December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

Re: Nuclear Weapons Material
by mpd＠netcom.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Jim Dixon <jdd(a)aiki.demon.co.uk> writes: > I was told by what I considered to be reliable sources that > plutonium was extremely toxic. Upon reflection, I am sure > that this is the word that was used: toxic, not radioactive. Plutonium-239 emits alpha particles, which are helium nuclei, at an energy of approximately 5 MeV. Such particles are bulky and can be stopped by a few centimeters of air, or a thin piece of paper or metal foil. In order to cause damage, alpha emitters like plutonium must come in intimate contact with a material, such as the tissues of your lungs or bones or the inside of your favorite memory chip. A billionth of a gram of plutonium inhaled or swallowed is something to seriously worry about, but you can hold a lump of the stuff in your hand as long as it is covered with a leakproof cladding or vitrified into a ceramic. It is in this sense that plutonium is extremely toxic and hazardous to the environment, while at the same time not being particularly radioactive. Heavy shielding is not required between you and it. Of course once fissionable fuels are irradiated, they become extremely radioactive due to a wide spectrum of short-lived fission byproducts and then require precautions when they are handled. > By "clad", do you mean coated in lead? No - the desired properties of cladding are resistance to corrosion and heat, as well as a low absorption cross section for thermal neutrons. We're talking about materials like zirconium and iridium here, as well as specialized alloys of stainless steel. -- Mike Duvos $ PGP 2.6 Public Key available $ mpd(a)netcom.com $ via Finger. $

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No Subject
by Anonymous 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Kudos to Hal Finney for his descriptions of Stefan Brand's offline cash. As with other offline cash protocols it contains the following assumption: > Let's call the user Irving, and > the number which encodes his identity (it might just be his bank account > number in this case) we will call I. What happens when we've caught Irving double spending (or million spending?) Is it guaranteed that Irving will have enough in his bank account to cover the fraud? I don't see any way to guarantee that except for absurdly large security deposits. Also, are bank accounts required to be in True Names so that multi spenders can be caught and punished? If so, how do we prevent the use of numbered accounts, Duncan Frissel's nom de guerre accounts, etc. and do we really want to set up that kind of True Name infrastructure? Also, what about stolen coins? If Irving can succeed in stealing a coin from Jane without her knowledge, Irving can spend it untraceably as many times as he can get away with (perhaps thousands or even millions, depending on what security precautions we layer above the offline cash), and Jane gets fingered. On the other hand, Jane might simply give Irving some coins, plausibly claim they were stolen, and split the proceeds from Irving's spending spree. In general, multi spending might occur because of accident, malice, or a combination of those two factors. How do we distinguish between accident and malice to determine liability, reputation loss and/or punishment?

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U & Pu is good for U
by Brad Dolan 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

>From: IN%"jdd(a)aiki.demon.co.uk" >To: IN%"psmarie(a)cbis.com" >CC: IN%"cypherpunks(a)toad.com" >Subj: RE: U & Pu "poisoning of the environment" > >In message <9408251512.AA11369(a)focis.sda.cbis.COM> "Paul J. Ste. Marie" writes: >> > > Epidemiologic studies of workers [even wartime workers with impressive >> ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ >> > > body burdens/ exposures] in a number of uranium bomb-making centers have >> ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ >> > > found ~ no health effects. >> > >> > This is quite similar to saying that nerve gas is harmless because >> > scarcely anyone working in storage areas has been killed by it. Or >> > that bullets won't harm you because people handle crates of them and >> > they don't get shot. >> > >> No, it is not. If you had read the message more carefully, you would >> have had to phrase your example as, "This is quite similar to saying >> that nerve gas is harmless because scarcely anyone who has inhaled >> substantial amounts of it has been killed by it." > >In all of these cases there is a serious attempt to make sure that the >workers are not harmed by the dangerous substances involved. I must >say that the phrase "impressive body burdens" is fairly incomprehensible. I grant you that "impressive" is not too specific but "body burden" is a common way of referring to the material which is taken into the body and retained. Typically, most material inhaled or ingested is quickly exhaled or excreted out of the body. Some exposure (and dose) accrues during this time. If some material remains deposited in the body, exposure continues. >But nevertheless, my point stands: workers are carefully protected from >the plutonium and U235 in nuclear weapons plants. By the standards of the time, workers during WWII were pretty well protected. By our standards, which may be overly conservative, some WWII-era workers received large doses and/or body burdens. Because these workers (1) had exposures and (2) were monitored, they are the group of choice for epidemiological studies. > When their radiation >badges show what is considered a high level dose, this does not mean >that they have been exposed to anything like, say, the radiation from >a kilo of unshielded plutonium. I would be happy to hold a kilo of unshielded plutonium in my hand. I would probably think it wise to wash it later. Pu is an alpha emitter. Its radiation will not penetrate the dead layer of the skin. I have held pieces of uranium in my hand. I'm still here. >If radioactive substances are used as weapons, the intention will be >to do the maximum possible damage. I don't think that anyone would >survive for long after exposure to, say, a suspension of plutonium >in air designed to be breathed in, perhaps as an aerosol. I would bet that you could get a lot more effect for your terrorist dollar with aerosols of any number of other, more commonly available substances (like gasoline). I don't have ready access to a good library right now to go pull references but if you follow up on the references to these three papers, you should find more than you will ever care to read on the topic: Wilkinson, G.S.; Tietjen, G.L.; Wiggs, L.D.; Galke, W.A; Acquavella, J.F.; Reyes M.; Voelz, G.L.; Waxweiler, R.J. Mortality among plutonium and other radiation workers at a plutonium weapons facility. Am. J. Epidemiol. 125:231-250; 1987. Checkoway, H.; Mathew, R.M. Shy, C.M.; Watson, J.E. Jr.; Tankersley, W.G.; Wolf, S.H.; Smith, J.C.; Fry, S.A. Radiation, work experience, and cause specific mortality among workers at an energy research laboratory. Br. J. Indust. Med. 42:525-533; 1985. Peterson, G.R.; Gilbert, E.S.; Buchanan, J.A., Stevens, R.G. A Case- Cohort Study of Lung Cancer, Ionizing Radiation, and Tobacco Smoking Among Males at the Hanford Site. Health Physics, 58:3-11; 1990. >To repeat my point: you say that statistical studies of workers in >nuclear weapons plants which are specifically designed to minimize >the effects of radiation show that radiation has done little harm. Loosely put, the studies say, "Workers at facility X whose exposures varied from {small} to {large} showed/did not show increased death rates from {long lists of diseases}." >Well, I should hope so. >On the other hand I say that such studies are poor criteria for >judging the effects of radiation intended to do the maximum possible >harm. Well, these studies are about all we have to go on right now. The wartime residents of Hiroshima and Nagasaki do provide a large set of folks exposed to "radiation intended to do the maximum possible harm" but, darn it, none of them were wearing dosimeters. People do study these groups, making educated guesses about doses, but it's hard to draw precise conclusions on that basis. To draw this off-topic topic to a close, I recommend the following to help bring the various risks into perspective: Cohen, B.L.; Catalog of Risks Extended and Updated. Health Physics, 61:317-335, 1991. >I think that this is really indisputable. >-- >Jim Dixon Sorry for disputing. Brad bdolan(a)well.sf.ca.us

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Re: Nuclear Weapons Material
by jdd＠aiki.demon.co.uk 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

In message <199408251633.JAA16087(a)netcom4.netcom.com> Mike Duvos writes: > Uranium is not particularly radioactive, being a long lived alpha > emitter. This is true of plutonium and some other fissionable > materials as well. I can handle clad uranium or plutonium > reactor or bomb components in complete safety with no protective > clothing needed. The only hazard is from ingestion of the > material, or from accumulation of decay products such as radon in > a badly ventilated area. > > Workers in nuclear fuel fabrication facilities have been known to > use small disks of plutonium sintered into a ceramic base as > poker chips. Is this true? I mean, do you know it from personal experience? I was told by what I considered to be reliable sources that plutonium was extremely toxic. Upon reflection, I am sure that this is the word that was used: toxic, not radioactive. By "clad", do you mean coated in lead? -- Jim Dixon

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Re: Using PGP on Insecure Machines
by wcs＠anchor.ho.att.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

> > Also importantly, the user interfaces for PGP simply suck as it > > stands, making people like Tim uninterested in going through the .... > At the risk of repeating myself, what's the problem with wrapping PGP in > a shell script? Works for me - see a previous mailing, complete with > wrapper scripts. I can send either encrypted or just signed email > without especially noticing it. Wrapping PGP in shell scripts is only useful for people who use shells, and a lot of people either use GUIs instead (often non-extensible ones), or keep their PGP on PCs at home rather than their networked Unixen at work where they get their mail. This means that to use PGP, they need to do things like kermit from home to work, read their mail, save it in files, kermit the files to their PC, PGP-decrypt and read them on the PC, etc. It's a bit easier if people have remote-scriptable terminal emulators on their PCs, which let the Unix end run a script to save the file and download it and maybe fire up PGP on the PC, but it still feels annoyingly like work, and if your Unix box can download files to your PC and run them, it can run pgp-steal-keys just about as well as real PGP. Similarly, if you've got TCP/IP running on your PC, whether through SLIP or directly, you've still got a security risk to worry about. You can reduce these problems by running a _real_ operating system on your PC, but it's tougher to run your favorite applications that way, and you still need to either run all your mail down to the PC, which isn't practical for lots of people, or explicitly forward the stuff down there from your main mail system. There's another transparency problem, at least for reading encrypted mail - you either need to type in your passphrase each time, which is annoying and increases exposure somewhat, or you need to leave it aorund in environment variables, etc., which also increase exposure. On the other hand, a shell script approach can be just fine for signature checking, as long as your mailreader has a painless interface, since there isn't much security risk from having PGP on a machine without your real secret key and passphrase there. There's still some risk - if the machine is shared with other people, someone may be able to replace PGP with pgp-cc:-kgbvax or pgp-nsa-sig-verify - but it's a start. Bill # Bill Stewart AT&T Global Information Solutions, aka NCR Corp # 6870 Koll Center Parkway, Pleasanton CA, 94566 Phone 1-510-484-6204 fax-6399 # email bill.stewart(a)pleasantonca.ncr.com billstewart(a)attmail.com # ViaCrypt PGP Key IDs 384/C2AFCD 1024/9D6465

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Re: Nuclear Weapons Material
by thad＠pdi.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

To: cypherpunks(a)toad.com Subject: Re: Nuclear Weapons Material >> Roy M. Silvernail says: >> Plutonium oxide has a reputation for causing eventual lung cancer when >> inhaled in microgram quantities. But if the plutonium metal is sintered >> into a ceramic, it's not loose and breathable. I can't say how >> otherwise toxic it might be, but I'd expect it to be similar to other >> heavy metals. So the poker chips sound pretty safe. They'd be safe unless the pot got really big. I recall hearing a radio show in which some nuclear engineer was saying that such-and-such and incident couldn't have really gone critical, because when that happens, it starts to glow sort of bluish color, and you feel heat as if you were standing in front of a really big oven. The way it sounded, I got the impression that unintended criticalities did happen now and then. Thad Beier Pacific Data Images 408)745-6755 thad(a)pdi.com

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Re: Nuclear Weapons Material
by jdd＠aiki.demon.co.uk 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

In message <199408251812.NAA00474(a)zoom.bga.com> Jim choate writes: > I would like to request some reference on the use of Uranium in the casing > of a shell or round. The casing gets thrown out on the ground (by both > aircraft and tanks) when the round goes off. There is no reason to use > anything other than brass or steel for this. There is some confusion in terminology here. The brass case is indeed discarded when the round is fired. Byt 'casing' he means the exterior of the warhead. The word 'round' is used for both the warhead+gunpowder+brass and then for the warhead itself. Larger artillery pieces do not use a brass shell case at all. The round is loaded, and then the powder is rammed in after it. > I can find no reference any U-core round being HE or otherwise carrying a > charge. In all cases that I am aware of and can find reference to it is simply > a KE attack on the target where the by products of the impact bounce around > inside the target grinding up whatever is in there. I believe that this is true, except that the 'products of the impact' are drops of metal and what they do is worse than grinding something up. -- Jim Dixon

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Re: Using PGP on Insecure Machines (fwd)
by chen＠intuit.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

> [ On Knuth no longer reading his mail ] > > > He's also trying to complete his "Art of Computer Programming" series... > > > > Is Volume IV out yet? My I-III still await the promise of the Intro... > > Not that I know of. A recent Computer Literacy newsletter has an interview with Knuth in which he says (if I recall correctly) that he plans to complete vols. IV and V by 1998, whereupon he will begin work on a revised edition of vol. I. He's now emeritus at Stanford so that he can write full-time. -- Mark Chen chen(a)netcom.com 415/329-6913 finger for PGP public key D4 99 54 2A 98 B1 48 0C CF 95 A5 B0 6E E0 1E 1D

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Are RSA licenses fungible?
by paul＠poboy.b17c.ingr.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- I'm developing some software for use in psychiatric research; basically, about 20 field sites will run the software, collect data, and modem it back to a mothership central site. The encryption & security needs are evident, and one of the main reasons to meet these needs is that the doctors involved perceive that they might be liable for leaks. Code based on Pr0duct Cypher's PGP Tools would do exactly what I want done The good doctors' general fear of liability means that I can't expose them to the risk of unlicensed use of RSA's patents (even though I think those patents are questionable, my job is to not get my clients involved with that question.) So.. if I buy 20 licenses of ViaCrypt PGP, then proceed to use PGP 2.6-based code in my applications, does that constitute a legitimate solution? - -Paul - -- Paul Robichaux, KD4JZG | Demand that your elected reps support the perobich(a)ingr.com | Constitution, the whole Constitution, and Not speaking for Intergraph. | nothing but the Constitution. -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6 iQCVAgUBLlyusKfb4pLe9tolAQHH6gP/cA/UwqpKqIDXv4ztBkUzyvLPypOUWRYB OoYGcE/AZF7vO1fgvkObZgwP59QC1Z0fsVU+lNUVgW8qIfadcwb0awBHcooQZ3OL 4d4cX9oD0ARxOrFoA4lFBU97k3lBXa+szyBD+hN2qyIxXUvHPPn5SZcZGYb7swMf zHfDONdqnq8= =FwPl -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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Spoofing Nuclear Weapons and PGP
by John Young 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Responding to msg by dichro(a)tartarus.uwa.edu.au (Mikolaj Habryn) on Thu, 25 Aug 5:51 PM >not really certain. *shrug* sorry. Read some books on >it - the amount of literature which should be >classified but is freely available is mind-boggling. To tie this back to crypto and technology: Under a sub-sub-sub-contract I once worked on some phony CAD drawings for the nuclear weapons production process, plotting false info that still appears in popular books, some of which has been posted here. The docs were then encrypted and stegonagraphied for authenticity. We were told that they were turned loose on the market for this product in other countries. I don't know if the USG was involved, there no security clearances. It may have been a commercial scam. Also, growing up not to far from LANL, I was told that kids of staff were encouraged to chat about B-this and W-that by the security people there as part of the fog around that outfit. This supports the suggestion for profligate use of PGP as a stratagem, to make it harder to tell the trivial from the other. Or is public encryption a stratagem to focus on software rather than hardware? Anybody hear anything about covert ID in new-generation CPUs, like done with supercomps? John

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