December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

text of info file on Cantwell bill
by Mike Godwin 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Forwarded message:

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WRONG: Attack on Magic Money and Chaum cash
by Hal 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

I was thinking over the attack I described on Magic Money and Chaum cash, and I now think it will not actually work, especially in the case of the Chaum cash. Specifically, it will take as much work to forge cash as to factor the modulus. My idea was to collect signed forms of small primes, then try to find a "smooth" number of the proper form, one which can be factored over this set of primes. By multiplying together the proper primes, one could generate a signed number which would look like cash. What I was remembering as I was driving tonight is that this is very similar to a family of algorithms for factoring large numbers. The one I know best is the continued fraction algorithm, but I think the number field sieve uses broadly similar principles. In the cfrac algorithm, the goal is to find two squares which are equal mod n. This lets you factor n immediatly by taking its gcd with the sum or difference of the two numbers. This is done by taking a bunch of squares and trying to factor them over a set of small primes. If you generate enough factorizations, approximately as many as there are primes, you can multiply selected ones together and generate two equal squares. The point is, finding as many smooth numbers as there are small primes will let you factor n. But that is the same criterion I had to meet in my proposed attack in order to make a profit. So it seems that in general my attack will not work; it will be as hard as factoring the modulus. There may still be a problem with Magic Money because its cash values leave the low order 128 bits free, but I'm not so sure about it. I was wrong, I think, to suggest that a simple sieve could quickly identify smooth numbers. Although a sieve will easily tell you that a number has _no_ factors less than some cutoff, it will not easily tell you that a number has _only_ factors in that range. It may be that the only way to identify smooth numbers is by trial division, which would be the same situation as for Chaum cash. So, unless there is in fact some trick that can be used to quickly find smooth numbers given that the low order 128 bits are free, I don't think there is any need to worry about my attack on Magic Money. And it looks like Chaum's online cash is completely invulnerable to this approach. Sorry to have raised a red flag unnecessarily. Hal

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change of address
by nate＠VIS.ColoState.EDU 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- To all my friends (and enemies) out there: I have purchased myself a netcom account, so that I don't have to worry about what the university thinks about my political ideas and about my outspoken nature on privacy, etc. My new address is nates(a)netcom.com (rather a clever login, don't you think?) All mail not pertaining to my office work at teh visualization lab should be sent there. My other addresses (nate(a)vis.colostate.edu, nate(a)lamar.colostate.edu, nate(a)yuma.acns.colostate.edu, sammons(a)cs.colostate.edu and ns111310(a)longs.lance.colostate.edu) should still be used for mail relating ot the Lab and my work there. Thanks, and have fun! - -nate - -- +-----------------------------------------------------------------------+ | Nate Sammons <nates(a)netcom.com> | +-----------------------------------------------------------------------+ BTW, sorry for the boring sig, it'll get better!

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changing info on a key?
by nates＠netcom.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Since I moved all my personal mail to netcom, I was wondering how I could change my info in my key to reflect my new identity? thanks, -nate

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Re: Clipper Side-step
by qwerty-remailer＠netcom.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Beep say, "How about this as a way to stump Clipper? Generate a dialog between you and a friend of no relevant consequence. Load this sound byte into your system as a AIFC file (sound bite, or byte) Encrypt data/message/information/recipe/whatever into the low-bits of the sound bite." See my post "X's Last R". The problem is that PGP tattle tales on itself, it having no raw encrypted message output format (~indistinguishable from random data), and thus reverse steganography is trivial and can be automated. It could be less trivial if you use a steganography (hiding a message in another message) along with a secret scrambling routine for PGP messages, but then you are in the silly situation of "encrypting" an already encrypted PGP message! -=Xenon=-

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I support HR 3627
by hughes＠ah.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Hey. You. Have you sent your letter of support to Rep. Cantwell yet? It's now even easier than ever! Just reply to this very message with your reasons for supporting the bill (it's to allow export of crypto software, dummy), and your mail will be automagically sent to the correct EFF address with the right subject line. (And don't include this message, OK?) For the full text of the bill, see any of the following: ftp://ftp.eff.org/pub/Policy/Legislation/cantwell.bill http://www.eff.org/ftp/EFF/Policy/Legislation/cantwell.bill gopher://gopher.eff.org/00/EFF/legislation/cantwell.bill Eric

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Re: A serious question of ethics
by nobody＠pmantis.berkeley.edu 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

On Mon, 7 Feb 1994, Tom Allard wrote: > -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- > > nobody(a)pmantis.berkeley.edu wrote: > > > Ok, I'm in a bit of a quandry. While surfing the net last week, I > > happened across an address addached to a machine that belongs the the > > federal reserve. No big deal. I telnetted there on a lark, and entered > > 'guest' for the account. It dropped me into a shell. It didn't ask for > > a password. Intrigued, I did a little looking around. Nothing special, > > a CDRom and about 80 accounts. But(!!), /etc/passwd was there and > > available and not using shadows. No, I didn't snatch a copy. > > - ------- Forwarded Message > > Date: Mon, 07 Feb 94 11:10:05 -0500 > From: m1rcd00 > To: m1tca00 > Subject: Cypherpunk... > > Guest login was denied this morning... > > Well, since someone seems to be home now at Minneapolis, if you wanted > to send something back to that list, I suppose it would be OK. If you > happened to mention in such a missive that the technical contact here > at the Board has no responsibility for or involvement with the Bank > machine or network involved, did not fuck up, and was not amused, the > technical contact would probably not mind. > > - - --Bob > > > - ------- End of Forwarded Message Does that mean that I no longer should report the open system (I don't dare telnet there to find out if it is the same one)? Also, and I'm purely curious, what actually became of my anonymous report, and do I need to be worried about SS agents in dark sunglasses coming to my home and dragging me away? (Truely worried and scared)

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Cantwell letter campaign - update
by Stanton McCandlish 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

In less that 24 hours, EFF has already received over *five hundred* letters in support of the Cantwell bill (which aims to take public crypto off the munitions list and relax export restrictions). Keep it up folks! If you'd like to add your voice to these letters, all of which will be delivered in hardcopy to Rep. Cantwell, send a "Subject: I support HR3627" message to cantwell(a)eff.org -- Stanton McCandlish * mech(a)eff.org * Electronic Frontier Found. OnlineActivist F O R M O R E I N F O, E - M A I L T O: I N F O @ E F F . O R G O P E N P L A T F O R M O N L I N E R I G H T S V I R T U A L C U L T U R E C R Y P T O

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Clipper Side-step
by beep＠how.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

How about this as a way to stump Clipper? Generate a dialog between you and a friend of no relevant consequence. Load this sound byte into your system as a AIFC file (sound bite, or byte) Encrypt data/message/information/recipe/whatever into the low-bits of the sound bite. Play message over Clipper-infested line to waiting system. [ Yes, you could just encrypt a message and send it, but in the above situation, fleas-on-the-line would not even know data was being transfered as they listened to Aunt Agnes talk about broccoli casserole. ] Just bouncing ideas...

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unsubscribe
by olo＠netcom.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Gee, I'd really like to get off the subscription list. Have sent 2 or 3 requests as instructed to cypherpunks-request, but my mailbox still fills to overcapacity.

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