December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

Re: AW: Binding cryptography - a fraud-detectible alternative to key-escrow
by douzzer＠MIT.EDU 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

i'm neither nearsighted nor a fool. don't presume. i can accept the tracking of fossil fuels, bleach, fertilizer, sulphuric-acid-based drain cleaner, essentially any non-edible or psychoactive chemical. clearly purchase of non-edible chemicals below a threshhold quantity does not present a credible threat, so there's no reason to invade the privacy of someone who's simply unstopping a toilet, cleaning laundry, or getting a fillup. schedule the threshholds so that it is not feasible to drive around to different stores to collect enough of a chemical to make a threshhold-sized bomb, for example. the only other way to know if someone has assembled the ingredients of a bomb is through massive and insidious surveillance, which is far more objectionable. the tracking is implemented by recording the purchase in the database via a point-of-sale unit. i don't like it, you don't like it, but it's a good compromise. would you prefer a simple prohibition on the sale of the more sensitive types of chemicals? of course not. am i proposing that the above, or any other scheme or combination of schemes, comprises a foolproof solution? of course not. i think you misunderstood what i meant by "tracking of all automobiles." don't track where they are (that would be draconian), track who owns them, and what model and color they are. as far as tracking deadly weapons: if there were a unified database containing the ballistic profile of every gun barrel sold, and relating with each a physically tamper-resistant serial number and current owner, and if every transfer of weapon ownership required a cryptographically authenticated exchange with a unified clearinghouse to assure that no gun is ever transferred to or kept by a convicted violent criminal, i put to you that a huge reduction in crimes with firearms will follow. moreover, legitimate ownership and use of guns is not in any way curtailed by such a system. "by saying MEAN THINGS, you are hurting people, and that is wrong." that's total hogwash. your ideas of "mean," "hurt," and "wrong" are not the same as mine, and that's exactly why i reiterate that restrictions on what i can think, who i can speak to, what i can say, and how i say it, are unacceptable. i am often offended and contemptuous, and i expect to offend and inspire resentment just as often, and that's fundamental to the human condition. it would be a disaster of unrivalled proportions if a day were to arrive when all of humanity is of one mind; fortunately that can never happen. you got sillier at this point, but i'll finish up. the government will not protect me, because the government is not there when i am mugged, carjacked, etc. i know this as something real, not as something abstract, but through a simple thought exercise it is not hard to see that this is inevitable. _prohibition_ and _tracking_ are completely different. the murder, rape, and robbery of members of the community are prohibited in our society, as in most (all?) human societies with written laws. a law which forbids conduct which directly violates the physical or organic rights of others is a legitimate prohibition. regulation, e.g. by tracking, is not the same at all. i have already explained what i mean by tracking: it is simply the concentration of data regarding the transfer of (and therefore, responsibility for) substances and machinery that when abused has a dire impact on the rights of other individuals. now on "the torture thing": i wasn't trying to be imaginative, to be honest i just jumped at a chance to construct a trite paragraph like that. it was fun for me; i hope you enjoyed it. as far as what i have already been through in my life, i have no comments to offer. as far as the susceptibility of others to have their wills bent by torture, i have no doubt they are far more vulnerable on average than i am. "just make it unnecessary to carry out terrorist acts." it's clear to me now that you didn't take enough time thinking out your flammage. "just make it unnecessary" is exactly what i am saying here; if victimless crimes were abolished (and if the income tax were abolished, which i didn't happen to mention), we'd be a lot closer to removing the impetus for terrorist acts (and for any sort of insurrection against the state). however, terrorism will never disappear completely, because there will always be ethically impoverished people who adopt agendas that are predicated on domination and enslavement, and who manipulate weak people with ideological psychobabble to get their way. that's why someone has to track chemicals and killing machines regardless of the configuration of laws. what does cryptography have to do with all this toxic waste? i am willing to forego a certain amount of privacy regarding the weapons i own, the chemicals i buy, and the vehicles i drive, so that i can have complete privacy regarding the information i store and the conversations i have. of course, more obviously, i am willing to forego a certain amount of privacy about my guns, cars, and drugs, so that i can have and use my guns, cars, and drugs. -douzzer p.s. note that i am not on this list - i will not see a reply if you don't send it to me.

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Re: [NOISE] I never knew that Dimitri Vulis was a net.loon
by Jim Ray 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit To: dougr(a)skypoint-gw.globelle.com, cypherpunks(a)toad.com, dlv(a)bwalk.dm.com Date: Thu Oct 17 05:34:16 1996 [This post has nothing I can think of to do with cryptography, but it is high time to take some of the heat off Tim from this loon. Hey Dmitri, I've got a couple of cats, too!] Doug wrote: > On Wed, 16 Oct 1996, Mark O. Aldrich wrote: ... > > Check it out for yourself at > > http://www.math.uiuc.edu/~tskirvin/home/legends/legends3.html > > > > The above is very good, but there's not nearly as much on Vulis in it. > For anyone else who may have missed it, here is the original link again: > > http://www.math.harvard.edu/~verbit/scs/cranks/from-Shlomo.html#vulis > > This one absolutely_boggles_my_mind. But check them both out. These do shed some light on this guy, and he is an incredible source of noise. I've killfiled the loon long ago, but Doug alerted me to his rant about me, so I dug his posts out of the trash. I had no idea he was his own sysadmin, though I suppose doing that is one way to get away with being as annoying as he is. IMO it's obvious to all that the recent messages with relevant-looking subjects bashing Tim and coming through the remailers are from him, and I finally got annoyed. The resume he posted is old, and the address and phone number, plus some of the other information, has changed or is inaccurate. I am in the process of redoing my home page, but it's taking a while. Also, the Florida Bar has very little sway over me these days since: 1. My life seems to be going in a different direction. 2. I've started saying what I think about political influence in the Florida judiciary, following a particularly-smelly ruling in a political ballot access case. (I decided that the Florida Supreme Court was "in play" until November 5.) The facts were featured in the Miami Herald and then here in "DUO_pol" [thanks JYA]. From what I hear, my "Castro should look at doing this" suggestion and my opinion of their blinkered reading of the state & federal Constitution(s) has gotten back to them and (just as I had hoped) has not been received too well. That's life. Maybe next time I'll be nicer, or maybe next time they'll rule differently (i e fairly) and avoid my sarcasm. If Dmitri (or anyone else) wants to complain about me anyway (not that it is likely to change my behavior) the Florida Bar hotline is at (800) 235-8619. I don't know if this is a Florida-only or national 800 number, but you are welcome to try it and see, Dmitri. Have fun, but give it a rest on Tim and start hollering about me. I agree with Tim on lots of stuff anyway, and (despite my killfiling you long ago) I regularly see your ranting about him in others' messages responding to your trash. I consider myself a friend of Tim May's (though I have never met him) so rant about me (and _these_ cats) for a while. JMR One of the "legitimate concerns of law enforcement" seems to be that I was born innocent until proven guilty and not the other way around. -- me Defeat the Duopoly! Vote Harry & Jo http://www.HarryBrowne96.org/ ___________________________________________________________________ PGP id.E9BD6D35 51 5D A2 C3 92 2C 56 BE 53 2D 9C A1 B3 50 C9 C8 I will generate a new (and bigger) PGP key-pair on election night. <mailto:jmr@shopmiami.com> http://www.shopmiami.com/prs/jimray ___________________________________________________________________ -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.2 iQCVAwUBMmX9oW1lp8bpvW01AQG3RwP/Qne8Y1A+ECf2/FIIJu9OpCQtt6CqPsXH 3jhHURblftCSQUyuJqob/LXAFoamTmbT7QnSqvbX/VlrRp96WBAmViULzeQckGy+ CHFjo0Umnb14PGCaKwbwQb1kgFXxbinbvjDBZjJAAaDGfTUAgDCnekfgXZ+eMBtC oczNcbs1/cs= =eVYp -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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Bidzos clarifies RSA's position on Clipper IV
by Mixmaster 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

In a presentation at CommerceNet'96 in California, Jim Bidzos, CEO of RSA, clarified RSA's position on Clipper IV. RSA supported IBM's efforts to establish a *commercial* key escrow system. For reasons that aren't clear to me, this commercial key escrow system turned into Clipper IV. RSA does not like or support the use of this system for GAK and will create a webpage explaining RSA's position on their site.

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Re: Goodbye
by John Young 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 07:04 PM 10/16/96 -0700, you wrote: >Thus the glory days of cypherpunks, an insider club of the best >and brightest, far superior to the common herd, where we planned and >organized for a world where the ignorant masses can no longer >rob and harass their superiors, a world where the elite can >live the good life in freedom and comfort and abandon the >useless worthless masses to wander blindly into ruin, despair, >and slavery, lost in a world they cannot understand, and will >no longer have the power to smash. Why, James, this reads very much like Robert McNamara's best and brightest in the Nam glory days, cheerleading the B&B gang's gory battles slaughtering the worthless masses for vain comfort of the elite Pentagon planners. I presume you are not a savagely scarred vet, wrecked by over-heated ambition of the B&B elite, just another rightly ignored McNamara crybaby aged-Whiz Kid. Take R&R for a long while, you need it. Go to your nearest VA Hospital and wipe-up bed pans. Then come back to c'punks and earn your rank, not just flaunt the vanity plates.

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A home for stego in source code ?
by peter.allan＠aeat.co.uk 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

The monarchist lightning-hater has been cracking the whip again. > Where is highly sophisticated stego? Adam Back suggested several areas for investigation, including English text. Some weeks ago somebody suggested using synonyms in natural language to express stegodata. A synonym for a word in the message would be chosen from a defined set, and the choice that was made would express a bit or several. This seems related to the clever "alternate dictionary" idea in RFC-1938. But a lack of true synonyms (or programs that understand natural language) make it look pretty hopeless as a practical proposition. SOURCE CODE A POSSIBLE CHANNEL Even small programs often have several hundred symbols. The names given to these are mostly arbitrary, and they can be replaced (consistently) by other names by a program. In fact there "shrouded" source code is sometimes released to make it less clear to the human reader than the original source. In this application the names would be chosen randomly from a set of words and syllables (perhaps with some rules about which are plausible together). There is also a choice of StyleWithCaps and style_with_underscores. If the symbols (in order of first appearance) all have a CRC calculated on them I'd guess you could get 4 bits each without difficulty. There are also comments. These might be natural language, debugging code and never-really-got-this-working code. Maybe a CRC on each comment is worth 8 bits. Comments of the form /* Thanks to P.McNicholas, M.Davies and WorpleSword for advising on the next section **/ could be added with random names quite well (although the user might have to mark the complicated code fragments suitable for receiving such attributions). Names used could be lifted from a list of known helpful programmers ... And then there is layout. The kind of thing that is standardised with indent(1). This would be anti-standard in layout, choosing spacing and linebreaks and spaces with the stegomessage in mind. And some code constructions are capable of rewriting to add info to the message. 0==x , x==0 x>y , x<y i++ , ++i (sometimes) for , while if , switch (sometimes) Or variables could be added to hold intermediate values, and lengthen the source as our desired effect. There may be more scope for plausible stego in code that doesn't have to work. Next time you see a load of verbose mistyped rubbish called "Help me with my program!!!" it could be someone who got this idea ahead of me. I've been dipping into "Understanding and Writing Compilers" (Bornat, 1979). (free, withdrawn from library) It seems the early phases of a compiler build the symbol table as a tree and do various bits of analysis on the source. A good starting point for a program might be a compiler - rip out the translation and optimisation phases and add the stegoreader and stegogenerator. KEYED V. UNKEYED STEGO Assuming that the data hidden in stegofiles is random (keys or cyphertext) the enemy is supposed to be unable to tell whether there is really a message there. An example of unkeyed stego is the use of LSB of each byte in an image or audio file. In contrast, the subliminal channel mechanisms written about by Schneier use a key known to the intended reader. In this application keyed stego would seem to have an advantage over unkeyed in that the source could be made to keep to a house style while retaining some stego capacity. The seeds for the CRCs and style info (resembling ./indent.pro ~/indent.pro) could be user-defined. I'd still wouldn't want to hide plaintext under it, but it would give more flexibilty for the users. Would anyone like to write a version ? Then we could test my guesses about how many bits can be hidden. It probably won't be close to 1 in 8, but I think 1 in 30 should be within reach. -- Peter Allan peter.allan(a)aeat.co.uk

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RE: [NOISE] I never knew that Dimitri Vulis was a net.legend
by jbugden＠smtplink.alis.ca 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

"Timothy C. May" <tcmay(a)got.net> wrote: >And here I thought it was the real history of the Net, especially the part >about how "the dandruff-covered Peter Vorobieff (spit) conspired with the >purebred Sovok Valery Fabrikant (spit) to spread the lies of the Jew >cripples dying of AIDS in Sovok-controlled clinics." >(hint: this a satire, based on the writings of Vulis, who speaks of people >as "lying purebred Sovok Tchurkas" (whatever _they_ are), and attaches >the charming word "(spit)" after nearly every person he references.) Just last week Concordia University in Montreal unveiled four new art installations; one dedicated to the memory of each of the four professors shot and killed by Valery Fabrikant. The works are in the form of tables so that they can be integrated with the student body. Raving on the net does occasionally have physical manifestations. Prend soin, James

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Goodbye
by James A. Donald 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Goodbye I am leaving cypherpunks for a while, perhaps forever. Why should anyone handle a high volume list as a list and not as a newsgroup? Our tools for handling newgroups are superior to our tools for handling mailing lists. The reason to prefer mailing lists is that the very inconvenience keeps out the ignorant masses. Word initially spreads person to person, and intelligent and highly motivated people make most of the contributions, Thus the glory days of cypherpunks, an insider club of the best and brightest, far superior to the common herd, where we planned and organized for a world where the ignorant masses can no longer rob and harass their superiors, a world where the elite can live the good life in freedom and comfort and abandon the useless worthless masses to wander blindly into ruin, despair, and slavery, lost in a world they cannot understand, and will no longer have the power to smash. In those days we forged the weapons and planned the strategies, defending the net against the enemies of freedom. But with the passage of time, we got the same half human trash as you encounter in the newsgroups, and less satisfactory tools to filter them. The glory days are long past, and cannot be revived by forming a new mailing list. Perhaps I will see you guys on Usenet, by and by. --------------------------------------------------------------------- | 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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RE: USPS electronic postmark
by James A. Tunnicliffe 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

>Jonathan Litt[SMTP:littlitt@MIT.EDU] wrote: >Today I was at the Internet Expo in Boston and I sent myself a >postmarked email from the USPS booth. It is enclosed below for all to >scrutinize. >[...snip...] >I will also paraphrase something that was said by one of the people at >the booth: > > "We always send the message itself as an attachment. The message that > you see at first shows the postmark, and warns you not to open the > attachment if you are not the intended recipient. Just as with normal > mail, it is a federal crime to double click on the attachment to view > the contents of the message if the message is not for you." >[...snip...] >As stated above, here is the message in its entirety, exactly as it >arrived in my mailbox. Below that is the base64 decoded for your >convenience. (Official USPS warning:) >[...]If you are not the intended >recipient, you are hereby notified that any viewing, dissemination, >distribution, or copying of this message is prohibited. > >Only littlitt(a)mit.edu may view the enclosed message. [...unauthorized federally-protected not-for-your-eyes message deleted...] >Aaaugghh! I accidentally viewed the message! Now I'm a federal criminal! (A >veritable Public Enemy, I guess, given my additional crime of wearing my RSA >"munitions" shirt in full view of people who may well be dangerous foreign >nationals.) > >If I go down for this, I'm taking you with me, Jonathan. > >Tunny >====================================================================== > James A. Tunnicliffe | WWWeb: http://www.inference.com/~tunny > Inference Corporation | PGP Fingerprint: CA 23 E2 F3 AC 2D 0C 77 > tunny(a)Inference.com | 36 07 D9 33 3D 32 53 9C >====================================================================== > >

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NAVAHO
by azur＠netcom.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

As most all on this list are aware, the U.S. Army made frequent and successful use of our indigenous people (often Navaho) for battle field communications during WW II. Now obviously Navaho is a widely recognized language and even our 'oppressive" government wouldn't dare tell such speakers, who might be under investigation for some alledged criminal activity, that were engaging in international communications that they could not use this or a similar form of communciation because LE might not be able to interpret its meaning. What would be the legal status of communicating with a language, too complex for easy human use, which required a computer to structure and translate between other human languages? What would be the ITAR implication of exporting such linguistic software? What about speaking or writing riddles or other 'indirect' coding in which the true meaning of spoken or written communication is other than the appearent (literature, especially mysteries have them)? Could export of software designed to create/interpret such riddles or 'hidden' meanings come under ITAR regulation? -- Steve PGP Fingerprint: FE 90 1A 95 9D EA 8D 61 81 2E CC A9 A4 4A FB A9 --------------------------------------------------------------------- Snoop Daty Data | Internet: azur(a)netcom.com Grinder | Sacred Cow Meat Co. | --------------------------------------------------------------------- Counter-cultural technology development our specialty. Vote Libertarian. Just say NO to prescription DRUGS. "Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive." -- C.S. Lewis "Surveillence is ultimately just another form of media, and thus, potential entertainment." -- G. Beato

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Anonymous Auth Certificates [was: Re: Blinded Identities]
by Carl Ellison 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

P.S. you might also check out http://www.clark.net/pub/cme/usenix.html for more on why ID certificates are useless in any case. - Carl +------------------------------------------------------------------------+ |Carl M. Ellison cme(a)acm.org http://www.clark.net/pub/cme | |PGP: E0414C79B5AF36750217BC1A57386478 & 61E2DE7FCB9D7984E9C8048BA63221A2| | "Officer, officer, arrest that man! He's whistling a dirty song." | +-------------------------------------------- Jean Ellison (aka Mother) -+

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SKIP cryptanalysis?
by Adam Shostack 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Has anyone looked into SKIP key management? I'm aware of Jeff Schiller's statement about OAKLEY/ISAKMP being the more flexible, useful system to be the main standard for IPsec. Adam -- "Every year the Republicans campaign like Libertarians, and then go to Wasthington and spend like Democrats." Vote Harry Browne for President. http://www.harrybrowne96.org

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Re: YES OR NO?
by Alan Olsen 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 08:45 AM 10/17/96 -0700, you wrote: >On Thu, 17 Oct 1996, Dr.Dimitri Vulis KOTM wrote: > >> It is a great honor to meet a net.legent in person. > >I hope Dimitri will stop hidding behind his computer and "honor" >us with his presence at an SF Bay area Cypherpunks meeting. I've >got pledges for nearly $1200 to bring him out here to speak. All >we need now is a serious response from Dimitri. I guess when the >going gets tough, the "net legends" get yellow. What are you >afraid of Dimitri? I can understand what he has to be afraid of. It is one thing to be a harassing bastard on the net. It is another to have to defend your actions to those people face to face. Dimitri has made insulting remarks about myself and good friends. He has been abusive and obnoxious all over the face of the net. I can see how some people might take that personally. (I would not do him personal harm. Ask him why he feels he needs to be a flaming asshole maybe...) I killfiled Dimitri because there was no use talking to him and no use listening to him. Currently he has taken the tact of posting news when his reputation capitol reaches into the heavy negative numbers. (And I still filter them all into the trash because I cannot trust him to not forge the posts into something containing something the author did not write or intend.) There are others I do not argue with for other, similar, reasons. It is pointless to debate with the closed minded and the compulsive flamers. (If I wanted to listen to compulsive juvenile flame I would go hang out on WWIV BBSes. It least there you know the people are probably fourteen, not just acting like it...) The only purpose such debate will ever serve is to influence the onlookers. The point is probably moot anyways. I doubt if I will get to any of the California meetings any time in the near future. (Work is hell, but at least it pays something. Unlike the regular brand of hell.) --- | "Remember: You can't have BSDM without BSD." - alan(a)ctrl-alt-del.com | |"The moral PGP Diffie taught Zimmermann unites all| Disclaimer: | | mankind free in one-key-steganography-privacy!" | Ignore the man | |`finger -l alano(a)teleport.com` for PGP 2.6.2 key | behind the keyboard.| | http://www.teleport.com/~alano/ | alano(a)teleport.com |

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EUP_hem
by John Young 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

10-17-96. WaPo: "U.S. Considers Slugging It Out With International Terrorism" Officials contend that the main threat now comes from a murky network of home-grown, privately financed and largely independent groups forming a kind of international "terrorists' Internet." That network is proving extremely difficult for U.S. intelligence agencies to locate and penetrate. "Today's terrorists don't have to depend that much any more on states for access to financing or the technological means." "Postal Service Plans to Leave Its Mark on Electronic Mail" Cylink is developing a system for electronically postmarking and encrypting computer messages and Sun and Enterprise Productivity are developing software that will allow bulk mailers to calculate the price of mail shipments on the Internet. The Postal Service predicted that the new system ultimately will account for $5 billion in postage a year, about 9 percent of all postage. ----- http://jya.com/euphem.txt (18 kb for 2) ftp://jya.com/pub/incoming/euphem.txt EUP_hem

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ITAR/real law, copyright
by Greg Broiles 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Sorry for the rushed character of this note - am working on another project which is eating up my available time. I just wanted to respond because I think Tim and Marshall are talking about different ends of the same process. At 03:37 PM 10/16/96 -0800, Tim May wrote: >At 10:56 AM -0700 10/16/96, Marshall Clow wrote: >>A) This is not a change in the law. There is no law regarding export of >>encryption software. >>Congress has never passed any such law. These are State Department >>regulations, and presidential decrees. These regulations, which have the >>force of law to you and me, were never debated or voted upon by our >>elected representatives. They can be changed tomorrow the same way. In >>fact, they can be changed and the public need not even be notified. > >Actually, as Greg Broiles pointed out in an article (on the Cypherpunks >list) several weeks ago, Congress deliberately chooses to delegate much >regulatory authority to other agencies. As I understand the export-license process, there are multiple steps: 1. Commodity jurisdiction request: State Dept decides if ITAR controls the export of the item (e.g., is it a "defense article" or a "defense service" or "technical data", and not public domain, etc.)? 2. If ITAR does control the export, the State Dept decides (based on the characteristics of the item and the identity/location of the foreign recipient and the opinion(s) of other agencies consulted) whether or not to allow the export. The fact that these steps must be taken (and the general procedure for doing so) is a product of the Arms Export Control Act (passed by Congress, at 22 USC 2778 and thereabouts) and the ITARs (22 CFR 120 et seq), administrative regulations promulgated by the Dept of State. (To change the ITARs themselves, State Dept must publish notice of the proposed changes and solicit public comments, as well as make the final regs public in the CFRs and via the Federal Register). So the ITARs are "real laws", at least as real as any others. But the process by which these steps (deciding what will be a "munition", deciding whether or not a particular item is within one of those defined as munitions, deciding whether or not to allow an export) are taken involves policy choices whose motives and processes are not entirely clear, and which can be (and are) changed by the executive branch without notice or opportunity to comment. What I'm thinking of here are the rules like "40-bit RC4 is OK" and "3DES is never OK" and "56-bit DES with GAK is OK" and "disk bad, OCR text OK" which we're discovering through trial & error but are not, to my knowledge, part of the ITARs or elsewhere in the CFR or the USC. Also, Dept of State's decisions about individual exports and items are not subject to judicial review, by 22 USC 2778(h), an interpretation which is being challenged in the appeal in _Karn_. Interested readers might take a look at the district court's opinion in _Karn_ at <http://venable.com/oracle/oracle7.htm> and Stewart Baker's analysis of it at <http://www.us.net/~steptoe/summary.htm>. I think my understanding of the ITAR process is mediocre at best, I certainly welcome correction or clarification, although Jim Bell's predictable and wholly incorrect assertion that administrative regs only apply to government employees would be funny but for the fact that I know ordinary people (not government employees) who have been convicted of violating federal admin regs and the fines they paid (or are still paying), jail time spent, etc were all too real. My summary of admin law is deliberately vague because frankly admin law isn't my strong suit. Perhaps another list member with a superior understanding will fill in the gaps in my summaries. Also, Sean Sutherland wrote to ask (re the SPA's position on copyright liability): >I'm curious, do the Contributory Infringment >and the Vicarious Liability for Infringment By Another Person claims have any >legal basis, or are they just the inane rantings they appear to be? I sent a long message to the list a few days ago (Sunday?) discussing contributory infringement. The short version of the message is "Yes, contributory infringement is valid, but not necessarily in this particular case". And ditto for vicarious liability, although I think vicarious liability isn't even plausibly arguable. They are neither novel nor especially remarkable facets of copyright law, although as Sean notes they do not have explicit textual support in the Copyright act. Vicarious liability is an extension of the legal doctrine of "respondeat superior", e.g., an employer/principal is liable for the actions of an employee/agent for actions taken within the scope of employment/agency. Contributory infringement is an extension of the principles of enterprise liability, where (very generally) people who undertake a common purpose/project will share liability, even where only one party directly caused the actual harm. _Sony v. Universal City Studios_ 464 US 417, 435 (1984). Nimmer on Copyright 12.04[A] notes that it's possible to read 17 USC 106's grant of the exclusive right to "authorize" the exercise of the other exclusive rights as excluding the authorization of infringement by third parties (making the illicit authorizer a direct infringer). But that reading seems awfully technical, and Nimmer cites no cases which rely on it (and later describes it as "overly facile"). In any event, yes, vicarious liability and contributory infringement are viable theories of recovery, but neither seems especially promising. Matt Ghio wrote and asked if a direct infringement must exist before a third party can be held liable for infringement. Nimmer (a relatively authoritative treatise on copyright) argues that it should not be possible to have third party liability without a direct infringement, with a reference to cases I haven't had time to look at yet. (at 12.04[A][3][a], if anyone's fortunate enough to have a copy of Nimmer at hand) -- Greg Broiles | "We pretend to be their friends, gbroiles(a)netbox.com | but they fuck with our heads." http://www.io.com/~gbroiles | |

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EC patent
by Robert Hettinga 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

--- begin forwarded text Date: Thu, 17 Oct 1996 14:03:34 +0800 From: James Lee <jlee(a)ccl.itri.org.tw> Reply-To: jlee(a)ccl.itri.org.tw Organization: Internet Tech Div, Computer & Communication Lab, Indudtrial Technology Research Institute Mime-Version: 1.0 To: set-discuss(a)commerce.net Subject: EC patent Sender: owner-set-talk(a)commerce.NET Precedence: bulk +----------------------------------------------------+ Addressed to: set-discuss(a)commerce.net +----------------------------------------------------+ I heard that CitiBank has filed for a patent in Japan with 140+ claims covering many aspects of electronic commerce, security electronic transaction, etc. Does anyone know more about it? What impact will it bring to all SET members? James Lee Director, Internet Technology Division Computer & Communication Laboratories Industrial Technology Research Institute W000/CCL, 195 Chunghsin Rd., Sec. 4, Chutung, TAIWAN 886-3-591-4533(W) 886-3-582-0085(Fax) jlee(a)ccl.itri.org.tw ------------------------------------------------------------------------ This message was sent by set-discuss(a)commerce.net. For a complete listing of available commands, please send mail to 'majordomo(a)commerce.net' with 'help' (no quotations) contained within the body of your message. --- end forwarded text ----------------- Robert Hettinga (rah(a)shipwright.com) e$, 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA "The cost of anything is the foregone alternative" -- Walter Johnson The e$ Home Page: http://www.vmeng.com/rah/

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Re: Anonymous Auth Certificates [was: Re: Blinded Identities]
by Hal Finney 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

From: Carl Ellison <cme(a)acm.org> > >> >Steve Shear <azur(a)netcom.com> writes: > > > >[much cut] > >> > >> I've been charged with developing an Internet service which needs to assure > >> its clients of anonymity. However, we fear some clients may abuse the > >> service and we wish to prevent the abusers from re-enrollment if > >> terminated for misbehavior. (In your example, it would be the person(s) > >> trying to discover the service host via flood). > >> > >> My thought was to base enrollment on some sort of 'blinding' of their > >> certified signature (e.g., from Verisign) which produces a unique result > >> for each signature but prevents the service from reconstructing the > >> signature itself (and thereby reveal the client's identity). I'm calling > >> this negative authentication. > > The mistake is to think of using ID certificates (like those from Verisign) > in the first place. They don't mean anything. > > You want an authorization certificate, such as produced by SPKI. You need > to know what a key is authorized to do, not what name is associated with > the key. (Sorry about quoting so much, but I liked Steve Shear's succinct problem statement.) I don't see how authorization certificates solve this problem. How would you determine if someone was qualified to receive an authorization certificate? And what would you do to make them stop using the service if they abuse it, and to stop them from getting new authorization certificates? Thanks, Hal

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European Commission on "Illegal and harmful content on the Internet"
by wfgodot＠iquest.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- A recently released European Commission Communication on "Illegal and harmful content on the Internet" may prefigure the nature of coming European Union regulatory initiatives concerning the net. This Communication was in response to a 27 September resolution by the Telecommunication Council on "preventing the dissemination of illegal content on the Internet, in particular child pornography." The document reportedly reflects what will be ongoing work to "present practical measures in time for the next Telecommunications Council on 28 November 1996." The Communication describes its aims as: firstly to describe briefly the different types of illegal and harmful content, secondly to examine the technical context in which action can be taken to deal with illegal and harmful content, and finally to suggest a number of practical measures designed to be rapidly implemented Among the points of interest, it states with emphasis that "additional international cooperation is required to avoid 'safe havens' for documents contrary to general rules of criminal law." With respect to anonymous communications it discusses proposed "measures to close known loopholes and improve traceability and that anonymous remailers record details of identity." As is typical of these agendas, the devil will be in the evolving details of enforcement. It looks like 1997 will be a busy year for proponents of greater state control over internet content both here and abroad. If they can conjure up enough sufficiently compelling bogeymen, it could be a very successful one for them as well. The HTML version of this document can be found at: <http://www2.echo.lu/legal/en/internet/content/communic.html> Links to RTF and Word versions along with the accompanying press release and related documents can be found at: <http://www2.echo.lu/legal/internet/html> - -Michael -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.3a Charset: cp850 iQCVAwUBMmaw0tGJlWF+GPx9AQGMLgP+JC5Lyd0NZDukq8AWipUNcDUgb6m16iUN 3smYcPdPYvsUDSWznx7ZQsklQV0oz9u5Ru7s8VoOQfA2wqSoiai3LiUiJg5WkfOg HTAbvVQCeoUaRmkmmbFJSzfqVzGB4VkJRCE4htPmmqYhCwwmMjooTi3bAClySGTD 7YcLjv0pC5w= =4EZY -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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Re: DES cracker.
by Adam Back 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

[cc'd to cypherpunks] Michael Johnson <mikej2(a)Exabyte.COM> writes: > On Thu, 17 Oct 1996, Ted DiSilvestre wrote: > >... > > As someone posted a few weeks ago, rather than find one message to crack we > > should work on ten or a hundred simultaneously if possible. This seems to > > be the easiest way (assuming we can find this many "good" messages) to > > increase cracking efficiency by orders of magnitude. > > Hmmm... I don't see that this increases cracking efficiency. The suprising > (to me) result is that it doesn't really hurt it any. The increase in > average expected time to find a particular key is offset by the fact that > more keys are tried at once. We could crack just as many keys per year, on > average, but we become less sure of which keys will be cracked first. You do save something: you only need one key schedule per key that you try. You can try the key against multiple ciphertexts. A negative effect is that you might loose cacheing opportunities as code and data are increased. For timings you're likely to get for DES, you suffer from the law of diminishing returns quickly, and the additional keys/sec from doing more keys tapers off asymptotically. The number of keys it would be most efficient to use (say where adding another key speeds things up by less than 1%, or whatever) hinges heavily on the actual balance between how fast the key schedule can be made to go as compared to a CBC block operation (or whatever mode you're attacking). Also the protocol you are attacking, and the position of the known plaintext in this block affects things greatly, the further along the plaintext, the more blocks you have to cycle through, and more data you have to move around. To illustrate the effect, here's some quick cacluations based (loosly) on the timings being quoted. With Peter Trei's projected DES block timing from pentium 90 to pentium 133, and approximate equivalence of ecb and cbc demonstrated by Eric's code (this set of figures is hand-waving: I'm not at all sure like is being compared with like, and we are now extrapolating from extrapolations), combining with Eric's keyschedule timing: keyschedule 12.2us (Eric Young's) DES cbc block = 0.47us (from Peter Trei's extrapolated pentium 133Mhz) n keys | key | DES | elapsed for | elapsed per | at a time | sched | cbc | n key tests | key test | keys/sec ----------------------------------------------------------------------- 1 12.2us 1.4us 13.6us 13.6us 73.5k keys/s 2 12.2us 2.8us 15.0us 7.5us 133.2k keys/s 4 12.2us 5.6us 17.8us 4.5us 224.2k keys/s 8 12.2us 11.3us 23.5us 2.9us 340.7k keys/s 16 12.2us 22.6us 34.8us 2.2us 460.3k keys/s 32 12.2us 45.1us 57.3us 1.8us 558.3k keys/s 64 12.2us 90.2us 102.4us 1.6us 624.8k keys/s 128 12.2us 180.5us 192.7us 1.5us 664.3k keys/s 256 12.2us 361.0us 373.2us 1.5us 686.0k keys/s So 256 keys gives ~9x improvement in keys/sec with these even less accurate guestimates, and using more keys won't increase that improvement all that much, asymptotically tailing off around 9.5x for reasonable numbers (< 64k keys). Improving the key schedule in the second table doesn't add hardly anything, because it is basically irrelevant when you get to 256 keys. (However, a faster key schedule _is_ significant for 1 key at a time). I think that Peter Trei / Phil Karn are fairly close to the limit, and if anything the resulting figure will be a fair bit short of what I have extrapolated because I suspect their peak Mb/s figure will go down when you start doing practical things with the addition of extra data shifting, etc. So it all depends on what corners can be cut in the key schedule, and how much you gain by coding the keyschedule in hand optimised assembler, and all the other factors discussed above, in summary: - keyschedule / CBC block timings ratio - how far into the message is the known plaintext (how many blocks to cycle) - cache limits (additional restriction on optimal number of keys) - extra code overhead over peak cache Mb/s (moving data, extra code) - extra code size and complexity (for multiple key code) Adam -- print pack"C*",split/\D+/,`echo "16iII*o\U@{$/=$z;[(pop,pop,unpack"H*",<> )]}\EsMsKsN0[lN*1lK[d2%Sa2/d0<X+d*lMLa^*lN%0]dsXx++lMlN/dsM0<J]dsJxp"|dc`

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Re: EC patent
by jim bell 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 04:53 PM 10/17/96 -0400, Robert Hettinga wrote: >--- begin forwarded text >Date: Thu, 17 Oct 1996 14:03:34 +0800 >From: James Lee <jlee(a)ccl.itri.org.tw> >Reply-To: jlee(a)ccl.itri.org.tw >+----------------------------------------------------+ >Addressed to: set-discuss(a)commerce.net >+----------------------------------------------------+ > >I heard that CitiBank has filed for a patent in Japan with 140+ claims >covering many aspects of electronic commerce, security electronic >transaction, etc. Does anyone know more about it? What impact will it >bring to all SET members? >James Lee >--- end forwarded text Maybe Japanese law is different, but don't I recall reading somewhere that "methods of doing business," business practices in general, are not patentable? Not that it would surprise me if the Patent Office idiots were to change their minds, like they did concerning software, algorithms, and mathematics in general... Jim Bell jimbell(a)pacifier.com

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Netscape Show - Security API
by Ray Arachelian 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

I was at the Netscape show and attended the Security API. Looks pretty impresive. The slides for this should be available a week from now on www.develop.netscape.com (?) for those interested. This will be available in Netscape 4.0 Everything is a plug in module, and you can even replace the crappy DES and crippled RSA mods with stronger ones and even write a PGP signature checker/signed/encryptor, etc for both server and browser. Very cool stuff. PGP was actually mentioned! Catch is this: the international version is again crippled, however it is interesting to note that they got a module loadable crypto API to pass ITAR. They did this by having the international versions check modules for signatures that say "US Export Allowed" :) Possibilities around this (not that I am advocating any, just restating what was said): export the USA version (of course breaking the ITAR), modifying the code that checks the signature and allow it to load any module, making a DIFF file between versions and exporting that (would this be legal?) They mentioned (someone asked) that the signature authentification methods that check a module are part of the same API, but hinted that they couldn't be overridden. This could of course be tested, and hopefully they can be disabled. :) But time will tell. There was also some talk of expiring signatures - not sure if it was regarding modules or mail or key certificates. If module signatures expire every six months that would make an interesting situation. In the USA, you can write any module to do anything! Would be cool to have a Netscape Mail PGP set of modules!!! This could indeed solve the problem of having software that's secure and yet also easy to use. What sucks is that someone in England couldn't write their own plug in modules to get better crypto for use in the international versions. Perfectly legal in the point of view of international laws and ITAR, but crippled! Netscape says they won't sign non-USA produced crypto modules for the international versions -- or at least that was the message they gave. The folks at Netscape said that the US Government (NSA wasn't mentioned) did not want the situation to exist that someone from outside could build stronger crypto and have it be imported to the USA... Looks like we have an Iron (Crypto) Curtain situation here. In the end the USA suffers since we are only one country, but I won't start ranting on that here since it's been discussed to death already. :) Several folks from outside the USA, one guy from England actually did express concerns at this problem. Some of the authentification methods they were showing were smart cards and such, and one of the comapnies there was giving eval models out! Litronic had a couple of models - one a serial port one (9600 only with 512 bit RSA, also 768 bit, 1024 bit models will be due out in mid '97) the other plugs right into the keyboard grabbing your keystrokes before they reach the application! If you need eval models for your company to do development call'em at 714-545-6649 or go to contact them at litronic.com, whatever. :) The serial port model is likely to be the most useful since it (should?) work on PC's (Running Linux too!), Suns, Macs, and even C64's. :) Not sure if the API for this is software or an RS232 protocol, if the latter, these will work with pretty much anything. Not sure how trustworthy they are, after all you can't disassemble the smart cards and check their properties to make sure there are no holes, but possibly a dual method would work. That is, send a message to the card, have it sign or encrypt the message with the private key, take that signature/encrypted message, and also ask the user to type in a second passphrase (or use the same hashed differently) that's handled on the local machine. If the user has both, even if the card is crippled, you are secure, and even if someone finds the card they won't be able to use it. (I won't go into rubber hose key recovery here or any other details, see Tim C. May's excellent Cyphernomicon if you need background info on that.) Over all, the message I got from this is that Netscape is doing the right thing, they are for strong crypto - but are forced to abide by the ITARs. They are for voluntary key escrow for companies, NOT mandatory key escrow. They'd like to provide strong crypto functionality to all and would if not for the ITARs. ============================================================================= + ^ + | Ray Arachelian |FL| KAOS KERAUNOS KYBERNETOS |==/|\== \|/ |sunder(a)brainlink.com|UL|__Nothing_is_true,_all_is_permitted!_|=/\|/\= <--+-->| ------------------ |CG|What part of 'Congress shall make no |=\/|\/= /|\ | "A toast to Odin, |KA| law abridging the freedom of speech'|==\|/== + v + |God of screwdrivers"|AK| do you not understand? |======= ===================http://www.brainlink.COM/~sunder/========================= If the Macintosh is a woman... Then Windows is a Transvestite! ActiveX! ActiveX! Format Hard drive? Just say yes!

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Re: Anonymous Auth Certificates [was: Re: Blinded Identities]
by azur＠netcom.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

>> >> >Steve Schear <azur(a)netcom.com> writes: >> > >> >[much cut] >> >> >> >> I've been charged with developing an Internet service which needs to >>assure >> >> its clients of anonymity. However, we fear some clients may abuse the >> >> service and we wish to prevent the abusers from re-enrollment if >> >> terminated for misbehavior. (In your example, it would be the person(s) >> >> trying to discover the service host via flood). >> >> >> >> My thought was to base enrollment on some sort of 'blinding' of their >> >> certified signature (e.g., from Verisign) which produces a unique result >> >> for each signature but prevents the service from reconstructing the >> >> signature itself (and thereby reveal the client's identity). I'm calling >> >> this negative authentication. >> > >(Sorry about quoting so much, but I liked Steve Schear's succinct problem >statement.) > >I don't see how authorization certificates solve this problem. How >would you determine if someone was qualified to receive an authorization >certificate? And what would you do to make them stop using the service >if they abuse it, and to stop them from getting new authorization >certificates? > >Thanks, >Hal It seems that one crux of the problem revolves around the CA and its method of certificate issuance. A CA which uses biometric data to reduce/eliminate the chance that an applicant could get several, unrelated, certificates issued would provide a basis for negative authentication (similar to a negative credit file). A one-way function performed, by the client, on their certificate from this CA would yield a token which unambiguously binds it to a valid certificate of the CA (and therefore uniquely identifies them) w/o revealing the certificate itself. -- Steve

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Re: European Commission on "Illegal and harmful content on the Internet"
by azur＠netcom.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

>-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- > >A recently released European Commission Communication on "Illegal >and harmful content on the Internet" may prefigure the nature of >coming European Union regulatory initiatives concerning the net. >This Communication was in response to a 27 September resolution >by the Telecommunication Council on "preventing the dissemination >of illegal content on the Internet, in particular child >pornography." The document reportedly reflects what will be >ongoing work to "present practical measures in time for the next >Telecommunications Council on 28 November 1996." > >The Communication describes its aims as: > >firstly to describe briefly the different types of illegal and >harmful content, > >secondly to examine the technical context in which action can be >taken to deal with illegal and harmful content, > >and finally to suggest a number of practical measures designed to >be rapidly implemented > >Among the points of interest, it states with emphasis that >"additional international cooperation is required to avoid 'safe >havens' for documents contrary to general rules of criminal law." >With respect to anonymous communications it discusses proposed >"measures to close known loopholes and improve traceability and >that anonymous remailers record details of identity." > >As is typical of these agendas, the devil will be in the evolving >details of enforcement. It looks like 1997 will be a busy year >for proponents of greater state control over internet content >both here and abroad. If they can conjure up enough sufficiently >compelling bogeymen, it could be a very successful one for them >as well. > It looks as if a functioning AP system can't be here any too soon. I can't wait to bet that these sorts of thought-crime restriction won't be seen as reasonable.

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[NOISE::SECURITY] Disabled ports in Navigator
by Rick Osborne 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

I was thinking about how to fix a sendmail program for our server when the (most likely unoriginal) thought cam to me: why not use your web broser as a telnet tool? You could embed CRLFs into the request field and the receiving program would just throw the GET /[etc] out like I messed up or something. I could then add subsequent logins & commands to my heart's content (or the string length of that particular browser's request field). Being behind a firewall, I tend to think of these things. The only problem would be with the fact that no EOL is ever sent, but with a good browser that displays as content is streamed, you wouldn't have to worry about that. Like I said, I doubt it's original because when I tried to do it in Navigator I get a Sorry, Access to the port number given has been disabled for security reasons. error dialog. I got this for all of the obvious ports (21,25,110, etc). I only have 3.0 on my machine, so I don't know if it works with previous versions. MSIE3 doesn't disable the ports, but it doesn't start displaying anything (it suffers from the stupidity of not displaying as it streams). Has anyone else personally tried this? My original idea was to see my home email, with something like: http://mail.here.com:110/user%20me%0D%0Apass [... etc] Any comments, suggestions, etc? Rick Osborne / C++ VB Pascal HTML VRML Java / osborne(a)gateway.grumman.com ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ The NSA is now funding research not only in cryptography, but in all areas of advanced mathematics. If you'd like a circular describing these new research opportunities, just pick up your phone, call your mother, and ask for one.

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[NOISE] I never knew that Dimitri Vulis was a net.legend
by Mark O. Aldrich 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

While the message blew by a little while ago (and I didn't save it), someone had posted a URL with information about Dimitri's sordid/alleged past on the Net. At roughly the same time, I ran across (by accident) a URL that lists Dimitri as a "net.legend" and offers yet another perspective. Apparently, Dimitri is far more well known that any of us (at least me) gave him credit for. The notion that the idiom "dandruff covered" is indicative of anti-semitism is one passage that I found rather amusing. Check it out for yourself at http://www.math.uiuc.edu/~tskirvin/home/legends/legends3.html ------------------------------------------------------------------------- |some people get by | Mark Aldrich | |with a little understanding | GRCI INFOSEC Engineering | |some people get by | maldrich(a)grci.com | |with a whole lot more | MAldrich(a)dockmaster.ncsc.mil| | -- Sisters of Mercy | | |_______________________________________________________________________| |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: Binding cryptography - a fraud-detectible alternative to key-esc
by Bill Stewart 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

I haven't seen the technical papers behind the postings you've made to the net, but the overall approach sounds very similar to "Clipper II", the Software Key Encryption work that the TIS people (Steve Walker?) and Dorothy Denning were touting a year or so ago. It wasn't in your references, and it's clearly close enough to be worth your attention. The design was interesting - it chose a set of public and symmetric key encryption that allows the recipient to validate the sessionkey-encrypted-to-key-copy-holder*. A not-highly-technical description of the TIS CKE Commercial Key Escrow system is at http://www.tis.com/docs/products/cke/present.html, particularly present9b.html. It's worth reading for the appalling graphics alone :-) I don't seem to have a copy of the technical description anywhere. <IMG href="http://www.tis.com/docs/products/cke/pres7a.gif"> A major capability that was missing from Walker's SKE work is the ability to split the copied* key into two or more parts, all of which are need to recover the session key, while making it possible to validate that the pieces do add up to the session key. (This was also missing from the Clipper chip in hardware, which pretended to do it in the master key setting process.) Can you extend the approaches you're using to allow an outside party, or at least the recipient, to validate that the two parts of the copied key contain the complete session key? [* I'm using the terms "copied key" and "Key copy holder" to refer to the copy of the key that you're giving to some third party and the third party. The term "escrow" is generally not applicable to the applications that transmit a copy of the key to some third party, and the technologies involved don't specify, communicate, or enforce conditions for access. TIS's CKE does at least cart around a 32-bit user-defined string for specifying recovery conditions, but there's not technical enforcement. ] # Thanks; Bill # Bill Stewart, +1-415-442-2215 stewarts(a)ix.netcom.com # You can get PGP outside the US at ftp.ox.ac.uk Imagine if three million people voted for somebody they _knew_, and the politicians had to count them all.

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Production of ALPHACIPHER for Windows 95 and DOS Cancelled!
by ! Drive 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

This may have already been posted, but I found it interesting... from: http://www.aa.net/cyber-survival-hq/ Development of the ALPHACIPHER product line has been voluntarily cancelled due to the possibility of non-compliance of users of ALPHACIPHER with the new key escrow law. Every key created by a user that would encrypt messages for international correspondence would have to be registered with the US Government. Cyber-Survival-HQ cannot insure that the users of ALPHACIPHER would voluntarily comply with this new law, and so ALPHACIPHER is hereby withdrawn from the marketplace. ALPHACIPHER currently has no built-in key generation function, and the proposed release of an ALPHACIPHER key generator has been terminated. All purchasers of ALPHACIPHER are entitled to a complete refund, and this has already been done. The New ADFGVX cipher is still offered for sale, as it is a breakable cipher, at least in theory.

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Re: DES cracker.
by Geoffrey C. Grabow 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 16:30 10/17/96 +0100, Adam Back wrote: > >[added cc cypherpunks also] > >Sameer Parekh <sameer(a)c2.org> writes: >> Peter Trei <trei(a)process.com> writes: >> > Ideally, this should be a DEMO case of a real world encrypted >> > application, in which we have a cryptotext, and a known plaintext, >> > each at least one 8-byte block long. >> >> I'd like to get in touch with a bank who can provide us some >> sample ciphertext for an ATM transaction or something like that. I >> initially thought we should hit SWIFT, but that would be very >> illegal. =) > >If someone can dig up a selection of banking protocols (some of these >things must be standardised), perhaps we can simulate the same thing >without the legal implications. > >Of course you'd need the person constructing the challenge to be >trustworthy to the tune of $10k, or whatever the prize fund pans out >to be. For that matter the NSA, or anyone else with a hardware >breaker would be able to cheat, but then they help our cause, which is >to demonstrate how weak DES is :-) > Tell me what you need. A large part of my job is providing hardware security modules to banks to secure (among other things) their ATM networks (Automated Teller MAchines, not Async Transfer Mode). Do you need PIN encryption formats, transmission message protocols, or what? Just LMK. G.C.G. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ | Geoffrey C. Grabow | Great people talk about ideas. | | Oyster Bay, New York | Average people talk about things. | | gcg(a)pb.net | Small people talk about people. | |----------------------------------------------------------------------| | PGP 2.6.2 public key available at http://www.pb.net/~wizard | | and on a plethora of key servers around the world. | | Key ID = 0E818EC1 | | Fingerprint = A6 7B 67 D7 E9 96 37 7D E7 16 BD 5E F4 5A B2 E4 | |----------------------------------------------------------------------| | That which does not kill us, makes us stranger. - Trevor Goodchild | ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

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[NOISE] About piracy & key recovery / hacked pages & Clinton-Gore
by scrappo.reverb＠juno.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Hmmm... let's see... At about the same time I see people talking about major software/hardware companies going into the key recovery biz and piracy sites _not_ getting taken off of servers (SPA). Piracy. Software companies. Don't they have a common bond somewhere? Wouldn't it be ironic if a rash of piracy occurred with said companies products being pirated? I also noticed two other parallels: Hacked web pages and (although not here) the Clinton/Gore re-election. Hmm... Didn't somebody say something about the real Dole page getting a lot of hits? Maybe the Clinton page gets a lot of hits too. Wouldn't that be a hoot if somebody hacked their page and changed it to something more meaningful, say, how they are pushing the terribly dangerous key-recovery project. Even a subtle hack, such as putting a link to national and international sites carrying PGP, would have an effect. In the true spirit of the subject, I am not responsible. err... I am not responsible if this happens. Food for thought/no need to reply.

1 0

Re: Production of ALPHACIPHER Snake Oil Cancelled!
by ! Drive 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

: From: Timothy C. May <tcmay(a)got.net> : At 9:11 PM -0700 10/17/96, ! Drive wrote: : >This may have already been posted, but I found it interesting... : > : >from: http://www.aa.net/cyber-survival-hq/ : > : > Development of the ALPHACIPHER product line has been voluntarily : >cancelled : >due to the possibility of : > non-compliance of users of ALPHACIPHER with the new key : >escrow : >law. : : : And just which _law_ might that be? Care to name an Act? Or even a Bill? I don't know, I'm only affiliated by the ISP, goto the page and find a mailto link and ask the owner. : : Come to think of it, just what the hell is "Alphacipher," and why should we : care? : : : > ALPHACIPHER currently has no built-in key generation function, and the : >proposed release of an : > ALPHACIPHER key generator has been terminated. All purchasers of ALPHACIPHER : >are entitled to a complete : > refund, and this has already been done. : : Were there any actual purchasers? : : > The New ADFGVX cipher is still offered for sale, as it is a breakable : >cipher, at least in theory. Why would one want to purchase something advertised as breakable? 'course advertising that its not breakable would would keep me away also. : : Ah, yes, now I understand. Sounds like just a new marketing ploy for the : same old snake oil. : : --Tim May

1 0

Writing A Remailer
by William Davidheiser 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Hi all. I want to try to write a re-mailer that will run on my ISP's UNIX shell account. I am familiar with Windows socket programming (C/C++) but have never done anything in the UNIX environment. Any pointers on where I should start? Thx a bunch --- billd

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Re: More threats from FOTM (Friends of Timmy May)
by Adamsc＠io-online.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

On Tue, 15 Oct 1996 21:54:20 -0700 (PDT), Sandy Sandfort wrote: >Does anyone remember the Russian word for "uncultured"? It was >in one or two of Tom Clancy's books. nekulturny? # Chris Adams <adamsc(a)io-online.com> | http://www.io-online.com/adamsc/adamsc.htp # <cadams(a)acucobol.com> | send mail with subject "send PGPKEY" "That's our advantage at Microsoft; we set the standards and we can change them." --- Karen Hargrove, Microsoft (quoted in the Feb 1993 Unix Review editorial)

1 0

Re: Microsoft Millionaires and Billionaires
by Adamsc＠io-online.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

On Wed, 16 Oct 1996 07:54:06 -0700 (PDT), Brad Shantz wrote: >You obviously don't know as many developers at Microsoft as I do. They >treat alot of their developers like farm animals. I just had an interview >at Microsoft last week. Very few if any of the people I met with were >millionaires. I've heard a lot of people say that the 5+ year Microsquishies are leaving in droves because 'it's not a fun place to work anymore'. The pain of success, I guess. # Chris Adams <adamsc(a)io-online.com> | http://www.io-online.com/adamsc/adamsc.htp # <cadams(a)acucobol.com> | send mail with subject "send PGPKEY" "That's our advantage at Microsoft; we set the standards and we can change them." --- Karen Hargrove, Microsoft (quoted in the Feb 1993 Unix Review editorial)

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Re: Comments on binding cryptography (1)
by Bert-Jaap Koops 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Dale Thorn <dthorn(a)gte.net> wrote: [many things, including] > So where in > the U.S. are you gonna get TRP's who will not *ever* "leak" your files > to an interested agency without proper warrant? [and] > They sure as hell don't trust us, now do they? This indicates exactly our difference of opinion, which I noticed already in my posting. We have different views on governments, so be it. > cypherpunks are not merely paranoid (paranoia as a Way Of Knowing), > they're very adept at telling you exactly how the criminals and > terrorists will get around this hokum, and you're in denial about it. If you can tell me exactly how criminals can get around the cryptographic protocol in the way the proposal tries to prevent (unilateral fraud), I very much would like to hear so. If you mean criminals can agree to use superencryption (or PGP for that matter), I don't deny that, as you might have noticed. Bert-Jaap

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Re: "Stopping Crime" Necessarily Means Invasiveness
by Bert-Jaap Koops 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

"Timothy C. May" <tcmay(a)got.net> wrote: > The recent talk about "catching criminals" misses this point, that > governments typically use surveillance powers to control citizens. (Note: I > would think Dutch residents should be especially sensitive to this concern, > given what happened to them in WW II, when the arriving Nazis used > telephone records to locate Jews for extermination. Until recently, Holland > had a tendency to carefully think about such issues---I believe phone calls > were billed in such a way as to not keep such records, for example). I suppose this remark is targeted at me and Eric. Yes, I am sensitive to the issue, but no, I don't think the threat of an American invasion particularly realistic. At present, I worry more about the threat of (organized) crime than about the threat of government abuse, call it Dutch naivete if you want. So much for politics. Can we get back to crypto? Bert-Jaap

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RE: Binding cryptography - a fraud-detectible alternative to ke
by everheul＠mail.rijnhaave.nl 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Bill Stewart[SMTP:stewarts@ix.netcom.com] wrote: >I haven't seen the technical papers behind the postings you've made Our original is on: http://cwis.kub.nl/~frw/people/koops/binding.htm At the end of that (also available as http://cwis.kub.nl/~frw/people/koops/bindtech.htm) there is a technical description of one implementation of Binding Cryptography. >to the net, but the overall approach sounds very similar to "Clipper >II", the Software Key Encryption work that the TIS people (Steve >Walker?) and Dorothy Denning were touting a year or so ago. It >wasn't in your references, and it's clearly close enough to be worth >your attention. The design was interesting - it chose a set of >public and symmetric key encryption that allows the recipient to >validate the sessionkey-encrypted-to-key-copy-holder*. They are mentioned in the final paper. /* I will only go into the technique now, not the politics */ In fact our technique is inspired on that technique (that is being used by several other as well). In this technique users' encrypted messages basically consist of three components: 1. the (actual) message encrypted with any symmetric system, using a random session key; 2. the session key encrypted with the public key(s) of the addressee(s); 3. the session key encrypted with the public key of a Trusted Retrieval Party (TRP). With the TIS scheme a TRP is called Key Escrow Agency (KEA), but that is just a name. When a law-enforcement agency is conducting a lawful intercept and strikes upon an enciphered message, they take the third information component to the TRP. If shown an appropriate warrant, the TRP decrypts the information component and hands over the session key, so that the law-enforcement agency has access to the message. The TIS commerical Key Escrow (CKE) leaves it at that. So unilateral (i.e without help of the recipient) fraud is easily possible; just send another (or none) session key in the thrid component. Nobody is going to know; the three packets look OK. Only when there is a law-enforcement agency is conducting a lawful intercept then they will know fraude is committed. (BTW "fraude" means using something (voluntarily) without complying with the *AGREED* rules. Hence fraude in voluntary systems is possible. PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE let us not have that discussion again!). Not willing to jeopardize the investigation, the LEA is then probably not going to do much about it. In the "TIS software key escrow paralleling Clipper" this unilateral fraude has been made impossible: as the recipient knows the session key (from decrypting the second component), he is capabel to recalculate the third session key and compare it with it the actual sent to him. Of course this comparison is incorperated in the software of the recipient; if the comparison fails then the decryption of the first component will not take place (in France your monitor might explode (-;) Although preventing unilateral fraude, this does not prevent colluding of frauders. Indeed, by a conceptually simple manipulation in the decryption software the outcome of the comparison can be made "positive" all the time. So in this fashion, without anybody knowing (seeing) about it colluding people will use the security benefits of the system, but not it "law enforcement" disadvantages. We liked the general techinque as it is rather liberal and internationally useable (you don't have to escrow any secret keys, the choice of TRPs is very flexible), but we did not like the colluding property. The idea in our scheme is that the colluding fraude is still possible, but must be at least *detectable* by third parties that have access to all data anyway (network operators, internet service providers). Moreover, for this detection no secret information is needed (or gained), so user' privacy is not jeopardized by it. With respect to this; I was surprised to read in the papers that Bangemann (European Commision) proposed to make Internet Service Provides responsible for checking the authenticity of certain types of sent data. In resume: we believe that our scheme is the middle of key-escrow (Clipper III) and the TIS scheme and is flexible enough to form a worldwide security infrastructure, where each participating country can implement its *own* crypto policy with. In particular, if, how (random, offline?) and by who checking is done is a matter for each country to decide on his own. Also the organization of TRPs is a matter of each country of its own. > A major capability that was missing from Walker's SKE work is the > ability to split the copied* key into two or more parts, all of > which are need to recover the session key, while making it possible > to validate that the pieces do add up to the session key. Splitting the session-key in binding data can be done by the sender (sending all shares to different TRPs); this can be checked by anyone. More importantly, in our ElGamal implementation of binding cryptography the splitting of the secret keys of TRP can be done in a very elegant way, that seems to be put there for (controlled) LEA-use. We will put that in the technical paper as well. Best regards, Eric

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GET ME OUT OF HERE
by crumrig＠us-state.gov 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

UNSUBSCIBE

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JUN_tas
by John Young 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

10-19-96. WaPo: "Story of How an Unknown American Linguist Broke Soviet Wartime Spy Code Finally Emerges From Shadows" NSA's legendary cryptlinguist Meredith Knox Gardner emerged from a lifetime of anonymity to tell his story at a conference devoted to the "Venona" code break. NSA historians have been unable to come up with any evidence that President Truman was ever informed of Venona. Mystery also continues to surround the government's failure to prosecute Theodore Alvin Hall, a Harvard physicist working at Los Alamos and Bill Weisband, a Soviet emigre working with Gardner at NSA, even though Venona decrypts revealed the two as spies. Gardner believes that the intelligence chiefs withheld the information from Truman because they were afraid that he would "give away the secret. You can't imagine how the intelligence agencies guard secrecy." ----- http://jya.com/juntas.txt (20 kb) ftp://jya.com/pub/incoming/juntas.txt JUN_tas

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RE: YES OR NO?
by jbugden＠smtplink.alis.ca 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

dlv(a)bwalk.dm.com (Dr.Dimitri Vulis KOTM) wrote: >I said: YES, when I have the time. If your schedule looks anything like mine, you only have time for something if you make time for it. If your YES is to be worth anything, you are going to have to make time. Will you make the time? If not, a NO would be a more honest response. Ciao, James Never put off until tomorrow what you can put off doing altogether.

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Re: EC patent
by Hayashi_Tsuyoshi 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

On Thu, 17 Oct 1996 17:38:28 -0800, jim bell said: >At 04:53 PM 10/17/96 -0400, Robert Hettinga wrote: >>--- begin forwarded text >>Date: Thu, 17 Oct 1996 14:03:34 +0800 >>From: James Lee <jlee(a)ccl.itri.org.tw> >>Reply-To: jlee(a)ccl.itri.org.tw >>+----------------------------------------------------+ >>Addressed to: set-discuss(a)commerce.net >>+----------------------------------------------------+ >> >>I heard that CitiBank has filed for a patent in Japan with 140+ claims The document is on my desk: CitiBank's patent in Japan #: Toku-Kou-Hei 7-111723 o 104 claims o published date: 29 Nov, 1995 o 112 pages (text: 48 pages, fig.: 64 pages.) # Note: # "Toku" means "Tokkyo", "tokkyo" == "patent" # "Kou" means "Koukoku", "koukoku" == "published" # "Hei" means "Heisei", "Heisei" is the Japanese year- # name; This year == Heisei 8 == 1996. A publication of the CitiBank's patent was a big news in industrial or financial domain in Japan. I found the article on Nikkei-Sangyo shinbun. # sangyo == industrial # shinbun == paper >>covering many aspects of electronic commerce, security electronic >>transaction, etc. Probably yes. >>--- end forwarded text > >Maybe Japanese law is different, but don't I recall reading somewhere that >"methods of doing business," business practices in general, are not >patentable? It seems that "Toku-Kou-Hei 7-111723" claims specified procedure, not *general* "methods of doing business". >Not that it would surprise me if the Patent Office idiots were to change >their minds, like they did concerning software, algorithms, and mathematics >in general... I think that Japanese P.O. has changed their policy in a few years influenced with U.S.P.O. ///hayashi

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Re: YES OR NO?
by nobody＠zifi.genetics.utah.edu 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

The Vulis-bot wrote: >Sandy Sandfort <sandfort(a)crl.com> writes: > >> ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ >> SANDY SANDFORT >> . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . >> >> C'punks, >> >> On Thu, 17 Oct 1996, Dr.Dimitri Vulis KOTM wrote: >> >> > I said: YES, when I have the time. Unless the "YES" was in private email to Sandy, he lies (again) about ever having given any form of a straight answer. >> Great. So let's pick a date sufficiently in the future that you >> can make a firm commitment. For starters, our three winter >> meetings are tentatively scheduled for December 14, January 11 >> and February 8. Any of those sound good to you? > >Don't know yet. Prediction/translation: "never" Sandy, I am not even sure that this is such a good idea... rewarding the annoying with a free, wintertime trip to CA with free lodging seems to be a way of encouraging more of the annoying... The last thing we need. Respected c-punks are dropping like flies as it is. Perhaps you'll prove me wrong and shut him up, if he proves me wrong by attending, that is.

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POTP critques?
by Peter Trei 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

An acquaintence of mine works at a firm with little cryptography experience. They are thinking of including cryptography in a future product, and Elementrix's Power One Time Pad is a serious contestant. I'm looking for independent critiques of the system, something better than 'it's not really a one-time pad.' Is the cryptosystem which is actually implemented worth a damn? Does their claim to have solved the key distribution problem hold water? I seem to remember something about them wanting to generate keys for you, and ship them to the customer. Is this correct? Peter Trei trei(a)process.com Peter Trei Senior Software Engineer Purveyor Development Team Process Software Corporation http://www.process.com trei(a)process.com

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FDA Net-regulations -- "Drug Lords" from HotWired
by Declan McCullagh 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Fri, 18 Oct 1996 05:20:19 -0700 (PDT) From: Declan McCullagh <declan(a)well.com> To: fight-censorship(a)vorlon.mit.edu Subject: FDA Net-regulations -- "Drug Lords" from HotWired http://www.netizen.com/netizen/96/42/global4a.html HotWired The Netizen "Drug Lords" Global Network by Declan McCullagh (declan(a)well.com) Washington, DC, 17 October Forget the Communications Decency Act and the censor-happy Clinton administration. Instead, it now seems like we have to keep an eye on the pinstriped bureaucrats at the US Food and Drug Administration, who are hatching their own schemes to regulate the Net. I just got back from the agency's two-day conference in the Maryland suburbs, entitled "FDA and the Internet: Advertising and Promotion of Medical Products." Discussions drifted from troublesome-to-the-Feds notions of drug use in America Online chat rooms to emerging international Net-regulatory agreements, but all the talk shared a kind of benevolent paternalism. Consumers can't be trusted to make their own choices. The Federal government must protect us from reading what only doctors are allowed to see. Netizens can't even be trusted to figure out when they're leaving a Web site after they click on a link. Drug industry representatives on the panel this morning appeared less than overly concerned with regulatory threats to free speech. Jamie Marks from Body Health Resources said: "It's very important that drug companies police the sites they link to." The panel also discussed how to prevent sites that celebrate or even talk about illicit drug use from linking to sites operated by pharmaceutical companies. Even search engines like AltaVista could be hit by FDA regulations. Sara Stein from Stanford University noted, "Search engines have begun to sell links ... that's another area of disclosure that's required." Translation: the FDA is looking to have a say in how to label medical advertisements on Web sites. The FDA's also working the international angle. They brought in to the conference speakers from France, Britain, Switzerland, Brazil, and the Netherlands - all of whom were particularly interested in online drug promotion, since US advertising laws are currently so permissive. J. Idanpaan-Heikkila, the World Health Organization's director of drug management and policies, said that real-world claims promoting pharmaceuticals should be "in good taste," adding, "I think this is applicable to the Internet." Cedric Allenou, the French Embassy's health attache, predicted more controls: "In France, as in the United States, there is a lack of regulation on the Internet. But these issues will soon be discussed by the French government." When asked what his country would do if a US server distributes information banned in France, he replied: "If your Web site is not in France, you're not under French rule. This is a problem with French Internet regulation." John Rothchild, an attorney from the Federal Trade Commission - which will announce its own Net-regulation plan later this year - said: "Based on some hasty research I did last night, I can report it is feasible to control access to our Web site based on what country the accesser is in.... I don't know the technical details, but according to the technical people at the FTC, non-US domain names have a two-letter suffix." Rothchild apparently didn't realize that many companies outside the United States have domain names ending in nothing but .com. At the end of the two-day conference, meanwhile, the one question left unanswered by attendees was not whether the FDA should regulate the Net, but how long it will take them, and how far they'll go. ###

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Re: DES cracker.
by Geoffrey C. Grabow 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 13:54 10/18/96 +0200, Gary Howland wrote: >Geoffrey C. Grabow wrote: >> > >> Tell me what you need. A large part of my job is providing hardware >> security modules to banks to secure (among other things) their ATM networks >> (Automated Teller MAchines, not Async Transfer Mode). Do you need PIN >> encryption formats, transmission message protocols, or what? Just LMK. > >It would be nice to get some confirmation that PINs are generated using >a DES encryption of the account number. > Actually, there are several methods. The most common one by far is called IBM3624. That uses 12 digits of the Primary Account Number (PAN), which in most cases is the card number, and encrypts it with DES. That result is then "decimalized" to change all hex letters to numbers. The first n digits of that result are then used to perform a MOD10 subtract from the customers selected PIN. That result is called an offset and is stored on track 2 of the card, the bank's database or both. G.C.G. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ | Geoffrey C. Grabow | Great people talk about ideas. | | Oyster Bay, New York | Average people talk about things. | | gcg(a)pb.net | Small people talk about people. | |----------------------------------------------------------------------| | PGP 2.6.2 public key available at http://www.pb.net/~wizard | | and on a plethora of key servers around the world. | | Key ID = 0E818EC1 | | Fingerprint = A6 7B 67 D7 E9 96 37 7D E7 16 BD 5E F4 5A B2 E4 | |----------------------------------------------------------------------| | That which does not kill us, makes us stranger. - Trevor Goodchild | ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

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Re: More threats from FOTM (Friends of Timmy May)
by bdolan＠USIT.NET 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Something like "ne(o)cultorney," I think. bd On Tue, 15 Oct 1996, Sandy Sandfort wrote: > > Does anyone remember the Russian word for "uncultured"? It was > in one or two of Tom Clancy's books. > > > S a n d y > > ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ > > >

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Re: Anonymous Auth Certificates [was: Re: Blinded Identities]
by Hal Finney 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

From: azur(a)netcom.com (Steve Schear) > It seems that one crux of the problem revolves around the CA and its method > of certificate issuance. A CA which uses biometric data to > reduce/eliminate the chance that an applicant could get several, unrelated, > certificates issued would provide a basis for negative authentication > (similar to a negative credit file). Yes, biometric data is another way of preventing multiple credentials. However it will not work well in electronic form. What you'd need would be a network of stations to take fingerprints and give credentials, ("is a person" credentials) which would then be used for getting access to other services where you're supposed to only use them once (voting for example). This requires a fairly elaborate infrastructure and social commitment to this solution to the problem. Somehow too it is hard to see how to sell a system as a privacy enhancement when its first step is to take fingerprints of the whole country. "But we're not saving your names, honest!" I don't know if it would fly. Tim May argues that alternative solutions which are more local will be better. In the case of the abuse situation, maybe you could just have people put down a deposit of $100 or so. Then they get an anonymous credential which they can use for access. If they abuse their access, their credential gets disabled. As long as their abuse is worth less than the deposit you'll be OK. And at any point they can turn in their valid credential and get their money back. No identities are needed at any point in the scheme. > A one-way function performed, by the client, on their certificate from this > CA would yield a token which unambiguously binds it to a valid certificate > of the CA (and therefore uniquely identifies them) w/o revealing the > certificate itself. Actually I think you need to use a blinding protocol when you acquire the certificate, rather than trying to run a one-way function on the unblinded cert. The output of a one-way function looks random and meaningless unless you supply the input. And if the input identifies the user then you've lost the anonymity. Hal

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Re: GET ME OUT OF HERE
by Timothy C. May 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 7:24 AM -0700 10/18/96, crumrig(a)us-state.gov wrote: >UNSUBSCIBE You have been unsubscibed. For good measure, you have also been unscribed, unsubsribed, and unsuscribed. In the event that you wished to be _unsubscribed_, only you can do that. Directions follow at the end of this message. --Unsubsciber To subscribe to the Cypherpunks mailing list: -send a message to: majordomo(a)toad.com -body message of: subscribe cypherpunks To unsubscribe from the Cypherpunks mailing list: -send a message to: majordomo(a)toad.com -body message of: unsubscribe cypherpunks

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No Subject
by Alexander.Kvache 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

unsibscribe

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Re: is there no end to AP & Creative Wiretap Arguments?
by Hallam-Baker 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Steve Schear wrote: > How about as a means of coercing war criminals ethnic purgers, as those in > Bosnia/Serbia, to turn themselves in to proper tribunals for judging. > Having AP bettors wager $100,000s on your untimely retirement, unless you > turn yourself in, could induce one to consider conventional justice. On the other hand it would provide said war criminals with a convenient mechanism for carrying out their crimes. It does not work for Bell and his appologists to wave their hands and say "trust me it will be better". There is absolutely no reason to believe that AP markets would be used by anyone but psychopaths. No mechanism is proposed which restricts the purposes to which the AP markets can be put. They would inevitably be used by the KKK and neo-NAZI groups for hate-crimes. > All human rights are Naturally derived as are the 'Laws of the Jungle'. > Governments instituted among men should derive their rights from the > soverignty of its citizens. Unfortunately, many countries choose to ignore > this. AP should serve an occassionally competitive system to keep the > 'duly consistuted' system on its toes lest those in authority reap the law > of the jungle. Rights do not exist outside a legal framework that supports them. Arguments from natural law have been discredited for 300+ years. Such arguments merely reify the prejudices of one society into axiomatic rights without the bother of having to justify them. There is no logical basis to prefer the "rights" of th US constitution over the "rights" recognised by the Islamic Jihad. If you read the US declaration of Independence it is very clear that its authors rejected natural law arguments. The rights that they hold to be "self evident" are extreemly abstract principles which could be justified within almost any ethical system. The removal of the word "God" was deliberate and reflects a concious rejection of the natural law argument. AP is self-contradictory. It claims to uphold "rights" by infringing them massively and disproportionately and in such a way that no rights would remain. It is impossible to justify AP except in extreeme authoritarian terms that could be used to justify any system of government. Phill

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Kantor Mischaracterizes
by John Young 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

The Washington Post, October 18, 1996, p. A26. The Administration's Encryption Plan I write in response to The Post's Oct. 4 editorial [below] that mischaracterizes the administration's recent encryption plan. The administration's encryption plan is reasonable, workable, fair and coherent. It addresses the critical issues of promoting the export of encryption products and protecting the public safety and our national security. The administration's objective is to put forth a balanced plan that promotes commerce and protects people. And that's exactly what we've done. The proof that our plan will work is with the critical mass of industry that has announced its intention to work with the administration to develop a key recovery system, which will allow law enforcement, under proper court order, to have access to encrypted data. In fact, many of these companies have products they will soon market that both safeguard information and protect society, and more are expected to follow. The National Research Council (NRC) report to which the editorial referred recommended allowing the export of encryption up to the strength of 56 bits. Contrary to the editorial, the president has not "embraced a looser form of licensure" than this report. Instead, this administration's plan allows the export of encryption up to 56 bits so long as industry commits to build and market products that support a key recovery system. This is, in fact, a stronger form of licensure not called for by the NRC report. The Post's editorial conveniently ignores the critical role encrypted products play in protecting businesses against illegal activity and the privacy rights of individuals. This is a disturbing omission that avoids critical concerns that can only be advanced by the administration's plan. Finally, this administration takes seriously its responsibility to protect its citizens and our national security. That's why we are not lifting all restrictions on the export of encryption products, and why there is a two-year deadline on the export of 56-bit encryption products. The administration's plan will accelerate the development of a market-driven, global key management system. That will provide the best security of all. Michael Kantor Secretary of Commerce Washington [End] ---------- The Washington Post, October 4, 1996, p. A22. Crypto Politics [Editorial] The Clinton administration once had a coherent, if unpopular, position on encryption software, the stuff that allows you to encode your email messages or other data so that no one can read it en route without a key. Now, in the wake of word that the president will sign an executive order, the position is no longer coherent, nor discernibly more popular with the high-tech audience it attempts to mollify. People and companies doing international financial business are highly interested in this kind of software, the more powerfully "uncrackable" the better. The U.S. software industry thinks there's a lot of money in it, especially if encryption becomes routine. The administration position till recently was that, much as U.S. software companies might profit from being able to market "uncrackable" encryption software freely, national security and law enforcement considerations dictated that such exports be controlled by license. Powerful encryption, like arms, could be dangerous in the hands of terrorists, rogue governments or international criminals. The software was classed as a munition; software above a certain uncrackability level could not be exported unless law enforcement authorities could get access somehow to the "key" after obtaining the proper warrants. Unbreakable codes on the loose strike us as a real danger, a legitimate reason for tight export controls. But if the administration really believes this, you'd think it would stick with steps that can plausibly meet the goal of control. Instead, trying to please, it has been splitting and splitting the difference between itself and the largely unmoved industry, which argues that no one will buy an encryption product that a government can decrypt at will. As with arms sales, the companies also argue that if they don't sell it, somebody else will, and that anyway it's far too late to fence off rogues. The national security people respond that there is still a "window," perhaps two years, in which they can prevent, if not all leaks of unauthorized crypto technology, at least its off-the-shelf use and wide adoption as the international standard. The administration initially proposed, then repeatedly refined, the concept of key "escrow" -- depositing a copy of the code with trusted third parties -- but never came up with a version the industry would accept. It commissioned a National Research Council report, which recommended a significant easing of restrictions. Now the president appears to have embraced a yet looser form of licensure upon declaration by a company that it will develop a plan within two years for key recovery. Also, the technology no longer will be considered munitions. What kind of plan? Nobody can quite say. What if the plans aren't acceptable? Licensing will revert to the old rule in two years. Will the security issue be moot by then? Probably. Barring some burst of clarity, one is left wondering whether the administration has compromised or caved, and what it now believes about the dangers of exporting uncrackable software. [End] See the National Research Council report: http://jya.com/nrcindex.htm

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Real Meaning of "Key Recovery" (was Re: DES cracker...)
by Andrew Loewenstern 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Peter Trei, whilst talking about a key cracking effort, said: > For the Key Recovery effort (please call it Key Recovery - > this has important psychological implications in the US) Yes yes! What a great way to "reclaim" this term... CC'ed to cypherpunks for all to see. No longer is it "Key Cracking" it is now "Key Recovery" ... andrew

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