December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

I was auto-outed by an IMG tag in HTML spam
by Anonymous 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

I just had my on-line pseudonym outed to my company's VP of marketing, with potentially serious internecine political consequences. It didn't even take an AOL customer service rep to do the dirty deed. Here's how it happened. I have an account unconnected with work, for personal mail, on a machine run by a friend in my wife's department at the local college. From this account, I speak my mind about my political views, my employer's spamming of their rather loosely defined lists of "customers", etc. I don't do that from my work account because I don't want any confusion about whether I am speaking for the company or not. Evidently my mention of my displeasure with my company's spamming hit a nerve with marketing. They sent a message to my off-site address (along with those of other critics about whom they wanted to know more). It was an HTML message with an embedded IMG tag. Last night about midnight, I downloaded my off-site mail with Netscape. (I was still at work because our team is debugging some killer database problems.) When Netscape saw that IMG tag, it happily connected to marketing's "customer" tracking server, and downloaded the keyed graphic. My boss just let me see the log he got from the marketing VP, showing clearly that my workstation read the message. The log was attached to a strident call for my head from the VP. Luckily, my boss agrees with my attitude, as do all of my co-workers on the engineering side of the house, and thinks I was in the right to use an off-site account. But the political fallout could be interesting. Beware "live" message content. If you don't, you may end up having to get your company's entire marketing force fired to protect yourself. Use mail readers that don't automatically process HTML and connect to image servers, accept cookies, or run javascripts. You are being watched by tricky defective, er, detective types. es.

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Re: Fwd: Big Brother Sees through walls (from the spyking list)
by Information Security 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

> From: sunder <sunder(a)brainlink.com> > > 1)From: "George Martin" <gmartin(a)kic.or.jp> > Subject: News Release: High-Tech Surveillance > > Here's a sampling of how state and federal agencies are using this > terrifying technology to spy on Americans: > > * In North Carolina, county governments use high-resolution spy satellite > photographs to search for property improvements that might increase > property tax assessments. Was this cost authorized by taxpayers? > * On the Mexican border, police use a "gamma ray scanner" to check > tanker trucks for contraband, scanning right through the vehicle's metal > sides. Good!!! CM excerpt: # Those rumor-level stories about our government encouraging # drugs to reach the inner cities were weird. # # Remember, we've been having a Drug War for four decades now. # # I guess there is a certain logic to it. Obviously the government is into # hysteria on the matter: it is then possible that they would want to continue # having a drug problem so they could continue the hysteria. # # Even the Attorney General was drooling over drug forfeiture dollars, to the # point of shunting aside other cases. # # # Recently... # # : CBS 60 Minutes, Steve Croft reporting. # : # : Remember that story of the hero customs agent snagging a tanker truck full # : of cocaine? There is a strange twist to the story. # : # : The Federal agent's manager repeatedly tried to interfere with him making # : the bust. # : # : The agent's dog had flagged the truck; the agent weighed it and found a # : discrepancy. His manager said it must be in the tires. You can only check # : the tires for drugs he was told. # : # : But the agent persisted, and made the bust. His manager let the driver # : of the truck leave. The driver literally fled on foot back to Mexico. # # What the hell was that about??? # # Was it a single corrupt Federal agent? # # : CBS 60 Minutes, Steve Croft reporting. # : # : Standing at a fence about a hundred feet from the U.S. Customs lanes, # : Steve Croft and an ex-agent with a walkie-talkie tuned to the right # : frequency began videotaping the border crossings. # : # : Truck after truck drove right through the individual Customs lanes, # : not even stopping. "Nafta express lanes" explained the ex-agent. # : # : Truck after truck drove straight into the U.S. unmonitored. # : # : Then a message came through the walkie-talkie: "We got some cameras # : watching, better get out there and cover traffic". # : # : Suddenly several Customs agents came out of the booths and started # : inspecting trucks. # # That makes at least five people at a minimum! # # What the hell is going on??? # # # IF the rumor is true, THIS looks like it would be the smoking gun. # # How did our country get so twisted around that they can invade our # bodies to drug test, yet allow truck after truck after truck to # just wander right in knowing HUGE drug shipment after HUGE drug # shipment is crossing? Gosh, there's no drug problem with Mexican # police, military and even their president. # # * The New York Times, February 19 1997 # * # * Brig. General Jesus Gutierrez Rebollo, Mexico's top Military Drug War # * point man, was arrested on charges of receiving payoffs from Jaurez # * cartel kingpin Amado Carrillo Fuentes, Defense Minister Enrique Cervantes # * announced. # * # * U.S. Drug Czar Gen. Barry McCaffrey had weeks earlier called General # * Gutierrez "a guy of absolute unquestioned integrity." # # # And what if some terrorists wanted to sneak in an atom bomb? # # Put a NAFTA sticker on it and drive right on in, y'all. Welcome to the USA. # # If you want to really be certain, hide the A-bomb in a truck full of cocaine. # # If a terrorist nuclear bomb ever goes off in this country, # it drove in from Mexico. # # Meanwhile, Los Alamos National Laboratories developed technology that # allows an officer walking or driving down the street, as shown on MSNBC TV # 6/9/97 www.TheSite.com, to determine whether anyone on the sidewalk is # carrying a gun. # # The priorities are all out of whack. # # Apply Military technology towards securing the border, not by spending # billions and billions and billions each year to secure each and every # one of us. # # We don't put governing-monitors on all car engines to control speeding. # Get an Operations Research clue. # # # Is our government perpetuating the availability of drugs? # # The 60 Minutes report sure makes it look like it is. # # How could letting unchecked Mexican truck after unchecked Mexican truck # through not be? # # ! FBI Director Louis J. Freeh, Senate Judiciary Committee, June 4, 1997 # ! # ! NEW CORRIDORS HAVE OPENED TO CONTINUE THE FLOOD OF DRUGS INTO AMERICA. # # No shit, Sherlock! Ya don't nafta say another word. # # Every single truck can be checked using Military technology. # # But no, massive monitoring of people suspected of no crime is the # appropriate response. # # They were just warming us up for the CALEA telephone monitoring bill. # # ---- # # Here is part of the story on why we let trucks full of cocaine and # heroin just roll right into the United States. # # * "Diminished U.S. Role Below Border Plays Into Traffickers' Hands" # * # * By Molly Moore and John Ward Anderson # * Washington Post Foreign Service # * Sunday, September 8 1996; Page A01 # * The Washington Post # * # * Due to their new 'Mexicanization policy': # * Mexico became the main gateway into the United States for illegal # * narcotics, with the amount of cocaine making the journey climbing to # * an estimated 210 tons last year. # * # * Mexico's drug arrests plunged nearly 65 percent, from 27,369 the year # * before the policy changes to 9,728 last year, according to data that # * the Mexican government supplied to the State Department. # * # * Cocaine seizures in Mexico were cut in half, dropping from more than # * 50 tons in 1993 to slightly more than 24 tons in each of the last two # * years -- the smallest amounts since 1988, Mexican government figures # * show. # * # * The GAO report charges that Mexico's greatest problem is, in # * fact, the "widespread, endemic corruption" throughout its law # * enforcement agencies. Earlier this month, in an indictment of his own # * department, Attorney General Lozano fired 737 members of his federal # * police force -- 17 percent of his entire corps -- saying they did not # * have "the ethical profile" required for the job. In a recent meeting # * with foreign reporters, Lozano said it could take 15 years to clean up # * the force. # * # * In November 1993, President Clinton signed Presidential Decision Directive # * No. 14, shifting U.S. anti-drug efforts away from intercepting cocaine as # * it passed through Mexico and the Caribbean, and, instead, attacking the # * drug supply at its sources in Colombia, Bolivia and Peru. # # The President himself ordered them to stop checking!!! This is in the same # leadership vein as Reagan declaring himself a "Contra". # # And why did President Clinton change strategy? [snip] > * The Naval Surface Warfare Center has developed an "ion sniffer," > a metal box that analyzes the chemical makeup of the air -- and can detect, > for example, traces of cocaine through the skin days after drug use. Bad. > * In Georgia, the state's Department of Revenue will start using > NASA satellites to examine the state's 58,910 square miles for illegal > timber cutting. Good. > * In New Jersey, California, and other states, police use thermal > imaging devices to scan houses for unusual heat sources that could indicate > indoor marijuana growing operations. Houses can be scanned while police sit > in their cruisers on the street. Bad. CM excerpt: # Here is a more detailed example of how government expands surveillance # (and thus control) in a seemingly never-ending manner...consider this when # talking about a National ID Card: # # Is it okay for the government to look at your property while walking by and # if the officer spots marijuana plants growing to get a search warrant? # # Of course it is. # # * "The Right To Privacy", ISBN 0-679-74434-7, 1997 # * By Attorneys Ellen Alderman and Caroline Kennedy # * # * ...then the Supreme Court ruled that if the yard was big enough that "An # * individual may not legitimately demand privacy for activities conducted # * out of doors in fields," the Court wrote, "except in the area immediately # * surrounding the home." # * # * ...then the Supreme Court ruled that a barn sixty yards from a farmhouse # * was too far away from a house to expect privacy. # * # * ...then the Supreme Court ruled that aerial surveillance did not constitute # * a Fourth Amendment search. # * # * ...then the Supreme Court ruled that a "precision aerial mapping camera" # * that was able to capture objects as small as one-half inch in diameter did # * not constitute a Fourth Amendment search. # # ...then courts ruled that infrared surveillance of homes was permissible. # # # What is this? # # * Subject: Re: Law Enforcement Aviation # * From: aufsj(a)imap2.asu.edu # * Date: 1996/12/27 # * Newsgroups: rec.aviation.military # * # * What interests me is how new technologies will be interpreted. I recently # * inquired at the local Law School about the courts views towards the use # * of impulse radar, and they said "Impulse what the heck?" # * # * Basically it is a radar that "sees through" things (like, say, your # * house). # * # * Their capabilities vary widely, but the feds are already using # * them and I know that Hughes corp. is designing a low-cost set up # * specifically for major police departments. # * # * They are driving towards a unit that can be mounted on a police helicopter. # * # * Will the police need a warrant? Who knows. Since they are allowed # * to do airborne infra-red analysis of your house, why not an take an # * airborne "x-ray" equivalent? # * # * --------------------------------------------------------------------- # * Steven J Forsberg at aufsj(a)imap2.asu.edu Wizard 87-01 > * And in Arizona, the state's Department of Water Resources uses > spy satellite photographs to monitor 750,000 acres of state farmland, and > compares the images to a database to discover which farmers don't have > irrigation permits. Good, I guess. > Even worse: The federal government will spend another $4.5 million > this year to develop even more intrusive surveillance equipment. Bad. > Currently under development by the Justice Department: A "super > x-ray" -- combining traditional x-ray technology, ultra-sound imaging, > and computer-aided metal detectors -- to reveal items hidden under clothes > from up to 60 feet away. Bad. > The courts are currently wrestling with the implications of the new > technology, debating the limits of the government's power to "search" > individuals from a distance with high-tech gadgets. Several contradictory > court decisions have already emerged, for example, about whether > thermal-imaging searches are Constitutional. > > Meanwhile, Republican and Democratic politicians continue to look > for new uses of the technology -- with some government officials already > talking about using satellite surveillance to track items as small as > backyard porches to check for zoning violations and construction permits. Smart cards are transponders. Never forget that. > "In the name of fighting crime, politicians seem eager to obliterate the > protections against unreasonable search, with equipment that Americans used > to only read about in Tom Clancy technothrillers," said Dasbach. "It's time > for the American public to wake up and realize that Big Brother is here > today -- and he's got a gamma ray scanner in his hand." No amount of control over the population is enough for the U.S. Government. ---guy

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Changing to Moderated Cypherpunks -- How?
by James F. Marshall 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Too much noise in the unedited list. How does one change to the moderated list? - -- James F. Marshall, Esq., Pasadena, California Subject "JFM Public Key" for PGP Public Key - -- OS/2 is to Windows as Stradivarius is to Yamaha -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.2 iQCVAwUBNNf8UjbjGennrhqZAQETXgP/WFshRowrhi7qMnUZHUIADA7cCV0fEYFA WiAlynovwU9dyvc/gygz9N6aeJO/ghqiQl2/NqCSsKn5H1nTr1MHbK2iYJwt6AXh ZhMSfz5p1QzVWwm9lIFETipPayuJ+WzCkaakMZP3PPZXG8XUT/48NZG5hJgjfIM7 vqzMkCcHr+A= =2N5t -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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Article V - an analysis
by Jim Choate 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

ARTICLE V. [Constitution: how amended; proviso.] The Congress, whenever two thirds of both Houses shall deem it necessary, shall propose Amendments to this Constitution, or, on the Application of the Legislatures of two thirds of the several States, shall call a Convention for proposing Amendments, which, in either Case, shall be valid to all Intents and Purposes, as Part of this Constitution, when ratified by the Legislatures of three fourths of the several States, or by Conventions of the three fourths thereof, as the one or the other Mode of Ratification may be proposed by the Congress; Provided that no Amendment which shall be made prior to the Year One thousand eight hundred and eight shall in any Manner affect the first and fourth Clauses in the Ninth Section of the first Article; and that no State, without its Consent, shall be deprived of it's equal Suffrage in the Senate. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- The Congress can propose amendments if 2/3 of both houses agree Or when Congress is directed by 2/3 of the state legislatures a convention can be called for *proposing* amendments Irrespective of which of the above two processes causes an amendment to be considered a part of the Constitution when 3/4 of the state legislatures vote for it, or by the constitutional conventions called in 3/4 of the state agree on it. The decision of which method to use may be *proposed* by Congress. It's after 1808 and we're not considering state representation in the Senate so I'll skip the last two phrases. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- The only sticky wicket I see is the ...proposed by Congress. Does this mean that Congress can decide which of the two it will recognize? Or does it mean that Congress can merely express its desire? Or does this apply only to the bills that were developed in the Congress? There's no time line for Congress to decide, could this be used to hinder such a process? Note that it's important to recognize that we're talking about 3/4n conventions and not a single convention attended by 3/4n representatives of the states. The tense of the sentence leaves no doubt. ____________________________________________________________________ Technology cannot make us other than what we are. James P. Hogan The Armadillo Group ,::////;::-. James Choate Austin, Tx /:'///// ``::>/|/ ravage(a)ssz.com www.ssz.com .', |||| `/( e\ 512-451-7087 -====~~mm-'`-```-mm --'- --------------------------------------------------------------------

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Re: ANON: mail concerns
by nobody＠alumni.cco.caltech.edu 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- >:: >Request-Encryption-To: X > >If user ID X is on the remailer's pubkey ring, the outgoing message is >encrypted to X. This could be usefull for anonymous return-address blocks. Encryption should be the default. Err on the side of caution. Eternal!Optimist(a)anon.penet.fi (copyright 1993, Eternal Optimist [Ha Ha Ha]) 0) 0) =:()]-< <na26436(a)anon.penet.fi> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.3 iQCVAgUBLNgXzIjvfLxJbYYtAQEK4AP9HrSaMSOnlsxzEjgLbAgvsCSw3vMxLJ4u 856ZbKI2cZTNLoPzyWLNW68gZ7kcNeaF7MHKzWbI9tLEDePpWN34sB11wBlpfzcf WzcYVLI6JBLVERq2seyKU3cqAhWuxldSDeAlsKkMsrzI0tGgOaLkxCxhxn9weZf8 58mZeANd3sg= =8F9u -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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Problems of anonymous posts
by nobody＠soda.berkeley.edu 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- (This is from Hal; I still can't post from Portal.) After going to enormous efforts to create a network of anonymous remailers, we are hoist by our own petard, as our list receives strange, irrelevant, and argumentative posts through our own anonymous remailers. (Not all anonymous posts are like this, but there have been quite a few in the last few weeks which fall into these categories.) This should challenge us to reconsider the value of anonymity and remailers. Are we working only to make the net safe for the immature and incoherent? I would say not, but these posts should remind us of how incomplete is the infrastructure needed for successful use of anonymity. A brief recap of the benefits of anonymous mail: presently, on the net, all mail is tagged with the sender and destination. This means that not only the recipient, but any net snoopers and sysops at systems through which the mail passes, may be able to know that person A is sending mail to person B. This kind of information can be used to build up dossiers of who talks to whom. Worse, as we move into an era of electronic commerce, more and more of our lives may begin to take place on the net. We may shop, find entertainment, do business, even work for a living across the network. This will open up even more opportunities for collecting data about how we live our lives. In my opinion, the best way to preserve our privacy is to make it impossible to collect this data. Anonymous remailers, and their cousins, IP bouncers (which perform an analogous function for telnet-type connections), can prevent the collection of this kind of information by hiding exactly who is communicating with whom. These services can serve as the basis for the other privacy-protecting technologies we've been discussing, such as digital cash. There's not much point in using digital cash to prevent tieing customers to vendors if monitoring the net will provide that information anyway. This isn't just a futuristic concern, either. Already today the government is taking steps which could, under some not-so-far-fetched extrapolations, get people on the list in trouble. Many people on this list have communicated with Phil Zimmermann, for example. What if email logs were used to track all those people down, and they became suspects in this criminal investigation that the government seems to be pursuing? It's not even impossible that the government could someday try to paint the cypherpunks themselves as a subversive organization. Think how much more difficult any such diabolical attack would be if people subscribed to the list via remailers, under digital pseudonyms. These days, with the shaky legal status of cryptography, we of all people should be able to see the benefits of anonymous communication. The problem is, then, how to gain the benefits of anonymity, while avoiding the abuses. One solution which we have long discussed is reputations and pseudonyms; another is making people pay to use remailers. The way reputations work is that people would digitally sign their anonymous postings. This way someone could post anonymously and build up a reputation by means of a series of postings signed under the same name. As time went on, they would no more want to damage the reputation of their pseudonym than they would want to damage their reputation under non-anonymous posting. To make this work, people need to be able to easily filter their mail on the basis of the pseudonym it came from, rather than the (irrelevant) anonymous remailer which sent it. Then they can choose to accept and read mail from anonymous posters who have built up a good reputation while ignoring that from those who have ruined their good (pseudo) name. Karl Barrus has done some experiments along these lines. He described some time back a system he had for working with the elm mail reader, one of the most common Unix-based mail agents. The software will display the true originator of PGP-signed posts (anonymous or not). This allows readers to apply the same standards to signed anonymous mail as to regular mail. It raises anonymous posters to the same level, and holds them to the same standards, as other posters. This software could allow anonymous posters to build up their reputations, encouraging more responsibility on their part. The other solution, pay-for-use remailers, has also been pioneered by Karl. His idea is to make the remailer a little harder to use by forcing the user to include some digital postage (based, I think, on what Tim May called "poor man's postage stamps"). This could help reduce the volume of anonymous mail and make it less likely that joke or trivial messages would be posted. (We could even consider applying Karl's approach to the list as a whole; people would have to apply ahead of time for posting tokens in order to post. This might force people to take a little more care and time in their postings.) I don't think Karl's efforts have been sufficiently appreciated here. He is quietly working to create the tools needed to allow anonymity to be a useful and important part of the net architecture rather than the annoying sideshow that it sometimes seems to be becoming. We need to support Karl, work to bring his innovations into other remailers and other mail agents, if we want to gain the benefits from what we have done so far. Hal Finney hfinney(a)shell.portal.com -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.3a iQCVAgUBLMFf3qgTA69YIUw3AQEp9QP/UyEvuQgM6GKiKdkZtHJw4/NhMwQDihrs 2D8weSeUQpKHPpxEnXiDEG6qswI0B4auq+hK3EDYIzccA6c6/+0Xa7SzESsujtjs VDRY7BNphAQ8ix6vd4Ti2vuk8sWa7IHasuAF+UytJrUXPaMbJgH1u/84M9HstA4t kNQ3venrgh4= =CFWw -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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[ISN] Need help keeping your company's mail respectable? (fwd)
by Jukka E Isosaari 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Thought some people might be in need of a tool like this... ++ J ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Mon, 21 Dec 1998 13:32:59 -0700 (MST) From: mea culpa <jericho(a)dimensional.com> To: InfoSec News <isn(a)repsec.com> Subject: [ISN] Need help keeping your company's mail respectable? Need help keeping your company's mail respectable? http://www8.zdnet.com/pcweek/stories/news/0,4153,364134,00.html By Christy Walker, PC Week Online October 26, 1998 9:00 AM ET IT managers looking to clean up their companies' e-mail and enforce corporate e-mail policies can get help from several software developers. New releases due soon from Worldtalk Corp., SRA International Inc. and Content Technologies Inc. will augment the basic management capabilities found in mainstream e-mail packages such as Lotus Notes and Microsoft Exchange, adding features such as content control, archiving, security and virus scanning. Worldtalk, of Santa Clara, Calif., early next year will roll out an upgrade of its WorldSecure Server that will allow users to control e-mail content, scan for viruses and enforce archive policies on internal messages as well as messages moving between the company and the public Internet. The new release, Version 4.0, will monitor mail moving across the internal network. The current version, 3.2, sits at the gateway level and only scans messages between the company and the Internet. Another tool, Assentor, from SRA, uses a natural language search engine to automate the scanning of e-mail messages for inappropriate content. Assentor 1.2, which is due by early next year, will include the ability to route messages based on the word patterns found in an e-mail message. Version 1.2 will also be able to look for specific word patterns based on the requirements of individual groups, said officials of the Fairfax, Va., company. Assentor is widely used by securities companies that are required by the Securities and Exchange Commission to closely monitor e-mail and other client communications. The product helps reduce the numbers of messages that branch managers and compliance officers must review, SRA officials said. Assentor uses MIMEsweeper, e-mail scanning software from Content Technologies. Content Technologies, meanwhile, plans to boost MIMEsweeper with the ability to deal with encryption. Version 4.0, due early next year, will support message decryption so that MIMEsweeper can scan encrypted messages for content such as viruses, said officials at the Kirkland, Wash., company. In addition, Content Technologies will roll out a MIMEsweeper add-on module next month that scans both inbound and outbound messages for offensive language. -o- Subscribe: mail majordomo(a)repsec.com with "subscribe isn". Today's ISN Sponsor: Repent Security Incorporated [www.repsec.com]

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list
by simya m�hendislik 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

thanks! _________________________________________________________ DO YOU YAHOO!? Get your free @yahoo.com address at http://mail.yahoo.com

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distribution scheme
by FitugMix 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

I'd like to request your comments on the following idea. code for this is ready, awaiting yours and some other people's comments regarding some of the non-coding issues. for example, I'd like a lawyer or someone else familiar with the law to comment on the legal aspects. also, cryptologic expertise would be great. however, this is NOT an encryption scheme. the goals are different ones, I'll talk about that in a second. the basic idea is to take a piece of information and chop it into a number of pieces. this is basically the reverse process of "take the first letter of every word". digital information, however, can be divided at an even lower level, the bit level. imagine to chop a file into 8 parts, with the top bit of every byte going into the first file, the second bit into the second and so on. as you can imagine, the first 8 top-bits will again form a byte in the first file. now imagine the same principle, with an *arbitrary* number of files. the goal of this is not a new encryption scheme. cryptological, my limited knowledge tells me this is not too bad, but far from "secure". the nice things are that the files themselves contain no information about how many total files there are and in which order they have to be re-assembled, and without that knowledge you are in for some work of cryptoanalysis. the idea is to provide for a channel of distribution of arbitrary material, even copyrighted, patented or illegal in your country (e.g. china) in a "legal" way. that's why I'd like legal advice on this - is the idea correct? I cannot be sued for distributing a couple hundred E's and A's because they are part of a copyrighted book. can I be sued for distributing a couple of bits from a copyrighted image file? a trademarked or patented document? are there any legal precedents? I know that in the case of encryption, courts have at least once ruled that distribution of the key that unlocks this is equivalent to distribution of the copyrighted material, but in this case there is no key, no single piece of information that contains anything "central". tell me what you think. I can post code or details if you want. Falcon

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The long, strong arm of the NSA (fwd)
by Jukka E Isosaari 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

http://cnn.com/TECH/computing/9807/27/security.idg/index.html The long, strong arm of the NSA July 27, 1998 Web posted at: 4:15 PM EDT by Ellen Messmer FORT MEADE, Maryland (IDG) -- Back in the days of the cold war, Washington insiders used to joke that NSA stood for "No Such Agency." The government denied the very existence of this group, which is dedicated to intercepting and decoding foreign communications. That was then. Today the National Security Agency is well known, and spends a lot of time leaning on software, switch and router vendors, pushing them to re-tool their products. The agency's goal: to ensure that the government has access to encrypted data. The industry is facing a year-end deadline to add a government-approved back door into network gear. Vendors that don't provide this access risk losing export privileges. Cruising up and down Silicon Valley, NSA spooks from the agency's Fort Meade headquarters have been making pit stops at companies ranging from industry leaders Netscape Communications Corp. and Sun Microsystems, Inc. to start-ups such as VPNet Technologies, Inc. in order to get a peek at products still on the drawing board. The NSA wants software vendors to make sure that any product with strong encryption have some way for the government to tap into the data. And because practically every commercial network application, router or switch these days includes encryption or an option for it, almost every vendor now has to answer to the NSA if it wants to export. Hot line to the NSA It's gotten to the point where no vendor hip to the NSA's power will even start building products without checking in with Fort Meade first. This includes even that supposed ruler of the software universe, Microsoft Corp. "It's inevitable that you design products with specific [encryption] algorithms and key lengths in mind," said Ira Rubenstein, Microsoft attorney and a top lieutenant to Bill Gates. By his own account, Rubenstein acts as a "filter" between the NSA and Microsoft's design teams in Redmond, Wash. "Any time that you're developing a new product, you will be working closely with the NSA," he noted. When it comes to encryption, it's widely known that a 40-bit encryption key is easily breakable and hence rather useless. Until not long ago, this is what the U.S. government allowed for the export of software. But the Clinton administration a year and a half ago said it would allow the export of products with stronger encryption keys by any vendor that agreed to add a "key-recovery" feature to its products by year-end - giving the government access to encrypted data without the end user's knowledge. According to Bill Reinsche, Department of Commerce undersecretary for the Bureau of Export Controls, about 50 vendors have submitted plans for government-approved key-recovery, also called data-recovery. These companies, which include IBM, were rewarded with Key Management Infrastructure (KMI) export licenses to export products with 56-bit or stronger encryption until year-end. But some companies are discovering that dealing with the Commerce Department for a KMI license means more involvement with the NSA. The Bureau of Export Control is actually just a front for the NSA, said Alison Giacomelli, director of export compliance at VPNet Technologies, Inc., a San Jose, Calif.-based vendor of IP-based encryption gateways. "The NSA has sign-off authority on these KMI licenses," Giacomelli said. In return for the KMI license, VPNet opened itself up for an NSA audit. "They've already come out once, and they'll be coming out again," Giacomelli said. VPNet remains committed to meeting the deadline for adding key-recovery to its product but has one major problem: uncertainty about what the NSA really wants. The confusion means "there's a lot of risk . . . in terms of engineering and resources," Giacomelli said. Clearly wary of granting the government supervision over its products, Microsoft has stubbornly refused to submit a data-recovery plan, even though the Redmond giant already includes a data-recovery feature in its Exchange Server. "The Exchange Server can only be used when this feature is present," Rubenstein said. "Because we haven't filed a product plan, it's harder for us to export this than for companies that have filed plans." But in an odd-couple sort of joint-partner arrangement, Microsoft and the NSA did work together to build what's called Server Gated Cryptography. Primarily intended to help banks use Web servers to do business internationally, the technology lets a server with a special digital certificate provide 128-bit encryption support to a Web browser outside the U.S. Sybase, Inc., which also submitted a plan to add key-recovery to its products, found it hard to satisfy the government's demands. "They approved our technological approach but disapproved each of our applications with it," said Sybase President and CEO Mitchell Kertzman. "It's been frustrating." Documents recently obtained under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) by the Washington, D.C.-based Electronic Privacy Information Center contain the data-recovery plan Netscape filed at the Commerce Department last year. Netscape's plan explains that the "escrow of private encryption keys" could be achieved by developing client and server products that can only issue an X.509 digital certificate after the private key has been escrowed. The key can only be held by an entity chosen by the intranet administrator who handles security policy. The Netscape plan called for introducing a certificate server with recovery capabilities in the first quarter of this year, with the introduction of S/MIME clients with basic recovery features in the second quarter. Netscape hasn't actually carried out this plan, and the company declined to discuss it. Netscape attorney Peter Harter would only say officially, "We had no choice but to submit the plan, no matter how much we opposed key-escrow, in order to be part of the ongoing dialog." Other FOIA documents show that Netscape was regularly briefing the NSA on its product plans since 1996 and that then NSA Deputy Director William Crowell took a special interest in trying to dissuade Netscape from using strong encryption. Crowell, now vice president for product marketing and strategy at Cylink Corp., said he had frequent discussions with Netscape, especially concerning changes to Netscape Navigator. "Their product didn't have a separate signature key, so if the government used the product for key-escrow later, you'd have to store the signature key with a third party, which we thought was a bad idea," Crowell said. He added that Netscape Navigator 3.0 adopted the changes the NSA wanted. According to Crowell, the NSA has a great deal of expertise in securing communications, and it wants to ensure that products bought by the Defense Department meet NSA standards. "In addition, as part of the NSA's intelligence mission, [the agency needs] to have a thorough understanding of where commercial products are headed." Taher Elgamal, author of the Netscape data-recovery plan, who recently left Netscape to start his own venture, said Netscape had no choice but to maintain constant contact with the NSA. "They're costing the industry a lot of money," Elgamal said. Others agree. "Everyone in Silicon Valley, including us, has to have specific staff - highly paid experts - to deal with them," said Chris Tolles, security group product manager at Sun. "Their job is to wrangle this from a policy standpoint." Sun has had run-ins with the NSA in the past. Two years ago, the NSA objected to Sun including encryption in the exportable version of Java 1.1. The end result was that Sun stripped encryption out of Java 1.1 and the software was delayed by about six months. Related stories: Hole in Internet security discovered - June 30, 1998 Government restrictions on encryption pose obstacles for Internet security - May 18, 1998

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