December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

48-bit RC5 code broken [fwd]
by azur＠netcom.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Date: Fri, 14 Feb 1997 8:02:49 PST From: "Peter G. Neumann" <neumann(a)csl.sri.com> Subject: 48-bit RC5 bites the dust In RISKS-18.81, we noted that Ian Goldberg of U.C. Berkeley had cracked the 40-bit RC5 in 3.5 hours -- the first step in the RSA Data Security challenge posed on 28 Jan 1997. The second step was taken on 10 Feb 1997 by Germano Caronni, a graduate student at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology. Caronni (with a lot of help from his friends) has recovered the key for text encrypted with 48-bit RC5, with the help of 3,500 computers and attaining an peak rate of 1.5 trillion keys searched per hour, over a period of 312 hours. A press release from RSA (given some circulation in the media) on gives some details. Close to the median expected effort, about 57% of the key space was exhausted. The Caronni team is now working on the next challenge, RC5-56. It is easy to clone yourself through virtual replication. [In this case, the team has a lot of Caronnis!]

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Re: More on digital postage
by jim bell 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 11:40 AM 2/15/97 -0600, snow wrote: >Mr. Bell wrote: >> At 03:31 AM 2/14/97 -0800, John C. Randolph wrote: >> >Tim may says: >> >>By the way, I think the "junk fax" and "junk phone call" laws are clearcut >> >>violations of the First Amendment. I understand why the herd _wants_ these >> >>laws, as it reduces the costs involved in replacing fax paper, running to >> >>the telephone only to find someone trying to sell something, etc., but it >> >>is quite clearly a prior restraint on speech, however well-intentioned. >> >I have to disagree here. The junk fax law is a restraint on unauthorised >> >use of property, i.e. *my* fax machine, *my* phone, etc. >> However, you connect that fax machine to a phone line, when you know full >> well that should it be enabled to do so, it will automatically pick up the >> phone when it "hears" a ring, and will print out a fax based on information >> provided. It isn't clear why sending a fax is any "wronger" than mailing >> junk mail, or making a (voice) phone call to somebody. > > That is a ridiculous argument. The door to my home is connected >to the street,m and I know full well that that makes it easy for anyone >to come wandering in to my home. Is it legal, just because I have my >home hooked to the street, for someone to come in and help themselves to >a beer out of my fridge? No, you're taking the issue to ridiculous extremes. That's why we have doors, and locks, etc. And, for that matter, "No trespassing" signs. But having an address, and a walkway, and a doorbell is generally considered if not explicit permission, but at least toleration of the idea that somebody can walk up and knock on the door, etc. Having a telephone with a number that anyone can dial is going to result in some level of intrusion. Having a fax machine is a similar issue, unless technology provides a way to block unwanted faxes. I certainly don't claim that we shouldn't try to do anything about these limitations! Quite the opposite, technology should be employed to protect privacy. But faxes are not fundamentally different than telephones, doorbells, and walkways: They facilitate interaction, even potentially undesirable interaction. > Nope. Sure I realize that they _can_, but that doesn't make it right, >and it doesn't make it legal. "Legal" is an arbirary concept; the opposite, "illegal," is merely what some bunch of brainless legislators get together and disapprove. Jim Bell jimbell(a)pacifier.com

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Re: Moderation experiment almost over; "put up or shut up"
by Dale Thorn 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Igor Chudov @ home wrote: > Dale Thorn wrote: > > Igor Chudov @ home wrote: > > > Dave Hayes wrote: > > > > Ok. I'll "put up". > > If I understood the last several hundred messages correctly, they have > > tried to make the point that the cypherpunks mailing list (unedited) > > was more ideal than a newsgroup. If this is what Dave is offering, > > I'm surprised if more people don't jump on it. Then again, they > > took their good ol' time jumping onto cypherpunks-unedited. > > I think that the ideas of a distributed list and the idea of > alt.cypherpunks are both good and these two mediums complement > each other. I can certainly accept this, but it would be nice if someone summarizes these feeds every now and then, as time to check them all out is very limited.

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Re: Cypherpunks Forums FAQ (life after toad.com)
by Perry E. Metzger 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

BTW, for those of you who haven't tried it, cryptography(a)c2.net, which I run and moderate, has been pretty successful thus far in providing a low noise high quality area for discussing cryptography and cryptography related political issues. I invite people to join. To get on, simply send a message to majordomo(a)c2.net with the words subscribe cryptography in the body. Perry Adam Back writes: > > There has been some discussion as to which list one should subscribe to > once cypherpunks(a)toad.com is dead (which I would remind you is 4 days from > now -- 19th Feb). > > For those not paying attention, I have collated information about > cypherpunks forums for your information:

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(fwd) DES challenge organisation
by Adam Back 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

An announcement forwarded to me (due to being on des-challenge mailing list I think) of proposed organisation for breaking RSADSI's DES challenge. Those interested in participating might wish to join the lists mentioned. In addition the list: des-challenge(a)muffin.org is for discussion of the DES challenge, and can be subscribed to by sending email to majordomo(a)muffin.org. -Adam ====================================================================== Subject: Announcement: Organisation Committee From: ths(a)rz.tu-ilmenau.de (Thomas S.) Date: 15 Feb 1997 18:27:40 +0000 Hi! The six volunteers who answered the call for a committee of management have got together to try to help 'steer' the DES challenge. We have considered the available options of proceeding, and we kindly ask everyone interested in this project to follow our proposals, to avoid waste of efforts. 1. The attempt to break the key will be coordinated. We chose this mainly because we can make a political statement. We don't want it to be a race for money. Each task will be handled by logically separate servers, some of which with be replicated and run as a hierachy. The protocol will use UDP, although there will be gateway servers for other protocols (such as HTTP, SMTP, FAX, etc). We hope that one of the first requests for a key range will be from parties interested in using a "random" approach -- we would appreciate some discussion on how large their ranges should be. 2. There will be one consistent WWW structure for the project. It does not have to managed by a single person. This structure should provide statistics, information for developers, interested users and perhaps even for the press. Several mirrors and translations will be started soon. The starting point is: http://www.des.crypto.org/ [fh28.fa.umist.ac.uk/des/] The url in brackets has to be used till we get the final subdomain. Likewise for the rest of this document. 3. The work of the different groups should be stated and coordinated on the page http://www.des.crypto.org/people.html. [fh28.fa.umist.ac.uk/des/people.html] This is to avoid uncoordinated parallel developmemt. Please write to Thomas S. <webmaster(a)mail.des.crypto.org> [webmaster(a)fh28.fa.umist.ac.uk] if you what want to be mentioned on this page. 3a. Several mailing lists have been set up for the different groups: des-coding for the actual DES routine and optimisation des-networking for the network code and protocol des-www for www contributions and mirrors des-pr for press contact, translations etc (like challenge-pr) des-misc :-) des-announce moderated, important information for users of the client List address: <list>@lists.des.crypto.org [@xtn.net] To subscribe, send mail to majordomo(a)lists.des.crypto.org [@xtn.net] with in the body of the message (several actions allowed): subscribe <list> Achives available (see homepage). 4. The actual DES routine has to be written and optimised. We ask developers to participate and coordinate their efforts using the mailing list des-coding. For obvious reasons, developers outside the USA are prefered, but "publication" of algorithms seems to be a legal way go get around. Please do not use this list to distribute crypto code. 5. The prize money will be split equally between Gutenberg and EFF. There is a possibility of using part of it for stickers or something similar, but don't count on it. We hope to get a working system up and running ASAP. The fact alone that DES is seriously challenged (with a reasonable time frame) should give us quite some publicity (by the time the system is ready). If we can make use of that, we will have significantly more client than for the 48 bit key. The organisation committee: Piete Brooks <Piete.Brooks(a)cl.cam.ac.uk> Jered Floyd <jered(a)mit.edu> Tim Newsome <drz(a)froody.bloke.com> Germano Caronni <caronni(a)tik.ee.ethz.ch> Thomas Roessler <Thomas.Roessler(a)sobolev.rhein.de> Thomas S. <ths(a)fh28.fa.umist.ac.uk>

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Re: Moderation experiment almost over; "put up or shut up"
by Dale Thorn 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Igor Chudov @ home wrote: > Dave Hayes wrote: > > Ok. I'll "put up". > > If the cypherpunks will have me, -I'll- run the cypherpunks > > list. Those that know me know that I will *not* censor, moderate, or > > otherwise alter the content (other than the stuff majordomo does with > > "resend") of any messages to the list. > I think that it is a great idea. If you want to contribute to the > effort to keep the list, this is great. You could join the network of > other cypherpunks mailing lists. > There is a small list for discussing these networking issues, > cypherpunks-hosts(a)algebra.com. It is not for crypto-discussions per > se, but rather for discussing how we proceed with these lists. If I understood the last several hundred messages correctly, they have tried to make the point that the cypherpunks mailing list (unedited) was more ideal than a newsgroup. If this is what Dave is offering, I'm surprised if more people don't jump on it. Then again, they took their good ol' time jumping onto cypherpunks-unedited.

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Re: Moderation experiment almost over; "put up or shut up"
by Dale Thorn 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Dave Hayes wrote: > Ok. I'll "put up". > If the cypherpunks will have me, -I'll- run the cypherpunks > list. Those that know me know that I will *not* censor, moderate, or > otherwise alter the content (other than the stuff majordomo does with > "resend") of any messages to the list. You have my vote. And any help I can provide, within my limits.

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Re: Moderation experiment almost over; "put up or shut up"
by Dale Thorn 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Cynthia H. Brown wrote: > - The female <mechanic / scientist / engineer>, in addition to passing the > same exams as her male classmates, has probably had to put up with a fair > load of B.S. questioning her right and ability to be there. The ones that > keep at it long enough to graduate are the ones that *really* want to do > whatever it is, and IMHO are more likely to try harder. > - I wonder whether the garage owners have any preference. In my military > experience (Signals officer), the (older male) sergeants and chiefs, when > given a choice, preferred female radar / radio technicians to male > because, in general, they were harder working, had thicker skins, and were > more pleasant to deal with. I love working with girls, regardless of the job. I personally prefer the ones who don't suck up to "the guys", and who don't subscribe to what society prefers girls should do or look like. Unfortunately, most offices won't hire them unless they conform in ways that I feel are offensive, so the really independent ones wind up mainly in low- paying jobs or going it alone (i.e., driving a truck). Nothing wrong with driving a truck, of course, but it would be nicer still if they could co-exist alongside males in the majority of workplaces without having to do female role-playing.

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Re: Moderation experiment almost over; "put up or shut up"
by ichudov＠algebra.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Dale Thorn wrote: > Igor Chudov @ home wrote: > > Dave Hayes wrote: > > > Ok. I'll "put up". > > > If the cypherpunks will have me, -I'll- run the cypherpunks > > > list. Those that know me know that I will *not* censor, moderate, or > > > otherwise alter the content (other than the stuff majordomo does with > > > "resend") of any messages to the list. > > > I think that it is a great idea. If you want to contribute to the > > effort to keep the list, this is great. You could join the network of > > other cypherpunks mailing lists. > > There is a small list for discussing these networking issues, > > cypherpunks-hosts(a)algebra.com. It is not for crypto-discussions per > > se, but rather for discussing how we proceed with these lists. > > If I understood the last several hundred messages correctly, they have > tried to make the point that the cypherpunks mailing list (unedited) > was more ideal than a newsgroup. If this is what Dave is offering, > I'm surprised if more people don't jump on it. Then again, they > took their good ol' time jumping onto cypherpunks-unedited. I think that the ideas of a distributed list and the idea of alt.cypherpunks are both good and these two mediums complement each other. - Igor.

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48-bit RC5 code broken [fwd]
by Steve Schear 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Date: Fri, 14 Feb 1997 8:02:49 PST From: "Peter G. Neumann" <neumann(a)csl.sri.com> Subject: 48-bit RC5 bites the dust In RISKS-18.81, we noted that Ian Goldberg of U.C. Berkeley had cracked the 40-bit RC5 in 3.5 hours -- the first step in the RSA Data Security challenge posed on 28 Jan 1997. The second step was taken on 10 Feb 1997 by Germano Caronni, a graduate student at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology. Caronni (with a lot of help from his friends) has recovered the key for text encrypted with 48-bit RC5, with the help of 3,500 computers and attaining an peak rate of 1.5 trillion keys searched per hour, over a period of 312 hours. A press release from RSA (given some circulation in the media) on gives some details. Close to the median expected effort, about 57% of the key space was exhausted. The Caronni team is now working on the next challenge, RC5-56. It is easy to clone yourself through virtual replication. [In this case, the team has a lot of Caronnis!]

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