December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

Re: ID of anonymous posters via word analysis?
by felix＠hu.se 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

>Edward J OConnell writes: >One could also imagine a 'symantic scrambler' analogous to the word >analysis program, but designed to defeat it, by randomly altering the >syntax of a post. It doesn't have to be random. You could have a neural network style translation of sentences. You would train the network by having a known pre-written sentence as output, and a sentence with the same meaning, but with your personal syntactic style. It would also be possible to do lexical or paragraphical translation. With this scheme, you can have as many writing styles as you want (e.g. one for each poster). If you want to look like Shakespeare, just train the network with a couple of (pair of) sentences of Hamlet. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- True Name: Felix Ungman "Gen is god and your God is not"

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ANON: anonymous mail
by nobody＠indirect.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- I thought I'd describe why you would want to pad anonymous mail. Currently, the destination and contents of email you send isn't private. It is possible for any number of people to snoop your mail as it travels to its destination. For privacy, you can encrypt your mail. Suppose Alice has an email account as learns that email is about as private as a postcard. She decides to encrypt all of her email, and all of her correspondents agree to do the same. So now, nobody can read her mail. But, who she communicates with still yeilds information. This is called traffic analysis, and I won't go into it here. So, enter anonymous remailers (see Chaum's "Untraceable Electronic Mail"). Currently several people on this list are experimenting with and running anonymous remailers. The remailers accept instructions (optionally encrypted) and resend messages, making it look as though the mail originates from the remailer. Now Alice sends and receives all her encrypted mail from an anonymous remailer. Somebody snooping Alice won't learn the contents of her mail, or even with whom she communicates. (She could even keep private what USENET news she reads by borrowing a trick from Mr. Slippery in "True Names" - just download everything and read what you want at home.) Another security enhancement is chaining the anonymous remailers, instructing one to mail to another, and so on, eventually delivering mail. Alice and her friends do the same, and they continue to privately communicate, keeping their various identities secret. If the snooper just watches the first remailer, he will learn that her mail goes to another remailer, etc. Now the snooper would need to watch more remailers to figure out who Alice is talking to. - From time to time, people suggest a probabalistic remailer, either forwarding mail to another remailer, or delivering it immediately. This actually reveals the final destination to more remailers than before. For example, if Alice chains mail A-B-C-final, then only the C remailer knows the final destination. But if the remailers implemented some probabalistic scheme, then each one will have to be given the final destination. To make it harder for a snooper, the remailers decide to cache their remailing requests, sending them out periodically instead of immediately. Now, a snooper would see a steady stream of mail into the remailer, and nothing coming out until suddenly, the remailer sends out all of its queued messages. If a large number of messages are stored to be remailed later, the snooper isn't able to easily match up incoming and outgoing messages. Now we come to message padding. If a snooper watches the incoming and outgoing mail, perhaps the size of the mail will provide enough information to link sender to destination, even if it is cached and remailed along with several other messages. So, to defeat this, the remailer can pad all messages to be a certain length. The best way for this to work is if a snooper can't figure out what is padding and what isn't. For plaintext and digitally signed (only) documents, this is not too difficult. But, for encrypted messages, if the remailer could insert padding into the encrypted text itself, or add in padding which would be ignored upon decryption, then it would be very difficult, if not impossible, for a snooper to determine what is and what isn't padding. The system implemented at the elee9sf(a)menudo.uh.edu remailer is a simple type - it pads the message body to a certain length. But it is pretty obvious what is padding and what isn't - so if a snooper is in a position to determine the length of a message (say they are trying to match up source and destination), they probably will be able to read the message and throw the padding out on their own. A better system would be one that pads inside encrypted text. This can be done with a pgp encrypted message by padding the end of ascii encrypted text and adjusting a few bytes (length fields, etc.). The message can still be decrypted, and the excess padding bytes will be ignored. Such a system is in the works... and it is reasonable to pad encrypted messages since it is much harder to detect and you will probably encrypt text sent through an anonymous remailer to get the maximum benefit. (If you don't mind everyone reading what you wrote you could use a dc-net and generate plaintext :-) Another useful technique is an anonymous pool, where everybody in the pool gets every message. Since everybody subscribing to the list receives every message, it would be extremely difficult for a snooper to determine to whom such a message is really intended for. You could use a newsgroup for the same purpose - post encrypted text to some group and your friend would read the group and retreive the message. Also, from time to time people wonder about errors and whether failed mail can be bounced back or whatever. The difficulty here is that the anonymous remailers try to keep information about source and destination to a minimum. For instance, a message may be routed through several remailers; the previous hop may be another remailer, so it wouldn't be useful to bounce the message back. Some remailers drop bounced mail, others wind up appending to a log file. A good solution currently implemented at extropia.wimsey.com is to use an anonymous pool for error reporting. Karl Barrus <klbarrus(a)owlnet.rice.edu> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.3a iQCVAgUBLNH9eYOA7OpLWtYzAQEPzQP/QYeciQf7TKimj67xQRWScov848bcauF6 hlFOfoF4MFSm7mhD1bPks7xiwZuYO6P+MwkaeMqBKYQfWzBi37Blx5PNo3iK6Dmk pmeGsYqew34oPxk7Exvsu7uOcKhFAhBcEWvElJ+ytMjEbuY8EsHoGGETXpPVK87C OFkNxCrdqYY= =J/5q -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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Re: Paranoid
by Karl Lui Barrus 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- I'm not exactly sure what this thread is about :-) but I do have some numbers: Differential cryptanalysis of DES requires 2^47 = 140737488355328 = 1.4 10^14 known plaintexts. The complexity of a brute force DES attack (keysearch) is 2^56 = 72057594037927936 = 7.2 10^16, or 2^55 = 36028797018963968 = 3.6 10^16 if you are efficient. Similary, brute forcing IDEA is 2^128 = 340282366920938463463374607431768211456 = 3.4 10^38 The best factoring algorithm (gopher plug: check in Misc/ for a recent "bits and difficulty factoring post") for a 1024 bit key is a complexity of 4.42 10^29. Somewhere around 1600 bits comes a point where it is "easier" to attack IDEA than factor the resulting number. Karl Barrus <klbarrus(a)owlnet.rice.edu> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.3a iQCVAgUBLNKNqYOA7OpLWtYzAQFlkwP+PdenJNJOKm9zcxkL4Zaq22aujfa2SAgk 1NILjQzZI8uZe9FIn8p2uEoS3YjYskg40tEMeohhGqZ371s/ndlTjDDhga0PCXLj Q4UHoowTVR9hx/cVGzLhuZbyAwbbqAvygGQNKN1iXn3IqpLoNV3Do+TtUj0xLt1l 0j1gl055YL4= =Vl2r -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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thanks...
by jdblair＠nextsrv.cas.muohio.EDU 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Thanks to all of the people who answered my question on message signing. -john.

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Macintosh PGP CDEV Idea
by jdblair＠nextsrv.cas.muohio.EDU 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- I have a proposal for a piece of code I'd like to try and put togethor over Xmas break, and I want to bounce it off of the group to make sure that I'm not duplicating anyone else's work. I work mostly on the Macintosh, and this program would be for the mac. It would be a CDEV (good 'ol desk accessory) which would contain a smaller version of PGP. By smaller, I don't mean less secure, I mean a little less functionality. All it would do would sign, encrypt, or decrypt text files. By being a desk accessory, it would allow a message that's been downloaded by whatever means (MS Mail, FTP, Kermit, etc.) to be quickly decrypted, or to encrypt files for uploading. The idea is to have a simple, easy graphical interface on a small floating pallete type window. Since it would be a CDEV, it could be used simultaneously with a communications program even if the machine was running 6.0 w/ the unary finder. Keys would still be generated in the full fledged version, but these keys would be accessible by the CDEV. A possible later version could also take advantage of Apple Events, thus becoming a module which other programs could send files to to become decrypted, or encrypted without worrying about the process themselves. I've begun poreing through the source code to see how easy or difficult this is going to be, but first I'd like to make sure that their aren't already projects like this in development, or if there is any body who would like to help with the development process. It must be made clear that I am a beginning C programmer and a beginning developer of hard-coded Macintosh applications. I've started to consider tackling this project as something that will force me to learn both. Anybody have any ideas, comments, proposals? E-mail me directly, unless you think its a discussion that should be posted to the group as a whole. later, - -john. -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.3 iQBVAgUBLNJm3qNqtARNqVmxAQGL2wH/dYM7nkpeNbrFniRseZUHEl0X1p4Cn5md iqPkZWhznhwa+QhcEm6s8RGSq/Kf/uEPsy1C58wVfFbwhMF23WfPhQ== =car+ -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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Has anyone seen "Applied Cryptography" yet ?
by trestrab＠GVSU.EDU 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

If anyone has seen Bruce Schneir's new book, "Applied Cryptography", please post a short review to the list so that others can know whether to special order it. Thanks. Jeff

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Pseudospoofing, LD, life, the universe, and everything
by nate＠VIS.ColoState.EDU 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Cypherpunks, I thought that the infamous L. Detweiler had stopped his posting, but it appears that he is back, and more neurotic than ever. I thought that it was the time for me to make another post relating to him, the list in general, and LD's obsession with pseudospoofing. OK, first, LD is pissing me off, as, I am sure, he is doing to many others out there in net.land. His raves are nothing if not persistant and ever increasingly long. I, being the founding member of the Colorado Cypherpunks, am not particularly prowd of him being affiliated with the group. I don't hate him, as some of teh others on this list apparently do, I just think he is a very persistant pest, a fly in the ointment. I think it is important to remember that in every movement there are fanatics, and in the best of intentions are those who would do harm while trying to crusade the good. I believe that Detweiler is one such person. He is experiencing some very serious problems with what he believes to be a concerted effort by some devilish cabal to warp and mung his brain through the rampant use of pseudospoofing. OK, fine if he believes that, I cannot keep him from thinking that some of us are emmisaries of Satan. I can, however, wish that he would leave me the hell alone and stop posting these long, drawn-out core dumps of his mangled psyche. I can ask him to stop his madness, though I know that it will only get me on his bad side, and possibly put me in physical danger (since I live in his vicinity, lucky me). I think that's enough on Detweiler himself, and I hope I don't have to talk about him anymore. On to pseudospoofing. I think that it exists, and that it's denial is just plain naive. The world is a non-friendly place, and there are dangers out there, and people who will exploit every aspect of the system to trick, decieve, and mangle others. This should not come as a shock to anyone on the list, since we are generally on (or close to) the cutting edge of new technologies and methods to use those technologies. I, myself have never participated in any kind of conspiracy with intent to confuse, nor have i ever posted under a name other than my own, and my anon.penet.fi identity. I have not posted as anyone that I am not, and have no intention to do so. I do not, however, object to the use of these technologies, or to the act of pseudospoofing. It cannot hope to be prevented, since there are always people out there who will figure out how to exploit the system to do their bidding. Yes, it's true, I am coming out in favor of pseudospoofing. I do not object to it's use, on the premise that it cannot be stopped, and it rarely does hard, aside from those (LD) whose minds are bent by the mere thought that it is happening. Enough of that. Now onto the list. I put some serious thought into dropping from the list for the past week or so, and I have decided _not_ to leave bacause sometime there are bits of information that I get from the list that are simply not available anywhere else. Some of the members of the list are, however, pissing me off. The list has degraded from a band of freedom fighters with things they cared about in jeopardy to a bunch of fucking children bickering over the most pathetic of things. I hope that the recent barrage of postings is not indicative of what is to come. If it is, then I may just reconsider and leave. I think that's all I have to say for now... I just wanted to let people know what I was thinking, and set the record straight if there are any members who think I am still on LD's side (which I was for quite some time). Thanks, - -nate +-----------------------------------------------------------------------+ | Nate Sammons nate(a)VIS.ColoState.Edu (303) 491-1578 | | Colorado State University -- Computer Visualization Laboratory | +-----------------------------------------------------------------------+

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Re: Give me your password- OR ELSE!
by owen＠autodesk.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

> > From: karn(a)qualcomm.com (Phil Karn) > >Car alarms and security systems didn't convince the criminals who make their > >living ripping off cars that the *Good ole days were over* and it was time > >to get a job at Burger Sri, it spurred them to find new methods to ply > >their trade. > How do you know this? Clearly some crooks may have just moved to more > violent methods, but it's quite probable that others moved off to > other fields where it's easier to make a buck, either legal or > illegal. Watch the nightly news or if you want to be really anal about it look up statistics about the increase in violent carjacking. Walk down the street in any San Francisco neighborhood, and count the piles of tempered glass that used to be car windows. So OK, you don't have a criminal mind, and it makes sense to you that it might be a good time to go legit, but let me offer you my sincere advice not to move into a bad neighborhood, you are at a natural disadvantage. > Although widely deployed strong cryptography may well cause an > increase in violent, rubber-hose cryptanalysis, this technique is > likely to be useful only for stored encrypted records and for > encrypted communications whose protocols are not secure against this > type of attack, e.g., PGP encrypted email. tightly focused linear thinkers are perfect targets for criminally minded predators, they are assured that you will leave them a wide arena from which to operate undetected. > > But much better protocols exist where online two-way communication is > possible, e.g., signed Diffie-Hellman key exchange, with periodic > automatic rekeying. Once you rekey in such a system, no amount of > rubber hosing will obtain prior session keys; they're gone even to the > participants. Recently a Cash machine was installed in a building which I frequent. It was placed 10 feet inside a plate glass window, and has easy access for a small truck to drive up and haul it away. It even has wheels. I noted that this presented a danger to those of us who were in the building late at night, since it was apparently so vulnerable. I was concerned that the unarmed security guard was a sitting duck, and perhaps target practice, for theives intent on driving through the window and quickly hauling the whole shebang away. The cash machine installer informed me that the unit had a cel phone and GPS that would call and give its location if tampered with, but he didn't have an answer when I remarked that this would be littel comfort to anyone shot or injured by thieves unaware of this factor. and please don't tell me that posting signs telling would-be criminals about these security precautions will do any good. They won't. > And even if you rubber-hose one of the participants into revealing the > RSA key he uses to sign his DH exchanges, this will only let you > masquerade as him in future conversations. In order to tap his future > conversations surreptitiously, you'd have to rubberhose him without > his knowledge, or hypnotize him into forgetting the incident. I'd say > this is difficult. More so than secretly hacking the machine he uses > to capture his secrets. Once again, it comes down to some level of > physical security, at least while the machine is in actual use. You are making an error if you think that any locks keep out anything but honest people. Necesity is the mother of invention. The point is that these issues are not linear, when implemented in real world situations you must consider the real world implications and provide real world solutions. LUX ./. owen

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Re: Give me your password- OR ELSE!
by Jef Poskanzer 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

>Watch the nightly news or if you want to be really anal about it look up >statistics about the increase in violent carjacking. Actually, I did that. Turns out the supposed increase that got all the media attention was solely due to the SFPD establishing a new statistical category. The actual number of incidents has not changed significantly. --- Jef

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Tax Havens on the Net
by Jim Hart 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

--------------------- Tax Havens on the Net --------------------- compiled by James R. Hart sources: Internet Connectivity List -- Larry Landweber, U.Wisc. ftp.cs.wisc.edu ../connectivity_table Version 9, August 1993 Hoyt L. Barber, _Tax Havens_, McGraw-Hill 1993 Codes used to indicate sites in each country with access to the Global Multiprotocol Open Internet: BITNET b: minimal, one to five domestic BITNET sites B: widespread, more than five domestic BITNET sites IP INTERNET I: = operational, accesible from entire IP Internet i: = operational, not accesible via the NSFNET backbone UUCP u: minimal, one to five domestic UUCP sites U: widespread, more than five domestic UUCP sites FIDONET f: minimal, one to five domestic FIDONET sites F: widespread, more than five domestic FIDONET sites OSI o: minimal, one to five domestic X.400 sites O: widespread, more than five domestic X.400 sites ------------------------ and without further ado: ------------------------ Aruba net access: ---f- languages: Papiamento, English, Dutch, Spanish currency controls: none? bank secrecy: moderate (numbered accounts not permitted) preferred legal entities: Aruba Exempt Company, NV (Dutch legal tradition, bearer shares allowed) taxes: no income tax on AEC or shareholders, no witholding of any kind tax treaties: none? Austria net access: BIOUFO language: German currency controls: ?? bank secrecy: good; numbered accounts available preferred legal entities: limited liability company, stock orporation taxes: corporate tax. no bank interest tax. 20% divident ax. tax treaties: many, OECD model, primarily personal and orporate income contact: Price Waterhouse, Austria Barbados net access: --u-- language: English currency controls: some (none for offshore banks & nsurance) preferred legal entities: company, public company, offshore bank, exempt insurance company, foreign sales corporation , international business company taxes: income tax offshore banks and international business companies 2.5%, exempt insurance companies and foreign sales corporations none tax treaties: double-tax treaties with 5 major countries (incl. U.K. & U.S.) Bermuda net access: --uf-- language: English currency controls: none for nonresidents bank secrecy: moderate preferred legal entities: local (conduct business in Bermuda, must be 60% Bermuda owned), exempt (only conducts business outside Bermuda) -- min. capitalization US$12,000 -- extensive background check on the principles taxes: no income, profit, sales, value added, witholding, or capital gains taxes tax treaties: no double-tax treaties. U.S. can be provided with tax information concerning civil & criminal tax cases Costa Rica net access: bIuf- language: Spanish currency controls: only on local currency, applies only to citizens or legal entities bank secrecy: good legal entities: individual enterprise/limited liability collective company limited partnership limited-liability company stock corporation (aka chartered company): most common taxes: 15% on dividents for some nonresident shareholders, moderate corporate income, payroll, imort, real estate taxes. Exporters exempt from most taxes. tax treaties: no double-tax treaties. Caribbean Basin Initiative exchange-of-information agreeement signed but not yet ratified (as of 1/93). Hong Kong net access: BI-F- languages: Cantonese, English currency controls: none bank secrecy: moderate? preferred legal entity: limited-liability corporation (English common law Companies Ordinance) taxes: 16.5% domestic source corporate income, 15% domestic employment wages, 15% on domestic property rental income tax treaties: no double-tax agreements n.b.: treaty to return Hong Kong to Communist China in 1997 Ireland net access: BIUFO language: English currency controls: none? bank secrecy: moderate? preferred legal entity: noresident company (private corporation w/limited liability, must conduct operations outside Ireland) taxes: only on Irish operations tax treaties: many double-tax treaties n.b.: those with Irish grandparents can obtain second citizenship Leichtenstein net access: ---f- languages: German, Alemanni currency controls: none bank secrecy: excellent preferred legal entities: allows any type found anywhere in the world (!) establishment (limited liability, unlimited duration) company limited by shares foundations and trusts taxes: none for income outside Leichtenstein. Net worth tax of 0.01% on capital and reserves (min. 1,000 Swiss francs), local resident taxes tax treaties: not party directly or indirectly to any exchange-of-information agreements double-tax treaty exists only with Austria n.b.: bankers won't assist law enforcement officials with drug, fraud, theft, or tax investigations. They might assist in money laundering and insider trading investigations, informing the customer first. Luxembourg net access: bIUFO languages: Letzeburgesh, French, German, English bank secrecy: moderate preferred legal entity: holding company taxes: holding companies pays only 10% registration fee on issued shares and 0.20% annual capital tax on issued capital bonds. tax treaties: many double-tax treaties n.b.: EC member Malta net access: --u-- languages: Maltese, English currency controls: none bank secrecy: good preferred legal entities: offshore notrading, trading, banking (overseas, subsidiary, local), insurance, trusts taxes: nontrading exempt, trading very low tax treties: many double-tax treaties n.b.: EC member Netherlands net access: BIUFO language: Dutch currency controls: ?? bank secrecy: poor preferred legal entities: private or public NV (can have bearer shares) taxes: complex, high (many loopholes for large offshore companies) tax treaties: many Panama net access: b-uFO languages: Spanish, English curency controls: none bank secrecy: good; numbered accounts permissable preferred legal entity: corporation taxes: none on income generated outside Panama tax treaties: only on shipping income Singapore net access: bIuF- languages: Malay, Mandarin, Tamil, English currency controls: none bank secrecy: moderate; numbered accounts available preferred legal entities: private limited company taxes: none on dividends, foreign deposit interest, or income derived from outside Singapore. tax treaties: many Switzerland net access: BIUFO languages: French, German, Italian, Romansch currency controls: none bank secrecy: moderate to good; numbered accounts available preferred legal entity: AG (stock company under Laws of Obligation) taxes: 3.6-9.8% worldwide income tax for operating companies, 35% witholding tax on interest and dividends tax treaties: many double-tax treaties Vanuata net access: --u-- languages: Melanesian, French, English currency controls: none bank secrecy: moderate? preferred legal entities: holding, trading, agency, mgmt. service, contracting taxes: no income or capital gains taxes tax treaties: none Western Samoa net access: --u-- languages: Samoan, English currency controls: none bank secrecy: good preferred legal entities: international company, offshore bank, insurance company taxes: none for companies under offshore acts tax treaties: none If you like having this information, let me know. Also let me know what other kinds of information you need on tax havens and net access; I'd love to be of service. If you have corrections to or additional information for the Tax Havens on the Net list, I'd be happy to add it with full attribution (or full privacy, as you prefer). To preserve your privacy, feel free to use anonymous remailers and encryption. My PGP key enclosed below. James R. Hart hart(a)chaos.bsu.edu -----BEGIN PGP PUBLIC KEY BLOCK----- Version: 2.2 mQCNAiz0Br4AAAEEAJohFjXdkx6i2Mq6nJXdJN+VGupeKwuu1SAiRvsBK7TQ1ajY d3wEFohbwaHGn3iq7A1//koipvzE5S/C6pPxIAHFeoYOUzeI/cWmh6vsuaF3/lVm K9lx/L7PyaF8rvd4FOmLqkvs1xk/24S9ZQaBb3cjhLV571NaiPCIc3SPJUKXAAUT tCJKYW1lcyBSLiBIYXJ0IDxoYXJ0QGNoYW9zLmJzdS5lZHU+ =z2UE -----END PGP PUBLIC KEY BLOCK-----

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