December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

[Fwd: Doubleclick]
by Eric Murray 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

[Multiple forwards deleted] [short-attention-span summary: someone's using Netscape cookies as a way to target-market browser users. Since I hate being targeted, I came up with a hack "fix" to prevent it, see below] > >Date: Wed, 26 Jun 1996 19:42:00 -0700 > >From: Scott Wyant <scott_wyant(a)loop.com> > >Subject: COMMENT: Cookie dough > > > >(I originally posted this to a library science listserve, and was asked to > >post it here. I hope it is of some interest to ADV-HTML readers) > > > >This list has seen discussion about the little "cookie" that a Netscape > >server hands to your browser. Have you wondered how someone might use it to > >make some money? > > > >Here's how. > >(This will take a while, but I think it's worth it.) > > > >Using Find File, look for a file called cookie.txt (or MagicCookie if you > >have a Mac machine). Using a text editor, open the file and take a look. > > If you've been doing any browsing, the odds are about 80/20 that you'll find > >a cookie in there from someone called "doubleclick.net." > > > >If you're like me, you never went to a site called "doubleclick." So how did > >they give you a cookie? After all, the idea of the cookie, according to the > >specs published by Netscape, is to make a more efficient connection between > >the server the delivers the cookie and the client machine which receives it. > >But we have never connected to "doubleclick." > > > >Close MagicCookie, connect to the Internet, and jump to <www.doubleclick.net> > > Read all about how they are going to make money giving us cookies we don't > >know about, collecting data on all World Wide Web users, and delivering > >targeted REAL TIME marketing based on our cookies and our profiles. > > > >Pay special attention to the information at: > ><www.doubleclick.net/advertising/howads.htm> > > > >You'll see that the folks at "doubleclick" make the point that this entire > >transaction (between their server and your machine) is "transparent to the > >user." In plain English, that means you'll never know what hit you. > > > >So what's happening is, subscribers to the doubleclick service put a "cookie > >request" on their home page FOR THE DOUBLECLICK COOKIE. When you hit such a > >site, it requests the cookie and take a look to see who you are, and any > >other information in your cookie file. It then sends a request to > >"doubleclick" with your ID, requesting all available marketing information > >about you. (They're very coy about where this information comes from, but it > >seems clear that at least some of it comes from your record of hitting > >"doubleclick" enabled sites.) You then receive specially targetted marketing > >banners from the site. In other words, if Helmut Newton and I log on to > >the same site at the exact same time, I'll see ads for wetsuits and > >basketballs, and Helmut will see ads for cameras. > > > >If you log in to a "doubleclick" enabled site, and it sends a request for > >your "doubleclick" cookie, and you don't have one, why each and every one of > >those sites will hand you a "doubleclick" cookie. > > > >Neat, huh? And you can bet they're going to be rolling in the cookie dough. > >Me, I edit my cookie file each and every time I go to a new site. (Despite > >the dire warning at the top of the file, you can edit it with no adverse > >consequences.) > > > >Oh, and one other thing. If you edit your cookie file BEFORE you connect to > >"doubleclick," and then jump around at the site, you'll notice that they > >DON'T hand you a cookie. I probed the site pretty carefully, checking the > >MagiCookie file, and nothing happened. > > > >Until I closed Netscape. The LAST thing the 'doubleclick" site did was.... > >You guesed it. They handed me a cookie. So much for making the > >client-server negotiation more efficient. (In fairness, that cookie may > >have been in memory until I closed Netscape -- I can't tell for sure.) > >Scott Wyant > >Spinoza Ltd. > > My own experiments shows that simply removing the cookie file (~/.netscape/cookies) works to "fix" this, as long as you don't have old netscape config files lying about (then it pops a dialog asking if you want to nuke the old config, and uses the old cookies file). Netscape (version 3.0b for Linux) doesn't recreate the cookies file. Of course this "fix" means that I'm not able to take advantage of whatever cookies might offer me, but since I can't control them and never see them there's probably not a lot that they do that I'll miss. I think that Netscape should add a configuration to the browser so that paranoid privacy fanatics like me can disable cookies or better yet control which ones that we'll accept. -- Eric Murray ericm(a)lne.com ericm(a)motorcycle.com http://www.lne.com/ericm PGP keyid:E03F65E5 fingerprint:50 B0 A2 4C 7D 86 FC 03 92 E8 AC E6 7E 27 29 AF

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Re: Cookies anyone?
by jfricker＠vertexgroup.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 04:34 PM 6/29/96 -0700, vanished(a)alpha.c2.org wrote: >While rummaging around in my cookie jar, I found this message--along with some cookies. > >:Netscape HTTP Cookie File >:# http://www.netscape.com/newsref/std/cookie_spec.html >:# This is a generated file! Do not edit. > >Rather than bring down my system by experimenting, I thought I'd ask the list, "What happens if I delete this file?" and "What happens if I delete (edit) the cookies?" > >This may have been discussed before, but until now I never checked for cookies. > >Thanks for your consideration of this matter. > >Vanished > Delete it at will. Cookies are small tidbits of information that server side CGI progs (and client side JavaScript progs) have saved. Cookies are generally used to identify web users when they return to a site. I've seen cookies named "lastvisit", "userid", and so on. If pathfinder.com creates a cookie, it is only visible to pathfinder.com (that's the theory anyway). Deleting the cookie.txt file will have no ill effects unless you are using one of those "build yer own Start Pages" at MSN or wherever. Altering cookies would send garbage down when the cookie is requested. If you would rather that cookies (and crumb trails) not be allowed simply delete any cookies present and make the nominal file read only. John.

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Re: UK Crypto regs?
by jya＠pipeline.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Adam, Thanks for forwarding that delightful report from Ross Anderson on the IEE TTP romp. His grimly comical description of the hauty evasiveness of governmental infosec turkeys fits the U.S. sessions on GAK. These power-drunk birds just aren't used to answering to an aroused, sober, informed public on the cluckers' no longer secretly enjoyed private stocks of if-you-gnu-what-we-brew inebriants. Pray British rabble-rousers continue to grieve the red-nosed authorities as have the colonials theirs. Is there more info on when the OECD report is due?

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RNG
by David Lesher 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

> > I just recently built a hardware RNG, I just wanted to see what you guys > think of it, here is how it works: > > Got a geiger counter plugged into the game port > Weak radioactive source next to it (dont worry wont fry you) > Use a PRNG string to do create an RC4 S-box > Cycle through the S-box in a tight loop, each time checking to > see if the geiger counter got a hit, if it did, record that number in > the S-box as our first byte, do this 100 times, and we have 100 random > numbers. > Tony Patti just gave the DC 'Punks a great talk on this topic. He built a faster RNG he called RANGER -- it connects to the parallel port. Plans for it are available in Cryptosystems Journal.... -- A host is a host from coast to coast.................wb8foz(a)nrk.com & no one will talk to a host that's close........[v].(301) 56-LINUX Unless the host (that isn't close).........................pob 1433 is busy, hung or dead....................................20915-1433

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Updated type2.list/pubring.mix
by John A. Perry 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- There is an updated type2.list/pubring.mix available on jpunix.com. Of note is the new jam remailer and the return of middleman. Welcome aboard! BTW you may have noticed that I've started sorting the type2.list file. I think it looks nicer that way. The files are available by WWW from www.jpunix.com as well as anonymous FTP from ftp.jpunix.com. Please direct questions or suggestions to perry(a)alpha.jpunix.com. John Perry - perry(a)alpha.jpunix.com - PGP-encrypted e-mail welcome! WWW - http://www.jpunix.com PGP 2.62 key for perry(a)jpunix.com is on the keyservers. -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.2 iQCVAwUBMdaO8lOTpEThrthvAQH4JQP9HYP+TbIZ8VO1v5lvRUfJfM0GDlakuCaN WK1CWQyCY79QLUs9GAAIksim+VyvfS9g1pg7zrsmy5S4MgZRMAX5NkWTg/+BNqKk M8LnDBAU2hSPNzjmNUiO9KhAgoein7z3Dy91ZOuaPGRNf6GhE0i8QjPTKKL81lzz 75+oY9rObEQ= =oR/A -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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MacPGP 2.6.3 released
by Zbigniew Fiedorowicz 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- I have put FatMacPGP2.6.3 v 1.6 on my web page http://www.math.ohio-state.edu/~fiedorow/PGP for distribution in the US and Canada in accordance with ITAR. The distribution is encrypted and you have to read the file README.txt for instructions on how to decrypt it. Here is a description of the main features of FatMacPGP2.6.3 v 1.6 from the README in the distribution: Enclosed is version 1.6 of FatMacPGP 2.6.3. This is a Macintosh port of the international version PGP 2.6.3ia released 04.03.96. The underlying PGP cryptographic code is the same as in the international release, except that it uses the RSAREF1.0 RSA library instead of Philip Zimmermann's MPILIB, in order to conform with US Patents on RSA. Also the legal_kludge switch, which allows interoperability with infringing pre-2.6 versions of PGP, is disabled. FatMacPGP 2.6.3 will run in native mode on a Power Macintosh, and will also run on 68K Macintoshes having a 68020 CPU or better. It will NOT run on Macintoshes with only a 68000 CPU such as Pluses, SE's, Classics or PB100's. It contains all the enhancements and bug fixes of PGP 2.6.3ia such as 1) It allows recipients of a public key message to be read in from a file containing the list of recipients, one per line. (Unlike previous versions of MacPGP it will not crash if the number of recipients exceeds 5 or 7.) 2) When extracting multiple keys into an ascii file, the each key is put separately into its own block, neatly labelled with the key id and user ids. 3) Better support for 8 bit character sets, ie. characters you get by holding down the option key. 4) Userids can be automatically signed with your secret key when creating keys ('pgp -kg') or adding new userids ('pgp -ke'). This is controlled by the AutoSign flag in the Options menu. 5) The misfeature of the initial 2.6.3i release, which didn't allow softwrapped text to be treated as text has been removed. 6) When clearsigning messages, FatMacPGP 2.6.3 will add a "Charset:" headerto the signature block, explaining which character set was used for creating the signature. This will help the recipient of the message to select correct character conversion when verifying the signature. If he/she is using version 2.6.3i, PGP will automatically choose the correct character set, thereby eliminating a lot of "Bad signature" problems. In addition to the above FatMacPGP 2.6.3 has many enhancements and bug fixes relative to previous versions of MacPGP. 1) Unlike MIT MacPGP 2.6.2 contains native Power PC code. Consequently it runs typically about 1.5 to 2 times faster than the MIT version on PPC machines, and even faster for large keyrings or large keys. It also runs typically 10-20% faster on 68K machines. 2) It has a greatly enhanced AppleEvent suite. For instance, unlike the MIT version, it is not necessary to write data to temporary files before passing it to MacPGP for en/de/cryption or signing. FatMacPGP 2.6.3 accepts AppleEvent TEXT parameters up to 32K in size in memory and returns the processed data as a parameter to the reply AppleEvent. (See the accompanying documentation for further details.) 3) It has options for automatic hardwrapping and detabbing of text, which should make electronic transmission of clearsigned messages more reliable and increase interoperability with many DOS and Unix text processing programs. 4) It has an option for stealthifying PGP encrypted files, removing any trace of their provenance. The resulting files can't be distinguished from white noise and can be completely concealed by "stegoing" into graphics and audio files. (There is of course also an option for destealthifying.) 5) It has an option for using SHA1 as the hashing algorithm for PGP signatures, instead of MD5. (Dobbertin has recently made some dramatic progress towards cryptanalyzing MD5. If he is successful, this might call into question the reliability of PGP signatures under certain circumstances.) This is an experimental feature which is not compatible with earlier versions of PGP. (It is not compatible with the proposed standards of PGP 3.0 either. But 3.0 is supposed to be deliberately incompatible with all 2.x versions to avoid the RSA patent issue.) FatMacPGP 2.6.3 is distributed under the same license terms from MIT and RSADSI as the 2.6.2 release, since its functional core is virtually identical. Please read the license agreements prior to using the program. Distribution of this program may be subject to US government export controls. This release is not endorsed by Philip Zimmermann, MIT or anyone else. However full source code for FatMacPGP 2.6.3 is being released together with the executable (although in a separate archive). It is not difficult to verify that the cryptographic core is unchanged from the 2.6.2 version. Also the author is mentioned in Zimmermann's documentation as the primary developer of previous MacPGP versions. A few support files, such as sample AppleScripts and other extensions, to facilitate interaction with the Eudora mailer program and the BBEdit text editor are included. While they are fully functional and hopefully useful, they are primarily intended to serve as illustrations to other developers on how to integrate PGP with other Macintosh programs. Detailed documentation can be found in the document "MacPGP263_AppleEvents" in the Macintosh Documentation folder. Read the included document "Verifying PGP" for instructions on how to verify this copy of MacPGP. Beginners should first take a look at the document "Getting Started with MacPGP". A detailed reference manual to MacPGP entitled "MacPGP263_Manual" is enclosed in the Macintosh Documentation folder and the indispensible "PGP User's Guide" by Philip Zimmermann is in the Documentation folder. Sources for FatMacPGP 2.6.3 will be available shortly. Z. Fiedorowicz -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.3 Charset: mac Comment: MacPGP 2.6.3 iQCVAwUBMdbLNr1LYmqiC9QjAQEl/wP+JXpDvgQ9VgTmXsvjjfFp+zd4v8ZeIMmt 45WcfqqPvSUPVEXv225MyYHMO1zKDkcKej1swBpFZDz5GV1eZJvriqYuNqc4Z0g0 0w9syQ2i6U5AoF6MR8bPs9Apq2Og9dRbFbaNXZ9Ba6bCtPHXyfZS1qQpi06Mkpty Xh39nE3dv4s= =/3Xe -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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Re: [Fwd: Doubleclick]
by Yanni 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

> There's a very obvious way to get their cookie put in your cookies > file without you explicitly going to their site. This is my favorite example... You work at a company. Evil co-worker there says...check out this webpage I just setup. You goto that page, the server gives you a cookie with confidential information. ( 4k can store a lot of data..:) )... Boss comes around and looks at your cookie file, notices confidential information. You get fired, sued, whatever.... > The server can send whatever it wants to you in the Set-Cookie: > header. Read the spec. Yes, but you know the server that sent it. A Set-Cookie header can't set the domain to be other than the domain that the cookie came from. The message that was copied to the list implied that one domain could set a cookie for another domain. That isn't true unless you have access the the persons cookie file. ( as you implied in your response, but which is beyond the scope of the original letter ). Regards, -jon Jon (no h) S. Stevens yanni(a)clearink.com ClearInk WebMagus http://www.clearink.com/ finger pgp(a)sparc.clearink.com for pgp pub key We are hiring! Check out... http://www.clearink.com/clearink/home/job.html

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Re: FTS2000 and Encryption?
by frantz＠netcom.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 1:57 PM 6/30/96 -0400, Mark O. Aldrich wrote: >... The [FTS2000 follow-on contract - WSF] >security policy and RFP materials are on the 'net (I can't get to the web >right now, or I'd post the URL with this message). Please post the URL when you can. >From what I remember, >the RFP does state that all payload data will be encrypted by the >Government using NSA-approved crypto and that the vendors are not to >"worry about" what's in the payloads. All they have to do is carry it >from point a to point b. Given that FTS2000 supports X.25 Packet Assembly Disassembly (PADs), there is a wide field ahead for screwing up such useful features as 8-bit transparent characters and data forwarding (i.e. When does the PAD decide it has a complete packet and actually send it). Try running emacs without good data forwarding control. ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Bill Frantz | The Internet may fairly be | Periwinkle -- Consulting (408)356-8506 | regarded as a never-ending | 16345 Englewood Ave. frantz(a)netcom.com | worldwide conversation. | Los Gatos, CA 95032, USA

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SEC lets California retailer trade stock on Internet
by Joseph M. Reagle Jr. 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

WASHINGTON, June 27 (Reuter) - A California company that sells energy-saving solar panels has received Securities and Exchange Commission approval to trade its stock over the Internet, extending the boundaries of off-exchange trading into cyberspace. The approval, the first the SEC has issued on stock trading over the Internet, was given earlier this week to Ukiah, Calif.-based Real Goods Trading Corp., through a ``no action'' letter. In such a letter, the SEC allows a petitioning company to perform what it requested to do, without fear of any enforcement action. In approving Real Goods' request, however, the agency imposed conditions in the interest of investor protection. John Schaeffer, president, chief executive and founder of the company said in an interview he hoped to get the new system operational ``within a couple of weeks.'' Schaeffer said that since 1991, his company has sold $4.6 million of its company's stock to the public through direct, small offerings and without having to pay fees to investment bankers. ``The 'off the grid' trading of our stock is a logical extension of our service to our customers, who will now be able to buy and sell our security without going through a broker,'' Schaeffer said. ``This is also consistent with our mission of creating independent energy alternatives for our customers,'' he added. Real Goods is currently traded thinly on the Pacific Stock Exchange, at a price range of between $5 to $7 in 1995. The stock closed at $7.25 on June 26. In its application, the company said its system would function as a passive Internet bulletin board that will provide the names, addresses, including E-mail, and phone numbers of interested buyers and sellers and number of shares offered for sale or desired to be purchased. Those participating may transmit the information through the company's World Wide Web site or by telephone, fax, mail or E-mail. Real Goods will then enter the data into the system. Real Goods posted a loss of $175,000 last year on sales of $15.3 million, Schaeffer said. ``We expect to be profitable this year,'' he said, adding he estimates sales to climb to about $20 million. Earlier this year, the SEC permitted Spring Street Brewery Co., of New York, to make an initial public offering over the Internet. The agency asked the company to suspend trading, pending review of legal implications of such a trading system. Spring Street subsequently said it planned to establish an online stock exchange through a unit. _______________________ Regards, Democracy is where you can say what you think even if you don't think. - Joseph Reagle http://rpcp.mit.edu/~reagle/home.html reagle(a)mit.edu E0 D5 B2 05 B6 12 DA 65 BE 4D E3 C1 6A 66 25 4E

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Re: [Fwd: Doubleclick]
by Yanni 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

> [short-attention-span summary: someone's using Netscape cookies as a > way to target-market browser users. Since I hate being targeted, I > came up with a hack "fix" to prevent it, see below] Whatever. > > >Date: Wed, 26 Jun 1996 19:42:00 -0700 > > >From: Scott Wyant <scott_wyant(a)loop.com> Subject: COMMENT: > > >Cookie dough > > > > > >If you're like me, you never went to a site called "doubleclick." > > >So how did they give you a cookie? After all, the idea of the > > >cookie, according to the specs published by Netscape, is to make a > > >more efficient connection between the server the delivers the > > >cookie and the client machine which receives it. > > >But we have never connected to "doubleclick." Scott must have. Navigator is very picky about where a cookie comes from and what is put in the domain field of the cookie. Go read about the domain field in the Cookie spec. Then, write a CGI to play with setting/deleting cookies yourself. You will find out that it is actually almost an art to even get a cookie set. > > >Pay special attention to the information at: > > ><www.doubleclick.net/advertising/howads.htm> Maybe this scott wyant guy works for doubleclick? ;) > > >You'll see that the folks at "doubleclick" make the point that > > >this entire transaction (between their server and your machine) > > >is "transparent to the user." In plain English, that means > > >you'll never know what hit you. No sh*t. The cookie spec says that as well. > > >So what's happening is, subscribers to the doubleclick service put > > >a "cookie request" on their home page FOR THE DOUBLECLICK COOKIE. There is no such thing as a "cookie request". It is up to the browser to send the cookie and up to you to parse it out of the HTTP header. There is no way that the browser is going to send the cookie unless the domain and path matches. Go read the Cookie spec. > > >When you hit such a site, it requests the cookie and take a look to > > >see who you are, and any other information in your cookie file. > > >It then sends a request to "doubleclick" with your ID, requesting > > >all available marketing information about you. (They're very coy > > >about where this information comes from, but it seems clear that > > >at least some of it comes from your record of hitting > > >"doubleclick" enabled sites.) You then receive specially > > >targetted marketing banners from the site. In other words, if > > >Helmut Newton and I log on to the same site at the exact same > > >time, I'll see ads for wetsuits and basketballs, and Helmut will > > >see ads for cameras. Whatever. What are you saying doesn't make any sense if you knew what the heck you were talking about. > > >If you log in to a "doubleclick" enabled site, and it sends a > > >request for your "doubleclick" cookie, and you don't have one, why > > >each and every one of those sites will hand you a "doubleclick" > > >cookie. Whatever. > > >Neat, huh? And you can bet they're going to be rolling in the > > >cookie dough. > > >Me, I edit my cookie file each and every time I go to a new > > >site. (Despite the dire warning at the top of the file, you can > > >edit it with no adverse consequences.) Whatever. > > >Oh, and one other thing. If you edit your cookie file BEFORE > > >you connect to "doubleclick," and then jump around at the site, > > >you'll notice that they DON'T hand you a cookie. I probed the > > >site pretty carefully, checking the MagiCookie file, and > > >nothing happened. > > > > > >Until I closed Netscape. The LAST thing the 'doubleclick" site did > > >was.... > > >You guesed it. They handed me a cookie. So much for making > > >the client-server negotiation more efficient. (In fairness, > > >that cookie may have been in memory until I closed Netscape -- I > > >can't tell for sure.) Scott Wyant > > >Spinoza Ltd. No duh. Navigator doesn't fflush() the cookie file until you quit. It keeps it in memory for speed. > My own experiments shows that simply removing the cookie file (~/. > netscape/cookies) works to "fix" this, as long as you don't have > old netscape config files lying about (then it pops a dialog asking if > you want to nuke the old config, and uses the old cookies file). > Netscape (version 3.0b for Linux) doesn't recreate the cookies file. > Of course this "fix" means that I'm not able to take advantage of > whatever cookies might offer me, but since I can't control them and > never see them there's probably not a lot that they do that I'll miss. Who cares if you can't control them? They don't contain any information that you don't already know about! > I think that Netscape should add a configuration to the browser so > that paranoid privacy fanatics like me can disable cookies or better > yet control which ones that we'll accept. Navigator 3.0 has a preference. -jon (who has had more than enough real world experience with cookies) Jon (no h) S. Stevens yanni(a)clearink.com ClearInk WebMagus http://www.clearink.com/ finger pgp(a)sparc.clearink.com for pgp pub key We are hiring! Check out... http://www.clearink.com/clearink/home/job.html

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Re: The Net and Terrorism
by frantz＠netcom.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Thanks Tim for your essay. The only thing I would add is that terrorist attacks on pure information resources (e.g. the banking system) are likely to result in many fewer casualties than terrorist attacks on physical entities (e.g. major cities). Another way of saying it is, email bombs are preferable to snail mail bombs. ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Bill Frantz | The Internet may fairly be | Periwinkle -- Consulting (408)356-8506 | regarded as a never-ending | 16345 Englewood Ave. frantz(a)netcom.com | worldwide conversation. | Los Gatos, CA 95032, USA

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Re: rsync and md4
by David F. Ogren 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- > On Sat, 29 Jun 1996, Andrew Tridgell wrote: > > > Now I'd like to calculate some probabilities of failure of the > > algorithm. The fundamental thing I need to know to do the calculation > > is the probability of a random piece of data of length n having the > > same md4 checksum as another given piece of data of the same length. > > MD4 is a hashing algorithm, but it can be used for checksuming. > > > > A first guess might be 2^-128 but I know that this sort of thing is > > rarely that simple. Is md4 that good? > > 2^-64. Are you sure? MD5 is a 128 bit hash, and the probability of collision with a specific random piece of data (of any length) should be 2^-128. I could be wrong, but do you have any explanation of why you think the answer is 2^-64. <snip> > > Why md4? I chose md4 because it seemed to be the fastest of the > > reputedly strong, publicly available checksum algorithms. Suggestions > > for alternative algorithms are welcome. MD4 is the fastest hash I am aware of. However, there has been some successful attacks against two rounds of MD4. Although this is not to suggest that MD4 is insecure, MD5 almost as fast (~1.3 times slower) and more secure. David F. Ogren | ogren(a)concentric.net | "A man without religion is like a fish PGP Key ID: 0xC626E311 | without a bicycle" - ------------------------------|---------------------------------------- Don't know what PGP is? | Need my public key? It's available Send a message to me with the | by server or by sending me a message subject GETPGPINFO | with the subject GETPGPKEY -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.2 iQCVAwUBMdXI1fBB6nnGJuMRAQFghwP/W0ZzdAYcbsdsCcrA97cwfw4uwug8sJWd bjWD4Z+ski7kE4HN7bj2dRLFGke6EQZ8DiebnLIRPqGCxeyxdzotqcrsdKrgp+eN eMfjp0Y3wVwvrPn2kVI5M0iI9kpX8tvvLh7Kp3OBvHdsBTim4aPPuM8xR2SHLSgv /SYnhEBeYLA= =VPWe -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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Re: anonymous mailing lists
by David Mazieres 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

iang(a)cs.berkeley.edu (Ian Goldberg) wrote: > Yesterday, Dave and I discussed at length a design for a new > remailer network... If you are thinking of revamping the mixmaster protocol, I have a couple of suggestions/requests. One basic philosophy motivating all of these ideas is that I would like to avoid requiring any "centralized control" or consensus about exactly what remailers should exist. This can be achieved by pushing a lot of configuration parameters into the anonymous messages, where the sender has control over them First, D-H (or RSA with short-lived keys) is an extremely good idea. Long-lived encryption keys (like the current mixmaster secret keys) should not be used for secrecy. However, it would also be good if you could avoid any man-in-the middle weaknesses. Specifically, with simple D-H, an active attack could be used to record all anonymous messages from A to B, and weeks later if B is compromised the messages could then be decrypted. Thus, when sending from remailer A to remailer B, B's identity must be proven with B's public key (either through RSA encrypting A's half of the D-H secret key and a challenge with B's key, or by having B sign his half of the D-H secret and a nonce). Moreover, since not every remailer will be known to every other, and since people may want to set up and test new remailers for a while before announcing them to the world, a strong cryptographic hash or MAC of B's public key should be embedded in the remailed-message itself. Thus, A can query B for its public key and verify the public key, then use this public key to know it is talking to the real "next hop". It would also be nice to avoid having every message go through every remailer unless the sender actually want's it to. In particular, a larger remailer network should not have to translate into more traffic for all the remailers, as it would be nice to have as large a network as possible. Thus, if, for instance, remailer A sends messages out every half hour, and A wants to send messages to B, C, and D--why not send the three useful messages to B, C, and D all in the same round, and just send garbage to all the other remailers. Of course, messages should be allowed to have as many next-hops as necessary, so that if you don't want A to know that a message's next hop is B, you can ask it to send the same message to C, F, and G as well as to B. That way, A won't know the real next hop. Now the next question is, when sending garbage to all the other remailers, should "all the other remailers" be defined by A or by the anonymous message itself. Here, A should definitely have some list of remailers it knows about. However, maybe at each hop a message should be able to supply 6-byte (IP address/port number) addresses of other remailers to which garbage should be send. If there appears to be a remailer at the address supplied, and that remailer is not already known to A, perhaps the new remailer should automatically be added to the list of garbage recipients (and then automatically deleted if it stops responding for 24 hours). In the event that A has a real backlog of messages for a particular destination B, it might make sense for A to hand some of those messages off to other remailers instead of just feeding them garbage. That way, even when one remailer is receiving a lot of mail it won't be immediately clear to it's operator which the preceeding hop is. Given all these features, of course, it would be necessary to have variable-length next-hop-descriptors instead of the fixed size and number currently in mixmaster. Is there some reason this can't be done? The total actual length of the 3-DES encrypted portion of the mixmaster message shouldn't be available to any but the last hop. Thus, is there something wrong with padding the message (or even just the 10K header portion of the message if you want to keep the message in two parts) with garbage to be 3-DES decrypted into more garbage at the next hop? Of course the padding should be done in such a way that the final hop does not know how much space the remailing headers originally took up, but this shouldn't be too hard (for instance the padding could go between the headers and the message data). Finally, another very useful feature would be some support for improved response blocks. Right now aliases like alpha.c2.org don't offer very much security because they have to go through Type-1 remailers. However, one could imagine mixmaster extensions to allow it to work for replies as well as anonymous messages. Imagine a nym server with just a 10K mixmaster header as a response block. The server would pad a received message to 10K, prepend the 10K mixmaster header, and send off the message. At each hop of the way, the message would get "decrypted" with some 3-DES key (and possibly a weird IV). However, couldn't the recipient then just "encrypt" the message to recover the plaintext? Of course, this might undesireably weaken the replay prevention, but there's got to be a good solution for response blocks somewhere near what we currently have for mixmaster. David

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REMINDER: SAFE Forum Cybercast - Monday July 1, 12 noon - 6 pm EDT
by Bob Palacios 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

SECURITY AND FREEDOM THROUGH ENCRYPTION FORUM MONDAY JULY 1, 1996 STANFORD, CA 9:00 am - 3:00 pm PDT / 12:00 noon - 6:00 pm EDT / 1600 - 2000 GMT On July 1, 1996 in the heart of California's Silicon Valley, members of Congress and prominent computer industry leaders and privacy advocates will meet to discuss the need to reform U.S. encryption policy. The SAFE Forum will bring together members of Congress, privacy advocates, cryptographers, and industry leaders for a discussion on the need to reform U.S. encryption policy. If you can't attend the SAFE Forum in person, you can still participate by attending the cybercast of the event. The cybercast will include still photos of the conference, a RealAudio broadcast of the forum, and a telnet chat room for netizens to discuss the event and cryptography issues. Just visit the SAFE Forum web site on Monday for the necessary links: http://www.crypto.com/safe/ (You will need to be a copy of RealAudio installed on your computer. Visit http://www.realaudio.com/ for a FREE copy of Real Audio). The SAFE Forum Cybercast is brought to you with the help and support of: MediaCast (http://www.mediacast.com/) and AudioNet (http://www.audionet.com/) --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Event Information * Location: Kresge Auditorium at Stanford University, Stanford, California * Date: July 1, 1996, 9:00 am - 3:00 pm Program: 9:00 - 9:15 Welcome Rep. Anna Eshoo (D-Ca), co-host Rep. Tom Campbell (R-Ca), co-host Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt) (by satellite) Jerry Berman, Center for Democracy and Technology 9:15 - 10:15 The Need for Locks and Keys on the GII: An Encryption Overview Marc Andreessen, Netscape Communications Lori Fena, Electronic Frontier Foundation Eric Schmidt, Sun Microsystems Craig Mundie, Microsoft Corporation 10:15 - 10:30 Technology Demo: The Need for Locks & Keys -- Packet Sniffing on the Internet (Cylink Corporation) 10:30 - 10:45 Break 10:45 - 11:45 How U.S. Encryption Policy Fails to Meet User Needs Herbert Lin, National Research Council Jim Omura, Cylink Corporation Tim Oren, CompuServe Incorporated Phil Zimmermann, PGP, Inc. Todd Lappin, Wired Magazine -- Introducing "Stories of Real-Life Encryption Users" 11:45 - 1:00 Lunch 1:00 - 1:45 The Cryptographers' Report: "Forty Bits Is Not Enough" Matt Blaze, AT&T Whitfield Diffie, Sun Microsystems Bruce Schneier, Counterpane Systems Eric Thompson, Access Data Tom Parenty, Sybase Technology Demo: The Genie is Out of the Bottle -- A World Wide Web Tour of Good Cryptography Available Outside of the United States 1:45 - 2:45 Addressing Law Enforcement Concerns in a Constitutional Framework Ken Bass, Venabel, Baetjer, Howard and Civiletti Cindy Cohn, McGlashan & Sarrail Michael Froomkin, University of Miami Law School John Gilmore, Electronic Frontier Foundation Grover Norquist, Americans for Tax Reform Nadine Strossen, American Civil Liberties Union Daniel Weitzner, Center for Democracy and Technology 2:45 - 3:00 Conclusion Members of Congress expected to participate include: * Rep. Anna Eshoo (D-CA) * Rep. Tom Campbell (R-CA) * Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-CA) * Sen. Conrad Burns (R-MT) * Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT) (by satellite) --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Sponsors Of The SAFE Forum: America Online American Civil Liberties Union Americans for Tax Reform AT&T Audionet Business Software Alliance Center for Democracy and Technology Center for National Security Studies Commercial Internet eXchange CompuServe Incorporated Computer and Communications Industry Association Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility Cylink Corporation Digital Secured Networks Technology EDS Electronic Frontier Foundation Electronic Messaging Association Electronic Privacy Information Center Information Technology Association of America IEEE - USA ManyMedia MediaCast Media Institute Microsoft Corporation National Association of Manufacturers Netcom Online Communication Services Netscape Communications Corporation Novell, Inc. Oracle Corporation Pacific Telesis Group Pretty Good Privacy, Inc. Prodigy, Inc. Progress and Freedom Foundation Rent-a-Computer Securities Industry Association Software Publishers Association Sun Microsystems, Inc. Sybase, Inc. Voters Telecommunications Watch Wired Magazine --------------------------------------------------------------------------- CORRECTION An earlier Policy Post listed Matt Blaze with Lucent Technologies. That information was incorrect; he is with AT&T Research. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------

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MD5 breaks, etc.
by Perry E. Metzger 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

1) On the question of MD4, it has been demonstrated that one can generate multiple documents with the same hash -- an example was given in a paper a while back of two contracts, identical but for the dollar sum agreed two, with identical MD4 hashes. That demonstrates that MD4 is useless. 2) Hans Dobbertin on May 2nd released a short paper that circulated widely on the net describing collisions in the MD5 compression function. Several people have asked me for references on this. I cannot give you anything -- all I have is postscript of the document, which had not been published in any journal when I last checked. However, the result is widely known. MD5 is *not* something that should be trusted going forward, and I hope the next version of PGP uses SHA-1. Perry

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Re: rsync and md4
by David F. Ogren 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Subject: Re: rsync and md4 To: perry(a)piermont.com, ogren(a)cris.com Cc: markm(a)voicenet.com, Andrew.Tridgell(a)anu.edu.au, cypherpunks(a)toad.com > > "David F. Ogren" writes: > > Are you sure? MD5 is a 128 bit hash, and the probability of collision > with > > a specific random piece of data (of any length) should be 2^-128. I > could > > be wrong, but do you have any explanation of why you think the answer > is > > 2^-64. > > Does the phrase "birthday attack" mean anything to you? But this isn't a birthday attack. Its a comparison between one specific file and one randomly chosen one. > > MD4 is the fastest hash I am aware of. However, there has been some > > successful attacks against two rounds of MD4. Although this is not to > > suggest that MD4 is insecure, MD5 almost as fast (~1.3 times slower) > and > > more secure. > > I'm afraid you are totally wrong here. MD4 has been completely > broken. I wouldn't trust it for anything. In fact, MD5 is no longer > trustworthy, either -- it was broken recently. Stick to SHA. > Unless you are aware of some attack that I'm not, this is the most current information on MD4 and MD5: MD4 has had successful attacks on limited rounds. It has _not_ been completely cracked. MD5 has not been broken. A weakness has been shown, but collisions still cannot be developed. So checksums should still be secure. Additionally, in this case we are more concerned with the chance of random collisions than intentional collisions. In fact, I was probably wrong to suggest MD5. It _is_ more secure, but speed is his first priority, not security. SHA1 is a good hash algorithm as far as security goes (I've used it myself), but it's over three times slower than MD4. - -- David F. Ogren | ogren(a)concentric.net | "A man without religion is like a fish PGP Key ID: 0x6458EB29 | without a bicycle" - ------------------------------|---------------------------------------- Don't know what PGP is? | Need my public key? It's available Send a message to me with the | by server or by sending me a message subject GETPGPINFO | with the subject GETPGPKEY - -- David F. Ogren | ogren(a)concentric.net | "A man without religion is like a fish PGP Key ID: 0x6458EB29 | without a bicycle" - ------------------------------|---------------------------------------- Don't know what PGP is? | Need my public key? It's available Send a message to me with the | by server or by sending me a message subject GETPGPINFO | with the subject GETPGPKEY -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.2 iQEVAwUBMddOi+SLhCBkWOspAQHLTgf7BsDpCO2nhxsHYOunVv8abXWgITexhM/Z vmYWaz2Lgu3tBYZHXIG7B2ijTikZ7u8RgMGd9esipjFxOks1bHRQwYbVbWeDUDb3 O0c5TmPPmZt/7PscUEw1D3hhtj8HeGmn9pfu0y/I54OnMIJzbvNMICpMtLLDXJCu PhpUoAfamyRdWl9OYAvZ3LBMLBdGagzCh/jPxCQ9gEBq0aYMkxF1/qlfIMdmegow H/uL+TRgN5roTIKDZPGPZWYbdLbf0NT00avPz5qKaA5BkOpxYgeRKtoBHdYC5krH O2NZGZqb5LRKgxW9+IvCWoUoJQTB6IXP+YDU7p4pbn/Y/QORSHzqGA== =WA0Y -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

2 1

Re: rsync and md4
by David F. Ogren 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- > > "David F. Ogren" writes: > > > I'm afraid you are totally wrong here. MD4 has been completely > > > broken. I wouldn't trust it for anything. In fact, MD5 is no longer > > > trustworthy, either -- it was broken recently. Stick to SHA. > > > > > > > MD4 has had successful attacks on limited rounds. It has _not_ been > > completely cracked. > > Could you please quit spewing inaccurate information? > > Dobbertin completely cracked MD4 already, and found MD5 collisions in > a document circulated on May 2nd that mean it isn't far behind. > > The comments you are making are dangerous because they encourage > people who don't know better to think that hashes which are known > unsafe are safe. Please quit posting until you start monitoring the > field enough to have accurate sources of information. > I stand by my statements. I have followed the current developments regarding MD5 with interest, and am using SHA1 in the program that I am currently authoring because of its MD5's weaknesses. However, MD5 (and MD4) have not been completely cracked. The problems that you bring up have to do with situations where an active attacker develops a slightly different pair of documents with the same hash. Although this is highly undesirable characteristic for a hash function, and shows a weakness in the function that may eventually lead to its being completely cracked, it does not mean that a fraudulent document can be created from an already signed document. This is an old argument and I don't want to get into it here. However, there a lots of people that who still think MD5 can be safely used to a) sign documents that you create yourself, and b) sign documents that you have made cosmetic changes to. Irregardless, this argument is moot. This thread is titled "rsync and md4". It is a discussion about which hash function suits this particular purpose and he is not particularly concerned with resistance to deliberate attack. In this case MD4 will function adequately. - -- David F. Ogren | ogren(a)concentric.net | "A man without religion is like a fish PGP Key ID: 0x6458EB29 | without a bicycle" - ------------------------------|---------------------------------------- Don't know what PGP is? | Need my public key? It's available Send a message to me with the | by server or by sending me a message subject GETPGPINFO | with the subject GETPGPKEY -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.2 iQEVAwUBMddp3uSLhCBkWOspAQEI1Qf/VLg6ak6Y/VfbynFhCcA69RZKAQ/C6pCx DMdz3OFitOwQM/csjTPBs7jue/3ArIQ+jevBOjp/NyAoJ4U8+Np4yv7ksmpEjTKq EWq4DcvAB7MgpgJ72A92tO55vQo8AjYPmcZT2LhqeiTg+R6yL437T4gqS0ZSs7Ud 7e1anp7m72shSel6OKsxtfgiyVDlVi6mdtpXlLegWxcZhPaRYaZen3mHJ3JdxCpc EsQupdrNVxBGMuxKeBwlkjCxD1TbqFpHTodh0oapEDScjpzTMmQeHYavmboI+Pys 32jt1PI9JEPIDracYcI3ovkgvR5VmMlKhAPDXcYbr2MWeBbVRDOaJw== =9dqv -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

4 6

List of reliable remailers
by Raph Levien 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

I operate a remailer pinging service which collects detailed information about remailer features and reliability. To use it, just finger remailer-list(a)kiwi.cs.berkeley.edu There is also a Web version of the same information, plus lots of interesting links to remailer-related resources, at: http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~raph/remailer-list.html This information is used by premail, a remailer chaining and PGP encrypting client for outgoing mail. For more information, see: http://www.c2.org/~raph/premail.html For the PGP public keys of the remailers, finger pgpkeys(a)kiwi.cs.berkeley.edu This is the current info: REMAILER LIST This is an automatically generated listing of remailers. The first part of the listing shows the remailers along with configuration options and special features for each of the remailers. The second part shows the 12-day history, and average latency and uptime for each remailer. You can also get this list by fingering remailer-list(a)kiwi.cs.berkeley.edu. $remailer{"extropia"} = "<remail(a)miron.vip.best.com> cpunk pgp special"; $remailer{"portal"} = "<hfinney(a)shell.portal.com> cpunk pgp hash"; $remailer{"alumni"} = "<hal(a)alumni.caltech.edu> cpunk pgp hash"; $remailer{"c2"} = "<remail(a)c2.org> eric pgp hash reord"; $remailer{"penet"} = "<anon(a)anon.penet.fi> penet post"; $remailer{"flame"} = "<remailer(a)flame.alias.net> cpunk mix pgp. hash latent cut post reord"; $remailer{"mix"} = "<mixmaster(a)remail.obscura.com> cpunk mix pgp hash latent cut ek ksub reord ?"; $remailer{"replay"} = "<remailer(a)replay.com> cpunk mix pgp hash latent cut post ek"; $remailer{"ecafe"} = "<cpunk(a)remail.ecafe.org> cpunk mix"; $remailer{"amnesia"} = "<amnesia(a)chardos.connix.com> cpunk mix pgp hash latent cut ksub"; $remailer{'alpha'} = '<alias(a)alpha.c2.org> alpha pgp'; $remailer{'nymrod'} = '<nymrod(a)nym.jpunix.com> alpha pgp'; $remailer{"lead"} = "<mix(a)zifi.genetics.utah.edu> cpunk pgp hash latent cut ek"; $remailer{"treehole"} = "<remailer(a)mockingbird.alias.net> cpunk pgp hash latent cut ek"; $remailer{"nemesis"} = "<remailer(a)meaning.com> cpunk pgp hash latent cut"; $remailer{"exon"} = "<remailer(a)remailer.nl.com> cpunk pgp hash latent cut ek"; $remailer{"vegas"} = "<remailer(a)vegas.gateway.com> cpunk pgp hash latent cut"; $remailer{"haystack"} = "<haystack(a)holy.cow.net> cpunk mix pgp hash latent cut ek"; $remailer{"ncognito"} = "<ncognito(a)rigel.cyberpass.net> mix cpunk pgp hash latent"; $remailer{"lucifer"} = "<lucifer(a)dhp.com> cpunk mix pgp hash"; $remailer{"jam"} = "<remailer(a)cypherpunks.ca> cpunk mix pgp hash latent cut ek"; catalyst(a)netcom.com is _not_ a remailer. lmccarth(a)ducie.cs.umass.edu is _not_ a remailer. usura(a)replay.com is _not_ a remailer. Groups of remailers sharing a machine or operator: (c2 alpha) (flame replay) (alumni portal) Use "premail -getkeys pgpkeys(a)kiwi.cs.berkeley.edu" to get PGP keys for the remailers. Fingering this address works too. Note: The remailer list now includes information for the alpha nymserver. Last update: Mon 1 Jul 96 6:47:34 PDT remailer email address history latency uptime ----------------------------------------------------------------------- flame remailer(a)flame.alias.net +++++__.-++- 10:04:50 100.00% alumni hal(a)alumni.caltech.edu #######*+*## 1:13 100.00% ecafe cpunk(a)remail.ecafe.org ####*#+--##* 14:24 99.98% replay remailer(a)replay.com *********+** 4:18 99.98% nemesis remailer(a)meaning.com +**** 23:43 99.98% c2 remail(a)c2.org ++++++++-+++ 51:58 99.97% portal hfinney(a)shell.portal.com +#######+*## 1:24 99.95% haystack haystack(a)holy.cow.net *-+#++++###+ 9:25 99.94% exon remailer(a)remailer.nl.com ++*******+** 5:49 99.94% lead mix(a)zifi.genetics.utah.edu ++++++++++++ 39:16 99.94% nymrod nymrod(a)nym.jpunix.com ** ****#+#-# 12:31 99.92% mix mixmaster(a)remail.obscura.com __.-_.-.--- 18:42:17 99.88% treehole remailer(a)mockingbird.alias.net +++ -..+++-+ 5:28:11 99.24% amnesia amnesia(a)chardos.connix.com ----------- 4:20:06 99.22% penet anon(a)anon.penet.fi __ _-..... 44:52:17 99.20% extropia remail(a)miron.vip.best.com --.-------- 5:15:59 97.93% ncognito ncognito(a)rigel.cyberpass.net -.___.-._ 22:24:17 97.35% alpha alias(a)alpha.c2.org ******-+++** 38:56 96.99% jam remailer(a)cypherpunks.ca * 19:19 96.68% lucifer lucifer(a)dhp.com +++ 56:06 95.20% vegas remailer(a)vegas.gateway.com #**-#*** 16:52 60.55% History key * # response in less than 5 minutes. * * response in less than 1 hour. * + response in less than 4 hours. * - response in less than 24 hours. * . response in more than 1 day. * _ response came back too late (more than 2 days). cpunk A major class of remailers. Supports Request-Remailing-To: field. eric A variant of the cpunk style. Uses Anon-Send-To: instead. penet The third class of remailers (at least for right now). Uses X-Anon-To: in the header. pgp Remailer supports encryption with PGP. A period after the keyword means that the short name, rather than the full email address, should be used as the encryption key ID. hash Supports ## pasting, so anything can be put into the headers of outgoing messages. ksub Remailer always kills subject header, even in non-pgp mode. nsub Remailer always preserves subject header, even in pgp mode. latent Supports Matt Ghio's Latent-Time: option. cut Supports Matt Ghio's Cutmarks: option. post Post to Usenet using Post-To: or Anon-Post-To: header. ek Encrypt responses in reply blocks using Encrypt-Key: header. special Accepts only pgp encrypted messages. mix Can accept messages in Mixmaster format. reord Attempts to foil traffic analysis by reordering messages. Note: I'm relying on the word of the remailer operator here, and haven't verified the reord info myself. mon Remailer has been known to monitor contents of private email. filter Remailer has been known to filter messages based on content. If not listed in conjunction with mon, then only messages destined for public forums are subject to filtering. Raph Levien

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Re: Hardware RNG
by jamesd＠echeque.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 06:23 AM 6/30/96 -0700, Timothy C. May wrote: > While radioactive decay is unpredictable (so are a lot of things, by the > way), there are all kinds of biases that reduce the apparent entropy. > Detector "dead time" is a classic one (basically, the detector can't detect > counts during a post-pulse recovery time...probably not a problem at low > count rates, but an example of how subtle things can sneak in). If he has more than eight bits of timing resolution, such biases will have no affect. He is using his non uniformly distributed random number to select a uniformly distributed pseudo random number. Provided that the does not attempt to get more entropy out than he puts in, the result should be a uniformly distributed truly random number. --------------------------------------------------------------------- | 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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FTS2000 Security Info and RFP
by Mark O. Aldrich 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

The URL's for FTS2000 RFP, Security Policy data, and assorted sundries are: http://post.fts2k.gsa.gov/ (the official government stuff) http://204.70.134.242/policy/ (This appears to be an MCI server and I don't know if they know that this stuff is online) Enjoy. ------------------------------------------------------------------------- |Just as the strength of the Internet is |Mark Aldrich | |chaos, so the strength of our liberty |GRCI INFOSEC Engineering | |depends upon the chaos and cacophony of |maldrich(a)grci.com | |the unfettered speech the First Amendment|MAldrich(a)dockmaster.ncsc.mil | |protects - District Judge Stewart Dalzell| | |_______________________________________________________________________| |The author is PGP Empowered. Public key at: finger maldrich(a)grci.com | | The opinions expressed herein are strictly those of the author | | and my employer gets no credit for them whatsoever. | -------------------------------------------------------------------------

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Re: rsync and md4 (my final comments)
by David F. Ogren 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- > > "David F. Ogren" writes: > > I stand by my statements. > > Then you have lost all your reputation with me. If you don't even have > the integrity to admit that you are wrong, you are obviously not a > reasonable source of information. > At this point, I can see that we have agreed to disagree. Mr. Watt has kindly quoted the exact text from Dobbertin, which I did not have handy. Let the readers of this list decide for themselves in regards to the security of MD5. But I wanted to make two last comments before this thread (finally!) dies. 1. I think that you will agree that MD4 will work fine for Mr. Tridgell's program, irregardless of your criticisms. He specifically stated that he was not concerned about intentional collisions, only random ones. 2. (quoted from Mr. Perry in an article entitled "MD5 breaks, etc.") > checked. However, the result is widely known. MD5 is *not* > something that should be trusted going forward, and I hope the next > version of PGP uses SHA-1. As I understand the current plans, PGP 3.0 _will_ incorporate a SHA option. In fact, I believe that there may already be "bootleg" versions that incorporate SHA. - -- David F. Ogren | ogren(a)concentric.net | "A man without religion is like a fish PGP Key ID: 0x6458EB29 | without a bicycle" - ------------------------------|---------------------------------------- Don't know what PGP is? | Need my public key? It's available Send a message to me with the | by server or by sending me a message subject GETPGPINFO | with the subject GETPGPKEY -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.2 iQEVAwUBMdfvtuSLhCBkWOspAQGkQwf5AQTJbqJ7YQOCSaLWK7qjn0Fr0AzF9Cyb Bd2WJcHisQZ4WxwPy41SF3uUNXvgyES11rfvqa7SoqDU1QuO4N3I8PZ5+zrlwDpI 2Yb/wHyQ2jPtCVSWCmoyZfbw7a9086wWbg+N4IDuefPdgI+SqNiYmQnEsrh1+f9T L2/gC6GLXFHtl68guYTGjI3XIgHcILWkqjuo19rzw+4NXAQ3kPxTaBLGcxuMYEPl E5IbuKZ3mN4CZIDTSSctr78cthsr79KgW5NwlBW5AcCkU1XnhALVTN0vNEf2tILN jl0BdVALNbkyFdTAE7/5z6pDcThgKR/68cRrTBTRFlq1WAadXAKV8w== =drZ2 -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

2 1

MD5 breaks, etc.
by John Hemming - CEO MarketNet 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Accepting for a moment that MD5 collisions have been identified. From a commercial aspect I am concerned to ensure the cryptographic security of our ECheque system. Just a thought on the use of MD5. If two signatures are appended to the same document both using MD5, but one either a) Signing all but the last octet of the message ... or b) Signing the whole of the message and signature. Would that not make the determination of useable collisions either impracticable or impossible? I must admit I am inclined to encode additionally the key components of the message (amount paid, to whom) as well as the hash using a Private Key encryption. After all we have at least 60 octets of important data that can be encoded in this manner using one simple encryption sequence, this can cover account credited and amount easily. If someone can collision codge the description I am not desperately concerned. Alternately, could someone please point me at the SHA algorithm.

2 1

Sameer got plugged on C-SPAN
by Alex Strasheim 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Janlori Goldman, at the Center for Democracy & Technology, just mentioned Sameer's anonymizer on C-SPAN during a segment of Internet privacy. They showed a shot of the screen and everything.

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Re: rsync and md4
by David F. Ogren 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- > Look the point is that Ogren seems to think this is some sort of a > minor technicality and that we can safely ignore it most of the > time. Thats simply not prudent. Once you find that the key properties > of your cryptographic hash have fallen and you have to be > exceptionally careful about what you put through the hash lest an > attacker somehow influence it, you've lost the game. MD5 is no longer > trustworthy. I agree that one needn't run screaming in the streets, > but Ogren made it sound as though this wasn't a matter of > concern. Thats simply wrong. Saying that leads people to a completely > incorrect conclusion. And I told myself I wouldn't respond to this thread anymore. Oh well. I just don't want to be misinterpreted. I never meant to imply (and don't think that I did), that the attacks against MD5 were insignificant. As I said, I'm moving to SHA in any software I develop from now on. What I said was the attacks were insignificant in the application being considered (rsync) and that MD5 was not completely broken. Come on, all the guy wanted was a fast 128 bit checksum. For example, I am still using PGP clearsigning which, of course, uses MD5. Dobbertin indicates that his attack cannot be used against me as long as I only sign messages that I create myself. Yes, PGP would work better with SHA. I'd be able to sign documents that others created with (more) certainty. But that doesn't mean that I should stop using PGP. P.S. I apologize to the list for flooding this list recently. Unfortunately, I took it a little too personally when Perry told me to "stop spewing inaccurate information" and to "quit posting". It was late, and I let him bait me more than I ordinarily would. Now I find myself running in circles trying to make sure that I've made myself clear and that no one else (other than Perry) is misintepreting what I'm saying. - -- David F. Ogren | ogren(a)concentric.net | "A man without religion is like a fish PGP Key ID: 0x6458EB29 | without a bicycle" - ------------------------------|---------------------------------------- Don't know what PGP is? | Need my public key? It's available Send a message to me with the | by server or by sending me a message subject GETPGPINFO | with the subject GETPGPKEY -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.2 iQEVAwUBMdgDbuSLhCBkWOspAQGPeQf/QJB109Gjd3s/ALodykZgH0S6FCs3wHK7 OiTUpxBF5lwojhBSrz7ej1RnAW+Uq5Lcz/GyWqH6rvYPPI1uZ3023UAV3nqH8qXY nnznPfvTkUQgSjaQu/YRvWlTWwrNsW/KIR6iVbwVDnbUnvuAjUJskWyAg1Wz4zIV 8PV8RnrHSTT06j5LrCtiD0eWr/NgmpgIFS5+ID5z9/ikMV6xF4zSrlubELFFJUUT M3nZWDlr7SaU0hFLQt3yu6oSqAjKSGrPsU1QCJ/Y1zdS49R/cLIzOzbQ42R1Cyot hMnAayTqNdUI/goa2WAbda3gYpRodTA2GpciNj7u3xs0Ik/1TIEqlw== =4x7D -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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Re: [Fwd: Doubleclick]
by Scott Wyant 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 12:43 PM 6/30/96 -0700, you wrote: > >> > >Date: Wed, 26 Jun 1996 19:42:00 -0700 >> > >From: Scott Wyant <scott_wyant(a)loop.com> Subject: COMMENT: >> > >Cookie dough >> > > >> > >If you're like me, you never went to a site called "doubleclick." >> > >So how did they give you a cookie? After all, the idea of the >> > >cookie, according to the specs published by Netscape, is to make a >> > >more efficient connection between the server the delivers the >> > >cookie and the client machine which receives it. >> > >But we have never connected to "doubleclick." > >Scott must have. Navigator is very picky about where a cookie comes >from and what is put in the domain field of the cookie. > Nope. I'm afraid your information is incorrect here. I've also watched other sites hand me a double-click cookie. And no, I don't work for "DoubleClick." Interesting premise, though. Scott Wyant Spinoza Ltd.

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FW: "CyberPayment Infrastructure"
by Blanc Weber 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

>---------- >From: Dick Moores[SMTP:rdm@netcom.com] >Sent: Sunday, June 30, 1996 2:13 PM >To: SEASIGI >Subject: "CyberPayment Infrastructure" > >"CyberPayment Infrastructure" is the title of a new article from the >Journal of Online Law. I have an email subscription, but there's also >a >web site, http://www.wm.edu/law/publications/jol . The new article >should be on the web site soon, but if it's not, I'll send it to anyone >who asks. It's about 20k. Here's the abstract: > > {Article 6} > > CyberPayment Infrastructure > Henry H. Perritt, Jr. [NOTE 1] > > [Cite as Henry H. Perritt, Jr., > "CyberPayment Infrastructure," > 1996 J. Online L. art. 6, par. ___] > >Abstract > >{par. 1} An essential requisite for commerce on the Internet >is the existence of a reliable and secure system to handle >payment for goods and services purchased. The basic >technology for such systems is public key encryption. >Professor Perritt explains how this technology can be used >to create a variety of "payment infrastructures." Any >payment system must meet certain requirements: merchants can >depend on it to be paid; consumers have access to the means >of payment through intermediaries like "certificate >authorities;" these intermediaries understand their >responsibilities and risks; and existing financial >institutions understand their responsibilities in the world >of non-paper-based financial instruments. Much of what is >necessary can be accomplished within today's legal framework >without need of new laws. > >----------------------------------------------------------------- > >Dick Moores rdm(a)netcom.com > >

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Re: [Fwd: Doubleclick]
by Tim Dierks 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 10:24 AM 7/1/96, Scott Wyant wrote: >At 12:43 PM 6/30/96 -0700, jon(a)aggroup.com wrote: >>> > >From: Scott Wyant <scott_wyant(a)loop.com> Subject: COMMENT: >>> > > >>> > >If you're like me, you never went to a site called "doubleclick." >>> > >So how did they give you a cookie? After all, the idea of the >>> > >cookie, according to the specs published by Netscape, is to make a >>> > >more efficient connection between the server the delivers the >>> > >cookie and the client machine which receives it. >>> > >But we have never connected to "doubleclick." >> >>Scott must have. Navigator is very picky about where a cookie comes >>from and what is put in the domain field of the cookie. > >Nope. I'm afraid your information is incorrect here. I've also watched >other sites hand me a double-click cookie. The way doubleclick works is that the sites who contract with them to sell advertising space insert a URL into their page which fetches the doubleclick ad banner. For example, the guys at TroutHeads, Inc. (www.troutheads.com) would insert an HTML IMAGE tag with an HREF referring to ad.doubleclick.net; that then results in _your_ browser doing an HTTP transaction with ad.doubleclick.net; doubleclick can then hand you all the cookies it wants. Anytime you fetch an image, you're visiting a site, and because it's automatic, you can easily visit a lot of sites you never knew you were going to. >From <URL:http://www.doubleclick.net/web_sites/htmlchange.htm>: For any HTML document you wish to display an ad banner for, simply add the following HTML tags: <CENTER><A HREF="http://ad.doubleclick.net/jump/MY_URL"> <IMG SRC="http://ad.doubleclick.net/ad/MY_URL" WIDTH=468 HEIGHT=60 ISMAP></A> Click on graphic to find out more!</CENTER> Where MY_URL is the URL for the HTML document displaying the ad banner. For example: <CENTER><A HREF="http://ad.doubleclick.net/jump/www.iaf.net/htmlchange.htm"> <IMG SRC="http://ad.doubleclick.net/ad/www.iaf.net/htmlchange.htm" WIDTH=468 HEIGHT=60 ISMAP></A> Click on graphic to find out more!</CENTER> - Tim Tim Dierks - Software Haruspex - tim(a)dierks.org "...when ketchup finally comes out of the bottle, it is going a good 25 miles a year.... It rolls along at three-thousandths of a mile an hour. Heinz knows the speed because it has a device called a Bostwickometer, a chutelike contraption that calculates the speed at which ketchup travels." - The New York Times, June 12, 1996

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Technology and Privacy
by jya＠pipeline.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

The Washington Post, July 1, 1996, p. A16. Technology and Privacy [Letter] In reference to the May 31 editorial "Plant Lights and Privacy" commenting on an 11th Circuit Court of Appeals decision to uphold the use of thermal imaging in cases involving indoor marijuana growing operations: The U.S. Supreme Court had just declined to review that 11th Circuit decision. On June 11, The Post published a letter from Jack King ["When Government Can Look Through Walls"] warning us that thermal imaging, as developed by the military and as used by civilian law enforcement agencies with the cooperation of the military, posed an Orwellian threat to citizens because the government could use the technology to tell if two people were making love in the privacy of their bedroom. To set the record straight, military thermal imaging is used to support civilian law enforcement only after other probable cause for a search warrant, such as power bills, observation of boarded-up windows, vents on the roof to draw away heat and buys by confidential informants, are documented. The military is then called in, using thermal imagers, to determine if there is an unusual heat source in the house as detected by heat escaping from the house. In dozens of cases where thermal imaging was used, I have not observed one case where it could detect the activity of people in a house, let alone a bedroom. I also have not observed the technology to have the ability to detect what people are doing in any room behind closed doors, covered windows and walls other than to detect blurs or shadows moving around behind light curtains. The United States v. Cusumano language quoted by Mr. King was reversed last month by the court because the original three judges decided it was an issue that didn't need deciding, i.e. the constitutionality of thermal imaging absent a search warrant, and did not exercise "judicial restraint." The trend to Mr. King's "militarization" of the war on drugs, based on a decision by then-secretary of defense Richard Cheney that drug use represented a threat to our national security, is being carried out with restraint, respect for the law and an appropriate appreciation for the privacy of our citizens. Barrie A. Vernon Alexandria The writer is an attorney with the National Guard Bureau at the Pentagon working in support of the counter-drug directorate. [End]

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Re: The Net and Terrorism
by jya＠pipeline.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

To complement Tim May's essay on the Net and Terrorism: The Washington Post, July 1, 1996, Business, p. 22. Keeping the Military in High Tech [Excerpts] At Camber Corporation in Springfield, Va., posters, comic strips and colorful Silicon Graphics Inc. computers dot the office landscape. Employees banter as they work. Technical director Bryan Ware, 26, serves as the bridge between the college-age computer programmers and the military commanders who authorize the projects. "A lot of military people don't know or trust technology," he said. "A lot of computer nerds don't know or trust the military. I know and like both." The Army had a congressional mandate to prepare for terrorists using chemical, biological or even nuclear weapons and for civilian doctors having to figure out how to treat the victims. To that end, the Army contracted Camber to create the Nuclear Biological Chemical Medical Defense Information Server which has many more bells and whistles than the average Web site. On the opening page, "danger" signs line the background. Articles on the latest terrorist catastrophes appear in the center of the screen. Black illuminated links to the site's library, to news and to other information fill the left-hand side. Click on the library link, and medical manuals on nuclear, biological and chemical warfare treatments appear. To the left, a video section link becomes visible. Click on it, and an interactive session begins between the user and an actor playing the role of nuclear, chemical or biological warfare victim. If the user administers the proper treatment (it's good to read the library manuals before going to the video), the victim will survive. If the user fails to administer the correct procedures, the victim will die. "We try to have fun," said Alex Neifert, 21, who's working on the Army Web site project for the summer before heading back to the University of Michigan's Graduate School of Information in the fall. "We're hoping to improve the preparedness of the military and civilian communities to deal with these types of problems. This site will give doctors access to important information that could save lives in the event of a terrorist action," said the Army officer in charge of the project. Camber and the military hope that 1,000 visitors will view the Web site daily when it officially opens July 3. To access the site, point your browser to: www.nbc.gov/. -----

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Re: Technology and Privacy
by declan＠well.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

The June 11 letter was from Jack King, a quite clueful and thoughtful D.C. attorney who has been diligent in tracking the war on (some) drugs. Hardly an alarmist. Why can't I quite bring myself to trust "Barrie A. Vernon?" -Declan > The Washington Post, July 1, 1996, p. A16. > > > Technology and Privacy [Letter] > > > In reference to the May 31 editorial "Plant Lights and > Privacy" commenting on an 11th Circuit Court of Appeals > decision to uphold the use of thermal imaging in cases > involving indoor marijuana growing operations: The U.S. > Supreme Court had just declined to review that 11th Circuit > decision. > > On June 11, The Post published a letter from Jack King > ["When Government Can Look Through Walls"] warning us that > thermal imaging, as developed by the military and as used > by civilian law enforcement agencies with the cooperation > of the military, posed an Orwellian threat to citizens > because the government could use the technology to tell if > two people were making love in the privacy of their > bedroom. > > To set the record straight, military thermal imaging is > used to support civilian law enforcement only after other > probable cause for a search warrant, such as power bills, > observation of boarded-up windows, vents on the roof to > draw away heat and buys by confidential informants, are > documented. The military is then called in, using thermal > imagers, to determine if there is an unusual heat source in > the house as detected by heat escaping from the house. In > dozens of cases where thermal imaging was used, I have not > observed one case where it could detect the activity of > people in a house, let alone a bedroom. I also have not > observed the technology to have the ability to detect what > people are doing in any room behind closed doors, covered > windows and walls other than to detect blurs or shadows > moving around behind light curtains. > > The United States v. Cusumano language quoted by Mr. King > was reversed last month by the court because the original > three judges decided it was an issue that didn't need > deciding, i.e. the constitutionality of thermal imaging > absent a search warrant, and did not exercise "judicial > restraint." > > The trend to Mr. King's "militarization" of the war on > drugs, based on a decision by then-secretary of defense > Richard Cheney that drug use represented a threat to our > national security, is being carried out with restraint, > respect for the law and an appropriate appreciation for the > privacy of our citizens. > > Barrie A. Vernon > Alexandria > The writer is an attorney with the National Guard Bureau at > the Pentagon working in support of the counter-drug > directorate. > > [End] > > > > > >

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Re: mocking paranoia
by Deranged Mutant 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

On 29 Jun 96 at 5:58, nelson(a)crynwr.com wrote: > Earlier, someone mocked someone else for being paranoid. Sorry, but > this is a mistake. By definition, you have a non-empty threat model > when you set out to encrypt; therefore you must be paranoid to use > encryption. [..] Depends. If you're paranoia is irrational, then you may do irrational things that will hurt... For instance, there are people who believe that the NSA has control over every C compiler on the planet which inserts a back door into any version of PGP, and therefore the only 'safe' PGP is v1.0. Rob. --- No-frills sig. Befriend my mail filter by sending a message with the subject "send help" Key-ID: 5D3F2E99 1996/04/22 wlkngowl(a)unix.asb.com (root@magneto) AB1F4831 1993/05/10 Deranged Mutant <wlkngowl(a)unix.asb.com> Send a message with the subject "send pgp-key" for a copy of my key.

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(fwd) Re: Cookie problem here , cookie problem there ...
by frogfarm＠yakko.cs.wmich.edu 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

[Given the recent upset here regarding cookies, of which I only have the most cursory knowledge, I hope some will find this tidbit of use.] >From: jerryw(a)convex.com (Jerry Whelan) Newsgroups: comp.infosystems.www.authoring.cgi,comp.infosystems.www.authoring.misc,comp.infosystems.www.browsers.misc Subject: Re: Cookie problem here , cookie problem there ... Date: 1 Jul 1996 14:28:39 -0500 Lines: 28 In article <4r8m92$4u(a)news.istar.ca>, Gord Jeoffroy <crs1583(a)inforamp.net> wrote: -} Margaret <margaret(a)werple.net.au> wrote: -} -} >You can disable the warnings, you cannot disable the cookies. I am -} >cancelling every cookie I encounter (I usually avoid sites heavy -} >with cookies), reason - I hate invasion of privacy and in particular, -} >junk email from direct marketing. -} -} -} I completely agree with your sentiment, by the way. I'm planning to -} add an editorial to an online magazine I'm beginning. The article will -} be full of server-side includes to demonstrate to the person reading -} it that Big Brother definitely is watching. I don't have any connection with these guys, except that I use their software. Check out www.privnet.com and the Internet Fast Forward netscape plugin for Windows. It can selectively filter cookie transmissions to web servers as well as some other very cool stuff like filter out unwanted images, including but not limited to advertisements. You will be amazed how much more information you can get on your screen when you filter out the useless images, like the one netscape puts at the top of their home page. -- ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Jerry Whelan -- Information Superman jerryw(a)convex.com -- http://yakko.cs.wmich.edu/~frogfarm ...for the best in unapproved information "We think people like seeing somebody in a uniform on the porch." -US Postal spokeswoman, quoted in AP 1/27/96. I don't know about you, but the only folks I know who'd enjoy seeing someone in uniform on their porch are leathermen...

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Notes from SAFE meeting
by minow＠apple.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Here are my raw, unedited, incomplete, and not to be trusted, notes from the SAFE meeting, July 1, 1996, at Stanford. (ps. thanks to the folk who did an amazing amount of work to put this on.) burns: fbi, cia, nsa presented to senate/congress: said nothing that wasn't already in public record (newspapers) telia (Swedish Telecom) representative (Mattias Soederholm) -- can't import strong encryption as NSA claims it would harass company. doesn't like having to tell customers that USA will read their mail. Whit Diffie - nuclear non-proliferation: proliferation of crypto does more good than harm: make sure that weapons are under your control: extensive development since Kennedy administration. Positive control over nuclear weapon: crypto. ---- Technical panel ---- whit diffie, eric thompson (forced decryption, fbi is a client), bruce schneier, tom parenty (sybase), matt blaze. We came to discuss policics, but were charged with discussing technology. key lengths -- too much jargon. question is work factor: how much work to break system. public keys used only for signatures; actual encryption uses "normal" crypto. 40 bits == 2^40 operations to get a key. First: two different points of view: security officer: every message must be secure, even against strong opponent. intelligence agency wants to read every message. 30, 60, 90, 120. 2^30 == one billion. any pc can recover any key. billion billion == des. very clear that can do it, not easy, however. 90 bits billion billion billion. won't be do-able in lifetime of business personal data. 120 bits can't be do-able in forseeable future. but, point of view of an intercept organization; meet in the middle? won't satisfy either party's interest. 40 bit can be exported. last year, demonstrated that can break 40 bit keys. Takes on order of few weeks to a month of Sun workstations. intercept device spends most of its time deciding whether to record data. has a fraction of a second to look at a message, 40 bits too large for intercept on that basis. eric thompson. access data. cryptanalysis -- break codes, build hardware to aid in this. specialize in defining parts and pieces to break e.g., rc40 amd2905 chips on a board breaks in $8,400 engineering cost. Sell under $20,000. little company, not well-funded government agency. des fpga about $1M/7 days per key. off the shelf design using 5 year old chips. what's realistic to expect the nsa, fbi can do? bruce schneier: foreign crypto. is it any good? yes. more done outside usa than inside. many countries asia, europe, pacific have strong groups. algorithm conferences: 90% of papers from outside usa. hard to get funding in usa. more academic research overseas. products with more options. here, products are hamstrung by baggage: key length, escrow. other countries can write without restrictions. best products from former yugoslavian folk working in swedish university. usa corp's cant compete: no talent, government restrictions. losing our share of research, developement, products. as internet becomes ubiquitious, we lose market share. restrictions won't stop, will only hurt us. tom parenty; worked for NSA: "in God we trust, the rest we monitor." key escrow ineffective. can today buy over 500 products from 60 countries. no usa monopoly. www.cypto.com home page; list of pointers for our favorite foreign crypto products (for some value of "our" and some value of "favorite.") crypto controls don't keep crypto out of child pronographer hands. keeps out of hands of legitimate individuals and corporations. criminal, terrorist, can layer foreign crypto on anything usa gov't does. will give protection. moral equiv of wiretaps? no! criminals: criminals talk to criminals, criminals talk to rest of world. crim to crim: use strong crypto. crim to airline, car rental, hotel: can go to airline etc. and subpeona their records: crypto buys nothing for wiretap. solve crimes, prevent crimes? would key escrow prevent oklahoma bombing? but without strong crypto, foreigner working outside usa can take plane down, grab medical records. etc., by hacking insecure networks. matt blaze: key escrow. ignore politics; doesn't make technical sense. fundamental flaws software engineering can't technically solve in a sensible way. first: enormous increase of engineering complexity. difficult to design even simply secure (alice, bob, eve + detective dorothy) system engineering. key escrow makes this even more difficult. engineering problem is too complex. classified world not far ahead of unclassified: blaze discovered protocol failure in clipper chip design -- can circumvent escrow field, can forge messages. reason failures occur not because nsa incompetent, but because problem is extremely difficult. second fundamental problem: operating key escrow center economically and technically difficult. 24/7/365, 2 hour response to law enforcement request. key escrow doesn't distinguish between comm key, data storage keys, and signature keys. releasing latter may be devistating. --- diffie: if you collect data; it will be used (census data used to round up Japanese in California, Jews in Germany, Holland, Denmark). schneier: data harvesting: insurance company wants to know who filled perscription for AZT. crpyto prevents against non-invasive attack; not against fbi entering house to install bugs. diffie: crypto requirements of bad people: terrorists need tight-knit, unified in purpose. tools to secure communication are readily available "closed crypto." ordinary folk need open crypto; delayed by government restrictions. --- legal issues: ken bass: counsel for telecom policy: national security? non-escrowed strong encryption? balance? costs? what are they, what do we lose? escrow born by nsa mission. didn't hear law enforcement concerns initially; now nsa stands behind shield of fbi. nsa/fbi has created arms race among cryptographers. most people would have been happy with des, which nsa can probably break, but not others. nsa discovered it was doing itself great damage by pursuing export controls: but biggest danger to nsa is explosion of protocols, routings, etc. nsa wants to read everything to see what it wants to look at. fbi, however, knows what it wants to see. nsa knows that crypto puts it out of business. nsa needs to preserve fiction of crypto (i.e, that they can read, but you think they can't). fbi wants to preserve status quo. law enforcement can't undertake survelience until it knows who the target is. don't need crypto to find crooks. needed only after you know who the crooks are. fbi foolish to try to convince us that crypto (escrow) is golden bullet of law enforcement. why does fbi need to have crypto to monitor people for whom they already have probable cause (that they need in order to get warrant to wiretap). jim lucire: americans for tax reform. IRS doesn't follow constitutional protections. barry steinhardt (ACLU). law enforcement concerned to preserve its wiretap capability. wiretap happy administration. set records for number of wiretaps (both in criminal and national security). law requiring wiretap capability in telecom infrastructure. additional crimes where wiretap allowed. Janet Reno: four challenges -- threat that encryption poses to law enforcement; ability to search for stored information. wiretapping. why does aclu find it so odious. fourth amendement "particularized suspicion" -- government must have a reason to search you. wiretapping is a "generalized search." in 1970's, 50% of wiretaps produced useful information. now 17% reveal useful info. warrant to search 100 homes to find criminal info in 17 homes? ability to continue wiretapping is in question. what is cost to individuals who are wiretapped? cindy cohn, lawyer: export problems with ITAR: scientists lose. bernstein case (can export crypto research): export rules squelch discussion and reseach: first amendment; right of people to talk about science, art, literature; not just politics. broadness: IATR is overlly broad. defines export to prevent publication. prevents export to "ordinary" people, but only intended to prevent export to terrorist. procedural problems: no hard boundaries. barbara simons (acm) -- copyright? net community suprised when CDA was passed. major voices heard are those of lobbiests; not technology focus; focussed only on their lobby-needs. monitor net? only to preserve copyright. goals will work only if you shut down the net. copyright legislation makes illegal to manufacture device to violate copyright (camera? vcr?) john gilmore (eff): can we trust the courts? won't be won on a single front: need to keep pressure up. "for purposes of first amendment analysis, court finds that source code is speech." will go to supreme court. need help from legislature. want to bring light into export control process. want to have clear rules so you can read rules, build product and export it. michael froomkin (law school, univ of miami): legal status of privacy? can't count on courts. don't take wait and see attitude. wiretap still has some value. Legal status of no export has been successful: no strong crypto in w/95. ken bass question: froomkin: crypto is a constitutional right (200 pages). very few nsa cases; mostly 4th amendment ('drug exception to constituion). korn case, bernstein case. briefs in cases required reading for congress (first amendment). crypto useful to protect free speech (Phil Zimmerman talked about human rights people in Burma who use PGP to protect their messages from government.) [representative zoe lofgren (Dem CA) -- someone proposed 4th amendment in congressional debate amending criminal law. Defeated on party lines.] implication for information sharing between cia/fbi/nsa with foreign intelligence agency? guatamala tragedy example of problem. the dumb criminal theory? blow up buildings with trucks they rent in their own names. --- With apologies for incoherence, errors, and incompleteness --- Martin Minow minow(a)apple.com

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Sameer on C-SPAN
by bluebreeze＠nym.jpunix.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

:From: Alex Strasheim <alex(a)crawfish.suba.com> :Date: Mon, 1 Jul 1996 11:32:21 -0500 (CDT) : :Janlori Goldman, at the Center for Democracy & Technology, just mentioned :Sameer's anonymizer on C-SPAN during a segment of Internet privacy. : :They showed a shot of the screen and everything. Not everything. No picture of Sameer!? That's what I'd like to see.

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Iron Censorship
by Duncan Frissell 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

The New York Times reports that: "Tipped off by an anonymous source named "nobody," Simon & Schuster Inc. and its literary police are engaged in the Internet equivalent of a high-speed car chase: tracking down a runaway book pirated on right-wing and anarchist sites on the World Wide Web. In the last month, the publishing house's monitors have discovered more than seven Internet sites containing the text of "Report from Iron Mountain," first published in 1967 and intended as political satire, and re-released early this year by a Simon & Schuster imprint, the Free Press." http://www.nytimes.com/library/cyber/week/0701iron-mountain.html Taking up the challenge, I fired up AltaVista and quickly found: http://www.cwi.nl/htbin/jack/mailfetch.py?2383 (2646 lines) I haven't checked this version against my dog-eared first edition so I don't know if this one has been modified by the Great Enemy. DCF "Who wonders what ever happened to the Regional Government Conspiracy. Anyone out there remember "Blame Metro", "Terrible 1313" and other chronicles of what used to be called the Metropolitan Government movement?"

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Re: rsync and md4
by David Rosoff 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- At 11.36 AM 7/1/96 -0400, David F. Ogren wrote: >2. >(quoted from Mr. Perry in an article entitled "MD5 breaks, etc.") > >> checked. However, the result is widely known. MD5 is *not* >> something that should be trusted going forward, and I hope the next >> version of PGP uses SHA-1. > >As I understand the current plans, PGP 3.0 _will_ incorporate a SHA option. >In fact, I believe that there may already be "bootleg" versions that >incorporate SHA. What is the difference between SHA and SHA-1? Is this algorithm subject to the same licensing as MD5? Could someone point me to such a bootleg version for DOS, please? Thanks. =============================================================================== David Rosoff (nihongo o sukoshi dekiru) ----------------> drosoff(a)arc.unm.edu For PGP key 0xD37692F9, finger drosoff(a)acoma.arc.unm.edu 0xD37692F9 Key fingerprint = 25 7D AA 01 85 41 43 89 50 5A 33 76 F1 F1 99 67 Non-technical beginner's guide to PGP ---> http://www.arc.unm.edu/~drosoff/pgp/ Anonymous ok, PGP ok. If it's not PGP-signed, you know that I didn't write it. === === === === === === === === === === === === === === === === === === === === "Truth is stranger than fiction, especially when truth is being defined by the O.J. Simpson Defense Team." -Dave Barry -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.2 iQCVAwUBMdiLyBguzHDTdpL5AQHACgP/dmJJ6aQ0ZVlHN3WcAsPkaGoAypU/iCz4 F8HSK6nxbmG+pBd5+82Flzqpquy23Wfp+uk2l+CIv7oygoOMXVvadRLTQKXZEe+h 8/rk0pLATszwLakwa427P5xgGs4mfwvKjzBi0LpEIu1qkUmWYGQphl7KPAumdLc+ +3Wpc0INmHY= =qXUq -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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Re: rsync and md4 [NON-CRYPTO ALGORITHM]
by frantz＠netcom.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 10:50 AM 6/30/96 +1000, Andrew Tridgell wrote: >It effectively creates binary diffs of the two files, without direct >(local) access to both files. As far as I know this is a new type of >algorithm. I worked with an algorithm which sounds similar to this one back about 20 years ago when creating a diff for VM/370 at Tymshare. Here's a quick description of the algorithm so you can see how much the hashing discussion below applies to your problem. (1) Chose a way to break the files into "units". We chose line ends. (2) Hash each unit in both files making two vectors of hashes. (3) Identify which units exist once and only once in a file by: (3a) Initialize a (large) vector of 2-bit entries to all zeros. (3b) Use the hash of each unit to index the vector. If the entry is 00 change it to 01. If it is 01 change it to 10. If it is 10 leave it alone. (4) And the two 2-bit entry vectors together to get the units that exist once and only once in both files. These units are anchors of similarity between the files. (5) Find the hashes which represent these anchors of similarity in both files and link them together. (6) Link the neighbors of already linked units. (7) The unlinked hashes represent differences between the two files. Note that this algorithm finds units that have been moved. I had to do something intelligent with this information to allow for diff-like output. To handle binary files you may need to change the definition of "unit". We used a simple barber poll hash. We went for a number of years before we had a hash failure. (I know, there was a bug in the code that handled hash failures.) A hash based on a CRC calculation would probably be better. ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Bill Frantz | The Internet may fairly be | Periwinkle -- Consulting (408)356-8506 | regarded as a never-ending | 16345 Englewood Ave. frantz(a)netcom.com | worldwide conversation. | Los Gatos, CA 95032, USA

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Info on alleged new German digital wiretapping law?
by Rich Graves 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- None of the Europeans I ran into at today's SAFE conference had even heard of the legislation decried at http://fight-censorship.dementia.org/fight-censorship/dl?num=3027 and in alt.fan.ernst-zundel. What's up? - -rich http://www.stanford.edu/~llurch/ send mail with subject line "send pgp key" for my key or "911" to page me -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.2 iQBVAwUBMdiyIpNcNyVVy0jxAQEi9QH7BglmZ3rtAnAcKp+5sMQzvWs8WUFXGzpO N8jqMnhpWhkIyFyV62EvAMFKHMGSquaPb75aak8s2xFTXJGsAuZDRg== =Dqj9 -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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SAFE Forum
by frantz＠netcom.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Rather than a complete report (which will cover a lot of material people here already know), I will just give you my highlights from the forum. None of the people on the first panel have been asked to testify before either intelligence committee. (Panel was: Lori Fena, EFF; Craig Mundie, Microsoft; Eric Schmidt, Sun; and a substitute for Marc Andreessen from Netscape). Current government "Key Escrow" systems cost $200/key/year. [Craig Mundie] These systems can best be described as key-rental systems. "Crime prevention ought to be part of the FBI's mission. [Herbert Lin, National Research Council] Jim Omura [Cylink] spoke of specific business his company has lost to foreign competitors due to export licensing problems. He spoke of protecting US corporate links between China and the US. CompuServe losses are mostly overseas (in e.g. the former USSR) due to insecure communications and Telephone companies. [Tom Oren, CompuServe] PGP Inc bought ViaCrypt on Friday. [Phil Zimmermann, PGP Inc.] (Scooped by Ian Goldberg) Congresswoman Eshoo appeared not to have heard about PGP being used by human rights groups in e.g. Bosnia to protect their files. National Research Council report available from: www2.nas.edu/cstbweb A compromise on key length won't satisfy either side because those using encryption to protect their data want every single message to be secure (implying long keys and brute force times), while those monitoring communications need to quickly decide whether a message is interesting (implying short decrypt times). [Whit Diffie, Sun] We sell RC4, 40 bit decryption hardware (based on AMD29000) for $16K. FPGA devices for breaking DES in 7 days for $1M. [Eric Thompson, Access Data] NSA's problem is not crypto, but the explosive growth in the number of protocols. NSA needs to get out of the business of being a reputation agent for crypto (thru ITAR approval) and allow weak crypto to naturally appear in the market. [Ken Bass, Venabel, Baetjer, Howard and Civiletti] In the 1970s 50% of the wiretaps were of value, now only 17% are. [Barry Steinhardt, ACLU] The introduction of "Dorothy" as the canonical Key Escrow (GAK) holder. (To great hoots of laughter.) [I think this was Tom Parenty, Sybase, but I could be wrong.] When analyzing the crypto requirements of bad guys (e.g. terrorists) and good guys (e.g. digital commerce users), the bad guys are small, tight knit communities where the current, widely available, crypto systems work well. The good guys are not tight knit and need infrastructure we don't have, such as widely available software and certification. [Very broadly taken from Whit Diffie] ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Bill Frantz | The Internet may fairly be | Periwinkle -- Consulting (408)356-8506 | regarded as a never-ending | 16345 Englewood Ave. frantz(a)netcom.com | worldwide conversation. | Los Gatos, CA 95032, USA

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whitehouse dossier database?
by Vladimir Z. Nuri 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

holy cow, is this real? Grabbe cites several credible references. although of course he himself fits the bill as one of the world's greatest conspiracy theorists (or trackers, depending on your point of view <g>). I don't recall the article by Paul Rodriguez of Washington Times, was it recent? ------- Forwarded Message Date: Sun, 30 Jun 1996 20:16:49 -0500 (CDT) Sender: owner-CN-L(a)cornell.edu From: Brian Redman <bigred(a)duracef.shout.net> To: Conspiracy Nation <CN-L(a)cornell.edu> The following is brought to you thanks, in part, to the kind assistance of CyberNews and the fine folks at Cornell University. Conspiracy Nation -- Vol. 8 Num. 30 ====================================== ("Quid coniuratio est?") - - ----------------------------------------------------------------- THE WHITE HOUSE "BIG BROTHER" DATA BASE ======================================= - - -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- The White House "Big Brother" Data Base & How Jackson Stephens Precipitated a Banking Crisis by J. Orlin Grabbe Score another coup for Jackson Stephens' Systematics (Alltel Information Services). It provided the software for the White House's "Big Brother" data base system, and now the White House is in a panic that there may be secret methods of accessing its computer. The existence of the White House computer system and data base--known as WHODB, White House Office Data Base, and containing as many as 200,000 names--was revealed by Paul Rodriguez in the *Washington Times*. Some of the information was developed by *Insight*'s Anthony Kimery, soon to be managing editor of the electronic publication *SOURCES eJournal*. Kimery is a writer whose articles in *The American Banker* and *Wired* were among the first to report U.S. government spying on domestic banking transactions. (Kimery was also fired from one magazine for looking into the death of Vince Foster.) Now things have come full circle. The chief government effort to spy on U.S. domestic banking transactions was directed by the electronic spy agency, the National Security Agency (NSA), working in connection with the Little Rock software firm Systematics. Systematics, half-owned by billionaire Jackson Stephens (of Stephens Inc. fame), has been a major supplier of software for back office clearing and wire transfers. It was Stephens' attempt to get Systematics the job of handling the data processing for the Washington-D.C. bank First American that lead to the BCCI takeover of that institution. Hillary Clinton and Vince Foster represented Systematics in that endeavor, and later Foster became an overseer of the NSA project with respect to Systematics. Working together, the NSA and Jackson Stephens' Systematics developed security holes in much of the banking software Systematics sold. Now we face a crisis in banking and financial institution security, according to John Deutch, Director of the CIA. "One obstacle is that banks and other private institutions have been reluctant to divulge any evidence of computer intrusions for fear that it will leak and erode the confidence of their customers. Deutch said 'the situation is improving' but that more cooperation was needed from major corporations, and said the CIA remains willing to share information with such firms about the risks they might face." (*The Washington Post*, June 26, 1996, page A19.) What Deutch failed to mention was that this "banking crisis" in large part was itself created by one of the U.S. intelligence agencies--the NSA in cahoots with Stephens' software firm Systematics. The Citibank heist by Russian hackers, for example, took advantage of a back door in Citibank's Systematics software. (The Russian hackers were apparently aided by the son of one of Jim Leach's House Banking Committee investigators.) Have any major banks thought of instituting lawsuits over this deliberate breach of security on the part of a software supplier? John Deutch has a proposed solution for this and other computer security problems: the creation of an "Information Warfare Technology Center". Guess where he wants to put the Center: in the National Security Agency itself, naturally. That is, the government wants money budgeted for a new bureaucracy to solve the problem another bureaucracy spent money creating. You have to admire the sheer chutzpah of this kind of con--one which would also leave the NSA fox guarding the banking chicken coop. Meanwhile, over at the White House, senior aides are in a panic. Is the WHODB system related to the PROMIS software? they want to know. Is there a back door into the system? Have files been download? It just goes to show that given the right incentive, even the White House will begin spouting conspiracy theories. Perhaps Charles O. Morgan (see part 2 of my Vince Foster series) should write the White House a threatening letter. - - -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.2 iQCVAwUBMdXLbWX1Kn9BepeVAQGSuwP7BOGXepZld6j1skJLnTfKYCDCBo3BZUyN A7hEslyPUkSh7pLGpJhiPQcQf+uEq9eFVYqeUKV+toKgZvEr6nb924aNFq5ObZyV 3drfdlWwgxf503ShHcOW7D/mpu2I5u1P2yyV5sM1nBH/y9CzX/DXNL9l3nBop7wA WmBXlraXros= =BjAo - - -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- - - ----------------------------------------------------------------- I encourage distribution of "Conspiracy Nation." - - ----------------------------------------------------------------- If you would like "Conspiracy Nation" sent to your e-mail address, send a message in the form "subscribe cn-l My Name" to listproc(a)cornell.edu (Note: that is "CN-L" *not* "CN-1") - - ----------------------------------------------------------------- For information on how to receive the improved Conspiracy Nation Newsletter, send an e-mail message to bigred(a)shout.net - - ----------------------------------------------------------------- Want to know more about Whitewater, Oklahoma City bombing, etc? (1) telnet prairienet.org (2) logon as "visitor" (3) go citcom - - ----------------------------------------------------------------- See also: http://www.europa.com/~johnlf/cn.html - - ----------------------------------------------------------------- See also: ftp.shout.net pub/users/bigred - - ----------------------------------------------------------------- Aperi os tuum muto, et causis omnium filiorum qui pertranseunt. Aperi os tuum, decerne quod justum est, et judica inopem et pauperem. -- Liber Proverbiorum XXXI: 8-9 - ------- End of Forwarded Message ------- End of Forwarded Message

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Re: Message pools _are_ in use today!
by tcmay＠got.net 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

I must be missing something....: At 3:28 AM 7/2/96, David Wagner wrote: >Someone sniffing the Berkeley 'net can tell when I receive an >alt.anonymous.messages message by when I download an article from >the NNTP server; they can tell when I send such an article by when >I upload an article to the NNTP server; they can list all the >``subversive'' Berkeley folks who have read alt.anonymous.messages >lately. > >The local NNTP server must be trusted. I'm not following your "upload an article to the NNTP server." Don't most people use mail-to-News gateways to post anonymously? (If not, they should, of course.) This way, the posting of an article has the anonymity provided by the chain of remailers used to reach the terminal site, the mail-to-News gateway. The posting is anonymous (within the usual limits we discuss here), and the reading is "pretty hard" to focus on, for several reasons: 1. Hard to gain access to local ISP without sending alerts out (it would be for my ISP, at least). This is admittedly not cryptographically interesting, but is a very real practical difficulty. 2. Many who browse alt.anonymous.messages probably "glance" at many of the oddly-named message pool messages. I know I do. Again, makes it a "needle in a haystack" to know which of several hundred folks who glanced at "ToBear" or "TheRealMessage"--assuming the NSA could ever identify these hundreds--is the real intended target. 3. And I recall that many have newsreaders which download _all_ messages in a newsgroup automatically. Again, this makes the pool of potential readers quite large and meaningless to try to track. The use of public posting areas for message pools (what I called "Democracy Walls" several years back) seems to me have several compelling advantages over "reply-block" approaches. --Tim May Boycott "Big Brother Inside" software! We got computers, we're tapping phone lines, we know that that ain't allowed. ---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---- Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, tcmay(a)got.net 408-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA | knowledge, reputations, information markets, Licensed Ontologist | black markets, collapse of governments. "National borders aren't even speed bumps on the information superhighway."

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"gov runs anon remailers"
by Vladimir Z. Nuri 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

fallout from that old, lame Strassman & Marlow paper. a bit on the new Puzzle Palace. ------- Forwarded Message Date: Mon, 1 Jul 1996 06:11:41 -0400 (EDT) From: "Donna J. Logan" <revcoal(a)pcnet.com> To: snetnews(a)alterzone.com, liberty-and-justice(a)pobox.com, act(a)efn.org Subject: CAQ: CIA Spying on EMAIL (fwd) - - -> SearchNet's snetnews Mailing List - - ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Sun, 30 Jun 1996 15:19:38 -0700 (PDT) To: Recipients of pol-abuse <pol-abuse(a)igc.apc.org> Subject: CAQ: CIA Spying on EMAIL From: Bob Witanek <bwitanek(a)igc.apc.org> Posted dadoner(a)chesco.com Thu Jun 20 23:46:55 1996 From: Ronnie Dadone <dadoner(a)chesco.com> Subject: CIA Spying on Re-mail? http://www.worldmedia.com/caq/articles/remail.html > ARE THE FEDS SNIFFING YOUR RE-MAIL? > > by Joh Dillon > > THE RULES OF PRIVACY ARE CHANGING WITH ELECTRONIC > COMMICATIONS, THE EAGERNESS OF GOVERNMENT TO PRY INTO OUR > COMMINICATIONS, APPARENTLY, IS NOT. > > Foreign and domestic intelligence agencies are actively monitoring > worldwide Internet traffic and are allegedly running anonymous > re-mailer" services designed to protect the privacy of electronic > mail users. > > The startling claim that government snoops may be surreptitiously > operating computer privacy protection systems used by private > citizens was made earlier this year at a Harvard University Law > School Symposium on the Global Information Infrastructure. The > source was not some crazed computer hacker paranoid about government > eavesdropping. Rather, the information was presented by two defense > experts, Former Assistant Secretary of Defense Paul Strassmann, now > a professor at West Point and the National Defense University in > Washington, D.C., along with William Marlow, a top official at > Science Applications International Corp., a leading security > contractor. > > Anonymous re-mailer services are pretty much what the name implies. > By stripping identifying source information from e-mail messages, > they allow people to post electronic messages without traceable > return address information. > > But Strassmann and Marlow said that the anonymous re-mailers, if > used properly and in tandem with encryption software pose an > unprecedented national security threat from information terrorists. > Intelligence services have set up their own re-mailers in order to > collect data on potential spies, criminals, and terrorists, they > said. *1 > > Following their Harvard talk, Strassmann and Marlow explicitly > acknowledged that a number of anonymous re-mailers in the US are run > by government agencies scanning traffic," said Viktor > Mayer-Schoenberger, a lawyer from Austria who attended the > conference. Marlow said that the [US] government runs at least a > dozen re-mailers and that the most popular re-mailers in France and > Germany are run by respective agencies in those countries."2 > > Mayer-Schoenberger was shocked by the defense experts' statement and > tried to spread the news by sending an e-mail message to Hotwired, > the online version of Wired magazine. Although the story did not > make headlines, his note quickly became the e-mail message relayed > 'round the world, triggering over 300 messages to Strassmann and > Marlow. It was followed by the electronic version of spin control. > > Strassmann quickly posted a denial. In an interview, he said the > Austrian completely misunderstood what he and Marlow had said. That > was false," Strassmann said of Mayer-Schoenberger's message. That > was the person's interpretation of what we said. ... We did not > specifically mention any government. What we said was that > governments are so heavily involved in this [Internet issues] that > it seems plausible that governments would use it in many ways." *3 > (Marlow did not return a call for comment.) > > But Harvard Law School Professor Charles Nesson, who heard the > original exchange at the Harvard conference, recalls the > conversation as Mayer-Schoenberger described it. *4 > Mayer-Schoenberger also stands by his story. I remember the > conversation perfectly well," he e-mailed from Vienna. They said a > couple of additional things I'm sure they don't want people to > remember. But the statement about the re-mailers is the one most > people heard and I think is quite explosive news, isn't it?" *5 > > Marlow said that actually a fair percentage of re-mailers around the > world are operated by intelligence services, Mayer-Schoenberger > recalled in a subsequent interview. Someone asked him: `What about > the US, is the same true here as well?' Marlow said: `you bet.' > > The notes for the Harvard symposium, posted on the World Wide Web, > also lend credence to Mayer-Schoenberger's account. The CIA already > has anonymous re-mailers but to effectively control [the Internet] > would require 7,000 to 10,000 around the world," the notes quote > Marlow as saying. *6 > -------------------------------------------------------------------- > > @EASE WITH EAVESDROPPING > > Prying into e-mail is probably as old as e-mail itself. The Internet > is notoriously insecure; messages are kept on computers for months > or years. If they aren't stored safely, they can be viewed by anyone > who rummages through electronic archives by searching through the > hard drive, by using sophisticated eavesdropping techniques, or by > hacking in via modem from a remote location. Once e-mail is > obtained, legally or not, it can be enormously valuable. Lawyers are > increasingly using archived e-mail as evidence in civil litigation. > And it was Oliver North's e-mail (which he thought was deleted) that > showed the depths of the Reagan administration's involvement in the > Iran-Contra affair. > > Moreover, it's easier to tap e-mail messages than voice telephone > traffic, according to the paper written by Strassmann and Marlow. As > e-mail traffic takes over an ever-increasing share of personal > communications, inspection of e-mail traffic can yield more > comprehensive evidence than just about any wire-tapping efforts, > they wrote. E-mail tapping is less expensive, more thorough and less > forgiving than any other means for monitoring personal > communications. 7 > -------------------------------------------------------------------- > > @ RISK > > Two kinds of anonymous re-mailers have evolved to protect the > privacy of users. The first, and the less secure, are two-way > database re-mailers," which maintain a log linking anonymous > identities to real user names. These services are more accurately > called pseudonymous" re-mailers since they assign a new name and > address to the sender (usually a series of numbers or characters) > and are the most vulnerable to security breaches, since the logs can > be subpoenaed or stolen. The most popular pseudonymous" re-mailer is > a Finnish service at anon.penet.fi". > > I believe that if you want protection against a governmental body, > you would be foolish to use anon.penet.fi," said Jeffrey Schiller, > manager of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology computer > network and an expert on e-mail and network security. Last year, in > fact, authorities raided anon.penet.fi to look for the identity of a > Church of Scientology dissident who had posted secret church papers > on the Internet using the supposedly private service. *8 > > The second kind of re-mailers are cypherpunk" services run by > computer-savvy privacy advocates. Someone desiring anonymity detours > the message through the re-mailer; a re-mailer program removes > information identifying the return address, and sends it on its way. > Schiller says that a cypherpunk re-mailer in its simplest form is a > program run on incoming e-mail that looks for messages containing a > request-re-mailing-to" header line. When the program sees such a > line, it removes the information identifying the sender and remails" > the message. *9 Some re-mailers replace the return address with > something like nobody(a)nowhere.org." > > Further protection can be obtained by using free, publicly available > encryption programs such as Pretty Good Privacy and by chaining > messages and re-mailers together. Sending the message from re-mailer > to re-mailer using encryption at each hop builds up an onion skin > arrangement of encrypted messages inside encrypted messages. Some > re-mailers will vary the timing of the outgoing mail, sending the > messages out in random sequence in order to thwart attempts to trace > mail back by linking it to when it was sent. > -------------------------------------------------------------------- > > @ISSUE: THE RIGHT TO PRIVACY > > Linking encrypted messages together can be tricky and > time-consuming. So who would bother? A. Michael Froomkin, an > assistant professor of law at the University of Miami and an expert > on Internet legal issues, says anonymity allows people to practice > political free speech without fear of retribution. Whistleblowers > can identify corporate or government abuse while reducing their risk > of detection. People with health problems that are embarrassing or > might threaten their ability to get insurance can seek advice > without concern that their names would be blasted electronically > around the world. *10 A battered woman can use re-mailers to > communicate with friends without her spouse finding her. > > The Amnesty International human rights group has used anonymous > re-mailers to protect information supplied by political dissidents, > said Wayne Madsen, a computer security expert and co-author of a new > edition of The Puzzle Palace, a book on the National Security > Agency. Amnesty International has people who use re-mailers because > if an intelligence service in Turkey tracks down [political > opponents] ... they take them out and shoot them," he said. I would > rather err on the side of those people. I would rather give the > benefit of the doubt to human rights." *11 > > Strassmann and Marlow, on the other hand, see the threat to national > security as an overriding concern. Their paper, Risk-Free Access > into the Global Information Infrastructure via Anonymous Re-mailers, > presented at the Harvard conference, is a call to electronic arms. > In it, they warn that re-mailers will be employed in financial fraud > and used by information terrorists" to spread stolen government > secrets or to disrupt telecommunication, finance and power > generation systems. Internet anonymity has rewritten the rules of > modern warfare by making retaliation impossible, since the identity > of the assailant is unknown, they said. Since biblical times, crimes > have been deterred by the prospects of punishment. For that, the > criminal had to be apprehended. Yet information crimes have the > unique characteristic that apprehension is impossible. ... > Information crimes can be committed easily without leaving any > telltale evidence such as fingerprints, traces of poison or > bullets," they wrote. *12 > > As an example, they cite the Finnish re-mailer (anon.penet.fi), > claiming that it is frequently used by the ex-KGB Russian criminal > element. Asked for proof or further detail, Strassmann said: That > [paper] is as far in the public domain as you're going to get." *13 > > At the Harvard symposium, the pair provided additional allegations > that anonymous re-mailers are used to commit crimes. There was a > crisis not too long ago with a large international bank. At the > heart of the problem turned out to be anonymous re-mailers. There > was a massive exchange around the world of the vulnerabilities of > this bank's network," Marlow said. *14 > > But David Banisar, an analyst with the Washington, D.C.-based > Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) downplayed this kind of > anecdote, saying that such allegations are always used by > governments when they want to breach the privacy rights of citizens. > I think this information warfare stuff seems to be a way for the > military trying to find new reasons for existence and for various > opportunistic companies looking for ways to cash in. I'm really > skeptical about a lot of it. The problem is nine-tenths hype and > eight-tenths bad security practices," he said. Already existing > Internet security systems like encryption and firewalls could take > care of the problem." > > The public should not have to justify why it needs privacy, he said. > Why do you need window blinds? Privacy is one of those fundamental > human rights that ties into other human rights such as freedom of > expression, the right to associate with who you want, the right to > speak your mind as you feel like it. ... The question shouldn't be > what do you have to fear, it should be `Why are they listening in?' > With a democratic government with constitutional limits to > democratic power, they have to make the argument they need to listen > in, not the other way around." *15 > > Froomkin, from the University of Miami, also questioned Strassmann > and Mayer's conclusions. First of all, the statistics about where > the re-mailers are and who runs them are inaccurate. I can't find > anybody to confirm them," he said. I completely disagree with their > assessment of facts and the conclusions they draw from them. ... > Having said that, there's no question there are bad things you can > do with anonymous re- mailers. There is potential for criminal > behavior." *16 > > Banisar doubts that intelligence agencies are actually running > re-mailers. It would entail a fairly high profile that they tend to > shy away from, he said. However, it is likely that agencies are > sniffing" monitoring traffic going to and from these sites, he said. > -------------------------------------------------------------------- > > @ WORK SNIFFING THE NET > > Not in doubt, however, is that the government is using the Internet > to gather intelligence and is exploring the net's potential > usefulness for covert operations. Charles Swett, a Department of > Defense policy assistant for special operations and low-intensity > conflict, produced a report last summer saying that by scanning > computer message traffic, the government might see early warnings of > impending significant developments." Swett added that the Internet > could also be used offensively as an additional medium in > psychological operations campaigns and to help achieve > unconventional warfare objectives." *17 The unclassified Swett paper > was itself posted on the Internet by Steven Aftergood of the > Federation of American Scientists. > > The document focuses in part on Internet use by leftist political > activists and devotes substantial space to the San Francisco-based > Institute for Global Communications (IGC), which operates Peacenet > and other networks used by activists. IGC shows, Swett writes, the > breadth of DoD-relevant information available on the Internet." > > The National Security Agency is also actively sniffing" key Internet > sites that route electronic mail traffic, according to Puzzle Palace > co-author Wayne Madsen. In an article in the British newsletter > Computer Fraud and Security Bulletin, Madsen reported that sources > within the government and private industry told him that the NSA is > monitoring two key Internet routers which direct electronic mail > traffic in Maryland and California.18 In an interview, Madsen said > he was told that the NSA was sniffing" for the address of origin and > the address of destination" of electronic mail. > > The NSA is also allegedly monitoring traffic passing through large > Internet gateways by scanning network access points" operated by > regional and long-distance service providers. Madsen writes that the > network access points allegedly under surveillance are at gateway > sites in Pennsauken, N.J. (operated by Sprint), Chicago (operated by > Ameritech and Bell Communications Research) and San Francisco > (operated by Pacific Bell). *19 > > Madsen believes that NSA monitoring doesn't always stop at the US > border, and if this is true, NSA is violating its charter, which > limits the agency 's spying to international activities. People > familiar with the monitoring claim that the program is one of the > NSA's `black projects,' but that it is pretty much an `open secret' > in the communications industry," he wrote. > > Electronic communications open up opportunities to broaden > democratic access to information and organizing. They also provide a > means and an opportunity for governments to pry. But just as people > have a right to send a letter through the post office without a > return address, or even to drop it in a mail box in another city, so > too, electronic rights advocates argue, they have the right to send > an anonymous, untraceable electronic communication. And just as the > post office can be used maliciously, or to commit or hide a crime, > re-mailers can be used by cruel or criminal people to send hate mail > or engage in flame wars." And like the post office, the highways, > and the telephone, the Internet could be used by spies or > terrorists. Those abuses, however, do not justify curtailing the > rights of the vast number of people who use privacy in perfectly > legal ways. > > Robert Ellis Smith, editor of the Privacy Journal newsletter, said > government agencies seem obsessed with anonymous re-mailers. They > were set up by people with a very legitimate privacy issue, he said. > Law enforcement has to keep up with the pace of technology as > opposed to trying to infiltrate technology. Law enforcement seems to > want to shut down or retard technology, and that's not realistic. > Anonymous re-mailers are not a threat to national security. *20 > -END-- > > SUBSCRIPTION INFO - - -> Send "subscribe snetnews " to majordomo(a)alterzone.com - - -> Posted by: "Donna J. Logan" <revcoal(a)pcnet.com> - ------- End of Forwarded Message ------- End of Forwarded Message

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Net and Terrorism.
by snow 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

I took a few days to think about this stuff, and I am replying to these in bulk rather than seperately. T.C. May wrote: Can anything be done? To stop the likely effects of lots more surface-to-air missiles, lots more nerve gas available on the black market, and so on? In a word, "no." /* I disagree. Terrorism, political terrorism is fear. There are ways to protect military targets that are quite cost effective, unfortunately they are politically unpopular. (What just happend in Saudi is on my mind. STUPID military commanders getting the same pie in the face time and time again. There is NOTHING so unchanging as the military mind set.) Civilian targets are harder to protect, but certain steps can be taken to lessen chances of a sucessful attack. Another method, and this would be very unpopular (and hypocritical of the US) would be simply to announce that we (the Country) are going to hold the _manufacturing_ nation responcible for the use of weapons of mass destruction. So if Soviet Nerve Gas is used, we gas a city in the Soviet Union. MAD carried to a lower level. A third option is quite simply to buy as much of it as possible. */ I expect a city or two to get nuked in the next decade or so. (Haifa or Tel Aviv would be my leading candidates.) To me, this is unsurprising. /* My bets in the following order: Paris New York Rome London LA (by home brewed idiots) Chicago Berlin. I don't think that terrorists in the middle east will pop a nuke as they would get as many of their own as the "enemy". One of the things a terrorist needs more than money is a place to hide, and if you are killing your own people, they won't shield you. */ moderate economic or physical crises. (No, I am not a "survivalist," just mentally and physically prepared to deal with a major earthquake, economic dislocation, or terrorist incident in San Jose, which is 30 miles north of me.) /* Sounds like a "survivalist" to me. */ examples of how the Net can be used to undermine governments (what those governments of course refer to as "terrorism," even when it is mostly not). I'm not advocating such "terrorism," by the way, merely telling it like it is. /* If you want to define terrorism as in the above paragraph, them I am, and you do too. The biggest problem with terrorism is that there isn't a good defination that looks the same from both sides. In otherwords the old saw about one mans terrorist being anothers freedom fighter. Any defination sufficiently inclusive so as to cover all "terrorist" activities will also include uniformed soldiers. The lines get very thin and blurry. */ Keep your head down, avoid crowded downtown areas, prepare for moderate disruptions, and reject arguments that an American Police State will do anything to stop terrorism. /* The american police state (and if we aren't one yet, it isn't for lack of trying) IS an instrument of terrorism in some parts of this country. */ (Remember, terrorism is just warfare carried on by other means, with apolgies to Von Clausewitz.) /* Terrorism is when the other side hits with out warning. */ From: frantz(a)netcom.com (Bill Frantz) Thanks Tim for your essay. The only thing I would add is that terrorist attacks on pure information resources (e.g. the banking system) are likely to result in many fewer casualties than terrorist attacks on physical entities (e.g. major cities). Another way of saying it is, email bombs are preferable to snail mail bombs. /* I don't think so. One objective of terrorism is/could be to lessen a populations faith in "The System". Some possible situations (can't remember how to spell scenireo): Trash a multi-store pharmacy database and people can't get their prescriptions, or worse get the wrong one. Cause disturbances in certain parts of certain cities, then attack the 911 system to route officers and firemen to _wealthy_ neigborhoods at the expense of the poor neighborhoods. Then complain to the papers about it. Gain control of the power grid (I don't know how possible this is) and selectively brown out certain sections of the city during peak demand periods. Make it obvious, then do the preceeding idea. In all of these people will, or could die, but are much more effective in undermining the faith people have in the structures that run the country. If a bomb blast goes off, people get pissed off at the bomb makers, if the power fails, people get pissed at the electrical company. If you can create a large enough disturbances they will be better than bombs. */ From: "Vladimir Z. Nuri" <vznuri(a)netcom.com> [TCM] >Can anything be done? To stop the likely effects of lots more >surface-to-air missiles, lots more nerve gas available on the black market, >and so on? >In a word, "no." try to have a warfare, siege-like mentality imho, and a continual "trying to stay ahead of the criminals". we do not have regular open terrorism in the streets of the US and I see no reason to think there ever will be as TCM suggests. /* Depending on how you define "terrorism" I would like you to visit my neighborhood, and then we can go to a couple other here in chicago where the cops terrorize the citizens, the gangs terrorize the cops and the citizens, etc. It hasn't hit the national level yet, but it will. */ nevertheless what his essay misses, and many in law enforcement miss, are the root reasons for crime. I'm not going to sound like a liberal /* There is a big difference (IMO) between a terrorist and a common criminal. Money and Ideology. In *MOST* instances the terrorist is attempting to acheive a political, social, or long term (as in decades/generations) economic change. A criminal is simply trying to get rich or get stoned. IMO the root cause of crime is a lack of self disipline, and it is as far as I can tell part of the human condition. */ in reality. it seems to me no nation-state has ever experimented with trying to take away the root causes of violence and discontent. why? /* Is it possible that to a large degree the nation-state IS the problem? */ because a policeman holding a gun is so much more visceral and the public responds to this image readily. other "programs" that try to decrease discontent among the budding terrorists of tommorrow are usually ridiculed. it is very difficult to prove that they work /* Rightly so. Most of these programs amount to hand-outs or paternalistic pandering. People need to work, not get paid for doing nothing. */ terrorists invariably have a patricular pathological psychological profile that sees the world in terms of "martyrs vs. villians" with the villians in the government, and the villians taking away or abusing respectable citizens. /* Often they are right. */ the "problem" of terrorism will be solved when we take the view that insanity and violence is *not* a natural aspect of human behavior (as TCM tends to suggest), and that /* It is. Insanity is a condition that occasionaly crops up in humans. Sometimes the problem is chemical, sometimes not, however it _is_ natural. So is violence. People want things, and some don't care what they have to do to get these things. */ >(Remember, terrorism is just warfare carried on by other means, with >apolgies to Von Clausewitz.) disagree. the purpose of warfare has traditionally been to seize something tangible like territory. terrorists are after intangibles-- namely, terror itself, disrupting a "peace process", etc. /* Or forcing a certain group to the discussion table. */ Any Obcrypto I could add at this point would be preaching to the choir. Petro, Christopher C. petro(a)suba.com <prefered for any non-list stuff> snow(a)crash.suba.com

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Re: The Net and Terrorism
by shamrock＠netcom.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 0:54 7/2/96, snow wrote: >On Mon, 1 Jul 1996, Simon Spero wrote: > >> I want my, I want my, I want my Atropine > > No, you don't. Simon, you got to be more careful when synthesizing that Sarin. Always check that the vent is working first. -- Lucky Green <mailto:shamrock@netcom.com> PGP encrypted mail preferred. Disclaimer: My opinions are my own.

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But what about the poor?
by Duncan Frissell 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 11:25 PM 7/1/96 -0700, Bill Frantz wrote: >Current government "Key Escrow" systems cost $200/key/year. [Craig Mundie] >These systems can best be described as key-rental systems. This is shocking, shocking. It never occurred to me that our government would charge us for the benefit of being tapped. What about the poor. I'm going to write Senator Kennedy and see if maybe we can get the selfish Republican Congress to free up some cash so that less fortunate Americans can afford to be tapped too. This argument against key escrow never made it onto that long list of questions we made up in the Spring of '93 when Key Escrow was first proposed by the Admin (it was probably Vince Foster's fault). We showed a lack of imagination. DCF "Gee Ossifer I'd love to let you read my files but I just couldn't afford expensive socialistic key escrow so I bought cheap efficient private key escrow instead."

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LOS_tit
by jya＠pipeline.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

7-2-96 UST, page one: "Companies fear losing privacy, customers' trust." In a show of self-reliance reminiscent of the old West, companies are taking matters into their own hands, hiring security firms to protect their computer systems and ignoring the convention that law enforcement is the best defense. It's a stance that has implications for law enforcement and commerce, raises broad questions of privacy and control, and pits the philosophy of the Clinton administration directly against that of many Fortune 500 companies. "An organization has very little to gain" by reporting, says Lloyd Hession, of IBM's Business Recovery Services. There seems to be universal agreement that the strongest means for securing computer data against theft lies in cryptography, but the Clinton administration, citing fears that criminals would use cryptography to cloak their activities, is setting regulations slowing development of cryptography software. The Clinton administration is to announce, as early as this week, a commission to determine the federal government's role in securing cyberspace, from terrorism to petty crimes. http://pwp.usa.pipeline.com/~jya/lostit.txt (13 kb) Go via www.anonymizer.com. Pipeline now belongs to Mindspring, an Atlanta company. LOS_tit

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PGP secret keys
by anonymous-remailer＠shell.portal.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Could someone post a pointer to a FAQ that tells what to do if you loose your secret key file? How can you regenerate your private key so that the userid number still matches the public key that has been distributed??

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hard drive encryption
by Cerridwyn Llewyellyn 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

What is the best utility freely available for encrypting an entire drive that won't be used for a length of time? ie: I'm going away for a period of time and wish to encrypt the drive while I'm gone, but have no interest in actually using it while it's encrypted. I also have no real preference in what algorithm is used, as long as it's relatively secure. Speed is also not a big consideration, as it will be used once when I leave to encrypt, and once when i return to decrypt. Thanks in advance for the help... //cerridwyn// btw, the OS is Win95 if that matters...

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Re: hard drive encryption
by Joel McNamara 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Currently, SecureDrive seems to be the most reliable under Win95. Check out: http://www.eskimo.com/~joelm/cryptbk.html I just published a cookbook on how to build a "CryptoBook" (a secure PC laptop with all sorts of crypto goodies). Details on SecureDrive are included. Joel At 07:53 AM 7/2/96 -0700, you wrote: > >What is the best utility freely available for encrypting an entire drive >that won't be used for a length of time? ie: I'm going away for a period >of time and wish to encrypt the drive while I'm gone, but have no interest >in actually using it while it's encrypted. I also have no real preference >in what algorithm is used, as long as it's relatively secure. Speed is >also not a big consideration, as it will be used once when I leave to encrypt, >and once when i return to decrypt. >Thanks in advance for the help... >//cerridwyn// > >btw, the OS is Win95 if that matters... > > >

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TRI_cks
by jya＠pipeline.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

7-2-96. FiTi: "A Japanese engineer's box of tricks is helping detect forged banknotes." Counterfeit dollar bills are judged on a scale of one to nine, with the crudest at level one. The detector machines that existed before Matsumura's could only pick out bills at around level five or six. Supernotes are ranked between seven and nine and have been almost impossible to detect. Matsumura says supernotes do have flaws, though, and his machine can spot differences in the printing by referring to a histogram, or statistical graph, of patterns on real US notes. Each supernote tends to have two or three minute aberrations. Consequently, sensors check for any variations at 12 points on the note. A 0.9-second scan also monitors the thickness of the paper and the printing ink. The company can only produce 500 units a month, but already has orders for 45,000. http://pwp.usa.pipeline.com/~jya/tricks.txt (4 kb) TRI_cks

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