December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

HELP: EFF BBS Project needs your support!
by Stanton McCandlish 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Please pardon the wide cross-posting (some of which are actually mailing lists), but all of these newsgroups involve issues with which EFF deals, and we hope the readers of these groups will support EFF's BBS project. EFF needs to set up a bulletin board system, to be called "Outpost - EFF Online", to help spread the word to people in the BBS community, most of whom do not have access to the resources of the net, on: cryptography privacy activism civil liberities online networking national information infrastructure open platform principles censorship laws that affect computer users ITAR restrictions telco/cable mergers internet access many-to-many communication virtual communities cyberspace digital telephony bbs seizures online resources and more... WHAT WE NEED: We need donations of funds and equipment. We already have BBS software (Digital Dynamics has donated their Synchronet BBS package), but still need a platform to run it on, including basic PC system, modems, tape backup, monitor, hard drive, etc. If you'd like to contribute to this project, please contact mech(a)eff.org (Stanton McCandlish, EFF Online Activist/SysOp, 202-347-5400 voice, 202-393-5509 fax, EFF - 1001 G St. NW, Ste. 950 E, Wash. DC 20001) All donations are tax deductable, and any donations of funds or hardware worth $40 or more will get the contributor a one-year membership in EFF. All contributors will be listed in a "thank you" note in an upcoming Effector Online (EFF's electronic newsletter), and permanently on the BBS itself. Great advertising! Thanks for reading, and thanks for your assistance!

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Mosaic: ftp site?
by walter kehowski 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Cypherpunks, I'd like to get Mosaic - I read about it in the NYT. I got several responses to my inquiry: Where can you get Mosaic? (Thanks). However, when I tried ftp.ncsa.uiuc.edu and zaphod at same, there was no /Mosaic directory - looked in index, etc., couldn't find it, basically. Any other sites or did I miss something? (I'm on NeXT (4.3BSD) so I was looking for the unix version.) Walter A. Kehowski <wak(a)next0.math.pitt.edu>

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Re: LPC for speech (fwd)
by loki＠nately.UCSD.EDU 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

:Forwarded message: :>From jp12745(a)coewl.cen.uiuc.edu Fri Dec 10 14:46:07 1993 :From: Jeffrey Wayne Porter <jp12745(a)coewl.cen.uiuc.edu> :Message-Id: <199312102045.AA16812(a)eehpx21.cen.uiuc.edu> :Subject: LPC for speech :To: jerry(a)terminus.dell.com (Jeremy Porter) :Date: Fri, 10 Dec 1993 14:45:49 -0600 (CST) :X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL22] :Content-Type: text :Content-Length: 948 : :Did you know that using LPC (linear predictive coding) on speech can :near-telephone quality at only 8 k BITs/second? With a signficant :decrease in quality (but still very understandable... probably better :than radio) you can get the rate down to 2kbps. If you don't mind :sounding like a speak&spell, you can go to 600bps or less. : : :Using LPC, you could send real-time voice over the :internet. It would even work (maybe just barely) over a SLIP :connection. According to my professor, LPC can be implemented :in a simple DSP chip, so I figure a 486 ought to be able to :handle it, too. Sound like an interesting (granted maybe not :too useful) project? It would be a way of providing secure :voice communications -- LPC code the speech, encrypt the data :stream, transmit via v.32bis modem, etc. :-- :-------------------------------------------------------------------- :Jeff Porter :jporter@uiuc.edu TA: ECE 290..."ph Jeff Porter" for office hours : : :-- :Jeremy Porter ------------- Systems Engineering -------- :Dell Computer Corp. ------ jerry(a)terminus.us.dell.com ---- :--- 70 4F BD AE 6D E9 D2 66 48 18 8B E7 64 7F 59 8F --- :Support your Second Amendment rights to encryption technology. : I am working on this very thing. We will be using LPC encoding for compression, IDEA for encryption, and DH key exchange for key handling. We plan to use something better than DH ASAP (something less vulnerable to man in the middle attacks). We plan to use 14.4kbps transmission speed. Lance

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Improved DH system.
by loki＠nately.UCSD.EDU 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

I have been told that there is a new improved version of DH key exchange, which is authenticated. Could someone give me the reference, and/or tell me what it is all about?........ Diffie?? I was not clear on what it is that I am working on. We are trying to build a cheep secure phone for the masses (read brainless). We are looking for black box brainless operation. I will provide more info about the project on request. ---------------------------------------------------------- Lance Cottrell who does not speak for CASS/UCSD loki(a)nately.ucsd.edu PGP 2.3 key available by finger or server. "Love is a snowmobile racing across the tundra. Suddenly it flips over, pinning you underneath. At night the ice weasels come." --Nietzsche ----------------------------------------------------------

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ALERT: FBI's Wiretap Bill is Back!
by Stanton McCandlish 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Digital Telephony Threat Returns According to FBI Dir. Louis Freeh, the development of sophisticated digital telecom and networking technology threatens the ability of the Feds to wiretap. In a Dec. 8 speech at Washington's National Press Club, Freeh annouced a renewal of the FBI's 'Digital Telephony' legislation scheme: the return of the controverial 'Wiretap Bill'. The bill is strongly opposed by organizations and individuals concerned about privacy, as well as the telecommunications and computing industries at large. The FBI's 'need' for this legislative action is under review by the Administration as part of it's examination of security and encryption issues. The reappearance of this Bureau effort contradicts statements by Special Agent Barry Smith of the FBI's Congressional Affairs Office, who stated less than a month ago that the 'Wiretap Bill' had been tabled. According to classified documents released under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), the FBI and the Electronic Communications Service Provider Committee or ECSPC (an ad hoc industry working group, which formed in March), are attempting to decide if technical solutions can be found to satisify law enforcement. According to a Nynex representative co-chairing the group, Kenneth Raymond, no solution has yet been found, but that FBI has yet to prove any solution is needed at all. Raymond likened Freeh's tactics to "yelling out the window" - an attention-getting move that needs some sort of clarifying followup. Though the ECSPC claims to be attempting to evaluate the problem and to solve it "in some reasonable way that is consistent with cost and demand", Raymond indicated that the group considers one 'solution' to be building wiretap access into future telecom hardware - like the Clipper chip backdoor, but a 'feature' of all switch specifications for phone and data lines. This news was just received, and a more detailed analysis and statement from EFF will follow soon. -- Stanton McCandlish mech(a)eff.org 1:109/1103 EFF Online Activist & SysOp O P E N P L A T F O R M C R Y P T O P O L I C Y O N L I N E R I G H T S N E T W O R K I N G V I R T U A L C U L T U R E I N F O : M E M B E R S H I P @ E F F . O R G

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Re: value of privacy?
by baumbach＠atmel.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

> example, it doesn't _hurt_ me to get targeted junk mail, but I find it > unsettling that direct marketers know enough about me to send the 'right' > mail. I see it this way; 'they' make decisions about me and initiate a > relationship with me without my knowledge or consent. The relationship is > artificial and uneven; 'they' know more about me than I know about 'them'. An idea that I have never used, but was suggested to me by my father, goes like this: RING RING me: Hello ??: Mr. Peter Baumbach, I am calling from ICK inc. to offer you .. me: Excuse me, but I am busy right now. Could you give me your name and home phone number, and I will call you back later? ??: Huh? I can't give you my home number, that's private. me: But you know my name and number. This hardly seems fair.

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Re: value of privacy?
by Dave Hart 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

I use a variation on the below whenever I get a telemarketer calling -- but instead of asking for the home number, I just ask for their number, meaning work number. Amazingly, it's very effective. Apparently outbound telemarketers often don't want to get inbound phone calls. ---------- | From: <netmail!baumbach(a)atmel.com> | | An idea that I have never used, but was suggested to me by my father, goes | like this: | | RING RING | | me: Hello | | ??: Mr. Peter Baumbach, I am calling from ICK inc. to offer you .. | | me: Excuse me, but I am busy right now. Could you give me your name and | home phone number, and I will call you back later? | | ??: Huh? I can't give you my home number, that's private. | | me: But you know my name and number. This hardly seems fair. | |

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LPC for speech (fwd)
by jerry＠terminus.dell.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Forwarded message:

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Re: ALERT: FBI's Wiretap Bill is Back!
by Brock N. Meeks 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Geez, Stanton, if you're going to rip off my story, you might want to give me some credit... or isn't EFF's self-proclaimed "Online Activist and Sysop" into proper journalistic practices of attributing where he gets his information. Just to clear things up, Stanton's message is a poorly rewritten copy of an article I wrote for _Communications Daily_ that ran on Dec. 9. The comments by FBI agent Barry Smith and Ken Raymond were made to me during one-on-one interviews, not open press conferences. There's no way you could have these quotes or this information Stanton unless you first read my story. Next time try giving credit where it's due... Or steal your information from someone not on the Net. Brock Meeks Reporter Communications Daily

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Re: Improved DH system.
by wcs＠anchor.ho.att.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Unfortunately, you can't really do a brainless black box phone with security that's much better than Diffie-Hellman (The "send half the key at a time" variant is somewhat better, but still can be tampered with.) The problem is that to do better security, you need some way to authenticate the Diffie-Hellman exchange. One way is to have a display on the phone which shows the data received, and read it to the other person (which is secure, but not brainless). Another way is to use digital signatures such as RSA on the Diffie-Hellman key parts, which requires some mechanism for users to create keys and distribute them securely, also non-brainless. One way to do this would be to use a central key-distribution server, perhaps based on phone serial number or telephone number or whatever, but that requires a lot of complexity, extra phone calls, etc.; this compromises a certain amount of security, though if it's implemented well enough to be non-spoofable, the major risks are the insecurity that comes from registration and the ability of people who compromise the keyserver (i.e. the government or keyserver-operator) to send incorrect public keys to wiretap victims allowing man-in-the-middle attacks. Another way that's not quite brainless would be to have public keys generated in the phone for signatures, and allow users who want to to exchange keys; you could build some relative of an automatic web of trust if you put enough memory in the phones, but then you'd have to provide memory management etc. which is distinctly not in the brainless category. Bill

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