December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

Re: Peter D. Lewis
by nissim＠acs.bu.edu 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

I'm unfamiliar with what it is people have against Kevin Kelly. Why "wanton scum"? people might want to send mail not cc:ed to cypherpunks to keep the list from experiencing too much of a burden here. -A

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Peter D. Lewis
by L. Todd Masco 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Culled from a columbia newsgroup: >WIRED magazine now has a "Peter Lewis Prize for Bad Internet >Reporting". Check out: http://www.hotwired.com/Signal/Flux/ where >they announce the prize each week. Also read the story how Reuters >muffed up the Microsoft/Catholic Church reporting. You know it's bad when WIRED accuses you of bad reporting. - -- Todd Masco | "life without caution/ the only worth living / love for a man/ cactus(a)hks.net | love for a woman/ love for the facts/ protectless" - A Rich Cactus' Homepage - --- [This message has been signed by an auto-signing service. A valid signature means only that it has been received at the address corresponding to the signature and forwarded.] -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.2 Comment: Gratis auto-signing service iQBFAwUBLw3l5yoZzwIn1bdtAQHYmwGAmV97gzR8Tcl4b5iWMtRSbxUGKGFjEErS CNbc4fIyVrRnpUg55T8PSB9RktUn/I5K =OK63 -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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Re: sniff passwords on PC (DOS)
by pstemari＠erinet.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 01:00 AM 1/6/95 CST, m00012(a)KANGA.STCLOUD.MSUS.EDU wrote: > ... It does not work after starting windows. Not sure, but it seems obvious >that MS windows installs it's own keyboard interrupt. ... True, but it's fairly simple to write a program that loads itselfs in win.ini and also hooks the keyboard messages from Windows. --Paul J. Ste. Marie pstemari(a)well.sf.ca.us, pstemari(a)erinet.com

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Re: public vs. private replies
by cactus＠seabsd.hks.net 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- - -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- In article <199501060807.DAA22166(a)bb.hks.net>, L. McCarthy <lmccarth(a)ducie.cs.umass.edu> wrote: >Tim May writes: >> In my opinion, having personal access >> to past posts is several orders of magnitude more important than >> having MIDI-MIME JPEG-II TeX players [...] > >It takes more disk space from one's personal quota, though (for those who >suffer under such restrictions). :[ All posts to cypherpunks since June '94 are available by ftp from ftp.hks.net:/cypherpunks/nntp/cypherpunks. They are also available via nntp from nntp.hks.net:hks.lists.cypherpunks. I'd be glad to put a search engine of some sort on them, either by Web or by mailserver, if someone can suggest a reasonable way to index the whole lot. - - -- Todd Masco | "life without caution/ the only worth living / love for a man/ cactus(a)hks.net | love for a woman/ love for the facts/ protectless" - A Rich Cactus' Homepage - -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.2 iQCVAwUBLw2LTRNhgovrPB7dAQEDNwP/QTydu0Tp68ytNupes18WU+uv159GJJfE Wy+3iLxj+9rbPJwEKBZlXqhkfV7pf4nK9wNwiwNR4ZF13zpCAljWPhw3BEgNM4Xj Ity2GWLb8s7PBMplc+ggTQ4LowMYGqoO/e1pBWH3joFCuv11owkf+ZmbvTSZgU7h l07wq41l2L0= =Ao+S - -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- - --- [This message has been signed by an auto-signing service. A valid signature means only that it has been received at the address corresponding to the signature and forwarded.] -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.2 Comment: Gratis auto-signing service iQBFAwUBLw3GJCoZzwIn1bdtAQFdVAF8DB7xxjzPgHNj2Eil0zEuLKj8SofCLFAs HBdXBN2fFjT5mNwnKh5a4T1R1Dv0Zp/c =6bFr -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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Remailer postage
by jpb＠gate.net 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Russ, Where can I get the Magic Money software? I'm also interested in a combination FV/MM approach to anonymous postage. I'm still waiting to get my linux box set up (hassle with client paying the bill and all that fun stuff) but am considering starting a remailer once I get the site set up. I am concerned about the ethics of having a paymailer feed into the free remailer soup - how would their operators react if I'm effectively making money (no matter how little) off of them? In the interest of preserving anonymity, perhaps their should be a set postage rate - that way someone could use a digital stamp anywhere, helping to confuse the audit trail. I'm not sure if I want to get involved in the hassles of redemption though. It would probably become a major hassle for all the operators to have to do that much accounting on a regular basis. jpb(a)gate.net finger for pgp and ripem keys

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Re: for-pay remailers and FV (Was Re: Remailer Abuse)
by Nathaniel Borenstein 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Excerpts from fv: 6-Jan-95 for-pay remailers and FV (W.. jrochkin(a)cs.oberlin.edu (4416*) > Hmm. Maybe I don't completely understand how this is going to work, but > won't _every_ remailer in the chain need to know your FV billing account? > How would the rest of them charge via FV without knowing your billing > account? What Russell was suggesting (I think), was that only the first > would bill via FV directly, so only the first would need to know your > billing account, and then he'd settle up with the others at the end of the > month. (A particular variation of that scheme is what you mentioned later > in your message, and I'll get to that). The latter is what I was proposing. Only the first one would charge via FV, but the other ones would form a "closed system" that you could only get into by going through one that charged. > But assuming that every remailer along the chain _was_ charging via FV, I > fail to see how only the last one would need your billing account; seems to > me they all would, and thus any one could collude with FV to violate your > anonimity. That's not my assumption. I think you may have misread my mail -- I *agree* with you on this point. Sorry if I was unclear! > The > remailer operators still have to have an organization and remain in close > contact, which I am uncomfortable with because it seems to make collusion > more likely. As I said, it all depends on your level of paranoia.... I tend to think that in such an organization, where the primary "product" is privacy, each member would tend to watch all the other members like hawks, eager to publicize any instance of the other guy not being sufficiently zealous in protecting privacy. (Of course, I'm assuming that people like *you* will be running these services, i.e. people even more paranoid about privacy than me.) > And it's still dificult to intermix for-pay and free remailers > within your chain, or even just for-pay remailers from several different > consortiums. I think this is wrong. In my model, each consortium model has two, a for-pay and a for-free. Anyone can send to a for-pay, but only a consortium remailer can send to a for-free. Not that complicated, really. > [The > consortium, as far as I can tell, would also find it rather dificult to > charge more for a longer chain, I can't think of any way for them to charge > anything excpet a uniform amount regardless of length of chain, unless you > give the first remailer a way to tell the length of your chain, which is > undesirable. I'm not sure if this is a problem.] To my mind, that's not a bug, it's a feature. The consortium is charging you a set fee for privacy, and you get to decide how many hops are required to have a level of privacy you trust. > And this level of paranoia would be perfectly well surved by a Julf/penet > style remailer, which _would_ work well with an FV-payment system, as I > agreed before. The cypherpunks chained remailernet system as a whole is > overkill for your paranoia needs, but appearantly not for the needs of > those who use it over Julf's. It appears to me, that an FV-style payment > scheme can't be added to the cypherpunks chained remailer system without > dropping it's security to the level of Julf's. Which might be good enough > for you, but not good enough for me, or presumably for anyone else that > uses cypherpunks remailers. This is true of the scheme that I said I would be satisfied with (one remailer + FV), but not true, I think, of the "overkill" scheme, which was the consortium. > [Do you understand how cypherpunks remailers work, and the difference > between them and a julf/penet style remailer? Do you understand how > encryption is used in a cypherpunks-style remailer chain to make it so each > individual remailer only knows the next remailer along the chain, and not > the entire rest of the chain?] Well, I *think* I do, though I may be suffering from a bit of dilletantism here -- I'm certainly no expert in cryptography, but I think I understand the concepts involved. We haven't even gotten into the effect of encryption yet -- so far, we've just been talking, I thought, about untraceability. But as far as I can see, there's no reason that the consortium pay-only-at-entry scheme couldn't work with encrypted remailers. Am I confused? Couldn't you use the same cryptographic chain as is currently used, where all the inner entries in the chain are free crypto-remailers open only to other consortium remailers, but in which the outer encrypted message had the FV payment attached, which gained it entry to the remailer pool? > Try to bring up objections to a digicash-style system that are applicable > to remailers. I agree that they are different technologies that fill > different requirements, but it seems to me that the particular requirements > of a remailer system are only met by a digicash/magic money style > technology. Again, I think you mis-read me. I haven't (nor do I care to) spent a lot of time thinking about how to do remailers at all, let alone with digicash. What I was referring to was the basic objections that come from using a digital cash scheme in the first place. > I think an electronic cash system that will work with remailers, must > satisfy these things: > 1) You need to be able to enclose the "signifyer" of the transaction inside > encryption. Whether the "signifyer" is the cash itself, or an agreement to > make a transaction together with a billing number, or whatever, you need to > be able to enclose it in a PGP (or other arbitrary PKE protocol) encrypted > block. > 2) The "signifyer" of the transaction (which again might theoretically be > the cash itself, or some kind of billing number) alone shouldn't be enough > to reveal the identity of the anonymous user. I agree that FV doesn't meet the above requirements, but I don't see why they're necessary for remailers. In the consortium scheme I'd proposed, the only thing that could ever be proven about you would be that you had used a remailer. Now, if the message was not encrypted, your anonymity could be broken by collusion of FV and the "entry" remailer. But if the cypherpunks style cryptographic chain was used, i.e. if the contents (including an inner envelope that said who you really sent it to) were encrypted, nothing more would ever be derivable without the collusion of everyone in the chain, and even then it would only be derivable if certain records were kept. All I'm claiming is that it's do-able using the FV payment system. I'm not going to do it myself because I don't personally feel that this level of untraceability is EVER legitimately necessary..... -- Nathaniel

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Re: Multiple symetric cyphers
by pdlamb＠iquest.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

>In article <199501120502.VAA29808(a)largo.remailer.net>, >Eric Hughes <eric(a)remailer.net> wrote: >> From: cactus(a)seabsd.hks.net (L. Todd Masco) (bunch of stuff deleted) >> I guess this reduces to: do strong cyphers have "signatures" of some sort, >> by which the type of encryption can be derived? >> >>If they do, they're likely not _strong_ ciphers. > >Great... that's the answer I was looking for, and what my gut feeling >was. I'm trying to determine how much rope is too much for a first pass. > >Related: is there, in general or in any known specific cases, any loss of >security in using sym. cipher A on ciphertext B (of another sym. cipher) with >the same key? With different keys (I would think not, but I vaguely >remember mention of something here long ago)? Is this asking the question, "Does DES form a group with IDEA?" (Substitute your favorite cipher.) Since it took about 15 years to figure out DES is _not_ a group, I suspect it will take a long time to figure out the answer to that question for each pair of ciphers you're going to substitute. Seems to me it's a good basic idea. If it costs, for example, a million bucks to crack a cipher; you have three ciphers that can be used; then the best-case cost to crack a message just tripled! Of course, if you choose two ciphers stronger than DES, it probably went up a little more (g). If the ciphers don't form a group, you just made your system unbreakable. Just use two ciphers. Then a brute-force attacker has to check each key for each cipher once when it is applied first, and once for each of the possible keys for the other cipher when it is applied second! Sounds too good to be true. Am I missing something? Pat

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Re: Multiple symetric cyphers
by grmorgan＠freenet.vcu.edu 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

> >> But selecting a single cipher is just as much a fixed policy as a >> randomly selected one is. Far better to let the user pick a policy, >> both about sent and accepted ciphers. > >If you do give the user control, what is an acceptable mechanical >implementation? Let's say I have a file encryptor which allows the >user to choose between DES, 3DES, IDEA, Diamond, and RC5. Must I >require the user to tell that program what cypher was used to encrypt >the file she wishes to decrypt? > >Is storing the cypher type as part of the encrypted file a weakness? Perhaps an MD5 of the password could be encrypted along with the plaintext using the method(s) of choice. At the decryption phase, the password would be MD5 hashed again and the block of bytes the size of an MD5 hash would be "decrypted" with each of the methods... which ever one matches the original MD5 hash would be used to decrypt the rest of the cyphertext. This method wouldn't leave a known plaintext in the file to attack. -- ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Greg Morgan <grmorgan(a)freenet.vcu.edu> | "I dunno Brain, me and Pipi

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Available: Cash paper by anonymous FTP
by rah＠shipwright.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

>From: brands(a)cwi.nl >Original-From: Stefan.Brands(a)cwi.nl >Subject: Available: Cash paper by anonymous FTP >To: www-buyinfo(a)allegra.att.com >Date: Thu, 12 Jan 1995 18:57:39 +0100 (MET) >Mime-Version: 1.0 >Status: U > > > I have made available for ftp-retrieval my paper > > "Off-Line Electronic Cash Based on Secret-Key certificates." > > This paper will be presented at the Second International Symposium of > Latin American Theoretical Informatics (LATIN '95), April 3-7, 1995. > > If you are interested in downloading a copy, login by anonymous ftp at > > ftp.cwi.nl > > The paper is in the directory pub/brands, under the name > "latin95.<ext>." The extension <ext> refers to dvi and PostScript > formats. > > Greetings > > Stefan Brands, > ------------------------------------------------------ > CWI, Kruislaan 413, 1098 SJ Amsterdam, The Netherlands > Tel: +31 20 5924103, e-mail: brands(a)cwi.nl > > ----------------- Robert Hettinga (rah(a)shipwright.com) "There is no difference between someone Shipwright Development Corporation who eats too little and sees Heaven and 44 Farquhar Street someone who drinks too much and sees Boston, MA 02331 USA snakes." -- Bertrand Russell (617) 323-7923

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Paper on NetCheque and requirements of network payment services
by rah＠shipwright.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

>From: bcn(a)ISI.EDU >Date: Thu, 12 Jan 1995 11:11:49 -0800 >Posted-Date: Thu, 12 Jan 1995 11:11:49 -0800 >Original-From: Clifford Neuman <bcn(a)ISI.EDU> >To: www-buyinfo(a)allegra.att.com >Subject: Paper on NetCheque and requirements of network payment services >Status: U > >There is a new paper available on NetCheque(TM) and requirement of >network payment services. The paper will be presented at IEEE Compcon >in March. The paper can be retrieved from prospero.isi.edu in > >/pub/netcheque/information/netcheque-requirements-compcon95.ps.Z. > >Clifford Neuman ----------------- Robert Hettinga (rah(a)shipwright.com) "There is no difference between someone Shipwright Development Corporation who eats too little and sees Heaven and 44 Farquhar Street someone who drinks too much and sees Boston, MA 02331 USA snakes." -- Bertrand Russell (617) 323-7923

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