December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

Larry is at it again, and is flaming old Eric now.
by Anonymous User 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

[BIG flamo at Eric deleted... it ain't worth printing] To keep Larry from forging in my name, I am going to fight fire with fire, and am going to anon post this. Dude, what did Eric Hughes do to you to get you so rabid? As soon as you were found out, you started drooling. Ask your local vet school for your first series of rabies shots... you NEED them. Eric Hughes spends his time and money for support of this list. Do you? Probably not. If he wants signatures, ITS HIS DAMN LIST. Enough of flaming at you, buddy. You are too wasted to hear anything but your typing and drool dropping to the floor as you try to spam this list again. About two months ago, Tim May bitched about the coming of a ton of dillweeds on the Net. Guess I agree on this point with him. LD, there is something called Electro Convulsive Therapy. It does a good job of helping cases that would otherwise be too far gone for medicine. Take a good look at getting treatment. It seems you need it. -- A lurker who does not like the maintainer of this list getting treated like crap for trying something new.

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Re: NYT Potpurri and Econo-cash
by frissell＠panix.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

>"And flirting with heresy, Mr. Spindler says he sees no need >for the so-called information superhighway. And 500 channels? >Sixty are plenty. 'This is not going to be an all-electronic Pretty stupid considering that the non-interactive 150 channel RCA/Hughes DBS system is one of the hottest sellers of this holiday season. DCF

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Re: Brands excluded from digicash beta
by Wolfgang Roeckelein 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Hi, paul(a)poboy.b17c.ingr.com (Paul Robichaux) wrote: >The more I deal with Digicash, the better First Virtual looks. My technical >preference is for using Brands or Chaum cash; at present, though, there aren't >any shipping Brands servers, and the Digicash folks don't seem to be able to >get all their socks in one bag. Does anybody know how the chaum patents (I think they claimed somewhere that they had applied for some) affect Brands system? Wolfgang --- Dipl.-Wirtsch.-Inf. Voice: +49 261 6509 173 Wolfgang Roeckelein Fax: +49 261 6509 179 WHU Koblenz E-Mail: roeckelein(a)wi.whu-koblenz.de Burgplatz 2 (NeXTmail ok) D-56179 Vallendar Germany

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Re: using us crypto sw outside usa
by adam.philipp＠ties.org 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- >I was wondering what is the legal status for using rsaref outside usa. >Is it legal or not? Depends on whether RSA has a patent in that country... I know of no countries besides the U.S.A. that have a patent on RSA. Using exact code may also violate copyright...that is a tougher matter to prove...but copyright treaties allow some level of international protection...use with care. >Also, what is the legal status of RC4 code posted to the net? It was a trade secret. It is no longer...Copyright issues still are still a problem, but ask an attorney in your country if you are going to use it in a commercial program. Adam Philipp - -- PGP Key available on the keyservers. Encrypted E-mail welcome. SUB ROSA: Confidential, secret, not for publication. -Black's Law Dictionary GJ/CS d H S:+ g? p? au+ a- w+ v++ c++ UL+ UU+ US+ P+ 3 E N++ k- W++ M-- V po- Y++ t++ 5+ jx R G' tv+ b+++ D++ B--- E+++ u** h-- f++ r+ n+ y++-- -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.2 iQBFAwUBLt74TCoZzwIn1bdtAQGrwgF/WOBO0J7eZDmrYd+TrirztXE+0DPG7ODN Gj8VMHuFpWEh92FV1/wkcOlBTQ7bfxtH =DdWH -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- [This message has been signed by an auto-signing service. A valid signature means only that it has been received at the address belonging to the signature and forwarded.]

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The thread that would not die. (Mandating signatures)
by John.Schofield＠sprawl.expressnet.org 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- It is silly to talk of someone "owning" the list. The list is a community. The only possible owners are the people in the community. If we all left, Eric would still have control over the list--but the list would be worthless. It is just as silly, though, to talk about whether or not Eric has the "right" to enforce his ideas. He *CAN* make changes to the list--anything else is irrelevant. This whole discussion seems to be based on the idea that signing everything is a Good Thing. Yet I haven't seen a convincing argument for that. If I read a forged message, I haven't been hurt. If the person being impersonated doesn't exist, nobody has been harmed--and if he does, ONLY that person has been harmed. So, let's put the onus here where it belongs. If people feel their reputations are important enough that they need to sign their messages, more power to them. If they don't feel it is important, who are you to tell them the value of THEIR reputations? When signatures are easy enough to do, the scale will balance on the side of security--people will value their reputations more than the trouble it takes to sign messages. Until then, people will not sign. For me, signing is easy--even though I am ridiculously unconnected right now. So I do it, using an off-line mail-reader shell that I wrote and distributed myself. The list members who are convinced that digital signatures are valuable could do much more to advance their cause by eliminating some of the barriers to using digital signatures than by mandating them. Any type of a stick will not work very well in this situation. The people most interested in privacy and encryption are those who are by nature most individualistic and stubborn. Forcing them to do something will make most of them go the other way, or go away. I know my mind works that way. -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.7 Comment: Call 818-345-8640 voice for info on Keep Out magazine. iQCVAwUBLt6x1Wj9fvT+ukJdAQGKcAP/TqIF6b8UEo6IWV93JdktGoYSxQ5w6wKw MR3tXicSCRI1S/tSOSqcZm45M9CExKz7W4z417Ip8iP/wzjEmAb+s0ObgRoxoHPL Xe+VFSYq6o7f5XT67eBr+lK6t+pknmkc626Z86LsjqKIZ5jBLZrpKzmOP+La2Ypv /uE1/ZckzbA= =G1kK -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- **EZ-PGP v1.07 --- Blue Wave/RA v2.12 -- |Expressnet: John Schofield 11:310/12 |Internet: John.Schofield(a)sprawl.expressnet.org | | Standard disclaimer: The views of this user are strictly his own.

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Re: Scalability of Ecash System / Article on Internet Cash available.
by rah＠shipwright.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Filched from buyinfo, where they've been talking a lot about e$ lately... >From: brands(a)cwi.nl >Original-From: Stefan.Brands(a)cwi.nl >Subject: Re: Scalability of Ecash System / Article on Internet Cash available. >To: www-buyinfo(a)allegra.att.com >Date: Thu, 1 Dec 1994 16:12:50 +0100 (MET) >Cc: hfinney(a)shell.portal.com >X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL23] >Mime-Version: 1.0 >X-UIDL: 786299434.063 > >I noticed that the discussion is currently about the e-cash system of >DigiCash. Some good issues have been raised in the discussion, and I >would like to comment in detail about my own opinion in these matters. >As it so happens, I recently wrote an article that addresses in detail >each of the raised concerns, and for this reason it seemed easiest to >simply make this article available by ftp. So I did. The paper is >entitled "Electronic Cash on the Internet," and will appear in the >Proceedings of the Internet Society 1995 Symposium on Network and >Distributed System Security, San Diego, California, Februari 16-17, >1995. To retrieve it: log in anonymously at ftp.cwi.nl, and go to the >directory pub/brands. There you will find the paper, in both dvi and >PostScript format (and Unix-compressed formats). The paper contains >several drawings; if you want to have the complete paper, including >the pictures, then you *must* retrieve the PostScript version. I made >a particular effort to explain the concepts behind the system (many of >which are due to Chaum); see Section 3, it is about five pages with no >math. > > Short abstract of the paper: It is generally realized that the Internet > will not be able to offer full-fledged electronic marketplace > capabilities without a suitable electronic mechanism for processing > payments. The electronic payment mechanism that is presented offers a > variety of features that are believed to be particularly appealing in > this respect. > > To participate, an Internet user must interface to his computer a > tamper-resistant device with an ordinary 8-bit microprocessor, > typically a PCMCIA card, and install some software. Internet service > providers do not need special hardware. Payments can be made > completely *off-line*, and are untraceable and unlinkable. > Multi-party security is guaranteed without parties having to trust > other parties. Transaction processing speeds are such that even > modestly equipped computers will be able to meet the performance > levels required by demanding Internet payment applications. One > particularly interesting such application is click-and-pay ability > when travelling World-Wide-Web links. > >The presented approach may seem to be less attractive than many other >proposals, because it requires tamper-resistant hardware for the >users. In the longer run, though, when the use of e.g. smart cards for >electronic payments has become commonplace, the advantages in my >opinion will significantly outweigh this objection. What will remain >are the advantages: click-and-pay ability to make instantaneous >off-line payments, the ability to cost-effectively serve tens of >millions of participants, the ability to guarantee one's own privacy, >multi-party security, support for different currencies, and >portability of tamper-resistant devices to other payment platforms. > > >Some brief comments on the current discussion: > >--- Michael E. Peirce (mepeirce(a)alf2.tcd.ie) wrote: > >I've been looking at the Ecash payment system and was wondering about > >the problem of scalability if it were to become popular. > >(For anyone who doesn't already know, Ecash is an electronic cash > >solution, details of which can be found at http://www.digicash.com ) > >It seems to me that, while their bank (bank.digicash.com) will be able > >to handle the 10,000 odd users in the trial, how would it cope with the > >possibly thousands of transactions that might take place all over the > >Internet, every minute, if the system were to become popular? > >Every transaction requires that the merchant shop, connect to the bank > >to validate the customers coins, right? > >With a popular Ecash system, the bank would be swamped, or what if even > >the link to the bank went down for a few days? > > Hal (hfinney(a)shell.portal.com) wrote: > >There has to be a single common database which all the banks share in > >order to detect double spending. Otherwise I could spend the same coin > >multiple times, going to a different bank each time. Granted, shared > >databases can work, but if a machine which holds part of the database goes > >down it will take special engineering to keep things consistent and > >available. > >There are two different senses in which we can speak of multiple banks. > >One is a setup where all the banks share the same type of cash, where > >they are logically a single bank but distributed to try to get increases > >in reliability. This has the database consistency and access problems I > >described above, which modern-day bank systems don't have to the same > >extent. > > I fully agree with these comments. Btw, it is correct that the e-cash > system of DigiCash is an *on-line* *coin* system. It is interesting to > take a look at their faq, at > http://www.digicash.com/ecashinfo/ecash-faq.html, item > "Does ecash really have to be online?". There is sais: "Actually, no. [...] > We'll add some more functionality in that area as soon as the on-line > system is completely operational." Furthermore, in item "If I copy my > money, can I spend it twice," it sais: "In an off-line > situation (future) ..." From these comments of DigiCash, it seems that > they very well realize the problems associated with on-line verification > when the system is used on a large scale, and that they hope to implement > an off-line system in the future. However, a problem with this might be > the following, as noted by Jim McCoy (mccoy(a)io.com) > >[first part] > >A digital money system can do that, but the current version of Chaum's > >system does not. The disadvantage of a system that does this > >self-identification of double-spenders is that it front-loads the cost of > >the identification protocol into everyone's withdrawls and purchases; they > >must use a cut-and-choose system during withdrawl to make sure that the > >coins presented for blinding are in the proper format and must perform an > >additional protocol negotiation during purchases. > >[...] The overhead involved in the necessary machinations to make sure > >that a malicious cheater did not send in bogus coins that mis-identified > >him increases the transaction cost of such a system significantly. It also > >increases the transaction cost of purchases by requiring the merchant and > >purchaser to perform an additional transaction to reveal halves of the > >identity bits after each purchase. > >[second part] > >It is an interesting version of the > >digital coin protocols, but one that is unlikely to be used in the > >immediate future due to the increased costs it places upon the system. It > >is likely that such a system will first appear in smartcard digital cash > >systems where dedicated hardware can cut down on the increased costs. > > The first part is correct, the overhead caused by the cut-and-choose > withdrawal protocols seems unacceptable. Another problem, which > certainly should not be forgotten, is that is can hardly be said to be > sufficient if only traceability of double-spenders after the fact is > offered. It is clearly desirable that there is prior restraint of > double-spending, and ideally the traceability ater the fact should still > be present (as a second line of defense). Now, doing off-line cash with > prior restraint of double-spending, *and* privacy of payments, seems to > result in extremely inefficient systems when one uses the cut-and-choose > technique of Chaum/Fiat/Naor (just try it, and you'll see what I mean...). > Probably these are the main reasons why DigiCash has not implemented an > off-line system. (Yet a third problem is that it is really cumbersome > to use a coin system if each coin is several kilo-bytes...) > > This is not to say that efficient privacy-protecting off-line cash systems > with prior restraint of double-spending do not exist. The system that I > present in my paper mentioned above meets all these criteria. The > reason for this is that I do *not* use a cut-and-choose withdrawal protocol. > As those of you who have tried to design off-line systems will > know, the design in fact consists of two protocols, one for paying and one > for withdrawal; designing the withdrawal protocol is by far the > hardest task (which is still an understatement...). The > technique that I use for my withdrawal protocols is a new one, called > restrictive blinding, and the only one known thus far that can provide > efficient withdrawal protocols. Curiously enough, most of the withdrawal > protocols that result from this technique are *not* ordinary blind > signature protocols as defined in > literature (because only the signature is blinded---the message is not!). > The withdrawal protocol in my Internet paper is a blind signature protocol, > but for instance the withdrawal protocol that I used in my technical > report (reference 5 in the paper) is not. > >-- Hal (hfinney(a)shell.portal.com) wrote: > >I wish I could. I have applied several times for the beta test at > >digicash, starting almost three months ago. Finally I got a reply at the > >beginning of November saying that I would be hearing from them in a few > >days. Since then, nothing. I wonder if people are actually being > >allowed to join the beta trial as are implied by all of these web pages? > >I would like to see a more honest explanation of the chances of being > >able to experience ecash than the simple "click here to try it out" you see > >everywhere. > > I had exactly the same experience; I sent in the registration several > months ago. I'm still waiting for my account, which was announced to me at > the beginning of this month. > > >Stefan Brands, >------------------------------------------------------ >CWI, Kruislaan 413, 1098 SJ Amsterdam, The Netherlands >Tel: +31 20 5924103, e-mail: brands(a)cwi.nl > > > > > > ----------------- Robert Hettinga (rah(a)shipwright.com) "There is no difference between someone Shipwright Development Corporation who eats too little and sees Heaven and 44 Farquhar Street someone who drinks too much and sees Boston, MA 02331 USA snakes." -- Bertrand Russell (617) 323-7923

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Re: Brands excluded from digicash beta
by Paul Dinnissen 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Hi, We're sorry to hear any complaints about the handling of any requests for information regarding ecash. As you can understand, we are certaintly not planning to create unsatisied ecash users at the very start of the ecash endeavour. So at least we are happy to hear from you so we can act appropriately. DigiCash has the ambitious goal to make the ecash client software available on virtually every OS platform and/or system. Alas, our programmers crew is not that extensive that we're able to release everything at once, we has to resort to a phased release approach. For some insight in the release history of the sundry ecash versions, we refer to our WEB server pages. With this background we answer your questions and remarks, at the hand of some of quote orginating form your mail to DigiCash. > Hal said: > > I just figured that I didn't have enough clout for them to bother to > > respond to me, but today on the www-buyinfo list, Stefan Brands, who > > many think has the best ecash technology available today, posted that he > > had had the same experience! Brands himself has still not been given > > an opportunity to join the beta test. He did not sound very happy about > > this. As announced, the ecash-trial starts in phases. Currently we are completing most versions of ecash. We receive quite a lot of good feedback from the first releases. Therefore we decided to change the user-interface to get better software that is easier to use, before confronting the user of the next releases with problems already solved! We decided to first to select tester from our own timezone to facilitate easy voice communication in case extensive support issues. Contrary to our expectations we encountered relatively few problems, so we can soon release also the beta-test to tester in the remaining time zones. So as you can see our release policy is not that staight forward and involves a lot of considerations like usability and acceptance. This is one of the main reasons why Mr. S. Brands HAS received his beta-test version friday the 11th of November, together with all his collegues at the CWI. They all run Silicon Graphics International OS and before that date this version wasn't finished. > I was in the same boat-- I sent in several requests, all of which were > ignored. After Digicash issued a call for prototype shops, I signed > up. WHAM. I immediately started getting mail asking when I'd have my > shop ready-- sometimes two or three messages a day. > > Once I got everything up and running, I didn't hear further from them. Sometimes we can react very fast, but alas this is only the case for standard procedures which we did automate. More specific questions and requests *have* to be handled by humans. We think the people who are willing to invest quite some effort in setting up a shop for the beta test, are very important participants in the beta test trail. Therefore it seems *very* unlike to us that we didn't respond to *any* mail or request from you. Not trusting our own memory ( we do receive more than 100 (yes, hundred) mails on ecash *each* day, even Sundays) we dove right in to it and found a trail of DigiCash answers to your mail with the subject: 'Concerns about ecash'. > Since then, an accident on my WWW server has rendered the e-shop > inoperable. I've asked Digicash, in the form of Paul Diniessen, for > help reconstructing the bank records. No go. Sorry we *did* sent you a respons within an hour from your request by my colleague Branko. He is responsible for our bank in the trial. His respons was: -The dbm library used by Linux and FreeBSD are different, so the ecash -databases are also incompatible. If you have a password for getting an -initial balance, you can also use this password for reopening your -account (and keeping your old balance). For the server(a)fairgate.com -account you can use the password ******** (pw made invisible PD) for this. - -Branko > > Of course, it may well be a matter of incompetence rather than insult, > > but the net result is the same. The more I see of digicash's lack of > > consideration towards their potential customers and important figures like > > Brands the more I question whether they have the potential to succeed. > > The more I deal with Digicash, the better First Virtual looks. My > technical preference is for using Brands or Chaum cash; at present, > though, there aren't any shipping Brands servers, and the Digicash > folks don't seem to be able to get all their socks in one bag. We feel somewhat troubled by these comments. We strongly feel that the alleged 'lack of consideration' as unjustified. First we would like to split up your comment in to two different issues, first regarding our potential customers and secondly the issue of Mr. S. Brands. As we mentioned before we deem *all* our users, in the past, now, and in the future, as important whether it concerns "shops" or mere "customers" they all contribute to a successful new payment medium. We like you to consider this phase in the existence of ecash as a genuin beta trail. In beta test not only software is being trailed but the supporting services too! However, it should be noted that we did respond to your mail and requests. On the issue on Mr. S. Brands. As we explained before no way we even considered to exclude Mr. Brands for the beta test. As of the technical appreciation of the Chaum system as opposed to the Brands system and the alleged scalability issues , we propose you contact Mr. S. Brands and Mr. D. Chaum for details. We will give a call today to check if received this mail. We hope to resolve the problems mentioned above and to continue our co-operation. Kindest regards, Paul Dinnissen DigiCash bv.

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Re: Cypherpunks@hks.net service
by dmandl＠bear.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

> From: cactus(a)bb.hks.net > > The cypherpunks(a)hks.net service is now available. > > It will sign any message sent to cypherpunks(a)hks.net with its (currently > 384 bit) key and forward the signed message to cypherpunks(a)toad.com. No offense, but what's the point? What's next, automated key-signing services? Is this just intended to help people who can't sign easily to get around Eric's proposed requirement? If so, it seems like almost an embarrassment--someone setting up a meaningless message signer to spoof the cypherpunk server, which it does easily. Doesn't sound too good to me. --Dave.

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Re: Brands excluded from digicash beta
by pays＠faugeres.inria.fr 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

I just want, in a short message, let you know that there exist some satisfied ecash testers (the system itself and the support when we set-up our digishop and our plain customers cyberwallets). The only thing I could eventually complain about is that I even received a second (unsollicited) account Id and password to retrieve ecash software because of a bug in the requests management :-) -- PAP

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Re: Paper available on new cipher
by bshantz＠spry.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Hooray!!! Kudos to Matt for actually posting something outside of the tiresome "Eric Hughes is a lame-o" thread!!! (Which, by the way, I agree with Tim that it is a sign of health on the list. I would also like to say that I'm not going to post my opinion.) I intend to read and comment accordingly on the MacGuffin document. It's refreshing to see someone coding crypto. -- Brad <---- Begin Included Message ----> Bruce Schneier and I have been designing a block cipher, called "MacGuffin", based on a new variant of the standard Feistel (S-P) network structure. We are presenting a paper describing the cipher, entitled "The MacGuffin Block Cipher Algorithm", at the Leuven crypto algorithms workshop later this month. Here's the abstract: <stuff deleted> A forthcoming paper will discuss the characteristics GUFN structure in more detail. Comments and analysis greatly appreciated. -matt <---- End Included Message ----> >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>INTERNETWORKING THE DESKTOP<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<< Brad Shantz bshantz(a)spry.com Senior Software Engineer Main #: (206)-447-0300 SPRY Inc. Direct #: (206)-442-8251 316 Occidental Ave FAX #: (206)-442-9008 2nd Floor Seattle, WA 98104 WWW URL: http://WWW.SPRY.COM ------------------------------------------------------------- >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>><<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<

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