December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

17 Dec '03

The Campaign for Radical Truth in History http://www.hoffman-info.com PO Box 849, Coeur d'Alene, Idaho 83816 .Visit our Bookstore ZOG Advances Control over Information with Clinton's Executive Order 13010 for "Information Warfare" by Michael A. Hoffman II Copyright©1997. All Rights Reserved Excerpt: "Managing the new risks inherent in an information-based society requires a different type of information exchange within the industry and between industry and government...Key to its success will be protecting the privileged information from both government and the private sector from unauthorized disclosure." -- Robert T. Marsh, Chairman, President's Commission on Critical Infrastructure Protection The Zionist Occupation Government (ZOG) further advanced Communist-like controls over American infrastructure, and underscored the cooperation between the Communist and Capitalist mentalities, when U.S. President Bill Clinton, with virutally no scrutiny from the Establishment news media, signed totalitarian Executive Order 13010 last July (1997). This Order established a new wing of the secret, banker-controlled government of the United States. While Clinton's Executive Order itself is written in the lingo of the bureaucrat and hence is largely insipid, its "fruits" are not. Executive Order 13010 is concerned with cyberspace "threats" to the power structure; with computer hackers who have the ability to interefere with government, business and industry operations. Well, that's the cover story anyway. In practice, the Executive Order authorizes a commission of bankers, industrialists and secret policemen (and police women) to gather intelligence on dissidents, government critics and anyone who is a potential threat to the continuing hegemony of the Aryan-Zionist ruling class. Here is a portion of the remarks delivered at a meeting (chaired by Janet "The Witch of Waco" Reno), by Robert T. Marsh, Chairman, President's Commission on Critical Infrastructure Protection, at the Bankers Roundtable, Washington, DC on September 11, 1997: "One of our toughest problems -- across all infrastructures -- is the sharing of information. There is already a heavy volume of information passed by industry -- especially banks, as you well know -- to government as part of the regulatory process and through law enforcement. "Managing the new risks inherent in an information-based society requires a different type of information exchange within the industry and between industry and government. Furthermore, managing these new risks calls for partnership at many different levels, from policy-making aimed at preventing a crisis to responding if such a crisis occurs. The Commission has some specific proposals in this regard: "We will recommend the establishment of an Information Sharing, Analysis, and Warning "Organization" -- a public-private organization that embodies the trust essential for the partnership between government and the owners/operators for successful infrastructure assurance. "We envision an 'information clearinghouse' staffed by up-and-comers from both government and industry who will receive relevant information from all sources -- public and private, anonymous or attributable -- analyze this information to assess what is happening in the infrastructures, decide on the necessary protective measures to be taken, then disseminate needed information to both government and the private sector. Key to its success will be protecting the privileged information from both government and the private sector from unauthorized disclosure. "Would you be willing to take turns providing a talented young banker from your company to represent the banking and finance sector inside such an organization? "Enhance industry's information sharing capability by creating Sector Information Assurance Coordinators that best suit each infrastructure's information-sharing needs -- either through an existing association or by creating a new entity. In essence, we are proposing that each industry designate a representative to be the channel for exchanging information with the government. Your reaction? "Create a National Infrastructure Assurance Council -- a very high level council comprised of senior CEOs from throughout the critical infrastructures, meeting regularly with selected Cabinet Officers... "These recommendations lay the foundation for the 'trusted environment' to achieving the public-private partnership essential for protection into the next century." What we are seeing here is the establishment of a thought police agency within the Federal government with links to law enforcement, concealed under weasel words such as "Information Clearinghouse" and "Sector Information Assurance." This recalls the Pentagon term for the slaughter of Iraqi civilians by the U.S. Air Force-- "collateral damage." Dr. Goebbels at least had the relative honesty to call his agency the Ministry of Propaganda. The Zionist Occupation Government refers to their propaganda and secret police functions with the bland title of "National Information Assurance Council." They're not propagandists, they're "Sector Information Assurance Coordinators." Mr. Marsh's reference to the gathering of "anonymous" information is of interest. Here is the keystone of all totalitarian powers--the anonymous snitch who turns in the hated old lady next door as a witch only because he can do so without attribution. Our Anglo-Saxon Common Law requires two witnesses and the U.S. Constitution insures the right to face one's accusers, but ZOG is operating on other principles. Chairman Marsh: "The objective is to achieve voluntary participation of all players within each infrastructure and to assemble and exchange information without fear of attribution to specific sources." That is the chairman of a government commission speaking. This is not conspiracy theory. These remarks are on the record. They constitute the Revelation of the Method (cf. my book, "Secret Societies and Psychological Warfare"). The System is becoming increasingly vulnerable, especially the banking system which is the biggest con-game of all, since it is based entirely on the confidence of the public in a commodity which in itself has zero value--paper notes referred to as "money." Wealth is created and dynastic families within the Aryan-Zionist ruling class are maintained, by the circulation or withdrawal of worthless Federal Reserve paper to which the public is taught to attribute value. In a similar fashion, the worthless mandates and orders of the Federal government, promoting a gigantic military-industrial complex in the service of War-Zionism and the Novus Odo Seclorum of Satan, sodomy and aborticide, are advanced almost entirely through the value of the fear and awe the public is taught to have for the Federal government. As both our funny-money and our funny-government become more and more obviously worthless in the eyes of even some of the masses of goyim, the confidence game can no longer be manintained on the basis of psychological warfare principles alone. The risk factor inherent in the System's "Truth or Consequences" gambit (discussed at length in my book) has reached the point where the risk must be "managed" by the function of cyber police. This is what Clinton's Executive Order 13010 establishes-- a gigiantic listening post for the secret police through the auspices of business and industry. Banks having been informing on their customers for years--since the administration of Ronald ("Super Patriot") Reagan who rubber-stamped the most onerous bank-reporting rules in our nation's history. Chairman Marsh admits this: "There is already a heavy volume of information passed by industry -- especially banks, as you well know--to government as part of the regulatory process and through law enforcement." Now the "turn in your neighbor" ethic of the banks is being mandated for all levels of U.S. commerce through the recruitment, in Mr. Marsh's words, of "elite CEOS." The whole point is to shore up flagging confidence in the Federal government's con-game, as Marsh admits: "Both the financial service industry and government require strong public confidence -- the industry in order to derive growth, and the government in order to derive political viability. Each is central to the daily lives of virtually every American, and the degree of trust the public is willing to place in them depends directly on the reliability of the services provided. Infrastructure, as the carrier of the communications and transactions which deliver those services, is, therefore, critical to the performance of both. With the retention of public confidence as a common bond, how might the industry and government better cooperate to assure that critical financial services are secured in the information age?" The chairman of the President's Commission on Critical Infrastructure Protection is saying that bankers have an interest in deceiving the people just as government has. The bankers' interest is in continuing to reap profits and the government's interest is to maintain itself in power against populist opposition forces. Chariman Marsh says that the public will only continue to be deceived ("trust"), if the shylocks can keep the game running smoothly. Of course, that's quite a hat trick in view of the fact that the public is becoming increasingly aware that the objective of ZOG's game is their own enslavement. The focus of ZOG in this regard is the "information age." ZOG's desire is to redouble their spying on us and to further institutionalize that spying at all sectors of business and commerce and then link it to the secret police ("law enforcement") for various sorts of economic, political and career reprisals and penal sanctions. Here is Mr. Marsh, this time in a speech to the New York Federal Reserve bankers, September 24, 1997 on what they fear most: "But, as you well know, major trends of change -- globalization, industry restructuring, Internet banking, and cyber cash --combine to create new risks. This is true within the financial services industry as well as the telecommunications and electric power industries upon which financial services heavily depend...it is the vulnerability to a possible coordinated attack on physical operations centers, or on the complex 'system of systems' which enables this industry to function world-wide, that is of rising concern." Marsh before a meeting of Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government, Sept. 20, 1997, speaking about "illegal" government activity in connection with "information warfare": "Let me talk briefly about a recent Joint Staff exercise with which some of you are probably familiar. This was just one in a series of no-notice exercises, but this one focused specifically on information warfare. Some of the issues raised were quite troubling -- including the fact that the Joint Staff ended up fighting this war, which was not only bad but illegal. They include many of the questions that the Commission has been grappling with for the past year: Who should take the lead in responding to a cyber attack on the United States? Should there be a Commander In Chief for information warfare? Where are the borders in the cyber age? What are the jurisdictions? Is this a law enforcement or a defense problem?" Chairman Robert Marsh's ties are to the military-industrial complex. He is the former CEO of Morton-Thiokol Corporation, a notorious polluter and builder of components for nuclear warhead-laden missiles. Mr. Marsh currently is a trustee of the MITRE Corporation. According to investigative reporter Stephen Knight in his book, "Jack the Ripper: The Final Solution," London's Mitre Square was a dumping ground for the Ripper's victims. Knight states: "Mitre Square has strong Masonic significance. In fact it is fair to say it was the most Masonic of all places in London, except for the Great Hall of the Grand Lodge itself." (London: Grafton Books, 1977, p. 175). I am not here implying that Mr. Marsh is necessarily a murderer or in league with Jack the Ripper, only that his relationship with the Mitre name is a synchronicity worth noting. (For the significance of "synchronicity" to the ruling class cf. the predictive modeling of the commodities markets and the "catastrophe theory" studies of Prof. Christopher Zeeman of Warwick University). Stephen D. Mitchell of the US Justice Dept. is a member of the Marsh commission. Here he discusses the "insider threat"--the fear the government has of patriots and dissidents being hired in "critical infastructure" areas such as banks and of how to screen these "insiders" out of employment. He also expresses the government's frustration with state privacy laws: "Privacy is trickier. Our outreach revealed a degree of frustration among infrastructure owners and operators, some of whom wanted to take greater employee security precautions than some laws might otherwise allow....The importance of individual privacy has made obtaining background information on a potential or current employee a fertile area for strong state laws. Though grounded in best intentions, this has resulted in unpredictable disparities of approaches across state lines. The bottom line: a critical infrastructure owner and operator may in some instances be discouraged if not prevented from asking many of the types of questions that could help identify and prevent a growing insider threat to our infrastructures." --Department of Defense, Worldwide Anti-Terrorism Conference, Aug. 21, 1997. Other members of the President's Commission on Critical Infrastructure Protection: Merritt Adams, ATT Corporation. Richard P. Case, IBM. Dr. Mary Culnan, Georgetown University. Peter Daly, U.S. Treasury. John C. Davis, National Security Agency. Brenton Greene, Dept. of Defense. William B. Joyce, CIA. Stephan D. Mitchell, Dept. of Justice. Irwin Pikus, Dept. of Commerce. John R. Powers, FEMA. Susan Siemans, FBI. Frederic Struble, Board of Governors, Federal Reserve bank. Nancy Wong, Pacific Gas and Electric. Relevant Links: President's Commission on Critical Infrastructure Protection: http://www.pccip.gov/index.html Executive Order 13010: http://www.pccip.gov/eo13010.html ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- archives / bookstore / news bureau / home

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Re: Information Warfare
by nobody＠REPLAY.COM 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

ZOG translated from the Talmud: > Stephen D. Mitchell of the US Justice Dept. is a member of the Marsh > commission. Here he discusses the "insider threat"--the fear the government > has of patriots and dissidents being hired in "critical infastructure" areas > such as banks and of how to screen these "insiders" out of employment. Too late... > He also expresses the government's frustration with state privacy laws: > "Privacy is trickier. Our outreach revealed a degree of frustration among > infrastructure owners and operators, some of whom wanted to take greater > employee security precautions than some laws might otherwise allow.... Yep, Corporate America is crying out for GAK and the right to keep their employees interned in Government Work Camps. > The bottom line: a critical > infrastructure owner and operator may in some instances be discouraged if > not prevented from asking many of the types of questions that could help > identify and prevent a growing insider threat to our infrastructures." "Before I send you for your drug-test and prostrate exam, I'm going to need to know your bra/condom size." > --Department of Defense, Worldwide Anti-Terrorism Conference, Aug. 21, 1997. Shit! I thought I was at the Cypherpunks physical meeting. I mean, Kent Crispin and Hallam-Baker were there... Say, you don't think... YellowWireMonger

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Building the Surveillance State
by Tim May 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 I predict that nearly every company which enforces the PGP 5.5 corporate snoopware will in fact routinely convert every incoming and outgoing message to plaintext for searching by keywords, topics, etc. This would be analogous to every phone call, incoming and outgoing, being recorded. Except that instead of having security people _listen_ to each recording, the messages can be glanced at quickly, marked for further review, compiled into dossiers, or searched for the keywords of interest to the security people. (Please note that I am not saying such phone call or e-mail monitoring is illegal, or should be illegal. A property owner is free to define his own policies for how he uses his own property. This includes company phones, company computers, and even the time of employees while they are on his premises. The issues are not the legality or ethicality of such recordings and monitorings, but the dangers. And whether people such as ourselves should help build or deploy such surveillance capabilitities. Or work for companies with such surveillance policies.) I further predict that this will actually _increase_ the amount of e-mail surveillance being done. Whereas today it is of course easy for companies to surveil unencrypted employee mail, I doubt that most of them do. But the adoption of snoopware like PGP 5.5 will raise the consciousness of company security people. "Hmmhh, maybe we ought to buy some of those e-mail keyword analyzers and combine them with our new purchase of PGP 5.5? If our employees are encrypting, we'd better keep tabs on them." By building in such easily-enforceable snooping capabilities, and by building in such things as the ability to reject even _incoming_ e-mail which has failed to encrypt to the corporate key (as I understand the product), this greatly moves us toward a surveillance era. Is this what "Pretty Good Privacy" really stands for? - --Tim May The Feds have shown their hand: they want a ban on domestic cryptography - ---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---- Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, ComSec 3DES: 408-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA | knowledge, reputations, information markets, Higher Power: 2^2,976,221 | black markets, collapse of governments. "National borders aren't even speed bumps on the information superhighway." -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: PGP for Personal Privacy 5.0 Charset: noconv iQA/AwUBND+11FK3AvrfAt9qEQKOZQCdFRS6Ogl3da7TDFxmFF7E9kE16RsAoPaG iFjXzww6H5c1no3iYGvL6BGD =wt4J -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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More dangers of corporate snoopware
by Tim May 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Suppose I want to send a private message to Andy Grove at Intel. With current systems, I would encrypt to his public key and send it to him. Only he, or those with access to his private key, could read the message. But suppose CAK becomes common, and suppose Intel has adopted PGP 5.5. I presume I have to also encrypt to Intel's corporate key...or one of them. (I assume different users in different departments may have different CAK keys.) So, who can read my message besides Andy? The Security Operations department? The Key Compliance Officer? Or, perhaps, only those _higher_ than Andy Grove, e.g., no one. And suppose I send a communication to a lower-level person? How many higher-level persons will be able to read the message? Will companies really accept that lower-level security people will have access to the communications about business deals, technology deals, etc.? The prospects for abuse are obvious. Or will there be provisions for overriding the PGP 5.5 snoopware features? Will it become a status symbol to have reached the level of trust where one's private e-mail is not subject to snoopware encryption? I suppose it's up to companies to figure out all of these troublesome issues. I just hope the architecture of PGP 5.5 is pliable enough to allow the market to decide which options to turn on, which to turn off, and which to take out completely. --Tim May The Feds have shown their hand: they want a ban on domestic cryptography ---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---- Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, ComSec 3DES: 408-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA | knowledge, reputations, information markets, Higher Power: 2^2,976,221 | black markets, collapse of governments. "National borders aren't even speed bumps on the information superhighway."

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Citizen Foils Armed Home Invasion
by Eric Cordian 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

RAINBOW CITY, Ala. (AP) -- Officers who went to a house with a warrant to search for drugs were met at the door by a couple in bulletproof vests and a surprise gunfight. A blast from an assault weapon, apparently fired through the front door, killed Chris McCurley, 46, the recently appointed chief of Etowah Country's drug task force, authorities said. Etowah County Sheriff James Hayes said a man and woman came to the door wearing bulletproof vests when law officers arrived Friday at their new house in a quiet neighborhood near the Coosa River about 65 miles northeast of Birmingham. After McCurley was shot, the man walked outside and continued firing, striking three more officers before he was finally shot down by police hiding behind trees, said Minnie Bellew, who lives across the street. Ezra George Petersen, 50, was hospitalized with minor gunshot wounds to his extremities, Hayes said. He was under guard at Gadsden Regional Medical Center. The woman, Connie Stozzie, 30, was taken to jail and was on investigative hold. Petersen shot at officers with an AK-47 assault weapon with a 100-round drum of ammunition, Hayes said. Officer Gary Lee Entrekin, 34, was in serious condition with a gunshot wound to the back, said M.D. Garmon, a spokesman at Riverview Regional Medical Center in Gadsden. Altoona police officer Khris Yancey, 26, was shot in the back, but his wounds were not thought to be serious. Reserve officer Rick Correll, 46, was in fair condition with wounds to an arm and foot. ``The law enforcement community and its supporters will not rest in this county until Petersen gets what he justly deserves -- and that's the electric chair,'' Hayes said. Neighbors said the tall, tattooed Petersen was a friendly man frequently seen riding a motorcycle. He had bought $20 worth of oranges Wednesday from Mrs. Bellow's grandson, who was selling fruit for a school fund-raiser. ``He was real nice. I talked to him about his motorcycles, all the stuff he did to them,'' 14-year-old Jake Bellew said. -- Eric Michael Cordian 0+ O:.T:.O:. Mathematical Munitions Division "Do What Thou Wilt Shall Be The Whole Of The Law"

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No Subject
by bureau42 Anonymous Remailer 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

So many things I would have done, but clouds got in the way.

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anonymous informer quality up
by Cyberdog 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

U.S. News Online October 20, 1997 Sinister obstruction? Or just incompetence? ... Thompson staffers were tipped off about the tapes by an anonymous E-mail message in early September. Last Wednesday night, almost a month after the initial tip, a Clinton lawyer called Thompson's committee with a message that began, "You're not going to believe this, but . . ."

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Auto-archiving cleartext is GAK
by Anonymous 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Advocates of the model where software is automatically archived on receipt, either in cleartext or re-encrypted with a corporate key, need to be aware that there are problems with it: No notification to sender about the policy. Imagine encrypting this mail to your friend sue(a)microsoft.com: "Hey Sue - it's been a while. Is your boss still being such a wiener? That was a great imitation you did of the jerk at the party last month. He still doesn't know you're shopping your resume around, right? What a luser." You might have thought you had a certain level of privacy when you encrypted it to your friend's personal key, but you didn't. This is going to cause embarrassment and misunderstandings. People should know if their mail is going to be automatically saved in the clear to a company archive. The best way to make sure of that is to have the sender be the one to do it, or not. No way to prevent third-party access. With the corporate message recovery feature, the sender has the option of simply ignoring the recovery key and sending it encrypted just to the recipient. Some corporations won't let it through, others will. Some companies will want mail to be made recoverable by default, while still allowing an escape clause for personal mail and special purposes (like for "sensitive" mail which needs protection against subpoena and discovery). They can use the "optional" CMR mode. Again, senders are always notified as to which mode is being used by a given company, and senders can be confident that if they don't use the third-party key, no access will be possible. With automatic encryption and archival on receipt, all mail will be archived, and senders have no notice and no guarantee that stated policies will be followed. No escape via super-encryption. Even if the company is mandating a recovery key and filtering out messages which aren't encrypted to it, the sender still has the option to super-encrypt with the recipient key alone, before sending the message encrypted to the corporate recovery key. This ensures that only the recipient's personal key can read the message. With software which automatically saves the cleartext of the message, once the user reads the data it is available to the corporation via the snoopware. Facilitates GAK! Suppose this solution is adopted, and software is developed which automatically re-encrypts received email and sends it to a secure archive. It's robust and works with a wide variety of email packages. Now the government could simply mandate this to be used for all mail reading software. The secure archive would be a remote archive maintained by the FBI to protect public safety. All plaintext would be sent there, encrypted by the FBI key. The business software would already support this. This is GAKware! Unlike with a CMR system, the sender would have no way to prevent access. Can't handle forgotten passphrases. People forget passphrases all the time. With re-encryption on receipt, there is no way to recover gracefully from this error. All the incoming encrypted data is lost until you can notify everyone who has sent mail to resend it, and get your new key out to all of them. These may be purchase orders, sales leads and other important documents which represent lost business if they can't be recovered. This is going to invite people to use poor security practices like writing down passphrases or choosing ones which are easy to guess. Worse, it... Invites key escrow. In order to prevent this problem, employees may be forced to share their secret keys with corporate management. Software will be written to facilitate this process. Crypto companies are already doing this. Nortel Entrust allows key generation by management, where employees are given the keys and management keeps a copy. Shades of Clipper! This also fails the notification requirement. Don't believe me? Take a look at this description of the Nortel Entrust product: > Recovering Lost Keys > > Many data security systems require that users have passwords to access > their keys. However, with some information security systems, disaster > strikes when users forget their passwords. When users of such systems > forget their passwords, not only do they lose their keys -- they also > lose all the information encrypted with those lost keys (forever). > Entrust, however, provides an easy way to securely recover keys. > > If users forget their Entrust passwords, they call their Entrust > Administrator to request that their encryption key pairs be recovered. > After setting up the users for key recovery using Entrust/Admin, the > Entrust Administrator provides each recovered user with a new > reference number and authorization code. Users then enter this > information as part of the Recover User operation in Entrust/Client. > This operation sets up a protected communication session between > Entrust/Client and Entrust/Manager for encryption key pair recovery. > When Entrust/Client recovers a user's encryption key pair, it > automatically creates a new signing key pair. > > Updating Keys > > While users can recover their key pairs if they forget their > passwords, there are some situations in which users may want to get > new key pairs altogether. For instance, the security policy of an > organization may dictate that users get new key pairs every two years. > In this case, a Security Officer uses Entrust/Officer to specify that > key update occurs every 24 months. The term key update refers to the > automatic creation of new encryption key pairs and signing key pairs > at specified times. Any Security Officer can specify the frequency of > key updates. > > Every time users log on to Entrust, the software checks to see if key > update is required. If this is the case, Entrust/Client makes a > request to Entrust/Manager for a new encryption key pair. Once the new > encryption key pair is generated, Entrust/Manager delivers the new key > pair in a protected communications session. Delivery of the new > encryption key pair is completely transparent to the user. No system is ideal. Before pushing this re-encryption model as a panacea, think about the implications. No system which provides automatic access to business data is going to be privacy friendly. Any such system can be perverted into supporting GAK. Load it up with all the disclaimers you like, but if you advocate software which contains key escrow and which automatically provides cleartext to third parties, you are not advocating software which protects privacy. Be prepared to be called an advocate of GAK next time you push for software which automatically archives cleartext, because if it can save it for business, it can save it for government.

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PolicyMaker & GAK compliance
by Adam Back 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Hal Finney <hal(a)rain.org> writes: > Adam Back writes: > > I would be nice to see the topic of the recipient refusing email based > > on policies relating to third party access to messages in transit > > being addressed in the standard when and if PGP gets to that stage. > > > > [ecash processing] > > This is a good example of a possible future kind of key assertion. > Are you confident that you can decide which kinds of recipient refusal > are morally correct and which kinds are not? Not automatically, no, I doubt it would work. > Is it the role of the IETF and the Open-PGP process to make this > determination? I would say not. Rather, we should standardize data > structures and conventions which allow people to express those > conditions and assertions which are useful to them. Yes. I agree. > There are a whole range of possible assertions which you might object to: > > [examples of PolicyMaker style policies] > > You can take these case by case and decide for yourself whether each > one is acceptable or not by your own standards. But I don't think it's > going to be possible to come up with a set of objective rules which will > decide whether any given assertion is allowed. > > Fundamentally, you are asking to make it illegal for a key to request > encryption to an additional recipient. That's what it comes down to. > You want to forbid this class of assertions. Yes. I was getting carried away. It would be too complex, most likely. The thrust of your argument seems to be that there would be little use making pgp 5.5 non-GAK compliant, because PolicyMaker style statements will be so flexible that they will be GAK compliant anyway. So, when are PGP starting work on PolicyMaker? Is it intended to introduce this functionality in this first round standardisation? It seems to me that adding PolicyMaker functionality could take some considerable time due to the huge complexity of the task. Also, just because GAK compliance will become possible if and when PolicyMaker style extensions are implemented, doesn't mean that PGP can expect popular support for actually going ahead and implementing GAK compliancy in pgp5.5; nor can it expect to gain popular support for the uncharacteristic big brotherish mentality displayed by those working at PGP in implementing the SMTP policy enforcer behind closed doors to enforce other people to modify their behaviour to honour third parties GAK or CAK requests. I think the whole thing is a huge PR fluff up. I'm suprised that those at PGP were all able to agree to do it without arguments being expressed by employees, and without those arguments leaking out of the company (given the picture Jon Callas painted of strong privacy and freedom biases at PGP). If there had been open discussion of the product's design prior to development, this feed back could have been obtained earlier. I presume the PGP PR person (who ought to get the sack in my opinion) thought that a sudden press release of such marvelous new feature as PGP snoopware and a snoopware enforcer for third parties would go down well. It doesn't. The enforcer is rudely enforcing the companise opinions on people who have no connection with the companies snoopware policies. You should keep such matters within the company by using escrowed storage keys to acheive snoopware. For these reasons I still argue that we should: - add storage keys to the standard It's more secure to do this. That should be argument enough in itself. It also is much cleaner separating key functionality out into separate keys where those keys have vastly different recovery, life time, and security requirements. - use storage key escrow to implement PGP snoopware instead of burdening the OpenPGP standard with the stigma of GAK compliancy This method ties in with the use of storage keys. It is nearly as effective a snoopware design. It also isn't GAK compliant. It also doesn't result in cypherpunks shouting at you. - don't use the special sub-packet type to flag GAK compliancy I think the above shows that the neither the standard, nor PGP Inc needs the GAK compliant sub-packet, so scrap it, and save the argument up for the much more defensible position of a generalised PolicyMaker style key usage restriction assertions - scrap the controversial SMTP snoopware policy enforcement app Use storage key escrow to implement PGP snoopware instead of burdening the OpenPGP standard with the stigma of GAK compliancy It's difficult to get standards which don't reflect big brotherish aims when the good reputation of PGP Inc and Phil Zimmermann is apparently behind it. Something weird is going on at PGP headquarters. PRZ is also silent. Are all the people at PGP Inc in accord in thinking that the snoopware policy enforcer is a really cool pro-privacy app? Some of the usually more vocal PGPers have remained silent throughout the entire episode. Also as Tim note's the lack of a Zimmermann Telegram (tm) getting suspiciously overdue. Is he dragging his feet of snoopware and GAK compliancy? Adam -- Now officially an EAR violation... Have *you* exported RSA today? --> http://www.dcs.ex.ac.uk/~aba/rsa/ print pack"C*",split/\D+/,`echo "16iII*o\U@{$/=$z;[(pop,pop,unpack"H*",<> )]}\EsMsKsN0[lN*1lK[d2%Sa2/d0<X+d*lMLa^*lN%0]dsXx++lMlN/dsM0<J]dsJxp"|dc`

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new "communication key" semantics & PFS
by Adam Back 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Now that we're considering (within the IETF OpenPGP standardisation framework) the prospect of having a separate communications key, and storage key, there are some aspects of communications keys which are currently less than ideal because of their current misuse to also function as storage keys. This argues for a new functionality to be given to communication only keys. This is all tied up with the idea of Perfect Forward Secrecy (PFS), which is basically the statement of the fact that communications keys are more sensitive than storage keys, because your attacker by definition has a copy of the encrypted communication. (You're sending over an open network where copying all traffic is a low cost exercise for a savvy system cracker, or spook, or industrial espionage). In contrast an attacker often will have to break into your premises to obtain the data protected by your storage keys. Another aditional vulnerability of communication keys is that the US government is very interested in obtaining copies of them via their "key escrow"/"key recovery"/GAK initiative. The strongest anti-GAK statement you can make is to use forward secrecy. I've raised this point before, but the meme doesn't seem to have penetrated yet. Hal Finney <hal(a)rain.org> wrote: > Adam mentioned the idea of forward secrecy in email communications. > I'm not sure how that would work technically, but it sounds like > an interesting possibility. It ties in quite well with what is in my view proper handling of communication keys. If we can break the tie with one key being used for both storage and communication, we can start to reflect in the protocol better security practice in the handling of communication keys. Forward secrecy is one way of looking at it. It doesn't have to be real interactive forward secrecy as you might get in an SSH session, or an SSL session, or some of the IPSEC standards, though these are other examples which could server as examples showing that forward secrecy is a good idea, for anyone who would like to argue against it. The basic principle is that you want to have communication keys which don't live for a long time. So one form of weak forward secrecy you could have would be to mark your El Gamal or RSA communications for much more frequent update, by giving it a short expiry date. Say once per week. Some people currently do this manually anyway. For example see Dave Wagner's web page (www.cs.berkeley.edu/~daw/) where he describes what he does with keys. (He has a long term signature only key which he uses to sign short lived "communication only" keys which he discards after expiry). What I am arguing for essentially is building this kind of improved communication key handling into the OpenPGP spec for keys marked as "communication only". In addition I think it would be nice to enable a new kind of communications key which is based on discrete log so that people who choose to use PGP protocols for more interactive email transfer protocols than SMTP can generate keys very quickly. I was originally thinking that this would have to be DH, but perhaps you can simulate DH PFS with El Gamal by securely wiping the private parameters of expired communications keys, and keeping the public modulus and g value. (This has similarities with the quick method in PGP5.x of generating El Gamal keys with precomputed shipped primes that you already have). The advantage being that you may be trying to generate keys frequently, so you may not want to wait for a full new 4096 bit El Gamal or 2048 bit RSA key generation, when you are not anticipating the sudden delay in sending messages. I was originally thinking it would be done by having a new DH key type (in addition to RSA, El Gamal, DSA). (Incidentally Hal, you may recognise in this the reason for some of my annoyance that PGP Inc is mislabelling El Gamal as "DH" -- with my earlier ideas on this proposal there would have been a _real_ DH. It also gets around objections to do with not being able to decide what DH keys are (as they are negotiated not randomly generated directly) which Hal raised as a reason why PFS (at least with DH) would disallow functionality where key capabilities are included in the public communications key encrypted packet, the last time this was discussed. Clearly you could work around this restriction if you had to -- just include the information in an extra packet encrypted with the contained key and some symmetric algoirthm for example, though this may limit algorithm choice at least for that packet). You can use PFS in an asynchronous "where possible" mode for non-interactive email transport situations. That is you would perhaps send new communications keys parameters with each message that defines in it's key sub-packet preferrences that it is capable of using communications only keys, and will be able to handle "recipients comms key as part of message". This might make sense where comms keys are being updated too quickly to burden a key server with, or where comms keys are not public (an aditional use for Hal's described no-export flag for signatures, but here applied to communications keys), but are specific to that communicating pair. (For paranoid people who are changing comms keys on each receipt, you would need to do this). As soon as one party has replied to a mail from the other, you can switch to forward secrecy. This would lead to emails such as "hi, can you reply to this message please". These are kind of similar to the "hi can you send me your public key" you get back from people when you haven't included your public key in your mail to them, and they don't have access to a keyserver. You can also then use this new "communications only" key setup to cope with fully interactive email delivery for systems using email transports other than standard SMTP. You should probably overlap sending communications keys if you aren't relying on keyservers due to frequency of key update, or for convenience for people without access to keyservers, so that the person sending you email is less likely to have no current communications key for you if you are using keys sent in the message. So towards the end of the month (if you had a policy of using communications only keys with monthly updates) replacing keys monthly start sending the next months communications key also, marked as not for use until it's starting date. (The use of very transient communications keys I think would imply a need for two communications keys: you'll need a long term communications key which is used for initial non-PFS mail in order to set up PFS.) With the separation of storage and communications keys all the architecture has much better security decisions: - We are able to treat communications with variable amounts of sensitivity, by giving different key expiry time periods to comms only keys. - We are also able to secure and escrow our long term data storage in mail box folders, or PGP encrypted files without having to live with a GAKware compliant implementation of snoopware. We can storage escrow keys appropriately without all the name calling and bad PR caused by enraged crypto anarchists, and crypto consultants. You _know_ it makes sense :-) Adam -- Now officially an EAR violation... Have *you* exported RSA today? --> http://www.dcs.ex.ac.uk/~aba/rsa/ print pack"C*",split/\D+/,`echo "16iII*o\U@{$/=$z;[(pop,pop,unpack"H*",<> )]}\EsMsKsN0[lN*1lK[d2%Sa2/d0<X+d*lMLa^*lN%0]dsXx++lMlN/dsM0<J]dsJxp"|dc`

1 0

Deliverable Mail
by 90953084＠juno.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

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1 0

CMR paves the road to GAK, and provides no corporate security.
by Trei Family 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

I've been mulling over PGP5's CMR feature for a while, trying to decide what I think of it. It hasn't been easy, but I've come down against it. I'm restricting my discussion to the use of CMR in corporate email. I am not addressing stored data. > Jon Callas (jon(a)pgp.com) writes: > There are two things I will discuss in this missive: > (1) The assertion that Corporate Message Recovery is "just like Clipper" > and why this is not true. > (2) The fear a number of people have expressed that Corporate Message > Recovery (CMR) could be used by the US government to slide in GAK. > I think we're agreed that CMR isn't itself GAK and I'll talk some about why > it isn't with (1). I think that we're a lot more worried that the presence of features like CMR will make it easier for governments to mandate GAK. It's much tougher to insist on GAK if a switch requires new software to be developed, and for everyone to purchase, install, and use espionage-enabled software. If CMR - like facilities are already in the software, then GAK could be mandated overnight by executive order. The inclusion of CMR drastically lowers the barriers to mandated GAK. >CMR isn't like Clipper: >* Clipper was a 64-bit key. CMR symmetric keys are full-strength keys (128 >bits or more), backed with a full-strength public key. A word of advice: don't try to discuss Clipper in this forum without checking your facts. Clipper used an 80 bit key. > * Clipper's key was set in hardware by the manufacturer, and users were > required to use it. Actually, the chips left the manufacturer 'blank'. They were to have their unit keys set by some ill-defined process involving government employees. It never really got nailed down, since Clipper was killed before the key escrow agencies and systems were ramped up beyond demonstration levels. > A CMR key is a software-enabled key, no user is ever > required to use it. With a CMR feature in place, a government can say "Starting now, encrypt to this key or we'll throw you in jail." Without CMR, they can't really do this. > There are cases in which a user might "volunteer" to > use a CMR because they work for someone who requires it, [or because the State says it will toss his sorry ass in jail if he does not] > but that's a > problem we'll address with the PGP Secure Resume Server which allows > headhunters to securely and anonymously find people who've made bad career > decisions. [or bad citizenship decisions?] > * A CMR key can be revoked, reissued, or changed. You can periodically > change it as a matter of policy. You can even stop using it. Clipper's was, > again, set in hardware, with no option of not using it. Once again, you're unlikely to do this if the State decides that that would be a good reason to jail you. > * The Clipper symmetric algorithm was secret; CMR keys use publicly > available algorithms. True, but the point is moot - most people beleive that the NSA is perfectly competant to write secure symmetric ciphers without outside review, and since they had given themselves a backdoor, there was no reason to leave the window unlocked as well. > * With Clipper, there was always a concern that an outside agency had the > keys. This is true with a number of other systems (the so-called key > recovery systems), and is the reason that a number of them are lumped > together with the term GAK. Note that the user-organization creates a CMR > key, and the end-user enables it. If any government gets access to this > key, it is because either (1) they solved the Discrete Logarithm Problem, > (2) they broke the public CMR key, (3) they black-bagged your CMR key, or > (4) they are using a subpoena, warrant, or discovery to get the key. We're > working on a way around (1), we can't do anything about (2) or (3), but > these are fine reasons not to use CMR! If you're beset by (4), you need > lawyers, not cryptographers. If the State could do (1), they would not be asking for key recovery in the first place. (2) and (3), are greatly aided by CMR, since CMR provides high value targets; breaking or black-bagging a single key gives you access to a great deal of traffic, and in the case of (4), you lose 5th Amendment protection, since a third party holds a key. > * With Clipper, there was a central repository of all the keys. With CMR, > there is not. I discussed that in detail in my message, "Why Corporate > Message Recovery isn't Key Escrow." Once again, you haven't checked the record. Clipper keys were to be split, with different halves going to different government agencies. There were fairly elaborate plans to prevent posession of only one half giving an attacker an advantage. Thus there were *two* repositories, not one. (From the point of view of the paranoid, this was not much of a comfort - both repositories belonged to the same entity.) > I have noticed that a number of people have the tacit assumption that > business people and corporations are in cahoots with the FBI, waiting to > hand over everyone's secret key. As in all parts of life, there are many, > many businesspeople and corporate execs who are not particularly moral. But > I don't think that their immorality takes this form. If we could examine > the dark, secret thoughts of a corporate scumwaffle -- the ones that he > *really* hopes don't hit the papers -- I sincerely doubt that, "Oh, Louis, > I love it when you rummage my drawers" is among them. Here's an alternative interpretation. I think that 'business people and corporations' feel (with considerable justification, I might add) that they have a moral right to control the information which flows in and out of their worksites, just as they have a right to control to flow of material goods on and off of their premises. To control the flow of material goods, companies install security systems, guards, metal detectors, etc. Depending on the type of good and it's value, these more or less work, though they're never perfect; when the marginal cost of improving security exceeds the loss that the improvement would prevent, you stop adding security. In the extreme case, the diamond workers of Namibia have to undergo a full-body X-ray whenever they leave the diamond reserve. Companies would like to be able to able to exercise similar control over data. However, bits behave differently than do atoms. Physical barriers are almost perfectly transparent. An employee can slip a multi-gigabyte DAT tape in a shirt pocket, or transfer stego'd data undetected inside innocent cover data, perhaps with non-CMR'd superencryption. For data, physical barriers - firewalls, passwords, isolated lans, access controls encryption, et al, can work more or less effectively to prevent unauthorized outsiders from acquiring data they should not. However, there is *no* way in which you can prevent a person you have authorized to receive data from making whatever use of it they desire, even if those uses are opposed to your reasons for giving them the data. CMR serves to give corporate executives the illusion that they can control the uncontrollable. It lets them think they can monitor the expression of their employess, while they can not. It lets them beleive that they can use technology to protect corporate proprietary data from theft by disloyal employees, while they can not. The only way to protect data is to make sure that employees share the goals and ends of the corporation; ie, give them a reason to be loyal and trustworthy. Classified agencies know this. In the classified world, there is a huge effort to protect data from outside attack. There is a similarly intense effort to check that only loyal, reliable, trustworthy people get clearances, and strong 'need to know' controls to restrict what data even they can see. However, once a cleared person has acheived properly authorized access to classified data, there is (in my observation) remarkably little done to prevent them from deliberately walking off with it. CMR provides an illusion that this loss can be prevented. It looks good in a chief security officer's report; it gives warm fuzzies to senior management. However, it provides no real security. In fact, it actually weakens security, since anyone with licit or illicit access to the CMR key(s) can read the data. > Now then, the next topic is the fear that CMR will be used in some > insidious government plot to slip in GAK everywhere. > I worry about this, too. But I don't think it's feasible that CMR can be a > stalking horse for GAK. If the government wants to GAK-enable all PGP, > they'll have to have a plan similar to this: [Strawman GAK plan deleted] Here's a more realistic scenario. 1. OpenPGP with CMR becomes a standard, and is widely accepted and installed. PGP gets rich. (Are you going to claim that this could never happen?) 2. An executive order is signed by the President, ordering that all encrypted email include the FBI public key as a recipient. He notes that this will be no burden to industry, since it's a freebie with the industry standard CMR facility. To summarize: 1. CMR cannot prevent disloyal employees from sending messages that their employers would want to prevent. 2. CMR, widely deployed, would greatly ease a transition to mandated GAK. Given CMR's inability to provide an a desirable goal (improve corporate security), coupled with the severe downside (paving the road to GAK), I have decided that I must oppose it. > Jon Callas jon(a)pgp.com Peter Trei trei(a)ziplink.net

5 4

negative security aspects of GAK compliance
by Adam Back 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

I think there is a clear technical security case against the GAK compliant packet, which I would like to see comments on from people who think the political GAK compliant argument is not significant. This ties in with using separate storage and communications keys, and with the better security practice of having shorter lived communications keys to provide forward secrecy from the point of issuing new communication keys (could be once per month, once per week, or once per message). Once you acknowledge that it is more secure to have short lived communication keys (which in my view it very clearly is), it should be clear that by putting a GAK compliancy packet feature, or other second recipient you are weakening the security because that is another door into a message which you are trying to make forward secret -- you are trying to ensure that after the fact, no-one, not even the recipient can decrypt the old traffic. (This is a very good way of ensuring that third parties, like industrial espionage spies, people using black mail or the Feds using rubber hoses, or supeonas or other legal or extra legal forms of coercion, can't obtain from you keys to decrypt it either, so they don't get plain text). The fact that the extra door into the message is outside the recipients control means that his own security could be compromised by sloppy practice on the part of that key holder. This argues that if people are to insist on using the enforced second recipient model for corporate snooping at all, they should for security reasons be at least using short lived communications keys for the GAK compliancy packet also. Or, as I would argue, most secure of all is not using GAK compliancy packets at all, but rather to use escrowed storage keys to retain access to mail archives. This is more secure because you don't keep second doors into what should be a communication encrypted with as few as possible (namely: one) transient communications key, with security policy control being in the hands of the person who owns the key (the recipient). As I have pointed corporate access to stored email can be acheived with similar amounts of snooping enforceability by having the PGP5.5 mail client store to an escrowed communications key after decryption, or even to re-encrypt after decryption to a long term storage company archive access bot within the LAN (with such encrypted messages themselves being wrapped in an extra comms encryption envelope using short term communications key if you like). I would be interested to see anyone refute this security argument from a security point of view. Adam -- Now officially an EAR violation... Have *you* exported RSA today? --> http://www.dcs.ex.ac.uk/~aba/rsa/ print pack"C*",split/\D+/,`echo "16iII*o\U@{$/=$z;[(pop,pop,unpack"H*",<> )]}\EsMsKsN0[lN*1lK[d2%Sa2/d0<X+d*lMLa^*lN%0]dsXx++lMlN/dsM0<J]dsJxp"|dc`

4 9

Re: America as a Shake Down Extortion State
by nobody＠REPLAY.COM 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Ryan Anderson wrote: >That's the point - you ignore the legislation until it becomes a problem >for you. Then you challenge it and get a legal precedent to stop it from >happening again. > >The judicial system is in *much* better shape than the legislative system >(even though they are strongly related) > >This, however, is not to say that the judicial system is in good shape. You're ignoring the fact that the legislative and the judicial are just two different horns on the same beast. "Please impale me with the kinder, gentler horn," is what you're saying. Let's face it. This "challenge it and get a legal precedent" approach has done absolutely nothing to stop America, formerly one of the freest countries on earth, from slowly devolving into a socialist police state. That's why I say fuck the lawyers, and fuck the legislators, too. If a roomful of morons are writing up ludicrous rules and you're gullible enough to listen to them, then who's the real moron? Ignore them. Set a precedent in life. I'm suggesting active civil disobedience by every thinking person in this country. I'm not saying blow up a federal building or any other such nonsense. Be responsible for your actions, but act! And act intelligently... [ Imastun ] -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.2 iQCVAwUBNEISTnC/ZQW0eQF1AQHZ2wP9GpVnZj7M8GErkJY9aKrpU9tSgLM99AKz CdLiDDpJGTLV1w09xhEpHFJWqgBx/Uq+6GdK/ih1Osrdu5vzYHh93eTGWGU1nmYD cbxl8TQOfVw9KbG3drrHx+Azvv6QzYJrrV4e2xPkoGuEeQUByFcemR9XIpcwmg8a 9r/7hyV3dTo= =xnIk -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

2 1

Re: Stronghold
by dlv＠bwalk.dm.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Adam Back <aba(a)dcs.ex.ac.uk> writes: >> > Unfortunately I wasn't on cypherpunks-unedited at the time, but I >> > thought that it was immediate send out from toad.com without going via >> > Sandy. >> >> Going over my notes I see that at least one of my submissions - the >> one quoting the C2Net lawyer letter in its entirety - didn't appear >> even on cypherpunks-unedited. > >I think I saw this claim made before around the time of the "moderation >experiment". > >The only ways I can see that this could have happened are either that: > > i) John Gilmore started editing cypherpunks-unedited at Sandy/C2net's > request > > ii) cypherpunks-unedited was edited all along by someone (John or Sandy) > >i) is sort of feasible, perhaps there are others who were on unedited >and were counting who could confirm this. Toto I think was. Apparently a 'bot was installed on toad.com to discard my submissions from the "unedited" list _after my article which prompted the C2net threatening lawyer letter did make it through the "unedited" list (but was censored from the "flames" list by C2Net). >ii) is hard to believe because the fact that something is edited shows >-- when the editor is sleeping you get lag. > >I'm fairly sure I didn't see the C2 legal letter you posted yesterday >before. I'm sorry to have to return to this topic that's been beaten to death and causes me intense nausea. I figured I'll comment on two more attempts to revise history by lying C2Net shills from Hewlett Packard and Oracle. Please recall that C2Net created 3 lists on toad.com: unedited flames C2Net-approved At one point, all my submissions to cypherpunks appeared on "unedited" and then on "flames" with about a 3-second delay, indicating a 'bot at work. The 'bot was scrubbed when C2net decided that my writings were not suitable for auto- forwarding to the "flames" list either. For about a week, numerous articles by myself, Tim May, et al appeared on "unedited" but not on "flames". Howver toward the end of the "moderation experiment" apparently a 'bot on toad.com was filtering my submissions from the 'unedited' list as well. My Jan 30th announcement that C2Net filtered out of the flames list _did show up on the unedited list. However my following articles, like the one quoting C2Net's threatening lawyer letter (which I cc'd to numerous people, including JYA, who, not surprisingly, declined to put it on his archive) did _not appear on the "unedited" list. Nevertheless at least one lying C2Net shill from Hewlett Packard claims that my articles appearing on the unedited list on January 30th prove that I wasn't being filtered from "unedited" one week later. Another lying C2net shill, Jason E. Durbin, a technical writer for Oracle, just wrote in news.admin.net-abuse.policy: }For those unfamiliar with the tactics Vulis uses when attempting to }destroy moderated fora, take a look at the current, ongoing thread }called "Stronghold" (and other variations on same) on the Cypherpunks }mailing list archived at: } }http://infinity.nus.sg/cypherpunks/current/date.html#start } }It summarizes (including Vulis' take on the situation) Vulis' attack }on the mailing list itself via a feigned attack on the Stronghold }security server. } }In summary, make such an annoyance of yourself by whatever means }necessary (posting binaries, running an insultbot, making false }accusations, etc.) to get yourself threatened with banishment, then }rally the free speech advocates by painting yourself as the innocent }harmed party even though no banishment occurred. ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ } }Interesting insights into how Vulis attempts to manipulate his victims }into damning themselves while making him look like a victim. }Interesting reading. "No banishment occured" - more bizarre lies from C2Net and their supporters. Oh, and I don't recall sending binaries to this list either. This reminds me of the claim by Rich Graves, another C2Net/Cygnus shill, that I'm sending "hundreds" of articles a day to this mailing list. You may recall that the same C2net/Oracle shill Jason Durbin has been following up on my Usenet articles in sci.crypt, comp.unix.questions, etc with lies and libel: claiming, e.g., that I "lie about my credentials", that I don't even have a master's degree, etc. Is C2Net paying Jason Durbin to badmouth my academic credentials? >From Jason Durbin's Net.Scum page: Jason E. Durbin, jdurbin(a)nl.oracle.com, jed(a)poisson.com, slothrop(a)poisson.com, jed(a)best.com, jed(a)netcom.com. Jason claims to work for Poisson Corporation, 8 Avocet Drive, #211, Redwood Shores, CA 94065, tel +1 415 637 0435, JD503. In real life, Jason is a lowly technical writer for Oracle Corporation, 500 Oracle Parkway, Redwood City, CA 94065, tel: +1 800 345 3267, +1 415 506 7000, (+1 605 506 7000), fax: +1 415 506 7200. Jason's manager in the technical writing department is: Sanford Dreskin Mail Stop: MS-40P12 Office tel: +1 415 506 2181 Office fax: +1 415 506 7228 Home tel: +1 510 376 9526 Home addr: 859 Augusta Drive, Moraga, CA 94556-1051 In what ways are Durbin and the Hewlett-Packard liar affiliated with C2Net? --- Dr.Dimitri Vulis KOTM Brighton Beach Boardwalk BBS, Forest Hills, N.Y.: +1-718-261-2013, 14.4Kbps

6 7

Phone Line Internet
by nobody＠REPLAY.COM 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Inter@ctive WeekOctober 10, 1997 Nortel Unveils 1-Megabit Phone Line Ethernet By Peter Lambert 1:00 PM EDT Northern Telecom Inc. announced the Nortel 1-Meg Modem, a modem designed to extend Ethernet-equipped personal computer access across standard telephone lines. The company plans to deliver plug-in modules for its DMS phone company central office switches and its Internet Thruway voice switch bypass device in the first half of 1998. It will license the 1-Meg Modem technology to modem makers. The 1-Meg will deliver 1-megabit-per-second speeds downstream into homes or businesses and 120-kilobit-per-second speeds in the other direction, and like Ethernet-connected local area network (LAN) interfaces, the modem will always be on, requiring no dial-up connection. The technology will offer compatibility with both frame relay and Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM) backbone networks. Separately, Nortel finalized a deal to gain an unspecified equity interest in NetSpeed Inc. and rights to integrate NetSpeed's Digital Subscriber Line technology into its own products. NetSpeed's ATM-based LoopRunner Digital Subscriber Line Access Multiplexer is designed to terminate up to 560 users per central office system rack. Nortel can be found at www.nortel.com NetSpeed can be found at www.netspeed.com Email Peter Lambert

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Is Adam Back falling for one of Minitru's tricks?
by Zooko Journeyman 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Dammit Adam. I respect your opinion and your knowlege about these issues, but I think that you've been fooled by Minitru's machinations. Minitru would _like_ for the world's businessmen to be presented with a choice between "brittle" crypto-- private keys held solely by owners, plaintext available solely to recipient, where every forgotten password, missed keystroke or disgruntled saboteur means the company loses valuable data permanently-- or GAKked crypto where these problems of brittleness are solved by Big Brother paternally providing backups when you find yourself in need. In reality neither of these is an acceptable alternative for serious use of strong crypto in business. Escrow is a valuable business concept, which was invented by businessmen centuries ago and has been used ever since because it provides significant value to the participants who voluntarily enter into the escrow contracts. In the context of the information age and crypto, escrow will be one of the basic building blocks of the new era, both for basic business purposes-- serving the same purpose that escrow has always served but with heightened importance to pseudonymous, global commerce-- and for building cryptosystems which are robust in the context of data being shared among many people (e.g. a company). The issue is not how many people are given access to your keys or your data. The issue is whether you maintain your right to control who those people are (including, but not limited to, your right to decide that you will be the only person with access), or whether others with delusions of grandeur and obedient police forces can compel you or trick you into giving them access. Don't let Minitru continue to confuse the issue-- you'll be left with nothing but false alternatives. Escrow is good and necessary and inevitable-- ask any businessman. GAK is not escrow. Escrow is not GAK. Regards, Zooko

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repost: potted history of moderation experiment
by Adam Back 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Dimitri's discussion of the moderation experiment prompted me to dig up this history of the event I wrote shortly after the distributed lists were setup. I did promise around this time to repost this later after the moderation experiment to ensure that it wouldn't be itself censored. If Attila and Dimitri's suspicions are correct, in addition to the below, cypherpunks-unedited may actually have been hand edited, and have had filters placed on it which rejected certain postsers articles out of hand, or auto-forwarding them to cypherpunks-flames. Other list members may be able to verify some the uncertainty surrounding these aspects of the censorship experiment. Enjoy, Adam ==============================8<============================== Date: Sun, 16 Feb 1997 23:49:09 GMT From: Adam Back <aba(a)dcs.ex.ac.uk> To: cypherpunks(a)toad.com Subject: Moderation experiment and moderator liability There appears to be a bit of a hush up surrounding the circumstances of the pause in the moderation experiment and subsequent change of moderation policy. To clear the air, I think it would be kind of nice if the full story were told, so I'll gather here a history as I understand it. Information from my archives (those I have), and from asking around in email. I realise that some of the actions that I am claiming of participants in this sequence of events seem hard to believe given their high reputation capital. I was myself initially dubious on the strength of the reputation capital of those being critisized. However the below is the sequence of events as close as I can determine. I welcome being proven wrong on any points. Events: 1. Dimitri Vulis posted a lot of off topic posts over a period of time 2. Dimitri reposted a couple of 50k Serdar Argic revisionist articles 3. Dimitri challenged John Gilmore to shut him up 4. John unsubscribed Dimitri, and modified majordomo(a)toad.com to siltently ignore Dimitri's attempts to resubscribe. Dimitri could still post, and presumably read cypherpunks with a different email address or via an archive. It was a token unsubscription only. 5. When Dimitri figured out what John had done, he made many posts denigrating John as a censor 6. Much discussion ensued critisizing John for blocking Dimitri 7. Over Christmas some joker subscribed cypherpunks(a)toad.com to a load of sports mailing lists, Hugh Daniels and John cleaned up the mess 8. Followed a long thread on hardening lists against spam attacks 9. John made a post to the list announcing that the list would be moderated for one month from Jan 11 as an experiment, and included Sandy Sandfort's proposed moderatation policy and offer to act as moderator. It appeared that the moderation experiment was Sandy's suggestion, and that John had agreed to go along with it. 10. Some discussion both pro and con of moderation, and the technical , free speech, and legal aspects followed 11. Moderation started Jan 19, the main list became the moderated list 12. Lots of people complained about the moderation, some defended it Tim May quietly unsubscribed 13. Some people complained about inconsistency in moderation -- some articles which went to flames were not flamish, but made by posters with low reputation capital, or were following up to posts which were flamish. 14. After a while some people commented on Tim's absence, and sent him mail asking what happened. Tim posted an article explaining that he had left because of the imposed moderation without discussion. 15. John followed up with a post defending the moderation experiment, and arguing for it's popularity (he claimed as evidence the number of posters who had not taken the trouble to move to the unedited list). 16. Dimitri posted an article where he claimed that there was a security flaw in Stronghold. Stronghold is C2Nets commercial version of the freeware Apache SSL web server. Sandy is employed by C2Net. 17. Sandy dropped the posting entirely -- it went to neither cypherpunks (edited), nor cypherpunks-flames. He considered that forwarding the posting would have made him legally liable. Sandy is a lawyer by profession. He did not explain this situation on the list. 18. Tim May had by now subscribed to cypherpunks-flames, and posted several follow-ups to Dimitri's posting, discussing the issue of Dimitri's post being dropped, and stated that Dimitri's posting was not flamish, and should not have been dropped in his opinion. Tim's postings were also silently dropped, going to neither of cypherpunks (edited), and cypherpunks-flames. 19. Sandy made an announcement that he was ending his participation in the moderation experiment. Still no explanation of why posts were dropped, or even admission that they were. 20. The two moderated cypherpunks lists (cypherpunks and cypherpunks-flames) went dead for some time. 21. Tim received a warning from C2Net's lawyers that if he did not desist from mentioning that Dimitri had posted an article criticising a C2Net product that he would be sued! 22. John posted a statement where he explained Sandy's sudden announcement of ending his particpation. John explained that Sandy had "hit a pothole in the moderation experiment when Mr. Nemesis submitted a posting containing nothing but libelous statements about Sandy's employer". Sandy did not drop Johns posting even though it covered the same topics that had resulted in Tim's posts being dropped, and resulted in Tim receiving legal threats from C2Net. In the same post John said that he had come to the conclusion that he was no longer willing to host the cypherpunks list. In this post John announced that Sandy had been persuaded to continue to moderate for the remainder of the moderation period, and gave the new policy. The changes were that anything other than crypto discussion and discussion of forming a new cypherpunks list would go to flames, and anything that Sandy thought was libelous would be dropped silently. 23. Sandy posted a statement affirming that he would continue to moderate, and that if any cypherpunks wished to discuss his prior moderation policy and performance as a moderator that they do it on new lists which they create themselves. (If Sandy's current moderation criteria mean that he feels obliged to forward this post to cypherpunks-flames as off-topic, or even to silently drop it from both moderated lists, so be it. I will simply repost it later, when the moderation experiment is over on one of the new lists. In the event of myself receiving legal threats, I shall simply post it via a remailer, or rely on someone else to do so. C2 does not appear to be running any remailers at the moment, otherwise I would use a remailer hosted at c2.net as the exit node in the remailer chain.) The positive outcome of all this has been to make the cypherpunks list more resilient to legal attack. The new distributed list seems to be progressing well, and will be less liable to attack. Filtering services continue, as they should. And alt.cypherpunks has been created as a forum ultimately resistant to legal attack. Also I should say that I would hope that no one holds any long term animosity towards any of the players in this episode, many of the people have been very prolific in their work to further online privacy and freedom, and I hope that we can all put this chapter behind us. Now more fun things... Anyone checked out the DES breaking project? Over on http://fh28.fa.umist.ac.uk/des/ are details of mailing lists where people are organising breaking RSADSIs DES challenge. For the RC5/32/12/6 (48 bit RC5) break which took 13 days, it seems there were a peak of 5000 machines involved. At this rate it will take 8 months to break DES. Adam -- print pack"C*",split/\D+/,`echo "16iII*o\U@{$/=$z;[(pop,pop,unpack"H*",<> )]}\EsMsKsN0[lN*1lK[d2%Sa2/d0<X+d*lMLa^*lN%0]dsXx++lMlN/dsM0<J]dsJxp"|dc`

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Toad Moderation Experiment
by Jim Choate 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Hi, You folks have been pretty board the last couple of days, must not be much happening on the crypto or civil-liberties front.....;( ____________________________________________________________________ | | | The financial policy of the welfare state requires that there | | be no way for the owners of wealth to protect themselves. | | | | -Alan Greenspan- | | | | _____ The Armadillo Group | | ,::////;::-. Austin, Tx. USA | | /:'///// ``::>/|/ http:// www.ssz.com/ | | .', |||| `/( e\ | | -====~~mm-'`-```-mm --'- Jim Choate | | ravage(a)ssz.com | | 512-451-7087 | |____________________________________________________________________|

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GET OFF THE DIME: PGP 5.5: Attitude
by Attila T. Hun 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- There is one all important consideration in this debate: would you rather have PGP, Inc. with its preeminent stature in the defense of freedom, freeware, and privacy as well as an established, TRUSTED product defining THE system which meets the need of the free world business, but is not selling out to GAK or CAK? or, would you rather see IBM, HP, TIS and others with their GAK products and potentially even backdoors? are any of these vendors even planning to give us source code so we might have a warm and fuzzy feeling until someone blows a hole in it 10 years from now? or, how about Bigfoot from the jungles of Redmond? PGP is the *only* small business with a name for the corporate MIS types. the answer is simple; stop arguing, squat, and move. When I initially composed this message it read: now, if the idealists, and the opinionated pragmatists would actually reflect on exactly what Jon Callas said, starting with Locke, instead of what they "think" he said, they might understand the philosophy for data storage and recovery which PGP is proposing versus GAK or CAK which PGP is not proposing. the more vituperative among us can be dismissed out of hand as the issue is less of personal privacy than it is one of reasonable property protection, documentation, and defensible security provisions. Jon Callas generally stated the problems adequately, and the solutions or conventions, in the running duels; unfortunately Jon is on the wrong side in an anarchic forum: as the bear; Jon's protagonists are the dogs, and we all know the results of the bear pit. truth was not a problem per se, just reason. as I think I made clear in my original FOCUS presentation, GAK (or CAK) must be dismissed out of hand. The issue reduces to: by what means is general responsibility accomplished? most ignored my premise, the few attacked for the same reason they always attack: crypto-anarchy, take-no-prisoners, or the only good JAKer [sic -freudian] is a dead one. historically, all of the elements of multi-key encryption with separate keys for signing, transmitting, and archiving have been available options with scripts or program wrappers since PGP burst on the freeware zone in its present incarnation. Meanwhile, the battles raged on with the defiant pragmatism of Adam Back balanced by Bill Gieger's careful affirmation of my premises in my prior FOCUS message response to Jon Callas: there is nothing in PGP 5.5 which can not be done with scripts and PGP 2.6. In fact, I stated my policy: session key and storage key. I had not implemented a separate signature key, but will be limiting my current public key to a signature key; and, creating a new encryption key. a good point, and well taken. other than possibly Bill Gieger, not one of the cypherpunk idealists, nor rationalists, in this thread has ever been required to face the realities of an employer. if they had been or are employers, they would understand all the perqs they presume are freebies or rights, are mere privileges --including personal freedoms not in the interest of the employer during company work periods, on company premises, or representing the company outside the facilities. I empathize with Jon Callas' complaint about the blues, and his plaintive "wanna trade" comment to Adam, but the blues come with the turf; likewise, the position of the buck stops here gives the idealists another nail for the coffin they have conjured for Jon and PGP "selling out to the enemy". the occupation of employer can be one of the least satisfying ways of living; department heads are not far behind --it's all about personal (not personnel) relations and diaper changing. as a scientist and developer, I never really enjoyed the boss tasks; more than once, I closed out when my function deteriorated to leader of the nursery. If PGP, hopefully with support, cooperation, and assistance from Cypherpunks, can offer workable and tenable solutions, which can satisfy the real needs of business for defensible audit trails, and which offer basically the same protection as current paper storage trails, PGP may be able to deploy their system as the *de facto standard* before any of the other systems take root. If PGP does not provide workable solutions for business, from simple PGP 2.6 to the SNMP managed "enforcer" and a simplified "frying the egg" means of establishing filing systems which meet both the overall needs of the business and the compartmentalized needs of restricted area and secure operations, some one else will --and corporate {a,im}morality applies their myopic vision only to the bottom line --GAK. for instance, if PGP can deliver *encryption management systems* which can provide control of the entire spectrum of corporate needs, perceived or real, such as: * no key escrow or management key (preferred, obviously) * session key with storage key (incl. some multi-key) group, department, corporate, etc. * multiple public key encryption (foolish for external) * limited CAK (certainly not desirable) * general CAK (an unreasonable sin) * GAK (the unpardonable sin) they have given business the *choice* of system management. It is important to keep in mind that the basic PGP product will do any of these formats as it currently stands with external controls. different business models have different levels of security requirements. hard core cases will buy in because they understand GAK and their foolish corporate mentality has no concern for the individual --get it installed, and the troops will push to bring it back to the preferred model using company security, not employee privacy, as the argument. better GAK with PGP than asking PGP to refuse to permit the use of their product in a GAK/CAK environment. GAK and CAK have no relationship to PGP --they are a corporate mindset and there is absolutely nothing PGP or cypherpunks can do about it --except educate the customers that there are far more secure methods of date recovery than hanging their shorts out in public for big brother to cut the clothesline. In other words, why should any cypherpunk, except our resident nihilistic anarchist, object if PGP's SNMP system provides industry with tools which can deploy the **less** objectionable control systems? or even the objectionable ones? if PGP does not or is not willing to provide the systems, and in the absence of these tools from an alternative *trusted* source, we will see GAK, just plain unabridged GAK, the simplest means to control for the Corporate Operations Officer (COO), or some other equivalent abomination spreading across the land like the ominous black cloud roiling across the land from an oil refinery fire. major corporations, most of them victims of many years of litigation, subpoenas, and judgements with their peers and with the government will just cave in to GAK --it covers all the bases, albeit very insecurely, but that is the fire next year: worry about tomorrow tomorrow. despite the general hue and cry of selling out to the enemy which arose in cypherpunks with the PGP defense department contract, as long as PGP 5.5 and its SNMP enforcer are implemented as Jon Callas claims, that contract may be the best government friend this community has today. PGP will be placing a product which covers the full spectrum of "privacy invasion" within the forces of evil. there are two ways to define a product in a market of this magnitude, a market which matches David and Goliath. PGP, by virtue of its freeware status is the standard the world over; by selling to the enemy, PGP will have proven it can be all things to all people --use what you need from it. Bubba/Goliath has been rumbling and jousting, but his own parts are buying the product that works. a very critical point. secondly, by market penetration, F{reeh,uck} is left standing in the middle of street, pulling his short arm. but if David fails to hurl that stone, Bubba will hand us GAK. the real issue in privacy is where does privacy begin, and where do corporate rights and responsibilities start, and do private rights end? defined classically: on company premises there is little if any legally enforceable individual privacy regarding communications. in NY brokerages, it is well known that brokers have their usual company computers, and a laptop with a modem, often wireless. if they are overly concerned there is always ssh --not ppp. even then, they are on company premises with company power and lights.... however, this discussion is intended to focus on business communications, not their ethics, or lack thereof and not personal communications which should be inviolate, and performed away from work. the corporate paper trace works two ways --proving you did what you said you would, or would not do --or as I put it to subordinates in a hatchetman cleanup: CYA on the sins of commission and omission. proper maintenance of paperwork, in an auditable form, is not just a sieve to collect fodder for big brother; you can, and should protect (or hang, of course) yourself with paperwork. Obviously, if you are engaged in questionable, unethical, or illegal practices, saved paper is dangerous; I can not imagine Bill Gate$ archiving notes or email <g?>. the real goal is "safe" record keeping, just like paper copies; no-one likes employer snooping (or employee snooping). unfortunately, the long running trust and honesty of years ago is not justifiable today, so there are rules. as for government snooping, give 'em a freeway salute. whether it is storage keys for Adam, or session keys, whatever, the issue is the same: anything you do to abridge the simplicity of the key pair is a potential privacy problem --as well as an additional opportunity for breach of security. the paper equivalent of one encryption key which can be lost is placing the paper copy in an access proof, unpickable safe and losing the key --and the safe self-destructs when tampered. would these same people place their only paper copy in this safe? (probably, since "losing" your key is generally described only as your bad karma). master keys are foolish and I dismiss GAK or CAK out of hand. encryption and filing policies which include a session key, a department key, or something which gives some sense of information security is preferable to the master key. the more diversity, the more security. I also believe it is preferable to encode the message twice: once to the recipient(s), the second with the company provided session key, whatever level. the logic is that using a separate encoding pass (which obviously must be essentially simultaneous) is less risky and a little less tacky than sending a message with dual keys --small point, but a consideration. it would not be difficult to rework a public key pair engine to dump to company records at the same time the communication record is released. as a comparison to the abuses which inherently will evolve with GAK: prisoners, convicted felons: murderers, rapists, pedophiles, etc. have more rights than "free" men (even though felons' civil rights are stripped for life at the time of conviction). censors for the incarcerated are only allowed to check incoming mail for money, drugs, weapons, eg: contraband; they are not permitted to slit the outgoing envelope. in addition to the regulations, the intelligence level of a hack would not understand the shading of allusions in plain text! even Dapper Joe Gotti, the Teflon Don, is entitled to the privacy of his personal correspondence unless there is a show cause order. to be both honest and pragmatic, certainly the privacy rights of some of some problem prisoners are violated. theoretically, GAK and CAK would be acceptable in a perfect world, and if the federal government and the rest of the information snoops would unfailingly adhere to Constitutional "commandments." human nature has proven more than once, and it will prove it again, it is not likely everyone will be incorruptible. in fact, I will go so far as to say that *everyone* has a price --even Tim May <g>. however, anybody who has eyes or ears knows, comprehends, and accepts that all governments rule by power --even the United States; and, that the control of information is the power to control. today, it is even more accepted that governments are, at best, a necessary evil --and corrupt, paranoid, and nosy governments at that; one which will violate your rights if it is, or they think it might be, in their interests to do so. few do not know that our governments are rotten to the core on privacy issues; the US, even more than the other members of Western society, has been abrogating, and will continue to perniciously abrogate, our rights. unfortunately, each centralization of the filing system permits the government, or lawyers litigating, a clearer path of access. in reality, encrypted electronic records are significantly safer filing cabinets than those filled with paper, but they are still records maintained. paper filing cabinets are fast disappearing; records are either microfilmed, or converted to bits, or both. Xerox, for instance, has a combination system which maintains an optical image and a scanned text digital image which can be processed with pattern recognition, etc. people say the damnedest things in email without thinking. given the ubiquity of computers, data recovery advances, and governmental intentions, everyone, whether or not it is personal or business, needs to learn the virtue of compartmentalization; files need to be organized: separate the necessary documentation from the routine and sublime --purge the latter regularly from visible system. following this procedure is not illegal if it is a regular practice, and, even more importantly, it is not performed to obfuscate or impede an investigation, civil or criminal. fundamentally, the worst thing we can do is permit the government to think they gained something by necessary business practice on the way to their perverted goal of transparent crypto. there is no question they will use their standard ploy that we have already agreed to backup procedures for data storage safety --so what is the difference if you permit us to maintain a key; remember, we're from the government, and we're here to help you. trust me-- yeah, right! on the other hand, we should be encouraged by the decision of the European commission to totally stiff the U.S. request for them to comply with the F{reeh,uck} mandate; likewise, they chastised the French. The difference in France v. the US is that if you do not ask the French government, they do not tell you: "no". If the European commission does follow through with their intentions, and I have no doubt they will as European politicians recognize both security and discreetness, they will be submitting EC legislation before the end of the year encouraging strong encryption both to facilitate commerce and to protect against the criminal elements; they fully realized the folly of expecting criminals not to use strong encryption even if it is illegal. firearms in the hands of criminals are also illegal. either F{reeh,uck} and Bubba can get off their horses and sell the EC hardware and software, or they can lose it all. Interestingly. the software will probably be PGP --except the revenue will not come home to PRZ, let alone America. Great trade policy, Bubba. where did you say you're from? Arkansas? the actions of the more pragmatic, and obviously privacy conscience, European leaders only paints a sharper contrast with the intentions of the U.S. government. have no doubt, the U.S. government is no different than Lucifer who intended to remove from mankind any choice. the actions of the U.S. government since the Civil War have been an insidious assumption of centralized power, including unaccountable police, and a systematic plan of supposed emergencies to expand the control of the few at the expense of the many. when the smoke of the battle clears, if PGP is not its original pristine, highway salute to the powers that be "old self," any "concessions" in behalf of corporate responsibility will be judged on their appearance, not the effectiveness of the solution. Then the flaming idealists will sing and dance for blood, claiming PGP released the dogs of war, beginning the inexorable dance to our doom. the disruptive class must be put aside (to argue among themselves) and the rest of need to get down to work: we must educate the users, washed and unwashed alike, that "doing business" is not necessarily cozying up to the devil; while simultaneously affirming that we can not and will not tolerate arrangements with any similarity to GAK, CAK and the four horsemen. on the other hand, if the government does not disassemble and chastise Bill Gate$, I fear Bill's intentions far more than I do the federal government, starting with crash prone mediocrity and including Gate$' standard no source code policies-- "trust me". sure, Bill, I trust you; just come a little closer.... -- "When I die, please cast my ashes upon Bill Gates. For once, let him clean up after me! " ______________________________________________________________________ "attila" 1024/C20B6905/23 D0 FA 7F 6A 8F 60 66 BC AF AE 56 98 C0 D7 B0 -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.3i Charset: latin1 Comment: No safety this side of the grave. Never was; never will be iQCVAwUBNEGcK704kQrCC2kFAQGkvgP9GdIrtrxBBA/48TZ+VKFStV4pl687EfxH fKinV1RNgTI33MoTXcxsy7nKRkX6b8PRk6/k33vTiWLwrUPrhFQPL0i49EIBZsfJ FOTEdGEQE16DosImiFFCGp5TUlG8dx1C9OJeutaWV9D9lBf8zNBilpPUFpbnQdYn b1Rd7f7ShIk= =lMeS -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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Re: [NTSEC] NT 5 questions (fwd)
by Ray Arachelian 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

=====================================Kaos=Keraunos=Kybernetos============== .+.^.+.| Ray Arachelian |Prying open my 3rd eye. So good to see |./|\. ..\|/..|sunder(a)sundernet.com|you once again. I thought you were |/\|/\ <--*-->| ------------------ |hiding, and you thought that I had run |\/|\/ ../|\..| "A toast to Odin, |away chasing the tail of dogma. I opened|.\|/. .+.v.+.|God of screwdrivers"|my eye and there we were.... |..... ======================= http://www.sundernet.com ========================== ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Sun, 12 Oct 1997 16:44:38 -0000 From: Peter Fey <fey(a)nue.et-inf.uni-siegen.de> To: ntsecurity(a)iss.net Subject: Re: [NTSEC] NT 5 questions Hi Matt, first - the last 2-3 days I've been 'BEHIND' the list - had to read some 200 mails to get by. ;-)() So maybe someone else did anser just your first question. > One of the addition to NT is disk encryption w/escrow. Is this the > Kerberos aspect of it? Right, one of the new features of NT 5 is the EFS (Encryption File System) including a feature called data-recovery. The EFS is an additional layer above good-old NTFS to allow users to encrypt single files, directories and whats below or whole drives. One reason Microsoft added EFS was to nihilate tools like NTFSDOS --- reading an NTFS-volume just by booting it on a DOS-disk in the NTbox. Another is protection of -lost- notebooks and the like ... As the whitepaper on the M$ site shows, the made up a pretty easy to handle and ?? pretty secure ?? to deal with system. Using asymmetric cryptography - i.e. private and public keys - they are up2date in technology and supporting weak and strong encryption 40/56 bit DES they confirm with the US export restrictions on cry. An migration path from 40 to 56 bit is mentioned too - if restrictions will lower down. (Hope so !) The second aspect of EFS ist the ?option? to data-recovery (not key recovery or key escrow). There is one/more Security Agents -the Admin or delegated persons- whose public key will be used in an additional encrypted-block to give companies the possibility to restore the !! DATA !!! encrypted with the public key of that Sec-Agent. NOTE: The private key of the user will not be used or made public to anyone at anytime !! (Replace anyone by Company, Manager, Hacker, Government, FBI or the like) By this it seems to be true data-recovery as should be. The open question states itself - what backdoors did/had to M$ implement to cope with US. --- Kerberos v5 is something completely different ! It is build up to replace the silly plaintext and the clever (but broken) challenge/response protocols of older versions of NT. [Call for Hackers] On the one hand you will loose lots of compatibility but gain lots of security. It is strongly used in the authentication of the new directory structure of NT 5 (another withepaper to read). Kerb v5 also points in the direction of DCE / *NIX compatibility. --- IMHO the effort of M$ is quite good but not nearly completed as there are several needed features not implemented yet and announced for NT 5.x or 6. And its a BETA if you have it ! As you can think I'm really hot to get the NT5 beta to test those new features. --- Discuss it : ) Peter simply a german student (and nearly MCSE)

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Re: Stronghold
by John Young 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Dimitri and Adam queried about me receiving a C2-lawyer letter to DV: I didn't see the letter, either on cpunks unedited (where I remained subscribed throughout the experiment and happily continue to be despite genocidal warnings to desist). Nor did I get a copy directly from Dimitri as he claims to have sent as cc, which I doubt. I suspect that if there is, or was, such a letter, it's either a fabrication of Dimitri himself, or a message he calculatedly sought so he could flag wave it. A page from the book of secret agents. Dimitri, Allah bless his carcass, is a learned and deft provocateur. So the problem I've got with Dimitri's allegations is that he's demonstrated that he has the skills and godless urge to spoof, spook and hound anybody who crosses him for Rasputin purposes not yet disclosed. Not that that's unusual hereabouts -- and who truly wants forgo comforting righteousness to confront an evil soul. Insecure smart cards, those (we) highly miseducated warriors seeking warfare, in our ability to engender and prolong grievances against others and deny theirs of us, and draw people into our webs of revenge and expatiation, against enemies of imagination and passion. In this DV, among many, is a fierce do-or-die competitor with, say, Tim May, and I still have a hunch that the two (or many) are in cahoots (if only in like mindedness and bulldog tenacity), now, and maybe at the beginning of the grand experiment of testing cypherpunkian elasticity with orchestrated provocateurism. All of us stirring the witches brew with fake innocence and real malice. None of us are going to quietly give up addiction to bloodlust, and will forever nightsweat insults and succumb to the urge to do vainglorious battle for vaporware honor. Dementia, due, as ever, to miseducation, haywire ambition, filmic fantasies of glory and immortality, dampened only by inevitable glandular wind-down. Is this dustup really about the faults of likeminded C2 and Dimitri, or our shared need for diversion from dread of disappearance without a trace? Billy Sunday

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No Subject
by bureau42 Anonymous Remailer 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

http://www.telcomtraining.com/downloads/

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Re: Stronghold
by John Young 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Dimitri wrote: >Give me your fax # and and I'll fax it to you. Ask c2Net to verify >whether it's authentic. Okay. That's a deal. Send it under the river, and I'll put it on our site. Fax: 212-799-4003. Don't give up if it's busy, the line's also used for losing bets. My credibility went south years ago, sent packing by disbelieving housemates and offspring. Inflated baby jesus loves me, though. John

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Re: PGP CAKware & IETF controlled Open-PGP standard
by Adam Back 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Jonathan Seybold <jseybold(a)pgp.com> writes: > > Adam, one aspect of your suggestion puzzles me: > One thing which concerns me most is KNOWING when a message I send > (or receive) could be read by someone else. The PGP CMR scheme makes this > very clear: if there is an extra CMR key, the message may be read by > whomever controls that key, if not, only the recipient may decrypt the > message. > If, however, the message is secretly re-encrypted to a corporate > storage key AFTER it is received, I will never know that. You will if you mark the key with this information. This is the same approach PGP is already using to provide the GAK compliant implementation of corporate access to stored emails. > The reality is that: > 1) Organizations have a legitimate need to recover information. You > can argue about this as much as you want. I'm not arguing. Of course they do. What I _am_ arguing is that in designing systems to provide companies with data recovery mechanisms that you should a) not weaken security more than necessary, and b) that it would be nice if you used a method which doesn't introduce GAK compliancy for communications keys. I presented I think in plenty of detail an alternate mechanism which is both non-GAK compliant, and more secure. So what is the problem? Is there a technical flaw in my solution? > A great many organizations will simply NOT INSTALL systems which do > not accommodate this. If businesses, law firms and many other > organizations will not use PGP, we will not have a viable standard. Agreed 100%. This is why I went to great pains to demonstrate precisely how you could achieve recovery of stored messages in a more secure and non-GAK compliant way. > which are easy to use and administer, which balance the rights of > the individual against those of the organization, and which do not > mislead people inside OR OUTSIDE of the organization. my proposed mechanism for stored email recovery copes with all that. > This means, I believe, that they should NEVER INVOLVE HIDDEN BACK > DOORS THAT USERS ARE NOT AWARE OF. Agreed. You can flag backdoors with either solution. > PGP Inc. has tried to work through these issues in a new way. I think that > we have agonized through a lot of trade-offs and come up with something > that will really work -- and work well. It works well enough, but it could be made much more secure, by separating storage key functionality from transient message key functionality. This would also give you the chance to resolve the articificially created need for GAK compliancy, which arises because you are being forced by this lack of distinction between key functionalities to use one key for both long term storage and what should be transient communications key usage. > There is always the danger that someone is going to use your tools > in ways that you do not approve of. We are trying to make it as easy as > possible for people to do the "right" thing, and to discourage them from > doing the "wrong" thing (like secret snooping). > With regard to GAK, the objective should be to accommodate > legitimate corporate needs without setting in place the foundation for GAK. If that is PGP's aim, they failed most miserably. > We have tried very hard to do this by creating the foundation for a highly > flexible and decentralized approach which allows different organizations to > do things in very different ways. We have also tried to keep everything > very visible so that every party to a conversation knows exactly how > "private" that conversation is. Decentralised control is good, of course, but the pgp5.5 and SMTP policy enforcer is a ready to roll GAK system. The visibility principle is good but is an entirely separable issue. > I think that the sort of thing that PGP Inc is doing is the best > defense against GAK. It knocks the pins out from under the argument being > used in this country that corporate message recovery requires a key escrow > infrastructure, Yes, it is better than a government arranged "key recovery" key infrastructure. > and will almost certainly lead to a wide variety of > organization-specific implementations that will be jealously guarded > and very difficult to corral. I cannot imagine your 80% scenario > working in the U.S. where there are so many small and medium-sized > organizations and so much concern about government intrusion. If the OpenPGP standard is to include the GAK compliancy features, and these competing systems use this standard, as long as the sum of the OpenPGP compliant systems gets to 80% (or whatever) it doesn't matter whether this is mostly provided by PGP, or mostly by GAK sellout companies like IBM, or TIS. It is a dangerous development to have a largely fielded compatible set of GAK compliant products, whoever the providers are. Email encryption needs to be standardised, otherwise people can't talk to each other. This suggests to me that one standard _will_ evolve as the winner, or if there are other standards, they will be backwards compatible to this main standard. A very related example of this kind of principle in action is the fact that most secured web traffic is secured by Netscape's SSL. > I do worry a little more about countries like France, but I have yet > to see any guaranteed "safe" alternative (including yours) that the > French Government is likely to accept. The French Government used require licenses for crypto, which were hard to come by, and crypto without licenses was illegal. In that framework you couldn't see them liking PGP period. More recently they have been swaying towards allowing crypto without licenses, but only if it is GAK compliant. PGP 5.5 & SMTP policy enforcer should be a sell out. Maybe y'all should pitch it to the French government and SCSII (their NSA). > I am very interested in seeing criticism and suggestions for > improvement and would like to see this discussed and debated as openly as > possible. In particular, I would be interested in how one could reconcile > your scheme of separate transmission and storage keys with my concern that > everyone party to an exchange always be informed about who might be able to > read that exchange. That's simple: you already have the mechanism, just put one of those attributes Jon described on the key stating this fact. > However, I think that some of this discussion should be separated from the > Open PGP discussion. NO ONE wants to build any sort of mandatory message > recovery scheme into the base Open PGP specification. PGP Inc itself is > committed to always providing a base client software product which does not > implement message recovery keys. Glad to hear it. Can we take it from that that PGP won't be arguing for the GAK compliancy flag Jon Callas described to be part of the standard then? This is needed for said non "message recovery" base client product to also be OpenPGP compliant. > The key structure needs to be flexible enough to accommodate all > kinds of uses we cannot now envisage. Yes, I believe that CMR keys should > be supported -- as should a lot of other things we need to talk about. CMR keys and the way that PGP has designed their associated flags and the SMTP policy enforcer app are what make PGP GAK compliant. Also there are clear security advantages to _never_ send communications encrypted to two keys. There are clear security advantages to separating the functionality of storage and communications keys. Communications keys are the most sensitive of all, and should have the shortest life times. In some applications this could be minutes. > Finally, let's dispense with the non-productive PGP Inc- bashing. We > founded this company to take something which was going to die because it > had no company behind it, and push it forward. PGP Inc was the first step > in that process. Open PGP is the next step. The PGP bashing PGP observes is an attempt by the pro-privacy crypto community to influence PGP to re-think the GAK compliancy, and to point out the more secure way to implement corporate recovery of stored email messages without GAK compliancy. I reserve the right to bash any company which attempts to field GAK compliant software. > Most companies are very ambivalent about "open" standards. Most of > the time, "open" to them means something which they control and everyone > else adheres to. PGP Inc, on the other hand, is very committed to the > spirit of open standards. We understand very well that we will only be > successful if there is an open and completely interoperable international > standard. > > I also want to assure you that all of the things we do get > extensively debated within PGP. Thus far, we have always been able to work > out consensus decisions which, I believe, are more sophisticated and better > thought-out for that debate. In all of this I have never heard ANYONE at > PGP Inc. suggest that the company add any feature or capability to the > software in order to appease any government agency. GAK is just as scary to > us as it is to you. If PGP wants to make an additional stance against GAK here are my recommendations: 1. remove GAK compliancy fields 2. scrap SMTP GAK compliancy policy enforcer app 3. separate storage and communications keys 4. use shorter lived communications keys giving forward secrecy 5. implement corporate recovery of stored mail folders with escrowed storage keys Forward secrecy is _the_ strongest statement you could possibly make against GAK. > Jonathan Seybold > Chairman, PGP Inc. Adam Back Protocol designer, Cypherpunks list member

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