December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

Re: Fairness, Justice, and Cypherpunks
by Sandy Sandfort 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ SANDY SANDFORT ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ C'punks, At 01:55 PM 5/28/96 -0700, Timothy C. May wrote a thoughtful disquisition on privacy laws and concluded: >Cypherpunks should not, in my strong belief, support "data >fairness laws" or "anti-gossip laws." To which I would add: Cypherpunks has never been about laws at all, except in the subversive sense. It has been the oft stated goal of Cypherpunks to protect privacy through the use of techonology, *irrespective* of what laws say. Cypherpunks who don't want powerful corporations to invade their privacy should be working on better privacy technology instead of trying to dance with the devil. S a n d y ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

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Re: Philosophy of information ownership
by tcmay＠got.net 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 7:38 PM 5/28/96, Bruce Baugh wrote: >In many cases, sure it is. I can't see how giving you the information to >establish that I can pay a bill I owe you should be in any sense treated as >a license do anything else with that info. A great many transactions are >finite, and ought not have lingering implications or side deals dangling off >the end. Most lenders are interested in these things: * past history of paying bills, especially for monthly bills such as VISA (and when one applies for and accepts a VISA card, it is explicitly made clear that repayment/deliquency information will be reported to credit agencies...most people of course _want_ this information reported, as this is largely what "establishing a credit history" is all about). * lenders for larger items, such as cars and houses, will want collateral and some evidence that the monthly repayment amounts are achievable (even if a loan is secured by a car, for example, it makes no sense for them to lend money to an unemployed 18-year-old and then have to spend money and time retrieving the car, etc. * other factors which have historically affected loan repayment probabilities, such as age, sex, ethnic group, religion, educational background, etc. (Note: Some of these criteria are of course no longer legal to officially use, even if their strong and clear correlations.) Note that "credit" is not a right. Credit, like insurance, is a kind of "bet" a lender is making. A bet that he will get his principal back, with interest. To help him make this bet, people offer evidence of past good faith in loans, and choose to reveal their current salaries, ownership of other assets, etc. In no way is this coerced. Anyone is free to eschew credit, avoid borrowing money, and pay with cash or checks for all purchases. >In the long run, this is where anonymous payments come in. In the meantime, >I muddle on as best I can. No, anonymous payments have very little to do with credit. See above. --Tim May Boycott "Big Brother Inside" software! We got computers, we're tapping phone lines, we know that that ain't allowed. ---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---- Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, tcmay(a)got.net 408-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA | knowledge, reputations, information markets, Licensed Ontologist | black markets, collapse of governments. "National borders aren't even speed bumps on the information superhighway."

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Re: Remailer chain length?
by Hal 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

From: Jim Choate <ravage(a)ssz.com> > > From: "Mark M." <markm(a)voicenet.com> > > And besides, the more remailers there are, the > > more difficult it is to do traffic analysis on remailer traffic. Actually, > > its the more remailers people chain messages through, but there are software > > packages that can do this easily. The more remailers there are, the longer > > remailer chains have the possibility of becoming. > > If this is strictly true, why not simply run several instances of a remailer > on the same machine. Then randomly chain them prior to sending them off > site. Or better still, run one remailer on the machine, and use it multiple times in the chain. It seems to me that one remailer on a machine is better than several because it will allow more mixing of messages. If two messages enter a machine and later leave, it may be possible to distinguish them if they went to different remailers and left with different From: addresses (or other header fields) as a result. If they had both gone to the same remailer it would be harder to tell them apart. I understand that there may be political reasons to have the machine owner and remailer operator be separate (although AFAIK the reasoning behind this is untested), but technically it seems better to have one remailer per machine based on traffic analysis issues. Hal

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Re: Philosophy of information ownership [ Re: Children's Privacy Act ]
by frantz＠netcom.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 09:24 AM 5/27/96 -0500, Mike McNally wrote: >What if I just *see* your couch, and then back in my garage I use my >couch replicator to make a couch just like yours, complete with fuzzballs >and loose change between the cushions? Now I have your couch, in a sense. >Are you still upset? If the couch design is copyrighted, you have just violated the copyright :-). ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Bill Frantz | The CDA means | Periwinkle -- Computer Consulting (408)356-8506 | lost jobs and | 16345 Englewood Ave. frantz(a)netcom.com | dead teenagers | Los Gatos, CA 95032, USA

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Re: Remailers - What exists?
by E. ALLEN SMITH 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

From: IN%"stewarts(a)ix.netcom.com" "Bill Stewart" 28-MAY-1996 05:27:38.19 >It helps a lot to have an account that isn't your main email >account, because it's going to get lots of junk in it >that you want to discard most of, so you'd be better >off without your real mail going there, unless you're >a procmail wizard. A related question is about the cover traffic generators. With those, I've gathered you've got the two choices of loops and nowhere-ending chains (e.g., directing it to "nobody" on most systems). If it's done using a loop, is there any way for a procmail script to determine that and toss them into /dev/null? >Mixmaster-style remailers are more secure than vanilla ones, >but of course you need to use the Mixmaster client software >to use them, which could be a problem if you're a DOS or Mac user. Or a VAX/VMS user; there are, I have been informed, enough UNIX-specific system calls in Mixmaster that porting it isn't a trivial task. >- ability to mess with the sendmail logs >- ability to tell the backup software not to back up your > spool directory (which would be Really Bad, especially > if your computer provider keeps backups forever.) > The alternative is to put it under /tmp somewhere, > and just make sure it recovers if too much stuff gets > deleted by regular daemons. What mechanisms are available to make sure it will recover if /tmp gets deleted? I suspect also that many ISPs might be quite willing not to bother backing up some directory or another - it saves them time and space. Thanks, -Allen

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Re: Clipper III analysis
by frantz＠netcom.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 4:11 PM 5/28/96 -0400, Carl Ellison wrote: >There were a number of flaws in that paper, but perhaps the most glaring to >me is that there are actually 3 classes of key: > >the two you mentioned: > communications key > storage key >and > signature key > >Of these, you want key recovery *only* for storage keys. You want to make >sure no one can get to your signature key. Even the IWG paper notes that. >But the only use for a PKI of any form is for a signature key. Once you >have your identity established somehow for a signature key, you can >generate and sign comm or storage keys at will. Furthermore, if you lose a >signature key, there's no big loss. You generate a new one and get a new >cert for it. So there's *NEVER* a reason for key recovery for a signature >key -- the only keys for which there is a need for a PKI. Carl is right. They want to GAK all keys including signature keys. Now think, to whom in your life are you willing to grant unlimited power of attorney? Your spouse? Your lawyer? Your banker? Your employer? Your government? Giving away your signature key is worse. Not only can any key holder act FOR you, he can act AS you. "We've got you cold perp. You signed this child porn that was posted to alt.binary.etc. You can make your calls from jail." Who needs entrapment. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Bill Frantz | The CDA means | Periwinkle -- Computer Consulting (408)356-8506 | lost jobs and | 16345 Englewood Ave. frantz(a)netcom.com | dead teenagers | Los Gatos, CA 95032, USA

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Re: Clipper III analysis
by tcmay＠got.net 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 12:37 AM 5/29/96, Bill Frantz wrote: >Carl is right. They want to GAK all keys including signature keys. Now >think, to whom in your life are you willing to grant unlimited power of >attorney? Your spouse? Your lawyer? Your banker? Your employer? Your >government? > >Giving away your signature key is worse. Not only can any key holder act >FOR you, he can act AS you. "We've got you cold perp. You signed this >child porn that was posted to alt.binary.etc. You can make your calls from >jail." Who needs entrapment. But, though things have gotten pretty bad these last 40 years, there are still courts, expert witnesses, and standards for signature verification. Experts are called upon to give testimony about the likelihood that a signature is that of the person claimed (by one side or the other). Though there have been few tests of digital signatures that I know of (I think Utah has a law...), this government access to identities (GAI) will throw a spanner in efforts to get digital signatures widely accepted. Once it gets shown in open court that Joe Blow can claim he did not sign a document and the government will have to admit that this is a possibility, and admits that anyone in government with access to the escrowed data base could have done the signing....well, digital signatures will lose much of their value immediately. Inasmuch as unforgeable digital signatures are critical for electronic commerce, a fact even Clinton cannot ignore, I expect this weakness to help sink Clipper III. As Carl noted, Cypherpunk Deep Cover Agent Micali has been doing a good job in planting logic bombs in these schemes...I urge we approve his bonus. --Tim May Boycott "Big Brother Inside" software! We got computers, we're tapping phone lines, we know that that ain't allowed. ---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---- Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, tcmay(a)got.net 408-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA | knowledge, reputations, information markets, Licensed Ontologist | black markets, collapse of governments. "National borders aren't even speed bumps on the information superhighway."

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Re: Philosophy of information ownership
by Alan Olsen 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 12:38 PM 5/28/96 -0700, Bruce Baugh wrote: >A separate problem arises when the government compels the disclosure of >information for one purpose - getting a driver's license, say - and then >turns around and sells it to others. It's much harder to either negotiate a >new contract or go to a competitor when the other party is a government. This is a problem in Oregon. The database of drivers licences and registered automobiles is sold openly by the state. (You can also order a copy on CD-ROM from a company based in Oregon as well...) As far as I know, there is no way to opt out of having your name sold to marketing firms. These records are routinely purchaced by mail order houses for resale to clients all over the country. The cost is pretty minimal (under $200) and you have to provide the media (usually two 9-track tapes). The database includes current address, vehicle licence number and the type of car that you own (among other things). The only way to not be on the list is to not have ID. Not viable in todays society. --- |Coors - For people who don't want to think about what they are drinking.| |"The moral PGP Diffie taught Zimmermann unites all| Disclaimer: | | mankind free in one-key-steganography-privacy!" | Ignore the man | |`finger -l alano(a)teleport.com` for PGP 2.6.2 key | behind the keyboard.| | http://www.teleport.com/~alano/ | alano(a)teleport.com |

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Re: Philosophy of information ownership
by Bruce Baugh 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 09:25 AM 5/28/96 -0700, Sandy Sandfort wrote: >that our privacy will be maintained. Generally, it is >incumbunt upon us--not others--to secure our own privacy. I'm in complete agreement here, and I'm willing to drop the thread here - I don't think I have much else to add. -- Bruce Baugh bruce(a)aracnet.com http://www.aracnet.com/~bruce

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Re: Philosophy of information ownership
by tcmay＠got.net 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 2:37 AM 5/29/96, Alan Olsen wrote: >At 12:38 PM 5/28/96 -0700, Bruce Baugh wrote: > >>A separate problem arises when the government compels the disclosure of >>information for one purpose - getting a driver's license, say - and then >>turns around and sells it to others. It's much harder to either negotiate a >>new contract or go to a competitor when the other party is a government. > >This is a problem in Oregon. The database of drivers licences and >registered automobiles is sold openly by the state. (You can also order a >copy on CD-ROM from a company based in Oregon as well...) As far as I know, >there is no way to opt out of having your name sold to marketing firms. >These records are routinely purchaced by mail order houses for resale to >clients all over the country. The cost is pretty minimal (under $200) and >you have to provide the media (usually two 9-track tapes). The database >includes current address, vehicle licence number and the type of car that >you own (among other things). As I said, I favor "data privacy laws" when they deal with government use of mandatory data (but not in the case of illegalizing the mere "remembering" of data obtained non-coercively). The problem has been made worse by "revenue enhancement" policies by various govenmental agencies. Local and regional governments have discovered they can make a few extra bucks by selling data bases they acquired through government power. Here in California there are restrictions on DL records, following the use of DL records to allow a guy to track down an actress, Rebecca Shaefer, and then kill her. (But this doesn't stop such abuses. A couple of years ago I obtained the NLETS (National Law Enforcement Telecommunications System) printout for the extremely reclusive and unseen-since-1957 author Thomas Pynchon. He lived a few miles from me, in Aptos, on an old logging road.) The problem of government records being "open to the public" of course is a two-edged sword. We want government to not operate in secret on the one hand, but we are naturally horrified when it is possible to go to the right office of government and look at lists of all the women who received abortions in county hospitals. I place no faith in government to protect my privacy. --Tim May Boycott "Big Brother Inside" software! We got computers, we're tapping phone lines, we know that that ain't allowed. ---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---- Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, tcmay(a)got.net 408-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA | knowledge, reputations, information markets, Licensed Ontologist | black markets, collapse of governments. "National borders aren't even speed bumps on the information superhighway."

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Re: Tempest Info [ELECTRICAL NOISE]
by Bill Stewart 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 02:08 PM 5/28/96 -0500, Andrew Loewenstern <andrew_loewenstern(a)il.us.swissbank.com> wrote: >Bill Stewart writes: >> Also, of course, your electrical power system needs to be >> shielded and filtered, so only 60Hz gets through, unless you >> plan to stick to laptops and bring in spare battery packs. >At HoHoCon a few years ago, someone did a tempest demo and mentioned that >signals could be recovered from water pipes! Fire sprinkler systems were >specifically mentioned... Yup. When you're installing a shielded room with waterpipes, it's best to use a chunk of plastic pipe just outside the shieldwall, and you need to make sure the plumbers use teflon tape instead of pipe dope ( unless it was the other way around; it's been a while.) >Theres a lot of different avenues for your eminations to be recovered, some >you may not have thought of. Like crypto, tempest is economics. And like crypto, there are lots of diddly little things you've got to check to make sure you've done _all_ of them correctly. Unlike crypto, however, it's generally easy to find out if you've made a mistake; big mistakes peg your test meter, little ones require you to wave the meter around everywhere and watch for little motions. Also unlike crypto, little mistakes generally won't lose the whole game for you; if somebody's got to watch for six months to accumulate enough leaked electrons to find out the Secret Plans, and you haven't noticed the black van with all the antennas parked out in your parking lot by then, you've got far more serious troubles than just a few stray electrons :-) You may also notice that you can't park your black antenna-van too near the Pentagon. It's not just because they think you're hauling fertilizer; electromagnetic emanations follow this nice square-law that means that a few hundred meters of extra distance makes it _much_ harder to detect the signal you're looking for, as well as mushing it together with all the other stray signals from the building. # Thanks; Bill # Bill Stewart, stewarts(a)ix.netcom.com, +1-415-442-2215 # goodtimes signature virus innoculation

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[crypto] crypto-protocols for trading card games
by Simon Spero 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Here's an interesting problem: In the not too distant past there was a fad for collectible trading card games, the most famous of which was Magic, The Gathering (tm). These games combined the collecting and trading of baseball cards with traditional aspects of card playing. Cards were issued by a central authority/publisher (Wizards of the Coast in the case of MtG). Each player uses his or her own deck; cards that are not played remain secret; however the same deck mut be used in each round of a match. tournament games are adjudicated by an umpire. Design a set of crypto protocols to support the issuing, trading, and playing of such card games in real time (100ms compute time per move) Simon

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Re: Clipper III analysis
by Carl Ellison 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

>Date: Tue, 28 May 1996 17:37:05 -0700 >From: frantz(a)netcom.com (Bill Frantz) >Subject: Re: Clipper III analysis > They want to GAK all keys including signature keys. Now >think, to whom in your life are you willing to grant unlimited power of >attorney? Your spouse? Your lawyer? Your banker? Your employer? Your >government? Almost. Actually, they mention at one point that they don't want to GAK the signature keys, but it's almost an afterthought. The thing I find peculiar is that they wand GAK through access to private keys in a PKI, ala Micali or Banker's Trust, but the only keys which need to be in a PKI are signature keys -- ones even they admit should not be recovered. Can you spell "empty intersection", boys and girls? :) Mighty clever of the cryptographer who started them down this path. - Carl +--------------------------------------------------------------------------+ |Carl M. Ellison cme(a)acm.org http://www.clark.net/pub/cme | |PGP: E0414C79B5AF36750217BC1A57386478 & 61E2DE7FCB9D7984E9C8048BA63221A2 | | ``Officer, officer, arrest that man! He's whistling a dirty song.'' | +---------------------------------------------- Jean Ellison (aka Mother) -+

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Re: [Fwd: --> CRISIS on USENET -- SIGN THE PROTEST STATEMENT VIA E-MAIL]
by kashi 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 11:52 AM 5/28/96 +0000, you wrote: >This is a post from Jon Noring (noring(a)netcom.com) about the recent >spamming of alt.religion.scientology. I thought he summed the >situation up very well. Why don't we get together an organized spamming of the CoC's servers? Let's give them a taste of their medicine! I bet that we can make their servers crash before they know what him them!

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Re: Philosophy of information ownership
by E. ALLEN SMITH 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

From: IN%"bruce(a)aracnet.com" "Bruce Baugh" 28-MAY-1996 18:50:34.36 >A separate problem arises when the government compels the disclosure of >information for one purpose - getting a driver's license, say - and then >turns around and sells it to others. It's much harder to either negotiate a >new contract or go to a competitor when the other party is a government. Quite. A related problem is when the government generates some information attached to you - the most obvious case being a social security number. Should a private company (e.g., a credit bureau) be allowed to make use of such? On the one hand, it would definitely limit companies not to be able to... on the other hand, you were coerced into having that information attached to you. One option is to have multiple possible SSNs for each person, but that gets into the problem of the credit bureaus, etcetera, may not deal with people who use a new SSN. It's their choice... but they're only able to make that choice because of governmental interference. -Allen

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Re: Remailer chain length?
by E. ALLEN SMITH 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

From: IN%"hfinney(a)shell.portal.com" "Hal" 28-MAY-1996 21:35:03.17 >Or better still, run one remailer on the machine, and use it multiple >times in the chain. It seems to me that one remailer on a machine is >better than several because it will allow more mixing of messages. If >two messages enter a machine and later leave, it may be possible to >distinguish them if they went to different remailers and left with >different From: addresses (or other header fields) as a result. If they >had both gone to the same remailer it would be harder to tell them >apart. But you could get a massive amount of mixing of messages, by this logic, simply by having 1 gigantic remailer. It'd have a vast traffic flow and could do a lot of latency, etcetera. But this also means that whoever runs it can trace everything - and whoever breaks into it can trace everything. While multiple remailers on the same machine isn't ideal for this purpose (if root is cracked, they all are cracked), it's better for this aspect than 1 remailer; root can be assumed to be harder to crack than a non-root-account remailer. Moreover, this is assuming one machine, or an interlinked group of machines set up such that there is one root account for all of them; separating the remailers into machines with different roots would help. The rubber-hose attack on the sysadmin is still a problem, though. -Allen

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Re: [Fwd: --> CRISIS on USENET -- SIGN THE PROTEST STATEMENT VIAE-MAIL]
by E. ALLEN SMITH 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

From: IN%"richieb(a)teleport.com" "Rich Burroughs" 28-MAY-1996 19:12:55.39 >In the last week, there have been several thousand (and rapidly approaching >10,000!) short posts swamping the newsgroup alt.religion.scientology (a.r.s.) >by a person or persons unknown. They are coming from several accounts, most >of them forged or bogus, and when the account is closed by its site >administrator based on complaints, the flood begins anew elsewhere. In at >least one instance a mail-to-news gateway has been used, necessitating the >administrator to close all posting to a.r.s. That one gateway has received, >last we heard, 886 attempted posts by the spammer within a 28 hour period >(which fortunately never reached their intended destination -- but thousands >of others have.) >3) The use of semi-anonymous "throw-away" accounts somewhat follows the same > pattern used recently to cancel posts containing portions of CoS' "secret" > scriptures, and which used the boiler-plate statement "Cancelled due to > copyright infringement" as the justification for the clearly illegal > cancels. > b) Kill files work by finding posts having certain identifiable attributes > in the header or message body, such as the From: address -- but as the > spam on a.r.s. shows, we've got a moving target that will resist kill > files. Any organization with enough money can keep getting throw-away > accounts that cannot be traced to the organization. They can also alter I am curious as to what systems these throw-away accounts are on; they would appear to be good output systems for ephemeral remailer endpoints. Admittedly, I suspect that this will take ecash remailers unless they're all through systems like aol.com that accept credit cards with inadequate verification (from what I know, check digit(s) only). -Allen

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Internet traffic is monitored.
by nobody＠REPLAY.COM 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Date: Tue, 28 May 1996 10:03:11 -0700 X-Sender: bstout(a)osc.hidata.com To: Firewalls(a)GreatCircle.COM, Return requested <firewalls(a)GreatCircle.COM> From: Bill Stout <bill.stout(a)hidata.com> Subject: Re: Encryption Technology Sender: firewalls-owner(a)GreatCircle.COM At 09:05 PM 5/22/96 -0700, Michael Dillon wrote: >... >RTFM ><SNIP - Other literary content deleted> On the Encryption note, and I swear not along the lines of the 'DOJ' and 'FBI Snooping' Big-Brother events, I heard another story recently. # begin story A person working on the MBONE project did an unannounced experiment across the internet using Triple-DES for MBONE, and the very next day, 'ATF' agents knocked on his door and warned him against exporting munitions. The experimentor was shaken by the fact that agents approached him so quickly after the experiment. # end story Extrapolations of fact: 1. Internet traffic is monitored. 2. The ability to snoop for encrypted traffic is present 3. The ability to identify encryption levels is present (How else can they differentiate DES-1 from DES-3?) 4. The ability to crack DES-1 in near real-time mode is present. (See above). 5. If above=true, then Feds dropping the Zimmerman PGP case probably also points to it also being crackable in a similar manner. 6. Using encryption only flags traffic for capture and decryption, using strong encryption makes you all that more interesting. Sorry, couldn't resist. I'll try not to start a threads about electro-plasma propulsion craft at Area 51, metallic-ceramic skin and pulse-jets on the Aurora spy plane, heat-imaging video cameras on satellites and planes that can watch you through your houses' roof, etc. :) Bill

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RSA breaking
by [0m [5m Toth 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

First i want to apologize: I'm french, my english is pretty good, but if there's some things you don't understand, don't hesitate to ask me further explanations. I'm studying computing. I've studied the RSA encription system, i know that PGP is based on RSA and o know that you give full confiance to PGP. As i and another student, have calculated, an RSA public key of a hundred numbers can't be broken with a software by the force method.(You all know that, sorry to say evidences :) ) But, cause there is a but, it can be broken by an hardware system. Gimme the money, i'll break it, a simple algorithm can be "hardwarly programmed" and with very high-tech components, the speed it can have is enough to break an RSA key. It's for me an evidence that your government has already done it, and that your dreams of privacy are maybe a good joke for some bureaucratists of the pentagon. Of course it (would) take a little time, but as soon as they have your key, it's real time for them to decrypt. One constant thing in the RSA code is that it is always faster to find a key than to break it, that's why i suggest that you find a system of russian dolls encryption with PGP that would crypt a message a lot of times. For studying computing, i know that is time to decrypt a message with the key is so small, that even if i am wrong, it won't be a loss to use a multiple encryption. I hope i don't look like a rooky for you, this letter is humblously written. Greetings, salutations.... No one is more vulnerable than the one who thinks he is, and who's wrong.

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INteresting tidbit
by JOlson 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

The following text is an e-mail I picked up from a firewall listserver. Return-Path: <jolson3(a)netbox.com> Date: Tue, 28 May 1996 10:03:11 -0700 X-Sender: bstout(a)osc.hidata.com To: Firewalls(a)GreatCircle.COM, Return requested <firewalls(a)GreatCircle.COM> From: Bill Stout <bill.stout(a)hidata.com> Subject: Re: Encryption Technology Sender: firewalls-owner(a)GreatCircle.COM Real-To: Bill Stout <bill.stout(a)hidata.com> At 09:05 PM 5/22/96 -0700, Michael Dillon wrote: >... >RTFM ><SNIP - Other literary content deleted> On the Encryption note, and I swear not along the lines of the 'DOJ' and 'FBI Snooping' Big-Brother events, I heard another story recently. # begin story A person working on the MBONE project did an unannounced experiment across the internet using Triple-DES for MBONE, and the very next day, 'ATF' agents knocked on his door and warned him against exporting munitions. The experimentor was shaken by the fact that agents approached him so quickly after the experiment. # end story Extrapolations of fact: 1. Internet traffic is monitored. 2. The ability to snoop for encrypted traffic is present 3. The ability to identify encryption levels is present (How else can they differentiate DES-1 from DES-3?) 4. The ability to crack DES-1 in near real-time mode is present. (See above). 5. If above=true, then Feds dropping the Zimmerman PGP case probably also points to it also being crackable in a similar manner. 6. Using encryption only flags traffic for capture and decryption, using strong encryption makes you all that more interesting. Sorry, couldn't resist. I'll try not to start a threads about electro-plasma propulsion craft at Area 51, metallic-ceramic skin and pulse-jets on the Aurora spy plane, heat-imaging video cameras on satellites and planes that can watch you through your houses' roof, etc. :) Bill

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Statistical analysis of anonymous databases
by Clay.Olbon＠dynetics.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

I ran across an interesting problem on the STAT-L mailing list. I came up with an initial solution, but it didn't fully solve the problem. I will summarize: In medical research (this particular application - there are others I am sure) it is desirable to have a large database of individual medical histories available to search for correlations, risk factors, etc. The problem, of course, is that many individuals want their medical histories kept private. It is therefore necessary to maintain a database that is not traceable back to individuals. An additional requirement is that people must be able to add additional information to their records as it becomes available. The researcher who initially posed the question suggested adding random data to "encrypt anonymity". My first cut solution was to hash the individual's name (perhaps including some other info or random info to thwart dictionary attacks) and send the records in under the hashed name. If done correctly, this should protect the anonymity of the record. The problem with this is that with the volume of data available in a medical record, it is very probable that a person could be tied to that record. Does anyone have any insights into this problem? <disclaimer> This is of purely academic interest to me, I don't know the person who asked the intial question (other than through email). It just sounds like a neat problem. </disclaimer> Clay --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Clay Olbon II | Clay.Olbon(a)dynetics.com Systems Engineer | ph: (810) 589-9930 fax 9934 Dynetics, Inc., Ste 302 | http://www.msen.com/~olbon/olbon.html 550 Stephenson Hwy | PGP262 public key: on web page Troy, MI 48083-1109 | pgp print: B97397AD50233C77523FD058BD1BB7C0 TANSTAAFL ---------------------------------------------------------------------------

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Re: Re: RSA breaking
by [0m [5m Toth 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

>Yes, RSA can be "broken" if enough computer power is thrown at a small key, > but what you wrote is not proof that PGP is "broken". PGP is completely based on RSA, break RSA, it's breaking PGP at the same time. >What size of key are you talking about? I said a hundred numbers key, but it can be applied on more, course a thousand, even 200 or 300 seems quite impossible in matter of time. >How much hardware? Difficult to evaluate, as long as it is not really my way(it's programming), but it's kite simple to make hardware from algorithms, just with an optimized eratosten crible(it's the name in french, i don't know the translation, but you'll certainly understand). >How much cost? Hard to evaluate, an infinite amount of money(i mean in matter of research) would be enough, sure that only a big lab, or a government can support this, but as soon as built, the breaking box is of no price. >Please back it up with some numbers. For the cost, i can't evaluate, for the time, i'll calculate tonight, and will send results tomorrow. Sincerely yours, Eric PS: Hope not everyone will take my mail as bad as you think to take it, a thousands pardon if i misunderstood(or you), but it's quite hard for me to follow in English, and to explain with full subtility.

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Quantum Logic Gates
by jya＠pipeline.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

As complement to the ONE_two article on the NIST team's latest work on quantum logic gates, we note that Malcolm Browne also reported last August on parallel work at MIT. We have put that article (keyed then as CAT_tal) at our rickety Web site: http://pwp/usa.pipeline.com/~jya/cattal.txt Also, Signal magazine reported on this area of research in its April 1996 issue at: http://www.us.net/signal/CurrentIssue/April/ Quantum-apr.html

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Re: Re: RSA breaking
by [0m [5m Toth 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

> System of Russian dolls? What would you suggest? My idea(it is not me that found that) is that tou could have many public keys, when someone want to send you something, he just mail you his(or her) keys, and then you encrypt with the first key, then with the second, etc... This system is used by some anonymous remailers: Each one has a key, you encript your text with the key of the last remailer, then you put your text, the adress of the people tou want the letter to be sent, then encrypt it with the key of the before the last remailer, and put the adress to be sent of the last remailer, etc So your letter is decripted by the first remailer, then sent to the adress found, then the second remailer decrypts it, etc, like an onion. The fact is that you can obtain a very good privacy if you have some keymaker programm. Let suppose you want to send me a crypted text(don't, it's forbidden to crypt in france), you mail to my remailer, that choose 1000(arbitrary number) keys, that send it to you, crypted with your key, you crypt your text the necessary number of times. This way, the message will be maybe uncrypted by someone, but if the key change for each message, someone can't find your key, i insist on this danger, having one key is useless as soon as someone found it. >What kind of system do you think would be needed to crack RSA coded messages? As i said, it is impossible to break an RSA code with softwares, the best attempt was 25 days with ten Crays linked for a key of only 50 numbers. But this can be done as i said before with a simple eratosten crible "translated" into hardware. Sorry electronic is not my way, but for the exemples i saw in class, it is really to the ability of a basic electronician, and they were more complicated than what i am talking about. The best components you have, the faster you'll go, so a governement or a bog private lab can afford this kind of prices.

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WSJ on "IRS-bashing"
by geeman＠best.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

According to WSJ, Leslie B. Samuels, "Treasury's top tax-policy official" says that "IRS-bashing is 'counterproductive and harmful'" -- and that "destructive rhetoric ... hurts the tax system and society" [elisions are the WSJ's] What if a the CDA grew little by little by little until it covered statements deemed "destructive rhetoric" .... hmmm. I mean after all, if it harms society....! Let's see ... Treasury: BATF. Key Escrow. GAK, anyone? ;) keep up the good work.

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