December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

Re: using RSA-the-cryptosystem to secure RSA-the-company's patent?
by merriman＠metronet.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

In article Jef Poskanzer <jef(a)ee.lbl.gov> writes: >Subject: using RSA-the-cryptosystem to secure RSA-the-company's patent? >Date: Sun, 10 Jul 94 20:07:58 PDT >From: Jef Poskanzer <jef(a)ee.lbl.gov> >Apropos the recent thread on tamper-proof programs... >Can anyone think of a way that RSA-the-company could include some sort >of RSA-cryptosystem-secured check in a release of PGP so that it would >only interoperate with other versions that have the same check? I don't >see how it could be done, but it's sure an intriguing idea. >--- Why in the world would we want to give them any kind of solution to something like that - particularly on an 'open line' like this? :-) Dave Merriman

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Why to Care about Others' Security
by fnerd＠smds.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Tim May says- > Personally, my main interests is in ensuring the Feds don't tell me I > can't have as much security as I want to buy. I don't share the > concern quoted above that we have to find ways to give other people > security. I can think of a couple reasons to want other people to be more secure. 1) The more people protect their privacy, the less profit there is in privacy invasion, so that there will be fewer people doing it and the techniques and infrastructure of spying might develop more slowly. 2) The more people protect their privacy, the less privacy afficionados will stand out from the crowd. 3) The more people buy privacy, the more developed the market for privacy techniques and services, and the more private ways of doing things will be available and easy to use. -fnerd - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - spam is in the eye of the beholder (splat) -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.3a aKxB8nktcBAeQHabQP/d7yhWgpGZBIoIqII8cY9nG55HYHgvt3niQCVAgUBLMs3K ui6XaCZmKH68fOWYYySKAzPkXyfYKnOlzsIjp2tPEot1Q5A3/n54PBKrUDN9tHVz 3Ch466q9EKUuDulTU6OLsilzmRvQJn0EJhzd4pht6hSnC1R3seYNhUYhoJViCcCG sRjLQs4iVVM= =9wqs -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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NIST and Micali settle Clipper patent dispute
by Jim Gillogly 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

NIST has agreed to license Micali's key escrow patents. I posted their press release in talk.politics.crypto and alt.privacy.clipper. The settlement is evidently open-ended; there's an article in Cyberwire Dispatch (whatever that is -- a copy was forwarded to me) that discusses the ramifications in some detail. Jim Gillogly Mersday, 19 Afterlithe S.R. 1994, 00:00

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Idle question...
by Ian Farquhar 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

I was compiling a list of crypto algorithms the other night, trying to produce a library of description documents for the algorithms, and an interesting but idle question hit me: what ever happened to RC1, RC3, MD1, MD3, A1, A2, A4, A6, and A7? Just wondering if anyone knows... Ian.

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RE: Why to Care about Others' Security
by Blanc Weber 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Advocating allowance for personal methods of achieving security establishes acceptance of the idea intellectually, and there can be many philosophical conflicts on that point with the Feds (and others). Because although you may have the tools, if the Feds have their way, no one would be allowed to use them (except surreptitiously). If there is available a good product, which works well, which can be used for the purpose of obtaining personal security (apart from what a government can offer) then individuals will want to use it when they see/feel the need for it. They will seek it because it's there. Making useful products which work will contribute to the end of finding ways to "give" other people security; they can't get it if there is not a way or a means to implement it. Blanc

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Modems that variate speed
by Aron Freed 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

I want a pose something for everyone as a new technology. I have no idea if it has been dreamed up before or if it's possible to do... Here goes: Most people communicate by modems if they're accessing the internet from home unless they're rich or just have the right connections (no pun intended). Anyway, could one create a new line of modems that could effectively and efficiently variate modem speeds to disuade people from trying to pick up any modem transmissions by say a local telephone company inorder to keep them from synchronzing data speeds. I know modems sometimes lose some speed, but for the most part they transmit at stable rates.. Am I completely paranoid about this or am I just going off the wall??? I was just reading this article about Telco Snooping that my friend forwarded to me off the NirvanNet... I'll put it up here if no one has seen it... Aaron -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- -=- YABBS - telnet phred.pc.cc.cmu.edu 8888 -=- -=- -=- =+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=

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RE: Why to Care about Others' Security
by Mike Markley 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

FutureNerd writes ---------- | From: FutureNerd Steve Witham <fnerd(a)smds.com> | To: <cypherpunks(a)toad.com> | Subject: Why to Care about Others' Security | Date: Monday, July 11, 1994 5:10PM | | Tim May says- | | > Personally, my main interests is in ensuring the Feds don't tell me I | > can't have as much security as I want to buy. I don't share the | > concern quoted above that we have to find ways to give other people | > security. | | I can think of a couple reasons to want other people to be more secure. | | 1) The more people protect their privacy, the less profit there is in | privacy invasion, so that there will be fewer people doing it and | the techniques and infrastructure of spying might develop more | slowly. It seems that the more people protect their privacy the greater the profit will be in finding ways to invade that privacy. When all kinds of information is available in more or less public places there is little, if any, reason to pay people to get this information. On the other hand if your information is closely guarded then it costs a lot more to get that information. | | 2) The more people protect their privacy, the less privacy afficionados | will stand out from the crowd. | | 3) The more people buy privacy, the more developed the market for | privacy techniques and services, and the more private ways of doing | things will be available and easy to use. | Definitely agree with you on these two points. ===================================================== Mike Markley <mmarkley(a)microsoft.com> I'm not a Microsoft spokesperson. All opinions expressed here are mine. =====================================================

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****Customs Goes For Encryption -- And It's Not Clipper 07/11/94 (fwd)
by Stanton McCandlish 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

[Copyright 1994 by Newsbytes. Reposted WITH permission from the ClariNet Electronic Newspaper newsgroups clari.nb.govt, clari.nb.top. For more info on ClariNet, write to info(a)clarinet.com or phone 1-800-USE-NETS. May 18, 1994] Posted-Date: Mon, 11 Jul 1994 16:44:31 -0400 Path: netnews.upenn.edu!crabapple.srv.cs.cmu.edu!bb3.andrew.cmu.edu!lll-winken.llnl.gov!looking!newsbytes From: newsbytes(a)clarinet.com (NB-WAS) Newsgroups: clari.nb.govt,clari.nb.top Subject: ****Customs Goes For Encryption -- And It's Not Clipper 07/11/94 Keywords: Bureau-WAS, NEWS Date: 11 Jul 94 19:19:57 GMT Approved: cn(a)clarinet.com Xref: netnews.upenn.edu clari.nb.govt:1073 clari.nb.top:1974 WASHINGTON, D.C., U.S.A., 1994 JUL 11 (NB) -- The US Customs Service has picked Information Resource Engineering (IRE) of Baltimore, Md., to supply encryption technology to protect Drug Enforcement Agency information traveling on telephone and computer networks in the Pacific Rim. But Customs won't be using the Clipper encryption technology the Clinton Administration and the National Security Agency is pushing. "Clipper simply is not available," Anthony Caputo, chief executive officer of IRE told Newsbytes. "Clipper has been approved for government agencies, but there just isn't much equipment out there yet." So the US Customs will be using IRE's technology, which uses its proprietary Atlas encryption algorithm and meets the National Institute of Standards and Technology's Digital Encryption Standard or DES for short. "DES products are the only thing you can buy today," said Caputo. "We expect to see Clipper become fairly widely used and we will have Clipper versions of our systems available when that happens." IRE was founded in 1983 by former crytologists at the National Security Agency who wanted to develop technology to make encryption easy and inexpensive. The company has focused on the banking industry, providing security for corporate wire transfers. Caputo says that Citibank, J.P. Morgan & Co., Chase Manhattan, Bankers Trust and Banc One are using IRE systems, as are AT&T and the US Treasury Department. "The government is far ahead of private industry on electronic commerce," Caputo said. "Banks are just getting around to it. One way people will use the information superhighway is for electronic commerce, and we are the best positioned company in the world for this development." (Kennedy Maize/19940711/Contact: Anthony Caputo 410-931-7500)

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Re: tamper-proof p-code
by collins＠newton.apple.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Ray, Ray->In your essay, you overlook the use of pseudo-code interpreters > and cryptographic code mangling. No I don't. In fact, I specifically mention the latter. Ray->It is not possible to make software > unconditionally tamper proof, but it is possible to make it hard [...] Ray->If crackers had to alter just 10% of an > application to get it to work unprotected, I think that would be a > sufficient deterrent to most of them. I agree! I even said this in the final paragraph: Scott->The attack might not be cheap! But people will do it if the >reward exceeds the cost. Some of the things you mention would make a program very expensive to `crack'. However, as we both said: just expensive, not impossible. It certainly might be expensive enough to stop the particular class of attacks you have in mind. Your notes about remote trusted systems (e.g., Telescript) are accurate. The difference they introduce into the scenario is that execution is no longer under control of the attacker, and in fact the attacker can have a piece of software that `runs', but may only run after being unlocked on the trusted system, with the private key of the trusted system. I specifically mentioned and excluded this class of problems from my argument. However, you also say: Ray->Here, the problem is that the code is never "decrypted" in >the first place. Ray->Imagine the task of having to create a plaintext which will generate > a certain MD5 hash. No. The code is decrypted. It does get to the CPU. The CPU does execute instructions belonging to the `actual functionality' of the software. Comparing this to finding a text with a given hash is not accurate. (Maybe it is accurate if the attacker tries to get between the interpreter and the byte-codes; but not if the attacker just stands behind the CPU.) Either the CPU gets to see the final instructions or it doesn't. If it never sees them it is because the program doesn't or won't run in the first place. I exempted this situation from my argument. The attacker must have at least one working copy of the software. If the CPU _does_ see the instructions, then the secret is out, no matter how difficult it is to capture it ... it's still only difficult, not impossible. My argment is about communication, not about programming. Like the old joke: A: "Would you sleep with me for a million dollars?" B: "...uh, sure. Yeah, I'll sleep with you for a million bucks." A: "Would you sleep with me for twenty dollars?" B: "What do you think I am?!" A: "I know what you are! Now we're just haggling for a price." The quality and effectiveness of `protection code' (under the conditions I gave) can never amount to anything more than `haggling for a price'. I think you already understand and agree with this. The price might actually be as much as $1,000,000.00; which could be sufficient deterrent. To that end, the tamper-proofing will have succeeded. Your p-code (maybe `protected-code') proposal could be a viable product. Don't stop. After all, none of DES, IDEA, and RSA, are unconditionally secure, and they serve us well. Cheers, Scott Collins | "Invention, my dear friends, is 93% perspiration, | 6% electricity, 4% evaporation, and 2% butter- collins(a)acm.org | scotch ripple." -- Willy Wonka ..................|.................................................. Apple Computer, Inc. 5 Infinite Loop, MS 305-2D Cupertino, CA 95014 408.862.0540 fax:974.6094 R254(IL5-2N) collins(a)newton.apple.com ..................................................................... 408.257.1746 1024:669687 catalyst(a)netcom.com

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Validating IDEA
by John Thomas 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Does anyone know if there is a validation suite for the IDEA cipher? I want to be able to verify an implementation on the TMS320 digital-signal processor. The NIST has such a test suite for the DES, but I haven't heard anything about IDEA. John A. Thomas b858jt(a)utarlvm1.uta.edu 75236.3536(a)compuserve.com PGP public key fingerprint: 80 21 D7 35 65 74 C8 9D 23 DB 29 78 8E 31 05 4D

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