December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

Re: ditz in office
by wcs＠anchor.ho.att.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

(I voted Libertarian, of course; back in '84 I had wasted my vote on (yuk) Mondale because he was the closest to a credible threat to Reagan, and it only encouraged them to get another useless Democrat the next time. If there hadn't been a Lib running, I would have probably voted for Perot just for the chaos factor, though I didn't particularly trust him.) I had, however, hoped that Clinton, as a tax&spend Democrat, would at least bring in some of the Liberal virtues along with the Liberal vices, which would be better than a George Bush who had the vices of the conservatives with none of the virtues. Unfortunately, I've been disappointed, in spite of how low my expectations already were :-) Somebody who favors national ID cards, concentration camps for non-violent political offendors, allowing the Federal cops to burn down the homes of uncooperative religious groups if they won't surrender, restrictions on free speech to keep the cops happy, wiretaps for everyone, and stuff like that is *clearly* no liberal. Some columnist, probably George Will, described him as a "passionate hypocrite", which seems to fit reasonably well. I'd hoped for someone genuinely passionate about something, and I don't see that in him. (Nobody could describe George Bush that way, of course, since the man's clearly not passionate about anything....) Bill Stewart, ranting about politics again....

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Applied Crypto
by fhalper＠pilot.njin.net 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Does anyone know if Project Guttenberg(or anyone else) has electronic books such as applied cryptography? Thanks, Reuben Halper

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Re: Dorothy Denning
by wcs＠anchor.ho.att.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

I objected to Anthony Ortenzi's article on Dorothy Denning. Much of the attacks seemed appropriate for a politician like Clinton (:-)), but aren't appropriate for an academic who's doing politics about technical areas, where there so much more *useful* ways to flame her ideas, rather than her character. > Number 1, if someone is an encryption expert [...], why would they endorse > anyone but the recipient being able to decode the message? You're confusing technical tactics with political/social goals. She's an expert in what you can do with encryption, she just has different values about who should be able to benefit from it and how. > Number 2. [Newsday...] > The argument was just very, well, flimsy is the word I guess. I thought so too. Part of it was from writing for a non-technical audience, but some of her arguments have been appallingly weak. El Rukn was a particularly bad example :-), and as you say, it would be nice if she'd just come out and say the government should spy on all of us to keep us from doing Bad Things; it's an argument people can relate to and discuss (though it'll get a lot of negative reaction, which is not her objective.) > Anyone know: > A) Is she an expert in cryptography? Yes - her book from the early 1980s was *the* standard text on crypto for quite a few years, and she's published some other reasonable papers. Dr. Denning is department head of CS or EE or something at Georgetown. > C) Was she dropped on her head a lot as a baby? Probably got scared by a Commie Terrorist Drug Dealer, and comforted by some friendly federal police officer... or else was educated in government-run schools. :-) > Also, I've gotten a message through to Ross Perot about our fight > against Clipper, and how to reach me, so if I get a response, I'll let Clipper sounds like just the kind of thing Perot would enjoy. Bill

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Re: The answer.
by wcs＠anchor.ho.att.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

> I think I have found the way to end all our problems: ESP. No good - the KGB has top psychics working for them, and the CIA has been working for years to keep up. I read it in the newspaper in the supermarket, so it must be true! Bill

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Re: Insecurity of public key crypto #1 (reply to Mandl)
by Eric Johnson 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

: >Only "sensitive" information is worth encrypting and if you want to : >stay out of trouble you don't go giving sensitive information to : >someone you don't know. : : If part of your communications are encrypted and part are not you have : sent the message about what information is sensitive and what is not. : This difference in encoding is a fir-class message in it's own right. : : Therefore _all_ communications should be encrypted at all time. It is : no argument against the principle that this is difficult to do at the : current time. : : Eric : Would it not make sense, therefore, to publish a public cypherpunks mailing list key, which is returned with subscription requests? All incoming message cleartext to the mailing list server would then be encrypted in the server's key; not for security, but precisely for the reason you state above. That _would_ create quite a volume of encrypted communications to each receipient of the list. --Eric

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Re: I have FOIA'd the Clipper Key Escrow databases
by wcs＠anchor.ho.att.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Eric Hughes writes: > Should John's FOIA request for the clipper key database work, it > creates a wonderful hole in the entire key custody system. > It would require a legislative act to plug the hole. Not necessarily - they may be able to claim there's a criminal investigation in progress (one of the standard FOIA loopholes) or they may lose the first round if there isn't one in progress so they'd have to go start investigating somebody (for corruption in government, or spies in the CIA, if nothing else is available :-) Since they don't know who the spy is, or who has which phone, everybody's key must obviously be relevant evidence... But it's clearly a fun opportunity. > Now, how many legislators do you know that are going to make a public > record by voting in favor of Big Brother? If the President supports it, why not a bunch of his fellow politicians? Bill

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Large Block DES Newsletter
by ritter＠cactus.org 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Large Block DES Newsletter Vol. I, No. 1 Feb. 28, 1994 Terry Ritter, Ed. Current Standings for the Large-Block DES Proposals: I. NxM DES: A B v v k1 -> DES1 k2 -> DES2 v v C D Exchange Right 4 Bytes E F v v k3 -> DES3 k4 -> DES4 v v G H Falls to meet-in-the-middle like double-DES. Falls to a practical attack by Biham, now called "fix-in-the-middle." II. NxM DES Found Weak Announcement of above. III. Isolated Double-DES 2x construct found weak in original article. The 1x construct: A v k1 -> DES1 v B v km -> XOR v C v k2 -> DES2 v D was found weak by Chris Dodd <dodd(a)csl.sri.com> who pointed out that two different blocks of known-plaintext (A,D) and (A',D') will allow matching (B XOR B') and (C xor X'). (This is similar to Biham's "fix-in-the-middle.") Good going Chris! Also found by Stefan Lucks <lucks(a)namu01.gwdg.de>. IV. Ladder-DES A B | k1 | v v | XOR <- DES1-----| | | | k2 | | v v |---- DES2 -> XOR | | | k3 | v v | XOR <- DES3 ----| | | | k4 | | v v |---- DES4 -> XOR | | v v C D Joseph C. Konczal <jkonczal(a)nist.gov> points out that the construct is indeed vulnerable to meet-in-the-middle. I agree, but note that this seems to imply a 112-bit search. Since we don't need more than 112 or 120 bits of strength, I don't see it as a problem. (Indeed, if we could get more strength, we might want to trade it for speed anyway.) 112 bits (or so) is the design goal, which should be enough for a couple of decades. In a normal cipher design, I would expect each key bit to contribute toward strength, but these are hardly normal cipher designs. Especially when we try to expand block size, extra keys may simply provide another small block with the same strength as a previous small block. Keys will be delivered electronically, so the relatively rare delivery of 2x or 4x or even 8x the expected key material should not pose a serious problem. However, Biham reports: "ladder DES is not more secure than 2**88 steps and 2**64 chosen plaintexts." Now, 2^88 cipherings is 2^32 times as strong as the 2^56 currently in DES (and larger than Skipjack), but hardly the 2^112 intended. For the current design the current options are: 1) live with the 2^88 strength (so far!), 2) design the rest of the system to prevent chosen plaintexts, or 3) prevent more than, say, 2^32 block cipherings under a single key. Actually, we need to know exactly what the problem is, and the limits of it, before we can propose a fix, or decide whether the ladder-DES scheme is unfixable. Summary Three substantially different constructs proposed; of these, two fall, and one is wounded. To review, the intent is to find some relatively-simple construct which builds on the assumed strength of DES to deliver wide blocks and something like 112 bits of strength, with less processing than triple-DES. (I see no need for super-strength, unless it is free.) We still do not know whether or not this is possible.

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Fax / Modem question
by fnerd＠smds.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

(Please respond to this question by private email.) Is it possible to set up most fax/data modems to be ready to receive calls from either fax machines or data modems? If so, in this mode, does it make the beep that sets a calling fax machine going, or does the caller have to push a button to initiate the connection from his or her side? Ditto for data. Doesn't the answer side usually put out the first beep? -fnerd please reply to: fnerd(a)smds.com - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - blue mass, Pharm. a preparation of metallic mercury with other ingredients, used for making blue pills. -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.3a aKxB8nktcBAeQHabQP/d7yhWgpGZBIoIqII8cY9nG55HYHgvt3niQCVAgUBLMs3K ui6XaCZmKH68fOWYYySKAzPkXyfYKnOlzsIjp2tPEot1Q5A3/n54PBKrUDN9tHVz 3Ch466q9EKUuDulTU6OLsilzmRvQJn0EJhzd4pht6hSnC1R3seYNhUYhoJViCcCG sRjLQs4iVVM= =9wqs -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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Re: Dorothy Denning
by fischer＠charybdis.prl.ufl.edu 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

> I recall a profile of the Dr's Denning in one of the > popular cracker/phreax exposes, (maybe in Markov/Hafner?) > > Andy I believe you are referring to Bruce Sterling's "The Hacker Crackdown", interesting book because Sterling sympathetically presents many sides: paranoid telco's, testosterone-poisoned adolescent hackers, hand-wringing cops (Dr. Denning is presented in this milieu) and (my personal favorite) the "information wants to be free" libertarians. Randy Fischer

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PGP on the HP 100
by smb＠research.att.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Has anyone tried putting ViaCrypt PGP on the HP-100? Is anyone but me crazy enough to contemplate it? How abysmal is the performance? --Steve Bellovin

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