December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

*fnord* "Encryption Flaw Rattles Security Industry *fnord*
by anonymous-remailer＠shell.portal.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

"Encryption Flaw Rattles Comuter Security Industry" SAN FRANCISCO - The discovery of a vulvnerability has shaken the computer world's faith in the safe use of the data-security technologies on which most current and planned electronic banking, shopping and "digital cash" systems are based. The vulnerability has been found in a class of technologies known as public-key encryption - designed to provide electronic transactions by scrambling data so they can be read only by people with the proper mathematical keys to the code. The flaw was identified by Paul C. Kocher, a 22-year-old researcher, who demonstrated a way that an electronic eavesdropper who is able to monitor the repeated process of unscrambling the incoming messages could figure out the private key. It can be done by repeatedly keeping track of the precise length of time it takes to unscramble each message. --From TimesFax, Mon. Dec. 11 Internet Edition

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*fnord* Addition info *fnord*
by anonymous-remailer＠shell.portal.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

From: pck(a)netcom.com (Paul C. Kocher) Subject: Announce: Timing cryptanalysis of RSA, DH, DSS Message-ID: <pckDJEEzH.DJ3(a)netcom.com> Organization: NETCOM On-line Communication Services (408 261-4700 guest) Date: Mon, 11 Dec 1995 01:33:17 GMT Lines: 67 Sender: pck(a)netcom20.netcom.com I've just released details of an attack many of you will find interesting since quite a few existing cryptography products and systems are potentially at risk. The general idea of the attack is that secret keys can be found by measuring the amount of time used to to process messages. The paper describes attacks against RSA, fixed- exponent Diffie-Hellman, and DSS, and the techniques can work with many other systems as well. My research on the subject is still in progress and the current paper does not include many of my findings. I will eventually publish a full paper, but am releasing a preliminary draft now to alert the community as quickly as possible. A copy of the abstract is attached at the end of this message and the full text can be downloaded in PostScript format from: ftp://ftp.cryptography.com/pub/kocher_timing_attack.ps ftp://ftp.cryptography.com/pub/kocher_timing_attack.ps.gz I've also made an HTML version which is accessible at: http://www.cryptography.com (The HTML uses subscripts and superscripts which aren't supported in older web browsers. The PostScript version is the "official" one and looks nicer.) The results have already been seen by Matt Blaze, Martin Hellman, Ron Rivest, Bruce Schneier, and many others. While the full significance of the attack is not yet known, I think everyone who has seen it considers it important (including Netscape who awarded me a $1000 bugs bounty prize). ABSTRACT. Cryptosystems often take slightly different amounts of time to process different messages. With network- based cryptosystems, cryptographic tokens, and many other applications, attackers can measure the amount of time used to complete cryptographic operations. This abstract shows that timing channels can, and often do, leak key material. The attacks are particularly alarming because they often require only known ciphertext, work even if timing measurements are somewhat inaccurate, are computationally easy, and are difficult to detect. This preliminary draft outlines attacks that can find secret exponents in Diffie- Hellman key exchange, factor RSA keys, and find DSS secret parameters. Other symmetric and asymmetric cryptographic functions are also at risk. A complete description of the attack will be presented in a full paper, to be released later. I conclude by noting that closing timing channels is often more difficult than might be expected. Cheers, Paul Kocher ********************************************************************* VERY IMPORTANT: If you send me e-mail, please understand that I probably won't have time to respond to all who write. Please keep messages SHORT and send them to pck(a)cryptography.com (**not** my netcom address -- misdirected messages will be ignored). PGP when used for e-mail is not vulnerable to the attack. Please state in your note whether you would like a reply. ******************************************************************** __________________________________________________________________________ Paul C. Kocher Independent cryptography/data security consultant E-mail: pck(a)cryptography.com (please see above before replying) ======== Xref: news2.new-york.net sci.crypt:5320 Path: news2.new-york.net!spcuna!uunet!in1.uu.net!newsfeed.internetmci.com!howland.reston.ans.net!ix.netcom.com!netnews From: jmrubin(a)ix.netcom.com (Joel M. Rubin) Newsgroups: sci.crypt Subject: Re: Announce: Timing cryptanalysis of RSA, DH, DSS Date: 11 Dec 1995 04:35:47 GMT Organization: Union of anti-organizationalists Lines: 11 Message-ID: <4agcf3$enr(a)ixnews2.ix.netcom.com> References: <pckDJEEzH.DJ3(a)netcom.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: ix-sf17-18.ix.netcom.com X-NETCOM-Date: Sun Dec 10 8:35:47 PM PST 1995 X-Newsreader: WinVN 0.99.7 I just saw a small article with your name on page 1 of the N.Y. Times Fax 8-page Internet Edition. (Monday, December 11, 1995) They change the edition at about 10:30-11 P.M. Eastern Standard Time (0330-0400 the next GMT day) so if you read this before then, you might want to download http://nytimesfax.com/times.pdf. It is in Adobe Acrobat format. Of course, there is probably a larger article in the paper edition. ======== From: jmrubin(a)ix.netcom.com (Joel M. Rubin) Newsgroups: sci.crypt Subject: Re: Announce: Timing cryptanalysis of RSA, DH, DSS Date: 11 Dec 1995 04:38:58 GMT Organization: Union of anti-organizationalists Lines: 7 Message-ID: <4agcl2$enr(a)ixnews2.ix.netcom.com> References: <pckDJEEzH.DJ3(a)netcom.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: ix-sf17-18.ix.netcom.com X-NETCOM-Date: Sun Dec 10 8:38:58 PM PST 1995 X-Newsreader: WinVN 0.99.7 In case you don't already know, there is an article about your work in Monday's N.Y. Times. I just read a very small version of it in http://nytimesfax.com/times.pdf. (Adobe Acrobat-format 8-page edition) The N.Y. Times Fax on the web changes edition about 10:30 or 11 P.M. New York time so if you want it, get it before then.

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Time-based cryptanalysis: How to defeat it?
by anonymous-remailer＠shell.portal.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Assuming Alice is decrypting a secret message sent to her by Bob (on her very slow C64 ;), and Mallet is watching with a stopwatch in hand, hoping to determine Alice's secret key... It would be good to place inside the decryption routines a timer (WELL PLACED!) that waits a random-number of cycles (based on key-strokes, mouse position, etc.) to defeat this type of cryptanalysis?

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Re: More FUD from First Virtual
by Bill Stewart 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 08:51 AM 12/10/95 -0500, Nathaniel Borenstein <nsb(a)fv.com> (Tense Hot Alien In Barn) wrote: >In any event, I could write a virus that sits in >front of the e-cash program and steals your keys when next you run the >e-cash program. Software's just too easy to fool. That's why I regard >the risk of catastrophe as being fairly large in software-based e-cash >schemes. How is this different for an ecash program vs. a First Virtual email acknowledgement program, where either a (really hairy) virus, or, more practically, an active email interloper could fake FV acks? While hardware may be the best encryption solution for the average user (as you say, and I think I agree with you), it needs to have some password interface such as a small keypad on the front of the smartcard, to prevent its usability after theft. Of course, there are problems with digicash as well; my Digicash play-money account thinks it's empty (in spite of having half a dozen coin-looking files), and doesn't recognize any of the half-dozen passwords I've guessed I might have used with it, so I'm not able to use Sameer's digicash-powered remailer. #-- # Thanks; Bill # Bill Stewart, Freelance Information Architect, stewarts(a)ix.netcom.com # Phone +1-510-247-0663 Pager/Voicemail 1-408-787-1281

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Re: GAK and self-incrimination?
by Bill Stewart 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 02:57 AM 12/10/95 -0800, you wrote: >The Fifth protects you against *compelled* self-incrimination - in >particular, the right to be free from the "cruel trilemma" of > > o conviction of a substantive crime, based on your > (true) testimony > o conviction of perjury, for lying when asked to incriminate > yourself > o contempt of court sanctions, for refusing to answer Testimony was often compelled by more direct means than threatened contempt citations. Piling rocks on people until they talked was still in use in the 1600s, unless I've got my dates wrong. It may have gone out of fashion slightly after witch-burning, but was still in recent cultural memory of the Constitution's authors. #-- # Thanks; Bill # Bill Stewart, Freelance Information Architect, stewarts(a)ix.netcom.com # Phone +1-510-247-0663 Pager/Voicemail 1-408-787-1281

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key escrow arguments (fwd)
by David W. Crawford 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Forwarded message: >From rre-request(a)weber.ucsd.edu Thu Sep 18 23:31:28 1997 Resent-Date: Thu, 18 Sep 1997 17:47:16 -0700 (PDT) Date: Thu, 18 Sep 1997 17:39:21 -0700 (PDT) Message-Id: <199709190039.RAA19449(a)weber.ucsd.edu> From: Phil Agre <pagre(a)weber.ucsd.edu> To: rre(a)weber.ucsd.edu Subject: key escrow arguments Resent-Message-ID: <"36_1eD.A.HwE.7mcI0"@weber> Resent-From: rre(a)weber.ucsd.edu Reply-To: rre-maintainers(a)weber.ucsd.edu X-URL: http://communication.ucsd.edu/pagre/rre.html X-Mailing-List: <rre(a)weber.ucsd.edu> archive/latest/1680 X-Loop: rre(a)weber.ucsd.edu Precedence: list Resent-Sender: rre-request(a)weber.ucsd.edu =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= This message was forwarded through the Red Rock Eater News Service (RRE). Send any replies to the original author, listed in the From: field below. You are welcome to send the message along to others but please do not use the "redirect" command. For information on RRE, including instructions for (un)subscribing, send an empty message to rre-help(a)weber.ucsd.edu =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= Date: Thu, 18 Sep 1997 13:08:56 -0400 From: Andrew Grosso <agrosso(a)ACCESS.DIGEX.NET> [Published last year in the Federal Bar Journal.] THE LAW ENFORCEMENT ARGUMENT FOR MANDATORY KEY ESCROW ENCRYPTION: THE "DANK" CASE REVISITED by Andrew Grosso (This article is a revised version of a talk given by the author at the 1996 RSA Data Security Conference, held in San Francisco, California. Mr. Grosso is a former federal prosecutor who now has his own law practice in Washington, D.C. His e-mail address is agrosso(a)acm.org.) I would like to start by telling a war story. Some years ago, while I was an Assistant U.S. Attorney, I was asked to try a case which had been indicted by one of my colleagues. For reasons which will become clear, I refer to this case as "the Dank case." The defendant was charged with carrying a shotgun. This might not seem so serious, but the defendant had a prior record. In fact, he had six prior convictions, three of which were considered violent felonies. Because of that, this defendant was facing a mandatory fifteen years imprisonment, without parole. Clearly, he needed an explanation for why he was found in a park at night carrying a shotgun. He came up with one. The defendant claimed that another person, called "Dank," forced him to carry the gun. "Dank," it seems, came up to him in the park, put the shotgun in his hands, and then pulled out a handgun and put the handgun to the defendant's head. "Dank" then forced the defendant to walk from one end of the park to other, carrying this shotgun. When the police showed up, "Dank" ran away, leaving the defendant holding the bag, or, in this case, the shotgun. The jurors chose not to believe the defendant's story, although they spent more time considering it than I would like to admit. After the trial, the defendant's story became known in my office as "the Dank defense." As for myself, I referred to it as "the devil made me do it." I tell you this story because it reminds me of the federal government's efforts to justify domestic control of encryption. Instead, of "Dank," it has become, "drug dealers made me do it;" or "terrorists made me do it;" or "crypto anarchists made me do it." There is as much of a rationale basis behind these claims as there was behind my defendant's story of "Dank." Let us examine some of the arguments the government has advanced. It is said that wiretapping is indispensable to law enforcement. This is not the case. Many complex and difficult criminal investigations have been successfully concluded, and successfully argued to a jury, where no audio tapes existed of the defendants incriminating themselves. Of those significant cases, cited by the government, where audio tapes have proved invaluable, such as in the John Gotti trial, the tapes have been made through means of electronic surveillance other than wire tapping, for example, through the use of consensual monitoring or room bugs. The unfetted use of domestic encryption could have no effect on such surveillance. It is also said that wiretapping is necessary to prevent crimes. This, also, is not the case. In order to obtain a court order for a wire tap, the government must first possess probable cause that a crime is being planned or is in progress. If the government has such probable cause concerning a crime yet in the planning stages, and has sufficient detail about the plan to tap an individual's telephone, then the government almost always has enough probable cause to prevent the crime from being committed. The advantage which the government gains by use of a wiretap is the chance to obtain additional evidence which can later be used to convict the conspirators or perpetrators. Although such convictions are desirable, they must not be confused with the ability to prevent the crime. The value of mandating key escrow encryption is further eroded by the availability of super encryption, that is, using an additional encryption where the key is not available to the government. True, the government's mandate would make such additional encryption illegal; however the deterrence effect of such legislation is dubious at best. An individual planning a terrorist act, or engaging in significant drug importation, will be little deterred by prohibitions on the means for encoding his telephone conversations. The result is that significant crimes will not be affected or discouraged. In a similar vein, the most recent estimates of the national cost for implementing the Digital Telephony law, which requires that commercial telecommunications companies wiretap our nation's communications network for the government's benefit, is approximately three billion dollars. Three billion dollars will buy an enormous number of police man hours, officer training, and crime fighting equipment. It is difficult to see that this amount of money, by being spent on wire tapping the nation, is being spent most advantageously with regard to law enforcement's needs. Finally, the extent of the federal government's ability to legislate in this area is limited. Legislation for the domestic control of encryption must be based upon the commerce clause of the U.S. Constitution. That clause would not prohibit an individual in, say, the state of California from purchasing an encryption package manufactured in California, and using that package to encode data on the hard drive of his computer, also located in California. It is highly questionable whether the commerce clause would prohibit the in-state use of an encryption package which had been obtained from out of state, where all the encryption in done in-state and the encrypted data is maintained in- state. Such being the case, the value of domestic control of encryption to law enforcement is doubtful. Now let us turn to the disadvantages of domestic control of encryption. Intentionally or not, such control would shift the balance which exists between the individual and the state. The individual would no longer be free to conduct his personal life, or his business, free from the risk that the government may be watching every move. More to the point, the individual would be told that he would no longer be allowed to even try to conduct his life in such a manner. Under our constitution, it has never been the case that the state had the right to obtain evidence in a criminal investigation. Rather, under our constitution, the state was given the right to attempt to obtain such evidence. The distinction is crucial: it is the difference between the operation of a free society, and the operation of a totalitarian state. Our constitution is based upon the concept of ordered liberty. That is, there is a balance between law and order, on the one hand, and the liberty of the individual on the other. This is clearly seen in our country's bill of rights, and the constitutional protections afforded our accused: evidence improperly obtained is suppressed; there is a ban on the use of involuntary custodial interrogation, including torture, and any questioning of the accused without a lawyer; we require unanimous verdicts for convictions; and double jeopardy and bills of attainder are prohibited. In other words, our system of government expressly tolerates a certain level of crime and disorder in order to preserve liberty and individuality. It is difficult to conceive that the same constitution which is prepared to let a guilty man go free, rather than admit an illegally seized murder weapon into evidence at trial, can be interpreted to permit whole scale, nationwide, mandatory surveillance of our nation's telecommunications system for law enforcement purposes. It is impossible that the philosophy upon which our system of government was founded could ever be construed to accept such a regime. I began this talk with a war story, and I would like to end it with another war story. While a law student, I had the opportunity to study in London for a year. While there, I took one week, and spent it touring the old Soviet Union. The official Soviet tour guide I was assigned was an intelligent woman. As a former Olympic athlete, she had been permitted in the 1960's to travel to England to compete in international tennis matches. At one point in my tour, she asked me why I was studying in London. I told her that I wanted to learn what it was like to live outside of my own country, so I chose to study in a country where I would have little trouble with the language. I noticed a strange expression on her face as I said this. It was not until my tour was over and I looked back on that conversation that I realized why my answer had resulted in her having that strange look. What I had said to her was that I had chosen to go to overseas to study; further, I had said that I had chosen where to go. That I could make such decisions was a right which she and the fellow citizens did not have. Yes, she had visited England, but it was because her government chose her to go, and it was her government which decided where she should go. In her country, at that time, her people had order, but they had no liberty. In our country, the domestic control of encryption represents a shift in the balance of our liberties. It is a shift not envisioned by our constitution. If ever to be taken, it must be based upon a better defense than what "Dank," or law enforcement, can provide. end

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OGY, chaotic scrambling
by Laurent Den-Hollander 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

A few years back i ran thru a paper emanating from a navy labs researcher (i think the name was Peccora) about using synchronised chaotic signal generators as a signal scrambling/encrytpion scheme. Has there been any kind of progress in this line of work, practical applications ? Answer on C4i-pro or directly email to Denholl(a)ceram.fr L. Den-Hollander. OIT engineer.

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Welcome to cypherpunks
by Majordomo＠toad.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-- Welcome to the cypherpunks mailing list! If you ever want to remove yourself from this mailing list, you can send mail to "Majordomo(a)toad.com" with the following command in the body of your email message: unsubscribe cypherpunks Cypherpunks Mailing List <cypher(a)infinity.nus.sg> Here's the general information for the list you've subscribed to, in case you don't already have it: About cypherpunks ----------------- I. Administrivia (please read, boring though it may be) The cypherpunks list is a forum for discussing personal defenses for privacy in the digital domain. It is a high volume mailing list. If you don't know how to do something, like unsubscribe, send mail to majordomo(a)toad.com and the software robot which answers that address will send you back instructions on how to do what you want. If you don't know the majordomo syntax, an empty message to this address will get you a help file, as will a command 'help' in the body. Even with all this automated help, you may still encounter problems. If you get really stuck, please feel free to contact me directly at the address I use for mailing list management: cypherpunks-owner(a)toad.com Please use this address for all mailing list management issues. Hint: if you try to unsubscribe yourself from a different account than you signed up for, it likely won't work. Log back into your old account and try again. If you no longer have access to that account, mail me at the list management address above. Also, please realize that there will be some cypherpunks messages "in transit" to you at the time you unsubscribe. If you get a response that says you are unsubscribed, but the messages keep coming, wait a day and they should stop. For other questions, my list management address is not the best place, since I don't read it every day. To reach me otherwise, send mail to eric(a)remailer.net This address is appropriate for emergencies (and wanting to get off the list is never an emergency), such as the list continuously spewing articles. Please don't send me mail to my regular mailbox asking to be removed; I'll just send you back a form letter. Do not mail to the whole list asking to be removed. It's rude. The -request address is made exactly for this purpose. To post to the whole list, send mail to cypherpunks(a)toad.com If your mail bounces repeatedly, you will be removed from the list. Nothing personal, but I have to look at all the bounce messages. There is no digest version available. There is an announcements list which is moderated and has low volume. Announcements for physical cypherpunks meetings, new software and important developments will be posted there. Mail to cypherpunks-announce-request(a)toad.com if you want to be added or removed to the announce list. All announcements also go out to the full cypherpunks list, so there is no need to subscribe to both. II. About cypherpunks The cypherpunks list is not designed for beginners, although they are welcome. If you are totally new to crypto, please get and read the crypto FAQ referenced below. This document is a good introduction, although not short. Crypto is a subtle field and a good understanding will not come without some study. Please, as a courtesy to all, do some reading to make sure that your question is not already frequently asked. There are other forums to use on the subject of cryptography. The Usenet group sci.crypt deals with technical cryptography; cypherpunks deals with technical details but slants the discussion toward their social implications. The Usenet group talk.politics.crypto, as is says, is for political theorizing, and cypherpunks gets its share of that, but cypherpunks is all pro-crypto; the debates on this list are about how to best get crypto out there. The Usenet group alt.security.pgp is a pgp-specific group, and questions about pgp as such are likely better asked there than here. Ditto for alt.security.ripem. The cypherpunks list has its very own net.loon, a fellow named L. Detweiler. The history is too long for here, but he thinks that cypherpunks are evil incarnate. If you see a densely worded rant featuring characteristic words such as "medusa", "pseudospoofing", "treachery", "poison", or "black lies", it's probably him, no matter what the From: line says. The policy is to ignore these postings. Replies have never, ever, not even once resulted in anything constructive and usually create huge flamewars on the list. Please, please, don't feed the animals. III. Resources. A. The sci.crypt FAQ anonymous ftp to rtfm.mit.edu:pub/usenet-by-group/sci.crypt The cryptography FAQ is good online intro to crypto. Very much worth reading. Last I looked, it was in ten parts. B. cypherpunks ftp site anonymous ftp to ftp.csua.berkeley.edu:pub/cypherpunks This site contains code, information, rants, and other miscellany. There is a glossary there that all new members should download and read. Also recommended for all users are Hal Finney's instructions on how to use the anonymous remailer system; the remailer sources are there for the perl-literate. C. Bruce Schneier's _Applied Cryptography_, published by Wiley This is required reading for any serious technical cypherpunk. An excellent overview of the field, it describes many of the basic algorithms and protocols with their mathematical descriptions. Some of the stuff at the edges of the scope of the book is a little incomplete, so short descriptions in here should lead to library research for the latest papers, or to the list for the current thinking. All in all, a solid and valuable book. It's even got the cypherpunks-request address. IV. Famous last words My preferred email address for list maintenance topics only is hughes(a)toad.com. All other mail, including emergency mail, should go to hughes(a)ah.com, where I read mail much more regularly. Enjoy and deploy. Eric ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Cypherpunks assume privacy is a good thing and wish there were more of it. Cypherpunks acknowledge that those who want privacy must create it for themselves and not expect governments, corporations, or other large, faceless organizations to grant them privacy out of beneficence. Cypherpunks know that people have been creating their own privacy for centuries with whispers, envelopes, closed doors, and couriers. Cypherpunks do not seek to prevent other people from speaking about their experiences or their opinions. The most important means to the defense of privacy is encryption. To encrypt is to indicate the desire for privacy. But to encrypt with weak cryptography is to indicate not too much desire for privacy. Cypherpunks hope that all people desiring privacy will learn how best to defend it. Cypherpunks are therefore devoted to cryptography. Cypherpunks wish to learn about it, to teach it, to implement it, and to make more of it. Cypherpunks know that cryptographic protocols make social structures. Cypherpunks know how to attack a system and how to defend it. Cypherpunks know just how hard it is to make good cryptosystems. Cypherpunks love to practice. They love to play with public key cryptography. They love to play with anonymous and pseudonymous mail forwarding and delivery. They love to play with DC-nets. They love to play with secure communications of all kinds. Cypherpunks write code. They know that someone has to write code to defend privacy, and since it's their privacy, they're going to write it. Cypherpunks publish their code so that their fellow cypherpunks may practice and play with it. Cypherpunks realize that security is not built in a day and are patient with incremental progress. Cypherpunks don't care if you don't like the software they write. Cypherpunks know that software can't be destroyed. Cypherpunks know that a widely dispersed system can't be shut down. Cypherpunks will make the networks safe for privacy. [Last updated Mon Feb 21 13:18:25 1994]

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Re: key escrow arguments (fwd)
by amp＠pobox.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

=snip= Date: Thu, 18 Sep 1997 13:08:56 -0400 From: Andrew Grosso <agrosso(a)ACCESS.DIGEX.NET> [Published last year in the Federal Bar Journal.] THE LAW ENFORCEMENT ARGUMENT FOR MANDATORY KEY ESCROW ENCRYPTION: THE "DANK" CASE REVISITED by Andrew Grosso =snip= A few comments on some statements the author makes that stuck me as I read them... > Finally, the extent of the federal government's ability to >legislate in this area is limited. Legislation for the domestic >control of encryption must be based upon the commerce clause of >the U.S. Constitution. That clause would not prohibit an individual >in, say, the state of California from purchasing an encryption >package manufactured in California, and using that package to >encode data on the hard drive of his computer, also located in >California. It is highly questionable whether the commerce clause >would prohibit the in-state use of an encryption package which had >been obtained from out of state, where all the encryption in done >in-state and the encrypted data is maintained in- state. Such being >the case, the value of domestic control of encryption to law >enforcement is doubtful. this person has obviously no familiarity with the tenuous nature of most "commerce clause" claims. if they can claim that a potato farmer, growing tomatoes locally, selling and transporting his harvest locally still falls under the 'commerce clause' rationale for some legislation, they can pretty well call anything 'interstate commerce'. =snip= I'll treat this next bit incrementally. > Our constitution is based upon the concept of ordered >liberty. That is, there is a balance between law and order, on the >one hand, and the liberty of the individual on the other. This is >clearly seen in our country's bill of rights, and the constitutional >protections afforded our accused: evidence improperly obtained is >suppressed; not any more. all the cops or whoever has to do is claim a 'good faith' exemption for the search, and, Bingo! it is suddenly admissable. There are several recent Supreme Court cases on this. >there is a ban on the use of involuntary custodial >interrogation, including torture, and any questioning of the accused >without a lawyer; This, likewise has been narrowed in recent years by the court. One thing to remember if you are being spoken to by some jack-booted thug working for some level of the state, is to say =nothing= to them. They can sit there and question you at length, and until you think to demand a lawyer, you are screwed everything up to that point is admissable. There have even been recent erosions of what constitutes asking for a lawyer. >we require unanimous verdicts for convictions; Ever since the O.J. trial, there have been calls to eliminate this. I wouldn't be suprised to see it within a decade. >and double jeopardy and bills of attainder are prohibited. This is absolutely laughable. You can be tried in state, federal and civil court for the same crime. This is all perfectly fine as faer as the courts are concerned. Likewise, there are so many laws now on the books, that if they can't get a conviction on one charge, there is a pretty good chance there is another charge they can make. >In other >words, our system of government expressly tolerates a certain level >of crime and disorder in order to preserve liberty and individuality. This is no longer true. >It is difficult to conceive that the same constitution which is >prepared to let a guilty man go free, rather than admit an illegally >seized murder weapon into evidence at trial, can be interpreted to >permit whole scale, nationwide, mandatory surveillance of our >nation's telecommunications system for law enforcement purposes. >It is impossible that the philosophy upon which our system of >government was founded could ever be construed to accept such a >regime. I laugh at that. > In our country, the domestic control of encryption >represents a shift in the balance of our liberties. It is a shift not >envisioned by our constitution. If ever to be taken, it must be >based upon a better defense than what "Dank," or law enforcement, >can provide. true enough. the problem is, that there is no defense for it. it is a basic binary decision. either you can speak freely or not. ---------------End of Original Message----------------- ------------------------ Name: amp E-mail: amp(a)pobox.com Date: 09/19/97 Time: 15:57:50 Visit me at http://www.pobox.com/~amp == -export-a-crypto-system-sig -RSA-3-lines-PERL #!/bin/perl -sp0777i<X+d*lMLa^*lN%0]dsXx++lMlN/dsM0<j]dsj $/=unpack('H*',$_);$_=`echo 16dio\U$k"SK$/SM$n\EsN0p[lN*1 lK[d2%Sa2/d0$^Ixp"|dc`;s/\W//g;$_=pack('H*',/((..)*)$/) == 'Drug Trafficking Offense' is the root passphrase to the Constitution. Have you seen http://www.public-action.com/SkyWriter/WacoMuseum ------------------------

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Your Majordomo request results
by Majordomo＠toad.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-- Your request of Majordomo was: >>>> subscribe cypherpunks Succeeded. Your request of Majordomo was: >>>> end END OF COMMANDS

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Questions for Mark Twain Banks
by Sean Donelan 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

The St. Louis Internet Users Group is doing a meeting on digital cash on Monday, Dec. 11. Since Mark Twain Banks is located in St. Louis, they've been invited to send a few speakers on the topic. Any choice questions? -- Sean Donelan, Data Research Associates, Inc, St. Louis, MO Affiliation given for identification not representation

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key escrow arguments (fwd)
by Ernest Hua 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

This is a very well-written article, so I am forwarding this to cypherpunks(a)algebra.com and cryptography(a)c2.net so everyone can see it. Apologies in advance to those seeing double or triple copying due to the forwards. Ern From: "David W. Crawford" <dc(a)panix.com> Subject: key escrow arguments (fwd) Forwarded message: From rre-request(a)weber.ucsd.edu Thu Sep 18 23:31:28 1997 Date: Thu, 18 Sep 1997 17:39:21 -0700 (PDT) From: Phil Agre <pagre(a)weber.ucsd.edu> To: rre(a)weber.ucsd.edu Subject: key escrow arguments Date: Thu, 18 Sep 1997 13:08:56 -0400 From: Andrew Grosso <agrosso(a)ACCESS.DIGEX.NET> [Published last year in the Federal Bar Journal.] THE LAW ENFORCEMENT ARGUMENT FOR MANDATORY KEY ESCROW ENCRYPTION: THE "DANK" CASE REVISITED by Andrew Grosso (This article is a revised version of a talk given by the author at the 1996 RSA Data Security Conference, held in San Francisco, California. Mr. Grosso is a former federal prosecutor who now has his own law practice in Washington, D.C. His e-mail address is agrosso(a)acm.org.) I would like to start by telling a war story. Some years ago, while I was an Assistant U.S. Attorney, I was asked to try a case which had been indicted by one of my colleagues. For reasons which will become clear, I refer to this case as "the Dank case." The defendant was charged with carrying a shotgun. This might not seem so serious, but the defendant had a prior record. In fact, he had six prior convictions, three of which were considered violent felonies. Because of that, this defendant was facing a mandatory fifteen years imprisonment, without parole. Clearly, he needed an explanation for why he was found in a park at night carrying a shotgun. He came up with one. The defendant claimed that another person, called "Dank," forced him to carry the gun. "Dank," it seems, came up to him in the park, put the shotgun in his hands, and then pulled out a handgun and put the handgun to the defendant's head. "Dank" then forced the defendant to walk from one end of the park to other, carrying this shotgun. When the police showed up, "Dank" ran away, leaving the defendant holding the bag, or, in this case, the shotgun. The jurors chose not to believe the defendant's story, although they spent more time considering it than I would like to admit. After the trial, the defendant's story became known in my office as "the Dank defense." As for myself, I referred to it as "the devil made me do it." I tell you this story because it reminds me of the federal government's efforts to justify domestic control of encryption. Instead, of "Dank," it has become, "drug dealers made me do it;" or "terrorists made me do it;" or "crypto anarchists made me do it." There is as much of a rationale basis behind these claims as there was behind my defendant's story of "Dank." Let us examine some of the arguments the government has advanced. It is said that wiretapping is indispensable to law enforcement. This is not the case. Many complex and difficult criminal investigations have been successfully concluded, and successfully argued to a jury, where no audio tapes existed of the defendants incriminating themselves. Of those significant cases, cited by the government, where audio tapes have proved invaluable, such as in the John Gotti trial, the tapes have been made through means of electronic surveillance other than wire tapping, for example, through the use of consensual monitoring or room bugs. The unfetted use of domestic encryption could have no effect on such surveillance. It is also said that wiretapping is necessary to prevent crimes. This, also, is not the case. In order to obtain a court order for a wire tap, the government must first possess probable cause that a crime is being planned or is in progress. If the government has such probable cause concerning a crime yet in the planning stages, and has sufficient detail about the plan to tap an individual's telephone, then the government almost always has enough probable cause to prevent the crime from being committed. The advantage which the government gains by use of a wiretap is the chance to obtain additional evidence which can later be used to convict the conspirators or perpetrators. Although such convictions are desirable, they must not be confused with the ability to prevent the crime. The value of mandating key escrow encryption is further eroded by the availability of super encryption, that is, using an additional encryption where the key is not available to the government. True, the government's mandate would make such additional encryption illegal; however the deterrence effect of such legislation is dubious at best. An individual planning a terrorist act, or engaging in significant drug importation, will be little deterred by prohibitions on the means for encoding his telephone conversations. The result is that significant crimes will not be affected or discouraged. In a similar vein, the most recent estimates of the national cost for implementing the Digital Telephony law, which requires that commercial telecommunications companies wiretap our nation's communications network for the government's benefit, is approximately three billion dollars. Three billion dollars will buy an enormous number of police man hours, officer training, and crime fighting equipment. It is difficult to see that this amount of money, by being spent on wire tapping the nation, is being spent most advantageously with regard to law enforcement's needs. Finally, the extent of the federal government's ability to legislate in this area is limited. Legislation for the domestic control of encryption must be based upon the commerce clause of the U.S. Constitution. That clause would not prohibit an individual in, say, the state of California from purchasing an encryption package manufactured in California, and using that package to encode data on the hard drive of his computer, also located in California. It is highly questionable whether the commerce clause would prohibit the in-state use of an encryption package which had been obtained from out of state, where all the encryption in done in-state and the encrypted data is maintained in- state. Such being the case, the value of domestic control of encryption to law enforcement is doubtful. Now let us turn to the disadvantages of domestic control of encryption. Intentionally or not, such control would shift the balance which exists between the individual and the state. The individual would no longer be free to conduct his personal life, or his business, free from the risk that the government may be watching every move. More to the point, the individual would be told that he would no longer be allowed to even try to conduct his life in such a manner. Under our constitution, it has never been the case that the state had the right to obtain evidence in a criminal investigation. Rather, under our constitution, the state was given the right to attempt to obtain such evidence. The distinction is crucial: it is the difference between the operation of a free society, and the operation of a totalitarian state. Our constitution is based upon the concept of ordered liberty. That is, there is a balance between law and order, on the one hand, and the liberty of the individual on the other. This is clearly seen in our country's bill of rights, and the constitutional protections afforded our accused: evidence improperly obtained is suppressed; there is a ban on the use of involuntary custodial interrogation, including torture, and any questioning of the accused without a lawyer; we require unanimous verdicts for convictions; and double jeopardy and bills of attainder are prohibited. In other words, our system of government expressly tolerates a certain level of crime and disorder in order to preserve liberty and individuality. It is difficult to conceive that the same constitution which is prepared to let a guilty man go free, rather than admit an illegally seized murder weapon into evidence at trial, can be interpreted to permit whole scale, nationwide, mandatory surveillance of our nation's telecommunications system for law enforcement purposes. It is impossible that the philosophy upon which our system of government was founded could ever be construed to accept such a regime. I began this talk with a war story, and I would like to end it with another war story. While a law student, I had the opportunity to study in London for a year. While there, I took one week, and spent it touring the old Soviet Union. The official Soviet tour guide I was assigned was an intelligent woman. As a former Olympic athlete, she had been permitted in the 1960's to travel to England to compete in international tennis matches. At one point in my tour, she asked me why I was studying in London. I told her that I wanted to learn what it was like to live outside of my own country, so I chose to study in a country where I would have little trouble with the language. I noticed a strange expression on her face as I said this. It was not until my tour was over and I looked back on that conversation that I realized why my answer had resulted in her having that strange look. What I had said to her was that I had chosen to go to overseas to study; further, I had said that I had chosen where to go. That I could make such decisions was a right which she and the fellow citizens did not have. Yes, she had visited England, but it was because her government chose her to go, and it was her government which decided where she should go. In her country, at that time, her people had order, but they had no liberty. In our country, the domestic control of encryption represents a shift in the balance of our liberties. It is a shift not envisioned by our constitution. If ever to be taken, it must be based upon a better defense than what "Dank," or law enforcement, can provide. end

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Timing Cryptanalysis Attack
by anon-remailer＠utopia.hacktic.nl 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

pck(a)netcom.com (Paul C. Kocher) writes: > I've just released details of an attack many of you will > find interesting since quite a few existing cryptography > products and systems are potentially at risk. The general > idea of the attack is that secret keys can be found by > measuring the amount of time used to to process messages. I just read this paper, and while it is somewhat interesting, I don't think the walls of cryptography are in any danger of crumbling. People employing systems like PGP are already advised to use them on private machines, with only one user, and untampered-with binaries. Under such circumstances, the collecting of statistics necessary to employ a timing attack would be difficult at best, and anyone doing a "black bag" job on the platform would be better advised to use a direct attack like a passphrase-sniffer as opposed to a complex statistical approach. On Networked systems with many users, where one is advised not to decrypt with or store ones private key, the situation is of course different. But again, another user with the ability to monitor the timing of specific subroutines in ones cryptographic software or feed that software enough chosen data to generate a statistical profile of the key, would doubtless have an opportunity to compromise the system in other ways. In the particular case of RSA used to sign messages or transmit session keys, the values being exponentiated are either highly random or strongly hashed, and the opportunity of an opponent to time numerical routines with data of his own choosing is non-existant. So while this is a very nice piece of work, and certainly of theoretical interest, I don't think it will modify the way in which people are advised to utilize cryptographic software, or cause companies like Netscape of RSADSI to shed any tears. -Bourbaki 137

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Re: [NOISE] GAK and self-incrimination?
by tallpaul＠pipeline.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

On Dec 10, 1995 23:55:13, 'Bill Stewart <stewarts(a)ix.netcom.com>' wrote: > >Testimony was often compelled by more direct means than threatened >contempt citations. Piling rocks on people until they talked was >still in use in the 1600s, unless I've got my dates wrong. >It may have gone out of fashion slightly after witch-burning, >but was still in recent cultural memory of the Constitution's authors. > The rock process was called "pressing" and it had an economic basis to it, if my memory serves. The laws of the time permitted the state (i.e. often the little village) to confiscate the property of those convicted of crimes in a court. Remember that many of the witch etc. accusations were made among the residents of the same villages with all of the petty resentments, vindictive people, and "nuts" that exist in every location and every time throughout history. The legal system did not permit someone to be tried for a crime until they had entered their plea of guilty or not guilty. In other words, you could charge them with being a witch. Then you demanded that they enter a plea. Then you try them, and likely convict them. Then you confiscate their property. People who reused to enter a plea jammed up the entire process -- no plea = no trial = no verdict = no property confiscation. To avoid this unpleasant series of equations, the forces bringing the charges wanted a way of forcing people to plea to the charge. They wanted it to be reasonably safe, since a person who died passed their property on to the rest of the family. But they also wanted it to be unpleasant enough to actually compell the accused to actually enter the plea. Thus pressing was invented. Stones were slowly added over a period of days to produce maximum discomfort with minimal chance of an accidental death. (Now what does this have to do with strong crypto?) Well, why would the person charged refuse to plea unless they were guilty? (Beginning to sound a little familiar?) Futplex's original post brings up yet another example from history where human behavior has nothing to do with crime. The person who refused to plead so refused not out of any sense of guilt but from something entirely different. If I'm not guilty why do I want strong crypto? Sometimes for the same reason I want a shredder. And why do I want a shredder? Sometimes just to keep the local gossip from going through my papers after I throw them out. --tallpaul

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RE: Because they want to be "players"
by jay holovacs 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

========================== >From: Tim May <tcmay(a)got.net> >To: Declan McCullagh <declan(a)well.com>; fight-censorship@vorlon.mit.edu;cypherpunks@toad.com >Subject: Because they want to be "players" >Date: Thu, Sep 18, 1997 10:37 PM > >Yes, SAFE is an evil bill. And anyone who supports the "use a cipher, go to >prison" language (*) is guilty of a most serious crime. In NY (as possibly other places), wearing a bullet resistant vest while doing something illegal is itself a crime. While it might be argued that messing around with guns can hurt bystanders, no one was ever injured by a stray bullet resisting vest. Jay

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Anohter angle on timing (TEMPEST)
by Dave Emery 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Reading of Mr Kochers clever attack brings to mind another way of obtaining the timings it uses, particularly on smartcards and other tamper resistant hardware based crypto devices - but also perhaps on locally accessible (and poorly sheilded) servers. Observing small changes in current drain, radiated rf pulses, ground noise, noise on other pins of the device (eg a smartcard) and other kinds of transient electrical noise generated by an internal processor performing a cyrpto algorithm noise might very well allow one to quite precisely identify when certain sections or loops in the internal code of the device was running. Using this information with Kochar's statistical approach to determining bit values from time variances might make such a tempest attack on protected keys held by such a devices practical even for those of us not privy to the tricks used by the spooks to process tempest data. And it certainly could make available much more timing information per run than just the gross time to complete the crypto operation, in fact it is entirely possible that an accurate timing for each step of the algorithm could be derived from such noise measurements. Dave Emery die(a)die.com

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Re: key escrow arguments (fwd)
by David Downey 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Am I just being paranoid or am I seeing a pattern here? Let me point out a few items that have sprung to mind after reading the post. 1) The government is trying to take away our right to strong private crypto because they do not have access to the decrypting key at either end. This nullifies any type of access they "need" to have to those transmissions. 2) They also are trying to use their market power to force companies to manufacture and sell crypto products that use government backed algorythms. (Which of course include the "back door" features they so loudly claim they need.) Such as when they told AT&T that they would buy 2.3 million Secure 3600 series phones from them *if* they put the government designed Fortezza(?) chip in them. 3) They classified crypto as a munition, like a fighter jet or tank, in an attempt to take it out of the realm of Constitutional Right. (Though it seems they forgot about the "Right to bear arms" part) 4) They forced the telephone industry to write their software in such a way as to instantly allow them access to any and *all* lines. (In the event that they should "need" to tap the line as per a supposedly legally obtained court order from an Artical III federal court judge. (Ummm.. Do they really think that we don't know what it takes to obtain that high a level of a political seating in the judiciary branch?) 5) They stirred up the media which in turn roused the sheeple. THe rally cry was child porn. Is there a pattern here, or am I just going out of what is left of my mind? ______________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com

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[Noise] A vaguely humorous post
by Don M. Kitchen 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- I saw some fool posting to alt.security among other places trying to get his basic program to do OTP's. On the off chance that anybody thinks this is funny, here's my response: In-reply-to: spy(a)vs.spy's message of 10 Dec 1995 05:02:17 GMT Newsgroups: alt.2600,alt.2600.programz,alt.security Followup-To: alt.2600 Subject: Re: HELP....This will not work; I am perplexed. Reply-to: don(a)cs.byu.edu References: <4adpkp$3id(a)mercury.initco.net> - --text follows this line-- > 60 INPUT "HOW MANY ONE TIME PADS DO YOU WANT?";NUMB [snip] > 160 RANDOMIZE E > 170 X=INT(RND(0)*90)+1 This isn't sci.crypt so I won't flame, but I feel I should point out that "One Time Pad" is a registered trademark of Cypherpunks, Ltd, and that any inferrence that anything coming out of a basic randomizer is "One", "Time", or "Pad" is a blatent trademark violation. As a courtesy to the public, Cypherpunks, Ltd, makes freely available it's patented One Time Pad technology. Using PGP, you may enter the top-secret activation code thusly: "pgp +makerandom=[size] [filename]" where [size] is the size, in bytes, of your Cypherpunk[tm]-generated, super-cryptographically- secure, ultimate One Time Pad[tm], and [filename] is where you want it stored. You can rest assured that with your cypherpunk[tm] One-Time-Pad[tm], not even a Cypherpunk[tm] can break your code without breaking your bones. > **Have you been compromised? If the answer is no, > you had better think again. With security ideas like that, I'm not surprised. MD5 man, MD5. PS, try to zip a large output from pgp makerandom. Now try a large output from basic. Hmmmm. Which one Just Wont Compress[tm]? Happy Monday everyone. PS: got mail crypt working, it's awesome. It's quite seamless, up to the point where my home box doesn't have incoming mail service and EMACS doesn't have built in POP or IMAP. (Yet). But great for nntp and PGP. Don -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.2 iQB1AwUBMMwBmcLa+QKZS485AQHKLAL6Ah4881dbMan91wNL2TJjvGMHe75Xwzrw YI0x5/XsmuoYv7M6qn4O+MZ9vEF51ES1sJaW5bOQ5Gq0vJn2bmGVIV+kmbn2p3TZ ZHxkv51NW7zxwRgyvnezwyYwBrY10bQ2 =eoAc -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- -- <don(a)cs.byu.edu> fRee cRyPTo! jOin the hUnt or BE tHe PrEY PGP key - http://students.cs.byu.edu/~don or PubKey servers (0x994b8f39) June 7&14, 1995: 1st amendment repealed. Junk mail to root(a)127.0.0.1 * This user insured by the Smith, Wesson, & Zimmermann insurance company *

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No Subject
by owner-cypherpunks＠toad.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

A few years back i ran thru a paper emanating from a navy labs researcher (i think the name was Peccora) about using synchronised chaotic signal generators as a signal scrambling/encrytpion scheme. Has there been any kind of progress in this line of work, practical applications ? Answer on C4i-pro or directly email to Denholl(a)ceram.fr L. Den-Hollander. OIT engineer.

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Re: sooner or later
by William H. Geiger III 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- - ------------------------------------------------------------------------- The following message is forwarded to you by William H. Geiger III <whgiii(a)users.invweb.net> (listed as the From user of this message). The original sender (see the header, below) was "David Downey" <digital_matrix(a)hotmail.com> and has been set as the "Reply-To" field of this message. - ------------------------------------------------------------------------- >Return-Path: <digital_matrix(a)hotmail.com> >Received: from hotmail.com (F4.hotmail.com [207.82.250.15]) > by users.invweb.net (8.8.7/8.8.7) with SMTP id RAA18318 > for <whgiii(a)invweb.net>; Fri, 19 Sep 1997 17:41:47 -0400 >Received: (qmail 10896 invoked by uid 0); 19 Sep 1997 21:41:28 -0000 >Message-ID: <19970919214128.10895.qmail(a)hotmail.com> >Received: from 207.51.67.2 by www.hotmail.com with HTTP; > Fri, 19 Sep 1997 14:41:28 PDT >X-Originating-IP: [207.51.67.2] >From: "David Downey" <digital_matrix(a)hotmail.com> >To: whgiii(a)invweb.net >Subject: Re: sooner or later >Content-Type: text/plain >Date: Fri, 19 Sep 1997 16:41:28 -0500 >X-Old_TimeStamp: Fri, 19 Sep 1997 14:41:28 -700 >Status: >Oh I wouldn't be feeling to optimistic with that. We in the >crypto/anarchist community are a very small minority. Our govenrmnet >would have no qualms at all of taking us out. A nice little Reichstag >Fire to turn popular opinion against us and then the storm troopers >will be sent out. If you are expecting some type of popular support >of "us" against "them" I think you are sorely mistaken. The majority >of the sheeple would be all to happy to turn in those evil >cryptologist for their 5min of fame. > I wouldn't say that we are that small of a minority. There are many folks out there that feel the same way that we do. I know of a large community in Kentucky, USA that feel that the government is slowly trying to institute a police state. (And no, I do not mean a militia, though many of them are friends that I had the honor of serving with in the US Army.) The viewpoint that I am trying to get accross comes from looking at history. Although many groups that went against governments were in fact wiped out, they left an indeligible mark on the minds and attitudes of future generations. Some even to the point of creating another generation of "freedom fighters" that actually forced the government to radically re-evaluate it's stance on certain items. (There are too many incidences of this to mention, though the slave movement in Rome, and the Spartan soldier revolt do come to mind.) What is to say that with the physical fire-power of today, and good old fashion American grit such as was shown at Iwa Jima by the US Marine Corp, we could not show the Government that we could not change their minds? I personally would hate for things to come down to that level, yet it seems that they are forcing us more and more towards that path. (Please don't misread my statements. I do not advocate the overthrow of the government. I merely am commenting on the fact that the factors which contributed to the American Civil War becoming a reality are once again present today. If another war should break out today... let's just say that is one nightmare I'd prefer *not* to have! ______________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com - ----------------------------------------------------- -- End of forwarded message - ----------------------------------------------------- - -- - --------------------------------------------------------------- William H. Geiger III http://www.amaranth.com/~whgiii Geiger Consulting Cooking With Warp 4.0 Author of E-Secure - PGP Front End for MR/2 Ice PGP & MR/2 the only way for secure e-mail. OS/2 PGP 2.6.3a at: http://www.amaranth.com/~whgiii/pgpmr2.html - --------------------------------------------------------------- -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.3a Charset: cp850 Comment: Registered_User_E-Secure_v1.1b1_ES000000 iQCVAwUBNCL+TI9Co1n+aLhhAQEeFgP/aqjyGITziDJBIke1hAfHFBea4Dxv11Av 7J4fkFZYF3In7j/NI00pDmX8Kb0xOiZXJkiA/JWhGr6pPFyJcFvEtMSoJKUy5W+l TEcTikn9y2qwkDl1dAULf2vP9etd825TC2wQkYJsPV/1baN1eRjzmedBoGvz7X/q qKxAZKKwSBI= =FglG -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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Clinton's Pager Hacked
by John Young 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Dave Wagner passed on a story about the hacking of the White House Communications Agency's pager system, with commentary on what was lifted and the possible consequences for crypto policy: http://jya.com/potus-hack.htm The full report on the hack is online at: http://www.inch.com/~esoteric/pam_suggestion/formal.html With links to the transcript. The big-time media are about to break the story worldwide according to Dave.

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Re: e-Cash: CAFE vs. Mondex
by Matthias Schunter 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Dear Mr. Klur, I'm member of the CAFE consortium but I can not answer your question. As far as we know, the details of the Mondex protocols are still confidential (or only available under a non-disclosure license). However, I can give you some details about CAFE. The CAFE system is a cheque based system. This means that the customer receives an electronic chequebook, where each cheque is (blindly) signed by the bank. During each payment the customer has to use one of these signed cheques. Some of its properties are: secure Breaking the card results in a limited gain, since soon the customer will run out of cheques (Mondex' security is quite likely only based on tamper-resistance). open Due to the open public-key architecture used, the system is open, e.g., it supports multiple-issuer, multiple-currencies. One part of this openness is the public availability of the specifications. practical It provides full loss- and fault-tolerance (i.e. if you loose your wallet you're able to recover your electronic money) and supports fast micropayments (e.g., for phone ticks). privacy-protecting The privacy of the user is protected. We will soon publish our full protocol and architecture specifications. A short 50-page summary is already available (PostScript). Additional information may be found at http://www.informatik.uni-hildesheim.de/~sirene/projects/cafe/index.html Please ontact me, if you are interested in this abstract or if you have additional questions. Regards, M. Schunter --- Forwarded mail from "David Klur" <dklur(a)dttus.com> Date: Mon, 11 Dec 95 12:13:48 CST From: "David Klur" <dklur(a)dttus.com> To: cypherpunks(a)toad.com, WWW-BUYINFO(a)allegra.att.com Is the Cafe e-cash system different than Mondex? If so, how? Also, does anyone know when the Mondex trial will start in Delaware? ---End of forwarded mail from "David Klur" <dklur(a)dttus.com> % Matthias <Schunter(a)acm.org> Uni Hildesheim +49(5121)883-788 fax-732

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Bill Gates gives 1 Billion to EFF!
by EFF 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

[EFF - Bienfait, Saskatchewan] News Release: Gates Gives Gargantuan Gift to Gullability Grifters! ---------------------------------------------------- In a suprise announcement this afternoon, Bill Gates announced that he would be donating a billion dollars over the next ten years to the Electronic Forgery Foundation, for use in promoting CypherPunks Action Projects. Gates emphasized that this plan had been in preparation for quite some time, and was not a response to the publicity-seeking Ted Turner's challenge to the rich and notorious. He also pointed out that he, unlike Turner, had nothing but the most self-serving of intentions. "I have asked that none of the money go directly to the projects, but only toward the administration of the CypherPunks Action Projects." he stated. "I expect that the CAP's will become rather top-heavy and, being overseen by the Electronic Forgery Foundation, will be able to compete with the sheer volume of lies that the government uses to suppress free speech and liberty in the U.S. Chief CypherPunks Spokesperson, TruthMonger, thanked Gates profusely for the gift, babbling and drooling at times, while accepting the first check and handing Gates an envelope about the size needed to contain photographic negatives. Gates immediately burned the envelope. TruthMonger stated that he had met with the EFF Board of Directors, including ? the Lunatic, Toto, The Real Guy, and A Player To Be Named Later, and that all of them had been anonymous in agreeing that the first order of business would be to purchase a liquor store from which to run the CypherPunks Action Projects. TruthMonger then put on an aluminum foil hat and, addressing the crowd as ? the Lunatic, said, "We will naturally be replacing the staff of the liquor stores with people more in tune with the goals of the CypherPunks.", adding that he had already put out some 'feelers' at local tit-bars in this regard. Bill Gates explained that a top-heavy disorganization, such as he envisioned with the EFF running the CAPs, would stand a good chance of becoming a self-feeding monster which could promote strong crypto at the same time as bending the multitudes to do his bidding as the year 2000 elections approached. When asked by a reporter if he was the Anti-Christ, Gates grinned and replied, "I could tell you...but then I'd have to burn you in Hell, forever." Reporters were quick to ask the EFF directors how they planned to protect their forseen rise in power and influence from being sabotaged by veteran CypherPunks who might use strong encryption to thwart the attempts of Big Money to harness their reputation capital to promote their own agenda. Taking off the aluminum hat and whipping out his dick, The Real Guy stated, "Well, of course we will have to forbid use of non-GAK'ed cryto by EFF employees, in the interests of Foundation Security. Or, alternatively, we may limit the use of encryption by our employees to 8-bit crypto products." Smiling sheepishly, he added, "We're not real good at math." At this point, shots rang out from the window of a nearby building, as well as from a grassy knoll and several other places, dropping many of those gathered at the press conference like flies. As Gates and TruthMonger made their getaway in an armored limousene, several CypherPunks were heard arguing on the grassy knoll as to whether it had been a mistake to shoot the lawyers first. A later memo to the press from MicroSoft indicated that the official announcement of the donation would be released in an upcoming chapter of "InfoWar (Part III of the True Story of the InterNet), written by Bill Gates, himself. When asked about the possibility of Gates having presented the EFF with a forged check, sources at MicroSoft merely giggled. --------------------------------------------------------------------- This announcement is copyrighted under the auspices of the Electronic Forgery Foundation. Any misuse or misquoting of the announcement will be considered par for the course. ---------------------------------------------------------------------

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Roger's case against RSA?
by ecarp＠netcom.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

I know that a week or so ago, there was a hearing in San Jose regarding Roger Schafly's (sp.) case against RSA. How did the hearing come out? I never saw a post... :( -- Ed Carp, N7EKG Ed.Carp(a)linux.org, ecarp(a)netcom.com 214/993-3935 voicemail/digital pager 800/558-3408 SkyPager Finger ecarp(a)netcom.com for PGP 2.5 public key an88744(a)anon.penet.fi "Past the wounds of childhood, past the fallen dreams and the broken families, through the hurt and the loss and the agony only the night ever hears, is a waiting soul. Patient, permanent, abundant, it opens its infinite heart and asks only one thing of you ... 'Remember who it is you really are.'" -- "Losing Your Mind", Karen Alexander and Rick Boyes

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Re: The Elevator Problem
by Daniel Miskell 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Ok, here was the method of key generation i was talking about. With the light communications, the idea was to use photons whose waves pulsed in certain directions (up/down, left/right, and diagonally) to create a way toommunicate much like morse code. The key used to scramble these communications was designed to change the direction the photons of a message pulsated - like changing the characters of a message, scrambling it up. The key consisted of three symbols, one for each of the possible orientations, and was fainly simple. It was like a one time pad in that the key was never recycled. The key could be generated by a game of 20 questions, so to speak. The people at either end randomly generated a key. Then, they asked eiither indirect questions about the contents of one anothers key (do you have an odd number of up/down symbols in row x, etc), but since the contents of the key were never touched on DIRECTLY, no eavesdfropper could determine the key, and it was ttally secure. We, obviously, cannot use the photon as a method of communication, not for th e masses. the undertaking of building such a network from scratch is astronomical. however, if one wwas to use the orientation symbols in ones messages, as if they were being beamed, but in an email message instead, one could make use of the simple key, and the simple game of '20 questions' to generate a totally secure key in a mater of minutes, depending on how long the message was and therefore how long the key has to be. Does any of this make sense? Regards, Munster. --- _________________________________ *!Cheese Doctrine:!* Though cultured over time, and aged to perfection, one must not yield to produce mold. One must also not belittle themselves by conforming to the "whiz", but melt over the unprocessed ideas of Ghuda. _________________________________

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