5CLB6PKu7bJDqiyHIBBJ90qqvJvZB740QHVxoRKycOD459nMWjiQXcnA 70Aq8gR+ZYCivsJLJfhKxoxuT+s/VyYVMB7mSfqGIGHHErbXHR4oA2T+Owmm8POi WDr4w3OjyQ== =3QHQ -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

1 0

Re: Telephone switch capacity -Reply
by Noah Brodbeck 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

>>> John D. Ervin <jervin(a)netpath.net> 11/03/95 05:32pm >You would be suprised as to how much is being tapped >now. >You need to do a little more research before spouting off.. >>If the FBI wishes to set up a system that is capable >>of monitoring 1% of the total number of lines, that equates >>to a ability to tap 5%, not 1% of all calls in progress. I am very confused. I was not 'spouting off' in any sense of the word. Your comment refers to my apparent lack of knowledge of the widespread practice of wiretapping. A practice, at least according to the sworn testimony of agents of the FBI, is not very widespread at all. That is, however, beside the point. I was making a very truthful comment about the engineered capacity of the telephone network in the U.S. I made no comment whatsoever about the current ability or desire of the FBI to tap into individuals telephone conversations. -=- Noah

2 1

consumer products that make nice sources
by Brad Dolan 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

>Date: Fri, 3 Nov 1995 10:34:00 -0500 (EST) >From: Brad Dolan <bdolan(a)use.usit.net> >To: s1113645(a)tesla.cc.uottawa.ca >Cc: "Perry E. Metzger" <perry(a)piermont.com>, cypherpunks(a)toad.com >Subject: Re: Sources of randomness > > >> What prices have you got listed? Is the equipment sensitive enough to get >> lots of entropy from a normal environment or do you need artificial sources >> of radioactivity? (easy, safe and cheap enough to get?) The tag on my Montana Sunshine Radon Mine radon pillow is a little blurred. I think the following is the right phone number. Sunshine Mine is an amusing concept. People pay money to go breathe radon there, while others are spending much money avoiding radon. Anyway, the pillows make nice sources and good conversation pieces. bd >Safe, easy-to-obtain gamma sources: orange fiesta-ware pottery (at flea >markets), old-style Coleman lantern mantles (not sure about the new >ones), uranium-ore "health pillows" (Sunshine Mine, 408-225-3670). ^^^ 406

1 0

Re: consumer products that make nice sources
by tcmay＠got.net 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 5:46 PM 11/3/95, Brad Dolan wrote: >The tag on my Montana Sunshine Radon Mine radon pillow is a little blurred. >I think the following is the right phone number. > >Sunshine Mine is an amusing concept. People pay money to go breathe radon >there, while others are spending much money avoiding radon. > >Anyway, the pillows make nice sources and good conversation pieces. I'd say they make poor sources. Far too large. A smaller source has better access to the detector without adding much to the overall background the user is exposed to. (I'm not saying low-level uranium or thorium sources are much of a hazard, but the fluence presented at the detector is very low for such an extended source.) It depends on the detector type (alpha, beta, gamma, neutrino?), but high count rates can be obtained in a variety of ways. (Don't get too high a count rate, or the dead time characteristics of the pulse-height analyzers will introduce spurious correlations that decrease entropy--I mention this to show that even radiation detector sources of entropy have non-random issues to take into account.) --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."

2 1

Computers at wholesale, Pentiums & AMD(k-5,k-6)
by ceo35＠concentric.net 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

For removal, please put remove on subject line and email me at Endless(a)Gosnet.com *Don't press reply, it won't get back to me. Follow instructions down below. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - "FULLY CONFIGURED, NEW PENTIUM MMX - TECHNOLOGY COMPUTERS" -FOR SALE- PENTIUM-133 TO MMX-233 COMPUTER SYSTEMS AT WHOLESALE TO YOU! Have you been looking for that one real, solid, GREAT computer buy at real 'Deal', yes! Well then, all that you have to do is to follw this link: It will be up thursday or friday, until then email me. Follow directions at end of page. Http://www.gosnet.com/success/pentiums.htm Some of the systems: P-133 @ $685.00 MMX-P-166 @ $740.00 Pentium-2's- 233 @ $1,540.00 P-150 @ $700.00 MMX-P-200 @ $825.00 Pentium-2's- 266 @ $1,640.00 P- 166 @ $737.00 MMX-P-233 @ $975.00 P-200 @ $809.00 AMD K-5/ 90 @ $585.00 K-6/ 166 @ $710.00 K-5/ 120 @ $620.00 k-6/ 200 @ $780.00 K-5/ 133 @ $632.00 k-6/ 233 @ $995.00 K-5/ 166 @ $690.00 MONITORS "14" TO "17" A steal of a deal on "17" monitors with a built in stereo-speaker system @ $440.00 "14" @ $220.00 "15" @ $250.00 AND MORE!! WINDOWS 95 @ $110.00 ROM DRIVES 16x, 24x starting @ $89.00 Continuose read/write CD'S @ $50.00 for a 10 pack Ethernet Cards PCI, 10Base-T/BNC @ $31.00 Soundblater 16 Model 2961 $ 65.00. , Mice $12.00, (serial port 3 button) Modem - 115.20 Bps down to 14.000 Bps, fax/mode W/V @$120.00 Many more products on web page when up. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Please include your name and phone number in your e-mail to us. Emailto: user2384(a)xsend.com We will call you to help you complete the purchase of your system. Hours 9-7pm(pacific)M-F, Sat 9-6. Important! Please put more info on subject line of email to us.

1 0

Re: National Security Committee amendments to SAFE
by Amanda Walker 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

> I take it this last sentence is intended to kill Bernstein, Karn and Junger > and any other cases we might try to bring. Correct? Looks like a separation of powers problem at first glance; how many situations are there where the legislative branch and the executive branch can collude to take the judicial branch out of the loop entirely? Amanda Walker Ascend Communications, Inc. amanda_walker(a)ascend.com

1 0

Re: Bruce Schneier's Applied Cryptography, 2nd Edition
by tcmay＠got.net 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 2:48 PM 11/3/95, Ray Arachelian wrote: >Now does anyone want my old 1st edition? :-) I am interested. I will trade five (5) slightly used prime numbers for it. (Has anybody ever thought about using prime numbers as a medium of barter in a digital economy? Think of the labor that would be saved if we all didn't have to compute our own!! :-}) --Klaus! von Used Primes 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."

2 1

Re: video as a source of public randomness
by tcmay＠got.net 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 2:17 PM 11/3/95, Tim Philp wrote: > Would not generating random numbers using video sources be >suseptable to the same 'external' influences as generating random numbers >from radio static? External RF fields could skew the 'randomness' of the >data. Do a thought experiment, if not an actual experiment. Tune your t.v. to an unused channel. Use no antenna, or perhaps just small rabbit ears. Notice the swirl of snow (as in "Snow Crash"). Imagine sampling bits from this snowstorm, perhaps 10 per frame. Apply the usual tricks to remove biases in one direction or another (*) and apply hashes as desired to distill bits of entropy. (* Such as von Neumann's scheme to turn even biased coins into "fair" sources: toss a coin twice and let H T be a 1 and T H be a 0.) To complete the thought experiment: Imagine the difficulty of an attacker being able to module this snowstorm in any predictable way. Imagine the difficulty when the antenna input has been disconnected, or the rabbit ears moved by air currents in the room, or.... "All crypto is economics." The cost of an attack based on modulating this source of randomness would be in the tens of billions of dollars, or more, and likely impossible at any cost at this time. (Depending on the sampling details, the antenna input, etc. I'm not saying a black bag job could not be done to alter the inputs to the t.v., just that external RF manipulation is unlikely in the extreme to be economically feasible.) > As another thought, has anyone done any work on RNGs involving >chaotic processes such as fluid dynamics and turbulent flow? I suspect >that pressure, or other parameter variences, in turbulent flow could yield >good random numbers. As a bonus, these parameters are easily measurable >without special, exotic, equipment and should be inexpensive Ignoring the work allegedly done on "chaotic encryption," the RF method described above essentially is relying on turbulence: the atmospheric variations ("spherics," "whistlers," are some of the buzz words) affect the snowstorm. Also, the rabbit ear antennas move in response to room air currents. Again, all unpredictable. (And as I noted above, sampling strategy is important...) I don't plan to belabor this point. Radioactive decay sources are certainly fine, though not likely to be purchased by most people. (I have nothing against radioactive decay, as some of you may know--it made my career.) --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."

2 1

Re[2]: FBI seeks huge wiretapping system
by sharborth＠hai-net.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Subject: Re: FBI seeks huge wiretapping system Author: Jay Campbell <edge(a)got.net> at internet Date: 03-11-95 06:08 >I was being facetious. The point is that the government has no >inherent right to tap our phones -- indeed, it didn't do so for nearly >the first 200 years of our existance, and we did just fine -- better, >in fact. It is a well-known fact that it was common practice for NSA operatives to ^^^ masquerade as Injuns in the 1800's and waylay Pony Express riders in order ^^^^^^ I think you'll find the NSA was not in existence in the 1800's. to intercept communications between targeted parties. This practice lost popularity towards the end of the century with the advent of boxed cereal, and with it the Lone Ranger Decoder Ring, since the operatives were too underfunded to afford anything more than oatmeal. [ducks] -- Jay Campbell edge(a)got.net - Operations Manager -=-=-=-=-=-=- Sense Networking, Santa Cruz Node Jay(a)Campbell.net got.net? PGP MIT KeyID 0xACAE1A89 "On the Information Superhighway, I'm the guy behind you in this morning's traffic jam leaning on his horn."

1 0

Re: Telephone bugging devices
by Sean Roach 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 01:49 PM 9/16/97 -0400, ERIC HUGHES wrote: > >I was wondering if you can give me infomation on how and where i can get >a non visible telephone bugging device. Cost as well. > >Or a room bugging device non visible as long as it can only be detected >by detecters > > Radio Shack. It's called a FM Wireless Microphone. You can probably get one for less than 20 bucks. You can then take the shell off of this, probably a little black rectangle or a childs toy microphone, and you will have a nie little circuit board. Battery life is a problem, but you can work out a solution to that depending on where you put it. Hide it either on the underside of surfaces below eye level or on the top surfaces of objects a foot or so above head level. They sell some more dedicated hardware out of the back of magazines like popular science and popular mechanics. Look for advertisements that claim that thier product can BROADCAST UP TO A HALF MILE and show a picture of something next to a quarter.

1 0

Re: Sources of randomness
by Peter Monta 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

I'm puzzled by the implication that thermal noise or avalanche or Zener noise is somehow inferior to noise from radioactive sources. It's not. Take as an example Johnson noise, the voltage noise from a resistance. It's the result of the interaction of vast numbers of electrons. It is unpredictable in the same way that individual radioactive decay events are unpredictable, and they are both results of friendly quantum mechanics. Small biases/interferences that come from nonideally sampling such voltages do not matter, since the entropy is still 1-epsilon bits per sample (more for nonbinary samples). There is no "chink in the armor" available for cryptanalysis---the user need only acquire N*(1+epsilon) random bits rather than N bits. The video-snow-noise described by Tim May is mostly Johnson noise in the low-noise-amplifier electonics, not atmospheric or ionospheric noise, at least above 50 MHz or so. Cheers, Peter Monta pmonta(a)qualcomm.com Qualcomm, Inc./Globalstar

3 2

Physician, Heal Thyself
by tcmay＠got.net 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 2:38 PM 11/3/95, Perry E. Metzger wrote: >Tim May will doubtless disagree, but he has nothing else to do in life ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ >than read the net so his incentives to see traffic minimized aren't >the same as other people's. Perry, would you please knock off the drone of snide remarks about me? I mostly don't respond to your posts. You often make very good points, but at other times you demonstrate a shrillness and apparent lack of socialization that I find appalling. Your snide remarks are, to use your own rhetoric, "wasteful of bandwidth." They are also tacky, childish, and pointless. You are often quick to say "What has this got to do with Cypherpunks?," but you yourself are perfectly willing to rant on about Nietzsche, the East Germans, and Louis Freeh. Physician, heal thyself. --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."

2 1

Biological Warfare
by Sean Roach 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

I came up with an idea for fighting GAK. Biological warefare. This is a tried and true formula for war. The Europeans used it to great effect against the Native Americans in the form of Rabies and Smallpoxs. The Europeans even used a form of it even earlier, throwing the rotting corpses of dead horses into beseiged cities to spread desease. The more modern chemical warefare has been used in both world wars and possibly by Saddam Hussain during the Gulf War. What I propose is a virus. For GAK to work, there have to be lines of code in the encryption program to give the government access. It has been commented here that anyone who can get the source code can comment those lines out. Let's be frank, very few will have that option. However, a software patch could be made that commented out the offending code of any given product. Perhaps also altering some visible part of the program so that you know that your conversations are now secure. Perhaps the addition of a small ascii character to the corner of the screen. The program that delivers the patch could be made in the form of a rather innocuous computer virus. Or, if you prefer, a worm. This way, the program can travel the same highways of silicon that the GAKked messages travel to deGAK the software that it targets whenever it encounters it. Give the software a relatively short lifespan, on the order of a year or so, before all copies check thier date and decide to self destruct. No need for the virus if the software has been upgraded. Then you'd need a new version of the virus. The project would be a large one as persons would have to get ahold of the source. Probably through decompiling it and figuring out what the now undocumented source does at each step. The actual virus would be easy to code by comparison. This should not preclude fighting the onset of GAK, rather the functional incorporation of GAK. What is the government going to do with 50,000 americans who have been using unGAKked software because they didn't know that it had been infected? Keep the visual clue as small as possible, maybe an extra period in a line of periods. That way an argument can be made for ignorance of the crime. That is all.

3 2

RE: Many Topics are Appropriate for Discussion Here
by John Curtis 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Nothing ventured, nothing gained. I don't mind reading serious questions no matter how naive, provided that the questioner is willing to listen to the responses no matter how acerbic. You would have to have a pretty thick skin to post here frequently. ---------- From: Futplex[SMTP:futplex@pseudonym.com] Sent: Friday, November 03, 1995 2:30 PM To: Cypherpunks Mailing List Subject: Re: Many Topics are Appropriate for Discussion Here I have some not-so-hypothetical questions: Suppose I have serious and plausibly realistic aspirations to become an authority in some subtopic of cryptography, network security, etc. (sometime well into the next millenium). Am I more likely to learn and hone my skills by actively participating (sticking my neck out) or merely lurking indefinitely ? Regardless of the answer to the previous question, should the list suffer me my missteps and naivete ? I do not consider these questions rhetorical, and the answers are very important to me on a personal level. And now I believe I'll shut up for a while. -Futplex <futplex(a)pseudonym.com>

1 0

Re: National Security Committee amendments to SAFE
by Sean Roach 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 04:15 PM 9/17/97 -0400, Carl Ellison wrote: ... >I take it this last sentence is intended to kill Bernstein, Karn and Junger >and any other cases we might try to bring. Correct? > >Is anyone starting a campaign to get congressfolks to kill both McCain-Kerrey >and the amended SAFE? ... I sent an e-mail to my representative, Mr. J. C. Watts Jr. Regrettably, he is on the national security board, so I don't hold out much hope of converting him. I presented him, however inelegantly my words, with the currently popular housekey escrow with the IRS. I also presented another of security cameras in everyones homes for looking in occasionally. Finally I asked that he watch 1984 and warned him about not watching it in the company of minors. Maybe he'll watch 1984, BECAUSE it has nudity, though.

1 0

LACC: DEA Agents Accuse CIA of Tapping Phones
by Greg Broiles 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

This would probably be a pretty interesting complaint to read, if there are any DC-area cypherpunks who feel like making a trip down to the courthouse .. >Resent-Date: Wed, 17 Sep 1997 19:55:42 +1000 (EST) >Date: 17 Sep 1997 09:49:50 -0000 >From: proff(a)suburbia.net >X-Loop: lacc(a)suburbia.net >Resent-Sender: lacc-request(a)suburbia.net >To: lacc(a)suburbia.net >Resent-From: lacc(a)suburbia.net >X-OS: FreeBSD3.0-current >X-Mailing-List: <lacc(a)suburbia.net> ftp://ftp.suburbia.net/pub/mailinglists/lacc/archive/latest/1018 >X-Subscription: To unsubscribe from this fine mailing list mail lacc-request(a)suburbia.net with Subject: unsubscribe >Subject: LACC: DEA Agents Accuse CIA of Tapping Phones > >Real-To: proff(a)suburbia.net > > > >SAN FRANCISCO (AP) - The CIA and other spy >agencies have systematically tapped the phones of >overseas Drug Enforcement Administration offices, >according to a class action lawsuit agents filed >Thursday in Washington. > >The lawsuit, which also names the National Security >Agency and the State Department, seeks a court >order barring those agencies from any further >wiretapping. > >"These agencies have a pattern and practice of >eavesdropping on DEA agents' and employees' >conversations while they are serving the government >overseas," said attorney Brian Leighton of Clovis, Calif. > >But legal experts say it could be a difficult lawsuit to >win, especially since an employer - in this case the >government - generally has a right to listen to employee >conversation on office phones. > >It also doesn't help that national security was involved >and that courts have held that U.S. citizens don't have >constitutional rights overseas. > >``It's an uphill battle. It's going to be a tough suit,'' said >constitutional law expert Paul Rothstein of Georgetown >University. > >The lawsuit was filed on behalf of all DEA agents, >but the agency itself was not part of the action. > >The only DEA agent named as a plaintiff in the suit >is Richard A. Horn, currently with the agency's New >Orleans bureau. Five other incidents involving other >unidentified agents are alleged. > >Two years ago Horn filed a lawsuit accusing U.S. >officials of undermining his anti-drug efforts in Burma. > >That suit is still pending. > >Leighton said subsequent contacts with other DEA >personnel revealed a pattern of similar abuses around >the world. > >CIA spokesman Mark Mansfield said he could not >comment directly on the class action lawsuit, but >defended his agency. > >"It is not the CIA's mission, nor is it part of the >operations of the agency, to surveil in any manner >U.S. officials, or other U.S. citizens at home or >abroad,'' Mansfield said. > >The only exception would be in counterintelligence >cases, he added, and then only in consultation with >senior Justice Department officials. > >DEA spokesman James McGivney said he could not >comment on pending litigation, but noted that as a >U.S. citizen, Horn had the right file his own lawsuit. > >John Russell, spokesman for the Justice Department, >which defends the other agencies in lawsuits, >said only, ``we will respond in court.'' > >In Horn's previous case, Leighton said, the Justice >Department angered DEA agents by claiming they >have no Fourth Amendment constitutional right >against wiretapping when working outside the >country. > >Leighton, a former federal prosecutor, said the >lawsuit doesn't address the reasons for the alleged >electronic eavesdropping. > >"My assumption is because they want to know >what DEA is doing, they want to rip off DEA >informants, they want to know DEA contacts >within foreign governments,'' Leighton said. >``And with the Cold War over, these agencies >are looking for a new mission.'' > >An April 1996 letter to agents by Horn and >Leighton, details the allegation of wiretapping >against the agent in Burma. > >Horn's residence ``was the target of a U.S. >Government Agency-sponsored electronic audio >intercept,'' it said. > >"Horn had occasion to see a cable containing >his words in quotation marks, that he had spoken >to another DEA agent, set forth exactly as stated...'' > >The suit also reports alleged wiretaps against >DEA agents in the Dominican Republic from >1987 to 1990, in May 1993 and September 1994 >at the Bangkok, Thailand office; at the Guatemala >City office in 1984, 1985 and from 1987 to 1989; >and in an unidentified location in April 1987. > >The suit, assigned to U.S. District Judge Harold H. >Greene, names as defendants Secretary of State >Warren Christopher, CIA Director John Deutch >and NSA Director Adm. J.M. McConnell. > > -- Greg Broiles | US crypto export control policy in a nutshell: gbroiles(a)netbox.com | Export jobs, not crypto. http://www.io.com/~gbroiles | http://www.parrhesia.com

1 0

wiretaping ability and future plans
by JMKELSEY＠delphi.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- >Date: Thu, 02 Nov 1995 01:55:06 -0800 >From: Jay Campbell <edge(a)got.net> >Subject: FBI seeks huge wiretapping system >FBI seeks huge wiretapping system >BY JOHN MARKOFF >New York Times >``These are staggering numbers,'' said Mark Rasch, director of >information security law and policy for Science Applications >International Corp. in McLean, Va. ``Either they do a lot more >wiretaps than they now admit, or they plan on doing a significant >larger number of wiretaps in the future because of the fear of >domestic terrorism.'' I can see at least two possible alternative explanations: 1. The FBI envisions a time when voice-recognition systems will be cheap enough to do "keyword searches" on digital voice in something close to real time, with high accuracy. This might be useful when fishing for crime, dissent, etc. It would certainly require some rather broader powers, but they may expect this, especially if they expect more acts of domestic and foreign terrorism. 2. After implementing some kind of widespread escrowed crypto, the FBI envisions recording lots of encrypted phone conversations, perhaps targeted on suspiscious people, perhaps random. Since the whole conversation is encrypted, this might not violate any laws, since they still have to get the warrant to recover the conversation. This would get them past the obvious practical problem with most wiretap-based investigations--if you start your wiretap three days after the target becomes a suspect, you've probably missed all the juicy stuff. Only a bit of carelessness or stupidity on the part of your target will get the desired information. > Jay Campbell edge(a)got.net - Operations Manager > -=-=-=-=-=-=- Sense Networking, Santa Cruz Node > Jay(a)Campbell.net got.net? PGP MIT KeyID 0xACAE1A89 Note: Please respond via e-mail as well as or instead of posting, as I get CP-LITE instead of the whole list. --John Kelsey, jmkelsey(a)delphi.com PGP 2.6 fingerprint = 4FE2 F421 100F BB0A 03D1 FE06 A435 7E36 -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.2 iQCVAwUBMJm0AUHx57Ag8goBAQGHTAP/XCsTUjb26sLB+UORMQCNjtBz2dhCjcF2 QkKfRjuUcBOG3z/nCeLDgfb1hWiiSYJwRhJOTG0dCcqS9k9gO//hpC4CsDz3y0Yw mt5sG4X6POB+ljBfFOHqM7joekLmnmbodZQYdmiFTHbZ/Zn4w4obrTRjcPKhlQH9 Fctxd8JCYyg= =ITxA -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

1 0

video as a source of public randomness
by JMKELSEY＠delphi.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- >Date: Thu, 02 Nov 1995 00:39:29 -0800 >From: tcmay(a)got.net (Timothy C. May) >Subject: Re: Video as a source of randomness >Digitized video input, especially from something like a noisy channel (t.v. >channel, for example), is quite likely to produce a lot more entropy bits >per second than nearly any of us ever need. (One's PGP key could be seeded >in a fraction of a millisecond, for example.) This seems like a potential source of a stream of public random bits. If these can be authenticated and matched, this kind of thing can be useful in a lot of protocols. For example, if there is some packet structure in the digital video transmission which has at least 160 bits of entropy, then we can take the SHA1(packet[i]) to be public random bit block i. (If we're worried about entropy, we can collect arbitrarily large numbers of packets to hash per 160-bit public random block.) For large-scale, above ground protocols, these packets would need some kind of signature or other authentication. However, for protocols that could handle having the public random string checked offline later, this idea provides a reasonably good public random string that can be used without any knowledge or consent of the broadcaster/cable system/satellite system/whatever. If the transmission is sent under encryption, so much the better. This does still leave the possibility that an attacker could control the broadcaster's transmissions for a few seconds, but this seems unlikely in practice. An alternative might be the encrypted transmissions from any communications satellite. How many telephone calls are your opponents able to reroute? >--Tim May, who has both audio and video digitizers built into his Power >Macintosh 7100av, but notes that none of the crypto programs he uses has >any provision for using them, and so he doesn't use them for crypto >purposes. Note: Please respond via e-mail as well as or instead of posting, as I get CP-LITE instead of the whole list. --John Kelsey, jmkelsey(a)delphi.com PGP 2.6 fingerprint = 4FE2 F421 100F BB0A 03D1 FE06 A435 7E36 -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.2 iQCVAwUBMJmz3kHx57Ag8goBAQGYiwQAkx3dxUUcGjsEKqRAlc0CTq6EaTzBrLRz ifrKgZPxfyD9F+sBTJGGPpHWc3mtfwJwV8HeIa/MY1Z1hpssN1ZY6ELlEn+4FFIA 3A+BNjB1PKrHebVZ0WHBJ3DI3h4/olF37bYNP261Uqd8CNig+fQ3VMtE0L0frBdr I+izpEMOwiw= =y7To -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

1 0

Re: National Security Committee amendments to SAFE
by Steven Bellovin 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Carl Ellison says: >>Decisions made by the Secretary of Commerce with the concurrence of the >>Secretary of Defense with respect to exports of encryption products under >>this section shall not be subject to judicial review. > >I take it this last sentence is intended to kill Bernstein, Karn and Junger >and any other cases we might try to bring. Correct? How could that possibly be binding? Anything the court system thinks is subject to judicial review is subject to judicial review. I'm sure one of the real lawyers will add a lot more detail. However... The way something can be beyond judicial review is if it's purely an executive branch function. You can sue, of course, but in order to overcome that argument you'd have to show that either the function wasn't executive branch-specific, *or* some other constitutional right is being violated. To see how a judge can rule on such an issue, have a look at the trial court's opinion in the Karn case. You can find that opinion at http://venable.com/oracle/oracle7.htm, according to Karn's page (I was unable to confirm that link just now).

1 0

Re: Sources of randomness
by Peter Monta 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Perry Metzger writes: > > [ radioactive vs. other ] > > I didn't contend that its inferior. I contended that its difficult to > distinguish from sources of electronic interference and is easy to get > wrong. Point taken; it sounds like I misread your post a bit. Certainly it's better to have a robust implementation than a delicate one, but let me argue how hard it might be to get electronic sources wrong. > ... > Someone can gimmick a zener diode or get it "wrong" a lot more easily > than they can get a radation event wrong. But how wrong is wrong? Unless the design is catastrophically bad, a zener source is going to give you zener noise plus some slight admixture of interference. Say the designer is extremely careless and there's deterministic interference 20 dB down. I don't see how even that matters cryptographically---the resulting loss in entropy will be millibits per sample. Perhaps there ought to be a couple of standard random-bit-source implementations, say at the CMOS-standard-cell and board-subsystem levels, that are widely vetted and trusted (and used!). But it's mostly a solved problem, seems to me. A radioactive source might be okay at the board level (though probably costlier than its electronic counterpart), but it'd be a pain to integrate, and it might disturb the rest of the chip. (I'd like to have a get_random_bit instruction as part of a microprocessor, for example.) Also if you want a high rate of random bits, you need many decay events, whereas for electronic sources the corresponding bandwidth is free---Johnson and shot noise are flat to 1 THz or so. Interestingly enough, zener diodes and particle detectors are a lot alike. Zeners, if they're avalanching, already have some internal gain; each electron crossing the junction gets so hot it knocks off other electrons, and there's a chain reaction. Particle detectors take the ion trail in a suitable environment and make a nice big pulse out of it with a similar chain-reacton effect (though the fancier kind will give you the actual amount of charge). Cheers, Peter Monta pmonta(a)qualcomm.com Qualcomm, Inc./Globalstar

2 1

SSZ is back...
by Jim Choate 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Hi, SSZ has been down the last few hours because of a non-functioning ISDN line. Seems to be back up now. On with the show... ____________________________________________________________________ | | | The financial policy of the welfare state requires that there | | be no way for the owners of wealth to protect themselves. | | | | -Alan Greenspan- | | | | _____ The Armadillo Group | | ,::////;::-. Austin, Tx. USA | | /:'///// ``::>/|/ http:// www.ssz.com/ | | .', |||| `/( e\ | | -====~~mm-'`-```-mm --'- Jim Choate | | ravage(a)ssz.com | | 512-451-7087 | |____________________________________________________________________|

1 0

Crypto++ 1.1
by Wei Dai 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

I am still talking to RSADSI's lawyers, but it's taking a lot longer than I expected. So in the mean time I've decided to rerelease the Crypto++ library with RC4, RC5, RSA removed, and some calls to RSAREF disabled. RSADSI said it will not object to this rerelease. Version 1.1 also has some minor bug fixes. You can find it at ftp://ftp.csn.net/mpj/I_will_not_export/crypto_?????/libraries/crypto11.zip where ????? is in ftp://ftp.csn.net/mpj/README For the next version I hope to work out a deal with RSADSI to put some of those files back in. I'm also planning to add SAFER and perhaps some elliptic curve stuff. Other suggestions are welcome. I encourage people to use this library in commercial as well as shareware/freeware products. You don't have to pay me a cent, but don't forget about the patents. Wei Dai P.S. Does anyone know if elliptic curve key agreement protocols are patented?

1 0