December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

The Republic of Desire (anonymous organizations)
by allan＠elvis.tamu.edu 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Let's start a new topic, and mr. deitwieler is not invited. Has anyone considered how an organization like The Republic of Desire from Gibson's _Virtual Light_ novel could be created/formed? It seems to me that it would be an excellent example and development motive for the crypto-anarchy tools: the DC-net protocol, Zero Knowledge Proofs used for anonymous credentials, reputation-nets/webs-of-trust, etc. etc. My only problem with this is knowing how to organize the "guerilla cell structures" or whatever it was he mentioned. Anyone have a ref for something that discusses guerilla cell organizations? -- Allan Bailey, allan(a)elvis.tamu.edu | "Freedom is not free." Infinite Diversity in Infinite Combinations | allan.bailey(a)tamu.edu GCS -d+ p--- c++++ l+++ u++ e++ m++ s n+ h+ f g+ w+ t+ r y+ "Liberty means responsibility. That is why most men dread it." -- George Bernard Shaw "Armadillos....those are the meanest suckers you're ever gonna wanna see... But you gotta kill 'em the first time, otherwise they get this revenge thing in their heads and they come lookin' for ya......." -- (i got this from the 'zine Armadillo Culture)

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Re: The Republic of Desire (anonymous organizations)
by cfrye＠ciis.mitre.org 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

> My only problem with this is knowing how to organize the >"guerilla cell structures" or whatever it was he mentioned. Anyone have >a ref for something that discusses guerilla cell organizations? The classic Russian model (late 1800's through the October Revolution) was to have three-person cells, each of which had one person who knew one person above them in the hierarchy and someone who knew one person below them. This makes for good security as there is no redundant information in the network and one failure breaks the chain. I don't have any specific citations in mind, but the Russian history instructors at A&M might be a good place to start. Best regards, Curtis D. Frye cfrye(a)ciis.mitre.org "If you think I speak for MITRE, I'll tell you how much they pay me and make you feel foolish."

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Re: Privacy != right?
by cfrye＠ciis.mitre.org 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Oops, forgot to finish the last sentence of my privacy post. The last paragraph should read: Since there is no specific mention of a "right _of_ privacy" in the Consititution, one must fall back on the implied construction and interpret Constitutional privacy as defined by other amendments. What this construction of the "right _to_ privacy" allows is for appellate courts to weight enumerated rights as more important than implied rights. Thus, in the name of furthering the goals of another amendment (say #6, speedy/public trial), the courts can limit the implied "right _to_ privacy" with fewer problems than if two "textual" amendments had come into conflict. Best regards, Curtis D. Frye cfrye(a)ciis.mitre.org "If you think I speak for MITRE, I'll tell you how much they pay me and make you feel foolish."

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Forwarded mail from S.Boxx
by Eric Hughes 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

This one was just too good to resist. Eric ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Delivery-Date: Thu, 18 Nov 1993 01:04:50 -0800 Return-Path: daemon(a)anon.penet.fi To: tcmay(a)netcom.com, hughes(a)soda.berkeley.edu From: an12070(a)anon.penet.fi (S.Boxx) X-Anonymously-To: tcmay@netcom.com,hughes@soda.berkeley.edu Organization: Anonymous contact service Reply-To: an12070(a)anon.penet.fi Date: Thu, 18 Nov 1993 09:03:32 UTC Subject: an epiphany I've finally figured out your intense loyalty, sensitivity, and secrecy. You're homosexual lovers. Quite a complex and secretive culture, these cypherpunks. I really do wonder what magic the Wizards have truly practiced. Look, if you don't want to tell me, just say so. But could you tell me when you are going to `come out of the closet'? I mean, everyone is going to find out some day, right? Could you at least tell me when the Big Day is? I'm really dying of anticipation. ------------------------------------------------------------------------- To find out more about the anon service, send mail to help(a)anon.penet.fi. Due to the double-blind, any mail replies to this message will be anonymized, and an anonymous id will be allocated automatically. You have been warned. Please report any problems, inappropriate use etc. to admin(a)anon.penet.fi.

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Re: hohocon
by hfinney＠shell.portal.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Regarding the issue of telnet'ing through an insecure system: A general solution to this problem is to have the system you are attaching to engage in some dialog with you to establish your identity. However, the dialog must be such that even if it is monitored by the system you are going through, that will not allow them to later claim to be you. This is the same basic problem as entering a PIN for a credit or debit card in an environment where the PIN can be seen or recorded. If someone sees your PIN they can steal your ATM card (or dcash card, in the future) and access your money. Cryptographic solutions involve zero-knowledge proof systems but they are too complicated to work in your head. For the hohocon case you could have a calculator programmed with some one-way function (DES is available for the HP48); the remote system could generate a challenge number and you would use your calculator to DES-encrypt it with a fixed secret key, then type the result in, and the remote system would check it. This would not help the hohocon people because next time they tried to log in as you the challenge number would be different. There was a paper in the Eurocrypt 91 proceedings called "Human Identification Through Insecure Channel" which attempted to address this problem. The authors proposed a system which was supposed to be simple enough that you could work the response in your head, but which would be complex enough that eavesdroppers would not be able to figure it out, even after seeing many examples. The idea was that the remote system would issue a challenge as a string of letters or digits: 1982043765. You will give a response of the same length, but only certain positions matter. Those positions are identified by one of two secret words that you memorize. Suppose the first secret is 1246. You will produce a response which embeds the 2nd secret word in the positions where 1,2,4, and 6 appear. Suppose the 2nd secret word is 3124. Your response, written below the challenge, would be: 1982043765 3421223142 - - - - Only the marked positions matter; the others are random. This sounds simple enough, but the problem is that for true security the authors require a much longer string with a much larger set of characters, 40 or 50 characters long. I tried implementing their algorithm, without even memorizing the secrets, just writing them down (they had to be about 10 letters long), and entering in a reponse given a challenge, and I couldn't do it. It was extremely difficult to locate the checked positions and put in the next letter. It took forever to do it, and I kept making mistakes. Maybe with practice it would get easier. Or, perhaps the technique would still be useful with a smaller question size to provide less security but still more than you would get without it. It would be interesting to see if other people come up with approaches to solve this problem. I really don't think that protecting my smart card with a 6-digit PIN is going to be adequate. Hal Finney hfinney(a)shell.portal.com

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Re: Guerilla Cells
by Matthew J Miszewski 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

The sendero luminoso in Peru also works this way...Of course if you break their rules, they break your neck! For security reasons each 'member' of the Shining Path is only allowed to know of two other persons in the heirarchy. This makes for good plausible deniability as well as qwik and efficient dissolution. --Matt ______________________________________________________________________________ In defense of liberty, encrypt for all purposes, civil and professional. In defense of privacy, encrypt all correspondence, personal and professional. In defense of sanity, do not encrypt your dry cleaning invoice! ++++++++--------mjmiski(a)macc.wisc.edu (c)1993

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latest procmail and recipes.
by J. Michael Diehl 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Hi all! I just thought I'd post to let you know that I can send any interested parties the latest version of procmail and my pgp recipes for procmail. Send me a message with the subject: send help for more details. Lagers, J. Michael Diehl ;^) |*The 2nd Amendment is there in case the mdiehl(a)triton.unm.edu | Government forgets about the 1st! <RL> Mike.Diehl(a)f29.n301.z1 |*God is a good Physicist, and an even .fidonet.org | better Mathematician. <Me> al945(a)cwns9.ins.cwru.edu|*I'm just looking for the opportunity to (505) 299-2282 (voice) | be Politically Incorrect! <Me> Can we impeach him yet? |*Protected by 18 USC 2511 and 18 USC 2703.

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Re: The Republic of Desire (anonymous organizations)
by cfrye＠ciis.mitre.org 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Alan followed up on my three-person cell note with: >This is kind of off-topic, but I thought the classic three-person cell was >as follows: > > A > / \ > B - C > / \ > D G > / \ / \ > E - F H - I > >where a line shows cell membership. So A commands a cell of himself, B and >C but knows no one below. A is either the leader, or is known by one member >above. B knows D is the leader of another cell, but does not know who E and >F are (or even if they exist). Similarly for C. > >This organization is vulnerable in two ways: any one person can give up >three others; and the chain can be followed (e.g. compromising B can lead to >compromising D and then to E, etc.). Because information has to flow >between the cells, there is potential for compromise. Alan's version is correct. Best regards, Curtis D. Frye cfrye(a)ciis.mitre.org "If you think I speak for MITRE, I'll tell you how much they pay me and make you feel foolish."

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Signal to noise/real issues
by an41418＠anon.penet.fi 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- I am a bit concerned about the cypherpunks list. I posted something to the list with the subject "All our eggs in one basket," that I believe is a real concern for cypherpunks. The posting has prompted a lot of personal correspondence, and maybe even a co-authorship on a paper if we can find a place willing to include a nym as an author. A few of you wrote me back messages complimenting my post. What worries me is that nobody has continued the discussion on the list, whereas the posts by L.D. and S. Boxxx seem to generate a lot of heated discussion. If my post was really not as important as those, then maybe I'm in the wrong mailing list. I think I'll post a copy of that message to sci.crypt where people are interested in real crypto issues. Wonderer -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.3 iQBVAgUBLOu+Qh1kTJuroDD9AQHDVwH9HFILw/wtEH/8r6rYkbRQlgGynzsDM528 pOsT5ffqqLbulJ1FN+2xOkfYx/fDQqBzrpmHZaV/bk0GdwUmYchyAg== =4JSu -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- ------------------------------------------------------------------------- To find out more about the anon service, send mail to help(a)anon.penet.fi. Due to the double-blind, any mail replies to this message will be anonymized, and an anonymous id will be allocated automatically. You have been warned. Please report any problems, inappropriate use etc. to admin(a)anon.penet.fi.

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Re: hohocon
by smb＠research.att.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

We use challenge/response devices from the Internet: \begin{figure} \begin{quote} \logsize \begin{verbatim} $ telnet guard.research.att.com Trying... Connected to guard.research.att.com. Escape character is '^]'. This is the new inet. Authorized use only. Authentication Server. Id? ches challenge: 348201 response: d2c3f97d TCP host name? cetus rlogin cetus -l ches IRIX Release 4.0.5C System V cetus.research.att.com Copyright 1987-1992 Silicon Graphics, Inc. All Rights Reserved. cetus=; exit Connection closed.Connection closed by foreign host. $ \end{verbatim} \end{quote} \caption{\label{fig:hha-connect} The full text of an actual terminal session using our challenge/response-based guard.} \end{figure}

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