December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

Voluntary Governments?
by tcmay＠localhost.netcom.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

[If you don't want to read about this stuff, don't. Just don't claim it's not a valid list topic, as some are wont to do...often after first making their own comments :-}. The issues of taxation, government, anarchy, and cyberspatial institutions are important topics for a list like "Cypherpunks." If the *beliefs* are not to be talked about, but only code is to be written, then _what_ code? Code that helps ensure tax compliance? Code that helps government control "cyberspace criminals"? We've seen recent discussions about religion, the need for values, etc. Many of us are opposed to the specific views raised, but since there is no "official party line," the way we work on these issues is through discussion. Besides, any arguments people actually type in themselves are worth at least deciding whether to read them or not....I'll change my opinion if completely off-topic posts on topics like abortion, the purported need for national health care, and the war in Bosnia begin to dominate the discussion. Until then...] Where to begin? Jason Solinsky and Mike Duvos argue for a kind of voluntary, donation-supported, non-coercive, service-providing government, funded voluntarily by citizens who presumably think they are getting their money's worth. Well, this is first of all a *very nonstandard* interpretation of "government"...more on this later (and how the idea of "privately-produced law" figures in). I'm skeptical that governments would give up their current use of coercion, or threat of coercion (the fallback position that gives their various edicts more teeth than, for example, my edicts or your edicts). I'm even more skeptical that the current bloated state could be funded by the small fraction of the population that--in my opinion--would make donations. (Mike has argued elsewhere that his concept is of a utopian state much smaller than we have today....an even less likely possibility unless that bloated state is starved to death by the methods many of us advocate...but this is another discussion.) >solman(a)MIT.EDU writes: > >[other excellent stuff elided] > > > Imagine if the government stopped trying to force people to > > join it. Or imagine if they tied decision making power to > > how much you pay in taxes. The more you pay, the more say > > you get. After accepting the idea that government is a Without the legal monopoly on coercion, this so-called "government" would be just another service provider, like Safeway or Goodyear or K-Mart. Economies of scale work against a large, slow-moving bureaucracy, so the so-called goverment would devolve quickly into multiple small pieces. This is the "anarcho-capitalism" many of us argue for, so I won't argue against it here. I just wouldn't call it "the government" anymore. As soon as "the government" gives up its use of force, allows competitors in all areas, and is run by donations or fees, it is no longer "the government." [I promised to mention "private produced law," or PPL. This is the notion of multiple, competing legal systems. A fictional treatment of this can be found in Neal Stephenson's novel "Snow Crash," and a more scholarly treatment can be found in David Friedman's "The Machinery of Freedom" and in Bruce Benson's "The Enterprise of Law." I don't have time now to go into this in more detail.] The specific point about "imagine if they tied decision making power to how much you pay in taxes" was tried a while back: only tax-payers could vote. I'm all in favor of this, but I doubt many of my fellow citizens are. (And to some extent we have this, through bribes and influence-buying. Campaign contributions, etc.) Would anyone choose to pay more in taxes for an increased voting share? Hardly. Do the math on how influential any one vote is in an election. For specific cases, maybe. Again, that's how influence-peddling arises. Not a very healthy development, even for a cynic like me. (I view governments as protection rackets. The last thing we need is a bidding war between various sides in a dispute.) > > product by which you get the warm fuzzies of giving to > > society, government could make itself into a more desireable > > product by undertaking changes like these. The possibilities > > are endless in this reguard. Its very easy for me to imagine > > a government in cyberspace which is substantially more > > successful at collecting taxes than the IRS. For a very few services, this could be so, with the caveat mentioned above, that "the government" would cease to exist as a monolithic organization. If for some reason it was required to remain a large, monolithic organization, then I'm quite sure it would collect much less revenue than it now does. The people paying the taxes would seek alternative providers for almost everything, leaving only a few areas "better" served by "the government." (And maybe not even these, as things like roads, defense, etc. couldn't be held as a monopoly by the Feds unless coercion was used...in Jason's purely voluntary system, the government would lose even these valuable properties. But I digress.) Mike D. enthusiastically endorses Jason's ideas: >The notion of government as a product which must compete on an >equal footing with others in society definitely wins "Nifty Idea >of the Week" in my book. > >Reminds me of something TS Eliott once said. "If only we had a >system so perfect it did not require that people be good." >Perhaps "government in cyberspace" will be the first working >example of this paradigm. I have a problem with the whole notion of calling a voluntary, self-selected, market-driven system a "government" of any kind. Yes, it is something people may voluntarily join, but so are country clubs, book reading groups, and mailing lists. And the decision to shop at Safeway one day is a temporary joining of such an instantiated group. But these things ain't governments! This is not just semantic quibbling. If we say that such groups are voluntary, but can vote on "rules" or "laws" which all must follow, then the voluntary nature means people can freely leave, can choose not to abide by the rules, etc. Hence the rules are toothless. There *are* forms of organization in which bad behavior has implications, such as banishment, shunning, etc. But this is true of the country club, or this mailing list...acting like a bozo has implications. Some might call these governments of a sort, but I don't. (Iceland in the Midle Ages is often cited as such a thing, Cf. Friedman.) But it is simply poor strategy as well as being poor semantics to label the voluntary social and economic interactions as being some kind of "government." Call them what they are: market interactions, agoric systems, or voluntary associations. Normal life is like this...families, girlfriends and boyfriends, freedom to associate as one pleases, free markets, anarchy in book and music selection, etc. And these systems work pretty well--or at least a lot better than the corruptions and absurdities of government-run programs. They don't require that people be "good," only that people understand the consequences of their actions, the value of a good reputation, and the punishment that will be meted out to the few who nevertheless transgress against a few basic rules. (I mention the need for violence because without some punishment, or removal by some affordable means, the "wolves" proliferate. To make this less abstract: no laws except for a very few laws about murder, theft, rape, etc. Enforce those laws ruthlessly, and the wolf population is kept in check. a fedback mechanism suppresses wolf formation. Ignore these laws, delay justice, and proliferate thousands of economic and social laws--such as the "dietary laws" also known as drug laws--and the wolf population will proliferate. A feedback mechanism that encourages more wolves to form Look at inner cities. Look at South-Central L.A.) (No offense meant to wolves or other predators here.) And these systems don't have to wait for implementation at some future time in cyberspace....they already exist all around us. Just don't call them governments, because they ain't. "Why doth governments never prosper? For if governments doth prosper,none dare call it government." --Tim May .......................................................................... Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, tcmay(a)netcom.com | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero 408-688-5409 | knowledge, reputations, information markets, W.A.S.T.E.: Aptos, CA | black markets, collapse of governments. Higher Power: 2^859433 | Public Key: PGP and MailSafe available. "National borders are just speed bumps on the information superhighway."

4 3

Re: Voluntary Governments?
by dance＠cicero.spc.uchicago.edu 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

>> > > Imagine if the government stopped trying to force people to >> > > join it. Or imagine if they tied decision making power to >> > > how much you pay in taxes. The more you pay, the more say >> > > you get. After accepting the idea that government is a >> >> Without the legal monopoly on coercion, this so-called "government" would >> be just another service provider, like Safeway or Goodyear or K-Mart. [JWS writes:] >Well isn't that how its supposed to be? [....] No. The object of government is to limit the freedom of the people it governs. The word is derived from "govern" which means "3. To control the actions or behavior of 4. To keep under control; *restrain*" [American Heritage Dict.] It would be great if government could be a service provider, or simply feel responsible for those it governs--but then it would not be a government any longer. It would also be nice if I won the lotto. ;) _/_/_/ _/_/_/ _/_/_/ _/ _/ All men recognize the right of _/ _/ _/ _/ _/_/ _/ revolution; that is, the right _/_/_/ _/ _/ _/_/_/ _/ _/ _/ to refuse allegiance to, and to _/ _/ _/ _/ _/_/_/_/ _/ resist, the government, when its _/_/_/ _/_/_/ _/_/_/ _/ _/ _/_/_/ tyranny or its inefficiency are _/ great and unendurable. --Thoreau, Civil Disobedience

2 1

RemailerNet
by Jim Dixon 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

In message <199408042200.SAA07928(a)cs.oberlin.edu> Jonathan Rochkind writes: > > * Rochkind's stability-from-being-paid and web-of-trust notions > > I'm not sure I like being credited with the "stability from being paid" > notion. I think there _is_ stability from being paid, but I think > if the infrastructure depends on it, it's not a good infrastructure. If you look at the history of the Internet, there have been some free Internet services, but the ones that have thrived have been paid. (If the government or your school subsidizes your Internet access, it may appear free to you, but the staff all get their paychecks every month. > The system should be able to create a stable top-level infrastructure > on top of an inherently instable environment, with remailers > going up and down, and popping into existence, and dying. It should > route around dead remailers, like the internet itself. If it is built like the Internet, it will do just that. > > The use of alt.x groups to exchange gateway information does not seem > > to add anything to this system; in fact it would seem to make it easier > > to spoof the system. > > It _would_ make it easier to spoof the system, but I think it does add > several very important things: > 1) New remailers can easily announce themselves to the remailernet. > [Whether they are to be trusted or not should depend on pgp-signed keys > and web of trust, but the newsgroup provides an way to announce yourself > to the system, and have that announcment by automatically dealt with > by all participating parties] There are two things being blurred together here which should be kept distinct. The first is gateway-to-gateway announcements. The second is advertising of the RemailerNet gateways to the wider world. Generally I would expect gateways to introduce themselves to one another privately and negotiate an understanding. Part of this will normally take place off the Net. This is an infrequent event, and so can be time-consuming and expensive. The basic web of trust is that between gateways. Once gateways had entered into a relationship, there would be frequent encrypted private traffic between them which would maintain the trust. Gateways can also announce their presence to the wider world, and publish their public keys. This could be done in alt.RemailerNet or it could be done in alt.internet.services, or any of several other places, or all of these. Any information published in alt.RemailerNet would be suspect, because it could be a complete fabrication or it could be a modified version of the correct posting. Gateways could be started up by anyone and some postings to alt.RemailerNet would be spurious. The "gateway" could be a sink, just tossing traffic sent to it, or it could copy all messages to a TLA before forwarding them. The user-gateway web of trust would therefore be far more problematical. I think that this would function as a market, and unreliable and untrustworthy gateways would be driven out over time. At the same time, there would be a constant bubbling up of new remailer networks, because the software would be freely available and the protocols well defined. The longer lasting gateways that proved trustworthy would in time join established networks. > 2) Users (not people operating remailers, people using them) could make > use of the newsgroup, to compile a database of remailers, and make long > remailer chains. Users could have automated software doing this. Compiling a list of remailers, sure. But if you let the user control how messages are chained, you are inviting real traffic analysis. The user should only be able to specify his destination and the level of security desired. > [snip] > These are really two facets of the one problem, of allowing a user > or remailer who has just arrived on the seen to quickly get a list > of remailers, and make use of them, all automatically. That's sort of the > super-set problem which encompasses the other two, and whose solution solves > the other two. > > I don't think it's a coincidence that the newsgroup system solves these > two problems at the expense of security (the newsgroup makes it easier > to spoof). If the newsgroup is used as described above, RemailerNet itself is not threatened; it is only the users that can be spoofed. This level of risk is unavoidable. But gateways would never use the newsgroup for inter-gateway communications, because (a) it would be redundant (they can talk directly once they know each other and (b) you would have to assume that anything posted to a newsgroup had been compromised. > The fact is, that even remailers exchanging mail _can_ be spoofed, if not > quite as easily as the newsgroup idea. It seems to be a premise of cryptographic > protocols and schemes, that you've got to assume a worst case and get a system > working where even under the worst case, everything works. Well ... if you follow this line of reasoning too far, you are just saying 'nothing can be trusted, so don't bother being careful'. If I were running a remailer and someone posted his address in a public newsgroup and said "hey, here I am, and I run a really good remailer" I wouldn't trust him just because he signed it. I would get in touch with him, ask around about him, maybe run some low-security traffic through his remailer for a while. Then after some time I would raise my estimate of his trustworthyness. If he dropped traffic, if someone reported that something that they had sent privately had been compromised, I would drop him. > I agree that it seems a good idea for the SMTP RFCs to be used to exchnage > info, ... etc You already use the SMTP RFCs to exchange information -- this message comes to you courtesy of those RFCs. Email can have very complex headers and they can be in pretty much any order. This makes it difficult to write email software. I am simply suggesting that we allow only the minimal few headers, with possibly a few added to support RemailerNet protocols. ASSIGNMENT OF ANONYMOUS IDs These types of traffic are possible, where 'known' means your ordinary email address: known --> known known --> anon anon --> known anon --> anon There should be two anonymous IDs, one for sending, one for receiving. I assume that anonymous IDs are never assigned automatically. If you want an anonymous ID pair, you ask the gateway for one, possibly enclosing your public key encrypted with the gateway's public key. The gateway returns your new IDs, encrypted if you you gave it a key. The 'send' anonymous ID is used for sending messages from someone else's account. The gateway converts it into a 'receive' ID before forwarding your message. The 'receive' ID appears on your email after it goes through the gateway and can also be passed to other parties who want to send you remailed messages. Additional security can be added by using a digital signature. The gateway could be instructed ignore messages lacking such a signature or to take some specified action. ELECTRONIC CASH Ecash is easily added to such a system. 'Emints' would generate a message containing a bank identifier and an encrypted value. This would be the ecash. It could be given to anyone or anything. Messages containing ecash would be encrypted. The emint would credit the account of the first person to present it, and would bounce any copies presented subsequently. Giving change would be trivial. -- Jim Dixon

2 1

(none)
by Jeff Gostin 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Blanc Weber <blancw(a)microsoft.com> writes: > who cypherpunks Good question, although it isn't the greatest english... :-) A wise man said cypherpunks assume privacy is a good thing. They are devoted to cryptography. They love to practice playing with public key cryptography and anonymous mailers. They write code. They don't care if you like the software they write. So, that's "who cypherpunks". :-) --Jeff -- ====== ====== +----------------jgostin(a)eternal.pha.pa.us----------------+ == == | The new, improved, environmentally safe, bigger, better,| == == -= | faster, hypo-allergenic, AND politically correct .sig. | ==== ====== | Now with a new fresh lemon scent! | PGP Key Available +---------------------------------------------------------+

1 0

Re: RemailerNet
by Jonathan Rochkind 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Part of our disagreement/misunderstanding might be in differing conceptions of the form the remailer net should take. > There should be two anonymous IDs, one for sending, one for > receiving. You seem to be talking about a Julf-style anon system, where the system knows who you really are. If the system is corrupt, if Julf were an NSA agent, then the entire system is compromised and useless. I like the cypherpunks remailer concept better, where each link in the chain only knows the next link in the chain, and security is achieved by multiple links. If several of the links are actually NSA agents, your security is reduced, but not compromised completely. If you've got a chain of, say 10 links, even if 7 of them are evil NSA agents, you still can probably retain your anonymity. Return addresses are accomplished by encrypted "resend-to:" blocks. It seems much preferable to have a system where it isn't neccesary to trust any one net entity completely, as it is in a Julf-style anon-ID system. [Of course one could use a combination of both in communications too, but I wouldn't feel safe unless my anonimity was safe even if the Finish FBI raided Julf's site.] When looked at with this goal in mind, I think maybe the newsgroup as a method of passing remailer net information makes a bit more sense. I don't think the possibility of the newsgroup being spoofed is actually fatal to the system. Let's examine ways in which it could be attacked: 1) The Enemy could introduce completely made-up "i'm here" messages, pointing to non-existent remailers. This doesn't harm anything at all when combined with a "ping"ing of remailer sites, as I've suggested. (One idea would be just to periodically mail all your remailers with the resend-to: being yourself, to make sure they exist, and are forwarding mail at least some of the time). 2) The Enemy could announce his own Evil-remailers to the net. These remailers would in fact exist, but would do evil things designed to compromise the net. What could they do? They could publicize all messages they get. Again, as long as you have 3 or 4 non-evil remailers in your chain, this doesn't really compromise your anonymity. You can decrease the risk further by only using remailers whose announced keys were signed by a trusted source. The evil-remailer could also just drop all communications in the bit bucket. This doesn't compromise security, but does make the remailer net unusable. By periodically pinging the remailer sites as I've suggested above, this risk can be minimized. If you've pinged the site 25 times, and all 25 times the remailer has forwarded your ping back to you, then odds are that it isn't dropping any messages in the bitbucket. (remember, the evil-remailer can't tell the difference between your ping a a normal remailer message, if done correctly.) 3) The Enemy could intercept announcement messages from good remailers, and replace their public key with his own. He could then intercept all mail to this good remailer, and read it, and forward it on, or drop it in the bitbucket. Using web-of-trust for signed remailer keys should help minimize this risk. 4) Denial of service: The enemy could intercept the announcement messages, and keep them from getting to the newsgroup. This doesn't compromise the security of the net at all, but is annoying. I can't think of any way to avoid this risk, but I think it might be acceptable, because it doesn't actually compromise any security, and would be fairly dificult for the enemy to do for long without being detected. 5) The enemy could intercept announcement messages from good remailers, and replace both the public key and address with his own. This is really just a combination of several of the previous attacks, nothing new.

2 1

A Helpful Tip for Impatient Souls
by Tommy the Tourist 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Those wishing perhaps the ultimate in Cypherpunks ease-of-use and greatest peace of mind, may find it useful to simply delete everything that does NOT come from one of the following email addresses: tcmay(a)netcom.com frissell(a)panix.com sandfort(a)crl.com Additionally, you'll probably want to let through posts from Hal Finney, Eric Hughes, and Bruce Schneier, but I forgot their addresses off-hand and am much too lazy to look them up. :) If you're using the "ELM" mailer, you can do this by creating a file called filter-rules in your .elm directory, containing the following text (more or less): if (from contains "sandfort") then save "~/cypher" if (from contains "frissell") then save "~/cypher" if (from contains "tcmay") then save "~/cypher" if (to contains "cypherpunks") then delete Add additional addresses as needed, but be careful of excessive alliteration. ------------ To respond to the sender of this message, send mail to remailer(a)soda.berkeley.edu, starting your message with the following 8 lines: :: Response-Key: the-clipper-key ====Encrypted-Sender-Begin==== MI@```&]^&2?(E<U9BPG1]W7L;=*KH_R`E[:HLL5(1[#C?F1F@+XOR[*O4;Q* M5#7=J!((PXPB/`Z?E75=RY`'42E\')B98SJ<!]_D6):*2C`'_S7T,&Y7VY1R :GOR712QF!VS=527/-L\@>E6`)=?D_W1Y'5P` ====Encrypted-Sender-End====

2 1

latency
by merriman＠metronet.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Looks like we had a little latency of our own on the list the last couple of days. Anyone know what happened? Dave Merriman -----BEGIN PGP PUBLIC KEY BLOCK----- Version: 2.6 mQCNAi3uZ2MAAAEEALWQtxX77SZSaFls6cVbPp+fZS4MNyKK3ZFYQo0qWyj+0tMq YgRTPRJRaCQixo63RttknogfPp514qdVMZw5iPeOXmD+RxrmTTwlbGqA7QUiG1x5 LG2Zims5zk4U6/rt8hwLh0/8E4lIb9r5d31qc8L1A9Twk/cmN8VrTvyYOzAZAAUR tClEYXZpZCBLLiBNZXJyaW1hbiA8bWVycmltYW5AbWV0cm9uZXQuY29tPokAlQIF EC3uaE3Fa078mDswGQEBbI8D/0FiwDcbfeNyDVJ+7EIWHjIxVkIGu+ArYUEllR3G SBHVZ9Vh7n8bNXeNHMnG5cZ23TLMVvweyhxFS+cDi+I7omeDNr6x65z500LxfUvL K5bSuSiBVkTp2z+/iojY/662JwKHzEEunuJ4CO8Yhxy11CdeszEX7DpXzRxLL92r EmO2 =4ZfP -----END PGP PUBLIC KEY BLOCK----- Finger merriman(a)metronet.com for PGP2.6ui/RIPEM public keys/fingerprints.

1 0

Re: RemailerNet
by jdd＠aiki.demon.co.uk 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

In message <199408051528.LAA18523(a)cs.oberlin.edu> Jonathan Rochkind writes: > You seem to be talking about a Julf-style anon system, where the system > knows who you really are. If the system is corrupt, if Julf were an > NSA agent, then the entire system is compromised and useless. If you are using unmodified Internet hardware and TCP/IP as the underlying transport system, then your point of entry into a remailer network definitely knows which machine is originating a message and the point of exit definitely knows where it is going. If your transport system is the email system, the same holds true because email runs on top of TCP/IP. While fiddling with email headers may make you feel secure, it gives you no protection. It is a large project (say 30,000 lines of code, some of it at the kernel level) to build a remailer network which does not use SMTP and TCP/IP. >From the scale of efforts that you are talking about, I assume that you do not intend to do this. So the remailer gateways know the source and destination addresses, they know your electronic identity. This may or may not lead them to your physical identity. That can be concealed fairly easily, especially in large institutions with poor control over their network resources. But this has nothing to do with our discussion now. > I like the cypherpunks remailer concept better, where each link in the chain > only knows the next link in the chain, and security is achieved by > multiple links. If several of the links are actually NSA agents, your security > is reduced, but not compromised completely. If you've got a chain of, say > 10 links, even if 7 of them are evil NSA agents, you still can probably retain > your anonymity. Return addresses are accomplished by encrypted > "resend-to:" blocks. It seems much preferable to have a system where it > isn't neccesary to trust any one net entity completely, as it is in a > Julf-style anon-ID system. [Of course one could use a combination of both > in communications too, but I wouldn't feel safe unless my anonimity was > safe even if the Finish FBI raided Julf's site.] Promiscuity leads to infection. Each contact with a new RemailerNet gateway increases the probability of your being compromised. If you modify the proposed RemailerNet to allow reposting at gateways, you have all of the benefits of the system described above, without the risks. Reposted messages would be encrypted with the far gateway's public key. The near gateway would then have no idea of the ultimate destination of the message. In a well designed system, the far gateway would also not know the identity of the sender. > When looked at with this goal in mind, I think maybe the newsgroup as a method > of passing remailer net information makes a bit more sense. > > I don't think the possibility of the newsgroup being spoofed is actually > fatal to the system. Let's examine ways in which it could be attacked: > > 1) The Enemy could introduce completely made-up "i'm here" messages, pointing > to non-existent remailers. ... > 2) The Enemy could announce his own Evil-remailers to the net. These remailers > would in fact exist, but would do evil things designed to compromise the net... > 3) The Enemy could intercept announcement messages from good remailers, and > replace their public key with his own. ...He could then intercept all mail to this > good remailer, and read it, and forward it on, or drop it in the bitbucket. > 4) Denial of service: The enemy could intercept the announcement messages, and > keep them from getting to the newsgroup. ... > 5) The enemy could intercept announcement messages from good remailers, and > replace both the public key and address with his own. This is really just a > combination of several of the previous attacks, nothing new. In the early to mid 1950s the FBI set out to penetrate Communist Party USA cells. At some point, when the fear of the Red Menace began to recede, people began to talk. The communists said, "you could always tell who were the FBI agents. They were the ones who paid their dues." The FBI was actually providing most of the funds for CPUSA. If anyone cared enough, what they would do is (a) put up enough remailers so that they were, say, a steady 80% of those announcing in the alt.x group; (b) provide a good, reliable service nearly all of the time; and (c) drive the other 20% out of business with a steady disinformation campaign (rumors, complaints, etc) and other more aggressive tactics. The FBI types running (a) and (b) would be well funded and they would be the sort of steady, unimaginative people who run small businesses well. The CIA field agents masterminding (c) would be very well funded network freaks, some of them ex-hackers. They could operate outside the USA and pay little or no attention to US laws. Pity the poor 20% in the face of such attacks. Any traffic sent through this remailer network would have only a tiny chance of getting through without being compromised. If you picked 5 remailers, the chances of all being non-FBI would be about .2^5, 3 in 10,000. The other 9,997 messages would be copied immediately to Langley. The proposed RemailerNet could be attacked in much the same way. But if the network were widely distributed so that gateways were in different legal jurisdictions and different countries, and if most of the people involved knew one another, it would be more difficult to compromise it. -- Jim Dixon

3 2

fast 386 DES code figures
by Phil Karn 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

To see if software DES could really be made acceptable in a IP security protocol, I've been bumming cycles out of my old DES code. I've completely translated the encrypt and decrypt routines to assembler, with no calls or jumps inside either routine. I picked up Richard Outerbridge's seriously clever initial and final permutation algorithm from Schneier, along with a few of his other tricks. The bottom line: about 38,373 encryptions/sec (2.456 megabits/sec) on a 50 Mhz Intel 486 running in 16-bit real mode. This includes the overhead of the C loop that calls the encrypt function and prints a status line every 10,000 loops. The code would probably run faster if assembled and run in 32-bit native mode, as this would eliminate a lot of 1-clock operand size prefixes (I do many 32-bit operations). Oh, by the way, if I eliminate the permutations the speed goes up to about 42,986 encryptions/sec (2.751 megabits/sec), an increase of about 12%. That says I should be able to do triple-DES at about 13,777 blocks/sec (881.7 kbit/sec) although I haven't tried it yet. What still bugs me is that Schneier lists the speed of one commercial DES implementation as 40,600 encryptions/sec on a 33 Mhz 486. I just don't see how that's possible without using a lot more memory for lookup table space (I use only 2K, which is nice in a DOS environment). In any event, this should be enough for a T1 link (half duplex) as long as too many cycles aren't needed for things like routing packets. :-) Phil

3 3

Re: Remailer ideas
by jdd＠aiki.demon.co.uk 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

In message <9408051709.AA14763(a)ah.com> Eric Hughes writes: > Jim Dixon analogizes between the Internet and remailer networks. The > analogy has some merit, but yet breaks down badly with the very first > point: > > * all packets should be acknowledged > > This is not the way the Internet works. There are some problems with vocabulary here and some conceptual problems. The objective is a system which is highly reliable and resistant to traffic analysis. If you have three messages in, one 10 bytes long, one 1000 bytes long, and one 1,000,000 bytes long, and you send them out to three different destinations, it does not take genius to see which is which, no matter what order they are dispatched in. But if you send them out as packets, each say 4096 bytes long, with all packets acknowledged, and the routing of the packets is random, and noise has been introduced ... traffic analysis is very difficult. TCP/IP is designed to work in an environment which is unreliable but also unhostile. The sliding window algorithm and acknowledgement at the message level is suitable for that environment. TCP/IP has been optimized for speed. [stuff omitted] > Further, in email, there's currently no notion of a connection. The internal functioning of RemailerNet is not the same as the functioning of the email system. All RemailerNet communications are reliable. Packets are acknowledged and the acknowledgement includes a hash of the packet contents, so that the packet cannot be tampered with. Acknowledgements will in general take different routes from packets. > * users should communicate with trusted gateways > > This point is only half true, because the analogy only subsumes one > kind of trust. For remailers there is both trust in delivery and > trust in silence, the destruction of the message and information about > it. 'Trust in silence' is a good term. This can be enhanced in a number of ways. If you are corresponding with someone you know, you encrypt your messages. If you are corresponding with a stranger, you encrypt your message with the public key of a far gateway; then post it to the far gateway through a near gateway. The near gateway knows who is sending, but cannot read the message and does not know the destination. The far gateway decrypts the message before delivering it, so it knows the message and the destination, but not the sender. If you are sufficiently paranoid, you put your message inside yet another envelope, mailing it through the near gateway to a far gateway, which posts it on to another gateway, which finally posts it to its destination. Remailer gateways should be spread very wide geographically if the network is to be secure. If you are very concerned about anonymity, bounce a message through gateways in, say, the USA, Finland, Russia, and Ireland. If your concerns are about your employer, say, the probability of his getting at four different gateways in four different jurisdictions simultaneously is vanishingly small. If your concerns are about governmental authorities, they are not that much higher. -- Jim Dixon

1 0