December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

RE: Code review is requested
by anonymous＠extropia.wimsey.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

>> 3) There may be other RNG's in existence which are accessed in a >> different way, or have different IO drivers. If you have knowledge of >> such RNG's please post the info to the cypherpunks mailing list. > >In Cryptosystems Journal, published by Tony S Patti, Volume 2 Number 2 >is a description, circuit board layouts, parts list, etc. for Ranger >hardware RNG. It produced 6,750 bits per second into the parallel port of a >standard PC. The author says that you can build a Ranger for less than $40 >worth of parts. > >Cryptosystyems Journal >P.O. Box 188 >Newtown PA 18940-0188 > >I have not seen any reviews of this device, but it has been arround for a >while, and may have been covered before I got interested in the field. > Could not the operating systems' IO driver be used for the interface to the parallel port be used as the interface to the RNG? The hack has support for a device which can be accessed thru an IO driver that returns one random byte for each byte read. (RANDDRIVER). Would this be adequate for such a device, or would special code be required? Is the IO driver for the parallel port that comes with MS-DOS OK for this purpose? Has anyone out there built such a device? Yours in anonymity XXX

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New anon mailer idea?
by gtoal＠an-teallach.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

*** This message is not from the person in the headers above. *** Reply to this message as normal, but be sure to include the *** following three lines in the mail when you do: *** Remailer-Reply-To: fdwgfjghfsdvkglhfslkjghfdkjhgkjfhgkfhg *** ljdfhkjhgfkjhfgkvjhfklvgkfjhvbgjkfhgjkhfgfkjhgjkfhgjf *** jkfdhkjfhgk;hfdgklhfdlgfldjkglkjfhg;hfgkjhfhgfghfkdhg *** Your reply mail will be anonymised. :From: Matthew J Ghio <mg5n+(a)andrew.cmu.edu> :> How about generating a secure hash and using that as an index :> into a table? If there's an address already there, use that - :> otherwise, generate one. :> :> Generate the hash from the incoming address, of course. That way, :> you don't need to keep track of anon-id-to-real-id mappings, yet :> guarantee that each user has one and only one anon address. Of :> course, folks coming in from different hosts will have different :> anon ID's. :> :> Or have I missed some blindingly obvious technical point thaqt :> would make this impossible? :I don't see how this would prevent me from having to keep track of :anon-id-to-real-id mappings. It could work for sending mail, but I'd :still have to have some way of keeping track of the real ids for the :replies. Excuse me butting in to a discussion I haven't really been following (I don't have a lot of interest in remailers); I'm wondering if everyone is missing some terribly obvious point here. Without knowing too much about how the current anon/remail stuff works, tell me what you think of this way of doing things (apologies if it's what someone already does or has been discussed recently). I want to mail fred@somesite anonymously. I know fred@somesite's public key. I encrypt my message for fred, then send it to a remailer address with instructions to pass it on to fred. For a little eavesdropping security, I include an anonymous pgp key of mine in the mail to fred so that he can reply to me without the remailer operators reading his mail. You can choose your favourite syntax for how I ask the remailer to send this mail to fred - I don't care what it is. The remailer then encrypts *my reply mail address* with the remailers own key, and inserts this as a header in the mail which only it can read. It attaches a little message to this header saying 'when you reply to this message, be sure to include this opaque header I'm giving you here...' The recipient gets the mail, decodes it, reads it, and replies. (Maybe encrypted with an anonymous public key I included in the mail, maybe in cleartext - doesn't matter for the scheme) When he replies, he included the small encrypted block that the remailer gave him at the top of his message, as he was asked to do by the remailer. The reply goes to the anonymous remailer. The anonymous remailer decrypts the header block that it searches the mail for, and extracts my email address from it again. The remailer then passes the mail back to me - this time including an encrypted block with the fred@somesite's address in it. (Or some other address if fred replied from another account; or perhaps I mailed a mail to news gateway - well, my encrypted address will still work even if a dozen people reply to the news article by mailing via the remailer, and now I *don't* know who the encrypted sender is) In this way, once a conversation has been established, replies can keep going backwards and forwards without much fancy protocol at all - all you ever do is remember not to delete the encrypted block that the remailer keeps inserting at the top of your mail. And with this scheme, the remailer does not need to remember the addresses of either the initial poster or the recipient, and hence can't divulge them if the machine is hacked. So it gives you a combination of the penet-style mailer with return address, and the cypherpunk-style mailer of throw-away anonymity -- as long as you trust the remailer operator not to cheat and log stuff anyway. Of course, you then extend the scheme by the same mechanisms that the cpunk remailers already use - chaining from one remailer to the next... if done properly, the return addresses should chain too, transparently, and the whole scheme will remain easy to use. Clearly this scheme is succeptible to mass logging of comms links followed by a bust to grab the remailer's secret key, but that's about par for the current remailers anyway. This scheme is no worse, and possibly quite a bit better. So, have I just stated the obvious or is this a new idea to anyone? Regards G PS Note this scheme doesn't need Matthew's hack for "+" in usernames, which not everyone wanting to run a remailer in say a private account on netcom etc would be able to install... PPS I thought for fun I'd put a header of the kind I'm talking about on this mail. Anyone replying should note it really *will* go to me, and you *won't* be anonymized ;-)

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Re: your mail
by Graham Toal 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

From: Chris Knight <cknight(a)crl.com> So much for an Ivy-League education... Please send mailing list requests to owner-cypherpunks(a)toad.com Actually I think that should be majordomo(a)toad.com, and if it isn't, then cypherpunks-request(a)toad.com owner-* addresses are intended for mail bounces and stuff like that. G

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Re: A confused quotation ?
by gtoal＠an-teallach.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

: Is this not strange ? :Date: Sun, 10 Apr 1994 20:26:23 -0400 :From: E-D-U-P-A-G-E <info(a)ivory.educom.edu> : ... : :OPEN SECRET : Instead of using mathematical codes to scramble and unscramble :messages, Georgia Tech physicists are devising a way of sending a message :with electronic noise generated by a flickering laser. By connecting :identical lasers over fiber optics, the same random pattern of noise is :generated at both the sending and receiving end, and the receiving simply :subtracts the noise to uncover the message. (Atlanta Journal-Constitution :4/7/94 E2) It is as you say a confused quotation. My guess is it's that synchronised chaos crap again, badly reported. G

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RE: Shot 'Round the World
by Blanc Weber 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

From: Greg Broiles "We don't insist on all-or-nothing accuracy in other forms of warfare, why expect it here?" Because you want to succeed? "Psychological warfare is about manipulation and FUD (fear, uncertainty, doubt)." All's fair in love and war. What makes it psychological is the faculty & type of effect aimed for, and FUD isn't the only thing possible, or desireable. "... we don't need to demonstrate good behavior to convince it/them that we deserve or can be trusted......" ". . . to bolster their flagging confidence, they need a good kick in the teeth." "There is no rational argument that can force the non-trusting to trust." ". . . the point may be to create a state of irrationality, not a particular rational conclusion." . What you would be aiming for here, apparently, is neither their psychology nor their intellect. But actually if you are not intending to communicate at all, then all of things which I mentioned are irrelevant. I would leave you to your own devices. "Perhaps this discourse about "images" isn't useful, and it's time to talk about capabilities." . What image do you get of the engagement of your capabilities under normal circumstances vs under a totalitarian regime? What sort of picture is created in your mind by the statements about human nature, "endowed ...with inalienable rights", among which are included "Life, liberty, Pursuit of Happiness", and what do you suppose George thought about that? Some questions I would ask in regard to this warfare business: What sort of a win would you be aiming for, which served the purposes of rational discussion poorly? For how long would you be expecting to live in the company of those whom you drove to irrationality? And how would you go about the business of returning everything back to a viable, liveable state, supposing you achieved victory? Blanc

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Tessera
by XXCLARK＠indst.indstate.edu 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Check the April 4, 1994 issue of Electronic Design magazine, New Products section, p. 148. Product is the Tessera card, by National Semiconductor. A "token".

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Re: number theory
by rjc＠gnu.ai.mit.edu 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Phil Karn [density of Carmichael numbers?] I have a vague recollection of the number of Carmichael numbers less than N being N^(2/7). Thus, the number of 1000-bit Carmichael numbers is (2^1001)^(2/7) - (2^1000)^(2/7) = 2^286 - 2^(2000/7) = 2^285*(2-2^(5/7)) =~ 2.2 x 10^86 I make no claims that this information is correct. -Ray -- Ray Cromwell | Engineering is the implementation of science; -- -- rjc(a)gnu.ai.mit.edu | politics is the implementation of faith. --

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Wandering Seniors
by fnerd＠smds.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

I saw something scary on our "public access" cable channel, just a one-screen announcement, and please forgive my memory: WANDERING SENIORS PROGRAM Help find Alzheimers patients who have gotten lost. New program gives people identification for life. [I didn't catch the program's phone number.] Seems like it just keeps oozing down those slippery slopes, don't it? -fnerd quote me - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - `We want information.' `You won't get it!' `By hook or by crook, we will.' -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.3a aKxB8nktcBAeQHabQP/d7yhWgpGZBIoIqII8cY9nG55HYHgvt3niQCVAgUBLMs3K ui6XaCZmKH68fOWYYySKAzPkXyfYKnOlzsIjp2tPEot1Q5A3/n54PBKrUDN9tHVz 3Ch466q9EKUuDulTU6OLsilzmRvQJn0EJhzd4pht6hSnC1R3seYNhUYhoJViCcCG sRjLQs4iVVM= =9wqs -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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Classic Math gone wrong...Re: (n!+1)^(1/2)
by pcw＠access.digex.net 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

> >For any number n, if the square root of (n!)+1 is an integer, it is also > >prime. (This is interesting, but rather useless in practice) > >For any number a, 1<a<=n, n! mod a == 0; therefore, n!+1 mod a == 1. n!+1 >is prime. Prime numbers don't have integral square roots. You're getting things missed up with the classic proof that there is no largest prime number. This doesn't hold in general. Try a=5. 5!=5*4*3*2*1=120. 120+1=121. 121=11*11. The classic proof goes: Is there a largest prime number? If there is then collect all primes, p1...pn and multiply them together p=p1*p2*...*pn. p+1 is not divisible by p1...pn. Therefore p+1 is a prime. Therefore there is no largest prime number. > > >Scott Collins | "That's not fair!" -- Sarah > | "You say that so often. I wonder what your basis > 408.862.0540 | for comparison is." -- Goblin King >................|.................................................... >BUSINESS. fax:974.6094 R254(IL5-2N) collins(a)newton.apple.com >Apple Computer, Inc. 5 Infinite Loop, MS 305-2D Cupertino, CA 95014 >..................................................................... >PERSONAL. 408.257.1746 1024:669687 catalyst(a)netcom.com

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Re: (n!+1)^(1/2)
by collins＠newton.apple.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

>For any number n, if the square root of (n!)+1 is an integer, it is also >prime. (This is interesting, but rather useless in practice) For any number a, 1<a<=n, n! mod a == 0; therefore, n!+1 mod a == 1. n!+1 is prime. Prime numbers don't have integral square roots. Scott Collins | "That's not fair!" -- Sarah | "You say that so often. I wonder what your basis 408.862.0540 | for comparison is." -- Goblin King ................|.................................................... BUSINESS. fax:974.6094 R254(IL5-2N) collins(a)newton.apple.com Apple Computer, Inc. 5 Infinite Loop, MS 305-2D Cupertino, CA 95014 ..................................................................... PERSONAL. 408.257.1746 1024:669687 catalyst(a)netcom.com

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