December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

Random Hiss from Mac mike
by Andrew.Spring＠ping.be 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

I've been looking at using the Mac's Sound Input Manager for hardware RNG. The advantage of it is that (1) most macs have a microphone port these days, (2) it doesn't involve any user interaction, (3) the API is easy. What I don't know, is how secure it is. Or more precisely, I don't know how much entropy is contained in the signal. In the simplest case, where the microphone is not attached, the signal consists of long runs of '0x80's alternating with '0x7f's. Now, I have no problem transforming this into uniformly distributed RN's : just hash the buffer with MD5. My question is, how many bytes get fed into the hash? Obviously, enough bytes so that I have 128 bits of entropy. Preliminary tests give me a max entropy of about .65 bits per sample byte. That's not very much, but if I can sample at ~20 KHz, that's 1625 bytes per second. That's estimated by recording the length of runs and computing the entropy over the entire sample: i.e. the sum (for k = 1 to 120) of -(fraction of runs of length k * log2 of that fraction). That works out to about 3.3 bits per run with an average run of 5.1 bytes. I suspect there's much less entropy in that signal than even this estimate, but I don't have any way to conduct tests with pure 50 cycle power and uniform ambient temperature. Or whatever else biases the signal. For all I know, every time someone in this building starts his microwave it biases the signal. Does anybody have any experience/advice in this area? -- Thank you VERY much! You'll be getting a Handsome Simulfax Copy of your OWN words in the mail soon (and My Reply). <Andrew.Spring(a)ping.be> PGP Print: 0529 C9AF 613E 9E49 378E 54CD E232 DF96 Thank you for question, exit left to Funway.

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Denning questions/reverses her position?
by Attila T. Hun 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- I'm too old for this! I never thought I would see the day that Dorothy Denning would terminate her star role as a shill for the Clinton/LEA encryption ban! from: http://www.news.com/News/Item/0%2C4%2C13000%2C00.html?nd Two supporters of Clinton administration's stance on encryption released a report today finding that encryption has not inhibited law enforcement efforts, with at least one author questioning her belief in the administration's position. The authors--Dorothy Denning, a Georgetown University computer science professor, and William Baugh Jr., vice president of Science Application International Corporation-- ______________________________________________________________________ "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 iQCVAwUBM+Eh5L04kQrCC2kFAQF9wwP+INGEAnc+1akKc+dP7re8fleX4PJrmsYU UKzxgBZAsWcZC7L5WkaOygckHznOc+a37iHzDFtt3sr86DP0D/4j675qJdt/O4B+ jbxXumJ8EXmTN9bOvXK8x9JRGjR9aWzjeaJKN3X+fH4Bjbw76FR9xIFkhhNvZqnM ahBzZyL2cZ4= =MlQZ -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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PacBell's idea of a good password
by shamrock＠netcom.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- - From the PacBell Messsage Center (voice mail) brochure: "Make it easier to remember your password by choosig a code you use already, i.e. a PIN number or birth date." - -- - -- Lucky Green <mailto:shamrock@netcom.com> PGP encrypted mail preferred. - --- [This message has been signed by an auto-signing service. A valid signature means only that it has been received at the address corresponding to the signature and forwarded.] -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.2 Comment: Gratis auto-signing service iQBFAwUBMDu1OyoZzwIn1bdtAQEvlAF+ObOioS3uF8obI6BRhtjfkZdvRAztTlUa uCjeR0AH2MzNEgTFM0mCSXuTnyy/trG0 =rg3O -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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The sorry state of non-US crypto
by shamrock＠netcom.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- I just spent an hour surfing the various crypto/cypherpunks web sites. In this hour I did not come across a single non-US site that carried anything else but PGP. Most non-US sites just carry rants about the evil ITAR, and a few carry the various international versions of PGP. That's it. I know that there are several European ftp sites that have other cryptographic software as well, but I sure as hell can't find them by browsing the web. One would think that at lest some of the major homepages (Virtual library, etc) carry links to such sites. Who cares if someone violates ITAR, if overseas users can't find the exported software? - -- - -- Lucky Green <mailto:shamrock@netcom.com> PGP encrypted mail preferred. - --- [This message has been signed by an auto-signing service. A valid signature means only that it has been received at the address corresponding to the signature and forwarded.] -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.2 Comment: Gratis auto-signing service iQBFAwUBMDq+LSoZzwIn1bdtAQGfJAF7B/XTP5VHlvTLgVRcrDHGX9kcLOANI7OE oQbdMFG6K9V7URHL7HV4N7EaAo+TriRp =Ocb0 -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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Re: e$: The Book-Entry/Certificate Distinction
by stevenw＠iglou.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

>At 2:30 AM 8/22/95, Timothy C. May wrote: >> (An important point is that >>in a cash economy, identity is almost irrelevant. It's only in non-cash, or >>"account-based," economy that True Names are demanded. Lots of interesting >>issues to discuss here, which I won't now.) [Lots of interesting discussion deleted] >Everyone trusts their transactions because of the difficulty of forging >certificates. That means that once again, a certificate has it's own >inherent worth. It speaks for itself, and when it changes hands, the trade >is, as Eric Hughes says, "immediately and finally" cleared and settled. >The overhead of keeping books is gone, at least for the trading parties, >and especially for the clearing houses, who, like exchanges, just kind of >disappear, along with any way to regulate them. Somewhere, Joe Kennedy, >the first Chairman of the Securities and Exchange Comission, is probably >either crying his eyes out or laughing his head off, depending on your >interpretation of his role in regulatory history. In such a system, where does credit come in? If I have a certificate that is worth X, then does the recipient know that it's from my "credit card"? How do I obtain credit, and in what form does it exist? Furthermore, how do we assess the value of real physical things in a system like this? -- Steven Weller <Windsor Consulting Group> +1 502 454 0054 (voice) OS-9 Consultancy and Software +1 502 451 5935 (fax) Finger for public key 00 02 3C 2F 83 76 D3 77 2A 95 E8 90 94 9A 9D 74 http://iglou.com/windsorgrp stevenw(a)iglou.com or realtime(a)well.sf.ca.us

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Re: The End of the Ecash Trial?
by rah＠shipwright.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 12:35 PM 8/23/95, Nathan Loofbourrow wrote: >I have yet to see a date, but Digicash states several times in their >press releases that Cyberbucks are only a trial currency, and that at >some point in the future the trial will come to an end. We've talked about this a little bit on ecm. Someone from Digicash is on record there as saying that trading in c$ came as a complete surprise. The hitch about continuing to honor c$ is that there needs to be a bank. Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but it seems that the current system does work on an offline, peer-to-peer basis. Nonetheless, ocassionally, you still need to verify that the money hasn't been double spent, and for that you need a bank. The problem with being a bank is the price of the bank software, which is where David Chaum and Co. want make their money. Thus, the last price I got (offhand) from David on the phone a year ago was $250k + 10% of net profits. Given the cost of hardware, people, lawyers, and if you actually back the certificates with dollars in a bank of deposit (not being what we want do to here, admittedly) bankers, and more lawyers. Could add up to a mulitmillion dollar proposition. Of course, it could be done with donated professional time, bandwidth, hardware and donated bank software from Digicash. But it's hard to see that happening from here... Cheers, Bob Hettinga ----------------- Robert Hettinga (rah(a)shipwright.com) Shipwright Development Corporation, 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA (617) 323-7923 "Reality is not optional." --Thomas Sowell >>>>Phree Phil: Email: zldf(a)clark.net http://www.netresponse.com/zldf <<<<<

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Re: is there...
by dmandl＠panix.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 3:56 PM 8/23/95, Perry E. Metzger wrote: >Is there an online version of Raph's anonymous remailer list for FTP >or on the web? I suddenly need to give it to someone. > >.pm http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~raph/remailer-list.html --D. -- Dave Mandl dmandl(a)panix.com http://wfmu.org/~davem

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Denning questions/reverses her position?
by Attila T. Hun 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- I'm too old for this! I never thought I would see the day that Dorothy Denning would terminate her star role as a shill for the Clinton/LEA encryption ban! from: http://www.news.com/News/Item/0%2C4%2C13000%2C00.html?nd Two supporters of Clinton administration's stance on encryption released a report today finding that encryption has not inhibited law enforcement efforts, with at least one author questioning her belief in the administration's position. The authors--Dorothy Denning, a Georgetown University computer science professor, and William Baugh Jr., vice president of Science Application International Corporation-- ______________________________________________________________________ "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 iQCVAwUBM+Eh5L04kQrCC2kFAQF9wwP+INGEAnc+1akKc+dP7re8fleX4PJrmsYU UKzxgBZAsWcZC7L5WkaOygckHznOc+a37iHzDFtt3sr86DP0D/4j675qJdt/O4B+ jbxXumJ8EXmTN9bOvXK8x9JRGjR9aWzjeaJKN3X+fH4Bjbw76FR9xIFkhhNvZqnM ahBzZyL2cZ4= =MlQZ -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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PGPfone Release is coming soon!
by jis＠mit.edu 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- As you may have seen, the news media has picked up on the upcoming PGPfone release. This note is to let you know that we at MIT are working with Phil Zimmermann and the PGPfone team to distribute PGPfone from MIT. We expect to have a *BETA* test version (Macintosh Only) of PGPfone available shortly. We will distribute PGPfone via anonymous FTP from net-dist.mit.edu. Look in the /pub/PGPfone directory (which doesn't yet exist). We will also be distributing PGP via the World Wide Web from: http://web.mit.edu/network/pgpfone This "Home" page already exists, but doens't have the distribution yet. Feel free to check it periodically, as it will be changed as soon as the distribution is ready. -Jeff -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.2 iQCVAwUBMDv4lMUtR20Nv5BtAQEyFAP+J3oFHuwKiOu56CtYSvA7WJUGgZg37zRj QPmMfnOD5/9nGUXGsQjs3NTMwV4Y+de4mM3Qxi/O/G0ID1aGod8pPbDkyh6wG594 FVWLu6c1E7pZcge1/Iv9nwBKbHAhOzh368YYMTIsiIlE3hjRB37/iVmIcQsOhleQ 4Qp8aJSEim8= =Mskz -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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Re: e$: The Book-Entry/Certificate Distinction
by Alan Penny 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

The other night I heard that some of the rules for selling stock have been changed to allow companies to sell stock directly to investors. I have been thinking that this may have the potential to support an interesting system. Imagine "Portfolio Accounts" with a debit-card like access method. Instead of paying for an item at a store with money or credit you use your Portfolio-Account card and buy the item with shares/micro-shares of stock. Stock brokers may offer this type of service in response the competition of companies bypassing them. Stock brokers could setup services that mediate between transactions calculating trades and values "on-the-fly" (anonymity could be tricky to build into this system). If the company you worked for paid you with stock instead of money this would complete the loop. Portfolio Accounts could be "cashed out" but if they have all of the attributes of money and don't suffer from inflation why not keep your stock invested. This also has the interesting feature of avoiding all taxes. Until you "cash out" your account you would not have to pay taxes, if you never need cash out your account, you never need to pay taxes. I suspect that our friendly governments would try to "correct" this "problem" in the long run if they can. Steven Weller writes: [snip] > > In such a system, where does credit come in? If I have a certificate that > is worth X, then does the recipient know that it's from my "credit card"? > How do I obtain credit, and in what form does it exist? > Could credit be supported by distributed futures market system? > > Furthermore, how do we assess the value of real physical things in a system > like this? If you had a stock transaction mediated economy the "currency" in this system would be backed buy the goods and services produced by companies issuing stock. You could view stock in this system as private currencies, and there would be thousands of competing currencies. I have been thinking that this might be a viable path to denationalized currencies. Stock certificates could be based on crytographic verification protocols. If all the stock in this system were 'bearer-based' (i.e., you posess it you own it) you could also support cash-like anonymity as well. > > > -- > Steven Weller <Windsor Consulting Group> +1 502 454 0054 (voice) > OS-9 Consultancy and Software +1 502 451 5935 (fax) > Finger for public key 00 02 3C 2F 83 76 D3 77 2A 95 E8 90 94 9A 9D 74 > http://iglou.com/windsorgrp stevenw(a)iglou.com or realtime(a)well.sf.ca.us > > Cordially, [-------------------------------------------------------------------------] [ Public pgp-key: email penny(a)tyrell.net with subject as 'send pgp-key' ] [ My opinions are mine. I have scored 90% on the the Turing Test. ] [ Alan Penny, penny(a)tyrell.net ]

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Denning questions/reverses her position?
by Attila T. Hun 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- I'm too old for this! I never thought I would see the day that Dorothy Denning would terminate her star role as a shill for the Clinton/LEA encryption ban! from: http://www.news.com/News/Item/0%2C4%2C13000%2C00.html?nd Two supporters of Clinton administration's stance on encryption released a report today finding that encryption has not inhibited law enforcement efforts, with at least one author questioning her belief in the administration's position. The authors--Dorothy Denning, a Georgetown University computer science professor, and William Baugh Jr., vice president of Science Application International Corporation-- ______________________________________________________________________ "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 iQCVAwUBM+Eh5L04kQrCC2kFAQF9wwP+INGEAnc+1akKc+dP7re8fleX4PJrmsYU UKzxgBZAsWcZC7L5WkaOygckHznOc+a37iHzDFtt3sr86DP0D/4j675qJdt/O4B+ jbxXumJ8EXmTN9bOvXK8x9JRGjR9aWzjeaJKN3X+fH4Bjbw76FR9xIFkhhNvZqnM ahBzZyL2cZ4= =MlQZ -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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Linux brutessl client
by Sam Quigley 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Hi. I've been able to compile a working brutessl 1.02 cllient under linux and gcc 2.7.0, but I get abysmal search speeds. My system is a pentium 60, which, according to the docs, ought to have a speed of something over 14100 kps (that's what a 486dx2/66 with no rotate left macro gets). brutessl -t reports that my system can do 11200 keys per second. Is there any obvious reason this number is so much lower than expected? I'm reasonably certain gcc implemets a rotl macro, but I don't know how to make use of it -- has anyone out there gotten assembly.c to compile under gcc? Finally, are there any additional optimizations for pentium machines available? thanks, -sq

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Shared secrets and corporations in Cyberspace.
by James A. Donald 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

How can collective entities hold keys? Corporations derive their cohesion partly from realspace coercion, and partly by trust based on face to face interactions among the participants, and partly from their brand name. Trusts derive their cohesion primarily from trust, again based on face to face interaction. A cyberspace corporation would derive its cohesion primarily from its name identification and the public key associated with its brand name. Consumers would presumably wish there financial instruments to be signed to the public key of Megacorp life insurance, rather than Megacorp's insurance saleman, for fear that otherwise their funds might go astray, or they might get bad software, etc, and the private key corresponding to that public key will sign the employees paycheques. If a cyberspace corporation does not have a valued brand name it is likely to disintegrate into its components, in the way that some realspace corporations did in the boisterous early days of silicon valley. But this creates a problem of "owning the corporation". If one man knows the corporations secret key, he can pretty much tell the shareholders to go take a hike. If two men know the secret key, it probably will not remain secret much longer. One solution is to use truenames, rather than keys as the "real identity" -- set up financial transaction software so that it considers that any key signed by a proper authority certifying the key to be the key of Megacorp is a valid Megacorp key, that all such keys are equivalent, and that the authority will only issue keys to one entity called Megacorp. Then when folk start fighting over who is the real Megacorp, the authority resolves the dispute by conventional means. Current proposals for transaction software are based on truenames and trees-of-trust. This is not too bad as long as we have a forest, not a single tree, but still, one would like to have some arrangement whereby a large number of people could share a single key, and can buy and sell interests in that key, whereby we can have the mechanisms of shared ownership without the need for an external authority to enforce it. Obviously trusts will work fine in Cyberspace, but trusts are by their nature small and undemocratic. --------------------------------------------------------------------- | We have the right to defend ourselves | http://www.jim.com/jamesd/ and our property, because of the kind | of animals that we are. True law | James A. Donald derives from this right, not from the | arbitrary power of the state. | jamesd(a)echeque.com

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Denning questions/reverses her position?
by Attila T. Hun 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- I'm too old for this! I never thought I would see the day that Dorothy Denning would terminate her star role as a shill for the Clinton/LEA encryption ban! from: http://www.news.com/News/Item/0%2C4%2C13000%2C00.html?nd Two supporters of Clinton administration's stance on encryption released a report today finding that encryption has not inhibited law enforcement efforts, with at least one author questioning her belief in the administration's position. The authors--Dorothy Denning, a Georgetown University computer science professor, and William Baugh Jr., vice president of Science Application International Corporation-- ______________________________________________________________________ "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 iQCVAwUBM+Eh5L04kQrCC2kFAQF9wwP+INGEAnc+1akKc+dP7re8fleX4PJrmsYU UKzxgBZAsWcZC7L5WkaOygckHznOc+a37iHzDFtt3sr86DP0D/4j675qJdt/O4B+ jbxXumJ8EXmTN9bOvXK8x9JRGjR9aWzjeaJKN3X+fH4Bjbw76FR9xIFkhhNvZqnM ahBzZyL2cZ4= =MlQZ -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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Re: e$: The Book-Entry/Certificate Distinction
by James A. Donald 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 12:01 PM 8/22/95 -0400, Robert Hettinga wrote: > It's easy > to see how a combination of certification technology and cryptographically > anonymous voting protocols allow the direct election of a company's board > members without proxies -- another hierarchical device -- for instance. It is not so easy for me to see how such protocols allow the shareholders to control the company's keys if the CEO tells the shareholders to go and stick their heads in a bucket. --------------------------------------------------------------------- | We have the right to defend ourselves | http://www.jim.com/jamesd/ and our property, because of the kind | of animals that we are. True law | James A. Donald derives from this right, not from the | arbitrary power of the state. | jamesd(a)echeque.com

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Denning questions/reverses her position?
by Attila T. Hun 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- I'm too old for this! I never thought I would see the day that Dorothy Denning would terminate her star role as a shill for the Clinton/LEA encryption ban! from: http://www.news.com/News/Item/0%2C4%2C13000%2C00.html?nd Two supporters of Clinton administration's stance on encryption released a report today finding that encryption has not inhibited law enforcement efforts, with at least one author questioning her belief in the administration's position. The authors--Dorothy Denning, a Georgetown University computer science professor, and William Baugh Jr., vice president of Science Application International Corporation-- ______________________________________________________________________ "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 iQCVAwUBM+Eh5L04kQrCC2kFAQF9wwP+INGEAnc+1akKc+dP7re8fleX4PJrmsYU UKzxgBZAsWcZC7L5WkaOygckHznOc+a37iHzDFtt3sr86DP0D/4j675qJdt/O4B+ jbxXumJ8EXmTN9bOvXK8x9JRGjR9aWzjeaJKN3X+fH4Bjbw76FR9xIFkhhNvZqnM ahBzZyL2cZ4= =MlQZ -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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Brute SSL Challenge
by David Neal 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Just skip this silly little message if you know enough to optimize the brutessl code. Didn't know of a better place to put this, so please no flames. Hopefully everyone on here is accomplished enough to know optimizing the brutessl code helps immensely. If not, well I used gcc -O6 -funroll-loops -fomit-frame-pointer -finline-functions -c search.c gcc -O6 -funroll-loops -fomit-frame-pointer -finline-functions -o brutessl \ brutessl.c search.o To go from 5,000 keys per second to 10,100 keys per second.

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Re: e$: The Book-Entry/Certificate Distinction
by tcmay＠got.net 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 4:10 AM 8/24/95, Alan Penny wrote: >The other night I heard that some of the rules for selling stock have >been changed to allow companies to sell stock directly to investors. >I have been thinking that this may have the potential to support an >interesting system. My company sold stock to me directly, through a Stock Participation Plan and an Incentive Stock Option Plan. >Imagine "Portfolio Accounts" with a debit-card like access method. I use a debit card which directly accesses my stock account. More on this in a moment. >Instead of paying for an item at a store with money or credit you use >your Portfolio-Account card and buy the item with shares/micro-shares >of stock. Stock brokers may offer this type of service in response the >competition of companies bypassing them. Stock brokers could setup >services that mediate between transactions calculating trades and values >"on-the-fly" (anonymity could be tricky to build into this system). This is where it breaks down. Stock prices are denominated in dollars (or the local currency, as applicable). And local purchases are denominated in dollars. Nobody pays "one microMicrosoft" for a loaf of bread. They pay $1. And Microsoft stock sells for $100, not 100 loaves of bread. >If the company you worked for paid you with stock instead of money this >would complete the loop. The IRS and other tax authorities have this one figured out: barter economies are not generally a way to avoid taxes. >This also has the interesting feature of avoiding all taxes. Until you >"cash out" your account you would not have to pay taxes, if you never >need cash out your account, you never need to pay taxes. I suspect that >our friendly governments would try to "correct" this "problem" in the >long run if they can. If you are paid in barter for some service, taxes are still owed, based on the estimated value of services rendered. By the way, a simpler example than all this talk of partial shares of companies is simply to talk about paying each other in gold, or oil, or any other commodities. Try to convince the IRS that taxes are not owed because one was paid in ounces of gold instead of dollars. --Tim May ---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---- Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, tcmay(a)got.net 408-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero Corralitos, CA | knowledge, reputations, information markets, Higher Power: 2^756839 | black markets, collapse of governments. "National borders are just speed bumps on the information superhighway."

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Denning questions/reverses her position?
by Attila T. Hun 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- I'm too old for this! I never thought I would see the day that Dorothy Denning would terminate her star role as a shill for the Clinton/LEA encryption ban! from: http://www.news.com/News/Item/0%2C4%2C13000%2C00.html?nd Two supporters of Clinton administration's stance on encryption released a report today finding that encryption has not inhibited law enforcement efforts, with at least one author questioning her belief in the administration's position. The authors--Dorothy Denning, a Georgetown University computer science professor, and William Baugh Jr., vice president of Science Application International Corporation-- ______________________________________________________________________ "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 iQCVAwUBM+Eh5L04kQrCC2kFAQF9wwP+INGEAnc+1akKc+dP7re8fleX4PJrmsYU UKzxgBZAsWcZC7L5WkaOygckHznOc+a37iHzDFtt3sr86DP0D/4j675qJdt/O4B+ jbxXumJ8EXmTN9bOvXK8x9JRGjR9aWzjeaJKN3X+fH4Bjbw76FR9xIFkhhNvZqnM ahBzZyL2cZ4= =MlQZ -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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Shared secrets, virtual corporations
by Mike Ingle 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

< Collective holding of signer keys > There are protocols that allow a group of people to collectively hold a key. A message is passed down the line, each person in turn operating on it, and at the end it has been signed. In this way the board of directors can sign a message without any one person having the key. These protocols can probably be combined with a secret-sharing system, so that a message can be signed if a certain percentage of the key-share holders collaborate. This allows voting, with the object of the vote getting signed only if >50% vote for it. Taking a share away from someone is a bit of a problem. If someone needs to lose his voting privileges, you probably have to generate a new key and sign it with the old one, then revoke the old one. Mike

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Re: Subject: ANNOUNCE: 2nd SSL challenge - we need your compute!
by Stephan Somogyi 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 15:16 23.8.95, aba(a)dcs.exeter.ac.uk wrote: > Any platforms you would like to see pre-compiled binaries for, send them > along, the source code is available from the ftp, and http addresses > above. A MAC binary would be nice also. I have a working version of BruteSSL 1.02 (without SKSP client) for Power Macintosh. However, as I don't want to run the risk of violating ITAR, I'm still investigating ways of making it available. Suggestions are welcome. Stephan ________________________________________________________________________ Stephan Somogyi Wer bremst hat Angst Digital Media

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Attila T. Spammer / Re: Denning questions/reverses her position?
by nobody＠REPLAY.COM 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Attila T. Hun wrote: > I'm too old for this! I never thought I would see the day that > Dorothy Denning would terminate her star role as a shill for the > Clinton/LEA encryption ban! As a matter of fact, the mere thought of this happening has caused Attila to go into a state of "brain-lock" wherein he sits at his keyboard, sending the same message, over and over again, to the list. It will be interesting to see what happens to Attila's brain if Clinton ever vetos a bill because it subverts the Constitution. BTW, Dorothy Denning's new spokesperson is a flying pig, and the Weather Network reports that Hell froze over shortly before Denning's new position statement. TruthMonger

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Global Investing using Electronic Tools
by gjeffers＠socketis.net 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

The Business Week Guide to Global Investments using Electronic Tools. Dear Cypherpunks, While I was hunting around a Waldenbooks store, I found the above named book. Its by Robert Schwabach, published by Osborne McGraw-Hill. It retails at $39.95 and comes with 3 3 1/2" diskettes. I just glanced thru it. It may be of interest to some Cypherpunks. I don't know if it would be useful for PRIVATE foreign investing or not. Yours Truly, Gary Jeffers

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Re: "Telco Terrorism" -- Wired on Baby Bells v. the Net
by nobody＠REPLAY.COM 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

> Telco Terrorism > By Declan McCullagh (declan(a)well.com) > Right now, the telcos have no financial incentive to > promote speedier, more efficient technologies - and > when they've tried, they've blown it through a > combination of high prices and notoriously bad > customer service and support. Take ISDN, a digital > technology that has been ready-to-arrive for 25 years > but never quite did. "The problem isn't technology," > according to James Love, an economist at the Ralph > Nader-sponsored Consumer Project on Technology. "It's > monopoly pricing by the telcos." If the telcos don't want to use efficient, effective technology to render service to their customers, then I certainly wouldn't want to *force* them to do so. However, neither do I want to be *forced* to pay exhorbitant rates because the telecos want to maintain a sloppily run monopoly on the services I have to choose from. > The telcos' solution: the FCC must let them levy > per-minute access charges to raise the hundreds of > millions of dollars a year needed to keep the phone > system from crashing. My solution? (Thanks for asking. :>) If the telecos wish to remain in the Dark Ages, then let *their* phone system crash. There will be no shortage of people standing in line to make money by supplying customers with phone service at competitive rates. > "The Effect of Internet Use on the Nation's Telephone > Network," blasted telco assumptions and pointed out > their hypocrisy: the Baby Bells whine that flat-rate > Internet services are congesting phone lines even as > many of them are peddling flat-rate Internet access > themselves. Some have actually given it away - The old "loss-leader" promotion to get everyone into your store. The telecos, however, then want to lock the doors and petition the government for monopoly pricing, instead of letting the "customers" shop across the street, instead. > "It doesn't have to be a large charge," Bell > Atlantic's Ed Young now says. "It can be something of > the magnitude of a penny a minute, or even less. But > it has to be something." "...so that we can raise the rates outrageously in the future." > As a rule, Washington's > bureaucrats are not power-crazed authoritarians; most > are reactive creatures who simply respond to > demonstrations of influence and power. Translation~:~ They are usually manipulated by the most powerful and influential of the power-crazed authoritarians. > The high tech > community responded by forming its own ad hoc > coalition to pressure the FCC, and thousands of > Internet users chimed in to express their collective > dismay. Of course, the best way to win not just the > battle but the war may be to remove the commission's > power to regulate the Net altogether. Still, so far > the real threat to netizens has come from complacent > telcos and their legions of starched-collar lobbyists, > not the FCC. The distinction is important, because the > old rule of thumb still holds true: The enemy of our > enemy may occasionally prove to be our friend. As long as everyone has Guns & Roses (with sharp thorns). Say what you want about Timothy McVeigh, but if the government launches another Waco atrocity in the near future, the citizens will be paying much closer attention to the way it is handled. The attempt to control the InterNet is yet another attempt to disarm the citizens. They are trying to get us to "voluntarily" turn in our electronic weapons, such as crypto. "They will take my crypto when they pry it from my cold, dead algorithms." TruthMonger

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Re: (Fwd) 1995 Nanotechnology Conference
by James A. Donald 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Crypto relevance -- slight. At 09:47 AM 8/23/95 -0700, Timothy C. May wrote: > Moore's Law is an observation of past behavior, not a law of > nature. Gordon thought the curve would "slow down" around > 1980 or so. It didn't, for various reasons. But many of us > expect it will. > > Consider that a new wafer fab capable of building these > "Moore's Law"devices has increased in price from about $50 > million a couple of decades ago to about $1.5 billion today. During the entire period that Moore's law has been in effect, we have used light to print the wafers. Now, with phase shifting masks in billion dollar fabs, we are reaching the absolute limits of light. If we go up to higher frequencies, we lose refraction, and phase shifting fails. Refractable light craps out at about .3 to .15 microns. Intel is currently at .35 microns. There will be a slight hiccup or a major hesitation in Moore's law as the fabs switch to a non optical printing process. Current contenders are: * Synchrotron radiation (twenty billion dollar fabs, or worse.) * ions (fab price jumps a few times higher than current fab price.) * electrons (no great escalation in fab price, but a radical drop in production rates) * flexible direct contact. (fab price goes way down, back to producing ICs in your garage.) The flexible direct contact method has enough horsepower to take us all the rest of the way down merge with biotech and to produce wires one atom thick -- assuming that people manage to get anything useful out of it at all. There have been very large investments in all of the above research projects, and so far non of them have worked as yet. (But they are all of them a hell of a lot closer to working than nanotech.) --------------------------------------------------------------------- | We have the right to defend ourselves | http://www.jim.com/jamesd/ and our property, because of the kind | of animals that we are. True law | James A. Donald derives from this right, not from the | arbitrary power of the state. | jamesd(a)echeque.com

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