December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

Re: Breaking DES
by an41418＠anon.penet.fi 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Since I started this thread, and because I have always had a problem with the rude way many people discuss things in this group, I was wondering, Perry Metzger, what contribution your sarcastic tone and occasional insults make to your argument. I believe it is possible to continue this debate and stick to the technical issues without getting personal or being rude. I wish more people would realize this. Wonderer (peacemaker?) ------------------------------------------------------------------------- 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.

1 0

E[gcd(p-1,q-1)]
by cme＠ellisun.sw.stratus.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Sorry, folks -- the formulae I posted yesterday are flawed. More later. - Carl

1 0

WinPGP
by Stanton McCandlish 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

anyone have a site name for this beta of Windows PGP? Or just a filename, so it can be archiefied? -- -=> mech(a)eff.org <=- Stanton McCandlish Electronic Frontier Foundation Online Activist & SysOp NitV-DC BBS 202-232-2715, Fido 1:109/? IndraNet 369:111/1, 14.4V32b 16.8ZyX

1 0

Re: PGP,etc. by PSDAA
by wak＠next0.math.pitt.edu 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Look (anon ftp) in soda.berkeley.edu/pub/cypherpunks.

1 0

Re: EFF GIF recall/Duncan's question
by Stanton McCandlish 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Forwarded message:

1 0

NSA Can Spend a Billion on a Computer
by tcmay＠netcom.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Whit Diffie has some more info, including a clarification, on the differences between Hagelin and rotor machines: Forwarded message: To: tcmay(a)netcom.com (Timothy C. May) From: whitfield.diffie(a)Eng.Sun.COM Date: Tue, 12 Oct 1993 at 08h00 Subject: NSA Can Spend a Billion on a Computer Minor technical point > The Harvest machine was particularly good at brute force breaking of > Hagelin-type rotor machines, the "DES of its day" Hagelin machines aren't considered rotor machines even though their main moving elements do rotate. Rotor machines had rotating elements that were wired wheels implementing table look-ups, i.e., S-boxes. The six wheels in a Hagelin machine merely have setable bits around their edges. The are in effect pieces of binary key that rotate --- much like the C and D registers in DES. Feel free to redisseminate this if you like. Whit

1 0

TIS testimony
by Stanton McCandlish 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Just in...got "Testimony by Stephen T. Walker, President, Trusted Information Systems, Inc., for Subcommittee on Economic Policy, Trade and Environment, Committee on Foreign Affairs, U.S. House of Representatives, October 12, 1993". This is about a 75k document, and is to be found via FTP as: ftp.eff.org: /pub/eff/temp/testimon.tis It begins thusly: "I am pleased to testify today about the negative impact that U.S. export control regulations on cryptography are having on one of the few industries where the U.S. remains dominant worldwide: the information system software industry. The major point of my testimony are that U.S. export controls do not prevent the international availability of good quality cryptography but do penalized the U.S. software industry and U.S. business in general." I'd post it, but it's 1500+ lines. -- -=> mech(a)eff.org <=- Stanton McCandlish Electronic Frontier Foundation Online Activist & SysOp NitV-DC BBS 202-232-2715, Fido 1:109/? IndraNet 369:111/1, 14.4V32b 16.8ZyX

1 0

Native American Encryption?!
by Arthur Chandler 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

I remember hearing many years ago that one of the branches of the armed aervices during WWII used a native American -- Cherokee? Apache? -- language to communicate. The Japanese (the story goes) went nuts trying to crack the code -- unsuccessfully. Two questions: 1) Can anyone give me a reference for this story (assuming it's true)? 2) If one used a natural language for encryption, and the would-be code crackers did not know it was natural language (say, Hittite), could they crack it? I seem to remember that hieroglyphs were undecipherable until the Rosetta Stone was discovered. But maybe current techniques would do a better job....?

2 1

Secret network
by Matthew J Ghio 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

There is something else that we can use for secret communications and that is ... (don't laugh, I'm serious) - water pipes. Many places still use metal pipes, thru which radio waves can travel quite well. I read an article in a science magazine a few weeks ago, where a team of researchers were tracking various electromagnetic emissions in residential households. They fould that a lot of background magnetic fields and radio emissions were coming from the water pipes. When the neighbors used certain appliances, they could detect it because the EM emmissions were picked up and carried by the metal water pipes. And that's was just background noise. Imagine what we could transmit by intentionally broadcasting signals thru the metal pipes! Also, most of the "noise" was low frequency, and since our transmitters would be high frequency, it would probably work pretty well (unless, of course, you had plastic pipes). Most of the local net traffic could be handled thru the pipe-network, while the radio transmitters, lasers & microwave stuff could be used for longer distance stuff.

1 0

Spread Spectrum Decoys
by Hastings＠courier8.aero.org 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Part of the "hunt and destroy vs. cost to deploy" equation thread about spread spectrum networks was forwarded to me. How about putting several cheap noise generators on the air as decoys? This might tip the cost balance in favor of the network. The Julieboard Direct Digital Synthesizer board, which only needs numbers fed to it from a PC printer port or microcontroller output, can be bought wired and tested for $125. Production in volume should be cheaper. So who is hunting down transmitters and killing them, and risking a confrontation with an armed opponent, for this paltry sum? Kent - <hastings(a)courier8.aero.org>

2 1