December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

Re: PERRY METZGER: YOUR MOMMY IS CALLING YOU HOME
by lat＠iac.net 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Anonymous remailer? What a crock! In my book, you might as well have written this rant on swift moving water or the wind. Lynn TerWoerds Cincinnati, OH

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Name Overloading
by tcmay＠got.net 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 8:54 PM 8/14/95, Bryce Wilcox wrote: >(Hm. "DC" -- "DigiCash" -- "David Chaum". I just noticed that...) Also "Dining Cryptographers," as in "DC-Nets," which DC invented. Chaum only smirks when asked about this multiple overloading. --Tim May, aka Marcus Registrada (overloaded with Trade Mark, Turing Machine, and maybe other things...) ---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---- Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, tcmay(a)got.net (Got net?) | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero 408-728-0152 | knowledge, reputations, information markets, Corralitos, CA | black markets, collapse of governments. Higher Power: 2^756839 | Public Key: PGP and MailSafe available. "National borders are just speed bumps on the information superhighway."

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votelink - some discussions on Phil Z & ITAR
by aba＠dcs.exeter.ac.uk 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

A short time ago on cpunks someone posted this pointer: http://www.votelink.com/ as there was a vote and associated discussion forum being offered on the subject of Phil Z, the (somewhat leading - incorrectly leading) question: "Should Phil Zimmermann be prosecuted for allowing release of his PGP encryption program on the Internet?" (The comment on leading question being prompted of course by the fact that Phil did not himself export PGP, nor put it on the internet, nor even put it on US BBSes. The way I understand the story was that a friend of Phil's posted the code to US BBSes, and that an unknown 3rd party posted it from there to the Internet. He is being investigated for "making PGP available in a form in which it could be exported", something different to what is implied by the question. In this light I find it difficult to understand how he could be held to have "allowed it's release on the Internet", something which even the State Department investigation is not I think accusing him of. Several people pointed this out in the discussion forum. A more accurate phrasing would perhaps have been: "Should Phil Zimmermann be persecuted for writing PGP?" but then that is no doubt biased in the opposite direction.) An interesting vote in any case, and the balance so far is: YES: 000,172 | ABSTAIN: 000,096 | NO: 001,508 The abstainers I think could be partly explained by the worry that the question was leading or incorrect, as this opinion was voiced in the discussion forum. Also an interesting thread was generated in the (WWW hosted) discussion forum about the legal problems implied by me posting these two snippetts of code (which I posted to the forum earlier): #!/bin/perl -s-- -export-a-crypto-system-sig -RSA-3-lines-PERL $m=unpack(H.$w,$m."\0"x$w),$_=`echo "16do$w 2+4Oi0$d*-^1[d2%Sa 2/d0<X+d*La1=z\U$n%0]SX$k"[$m*]\EszlXx++p|dc`,s/^.|\W//g,print pack('H*',$_)while read(STDIN,$m,($w=2*$d-1+length($n)&~1)/2) ------------------ PGP.ZIP Part [024/713] ------------------- M!4HD";*K"$$=/!<29+_A`K9C/2+@"4<,5G(N0M`47K#'`T6"[&>M83PL=@FR 8ES%:6Q"(F9A#)K!&_;X4TXZ?(T]6(]`>$*.^]3K*K["(239)\@F MHA\"<%"5(%N->/2!'>X3XPU<0!Y,F``58RK(F;K#XD2,^`F[L09CT1>MH,7/ ------------------------------------------------------------- (hmm it seems that their WWW conversion chopped out some parts of it presumably due to it containing < and > symbols, so perhaps their fears were even further unfounded). They were alarmed by the implication that their WWW server now contained PGP code which they did not feel qualified to judge the implications, or correctness of. This prompted the posting to the forum of a rather worried sounding disclaimer by a votelink representative, to the effect that they were abiding by the Prodigy ruling, and so felt unable to remove the offending piece of ITAR breakage, and yet felt rather unconfortable with it's presence. I hastened to explain (after a certain cpunk kindly drew by attention to the discussion which I had neglected to check out after posting the 1st message) that the same dilema applies to numerous other forums, such as USENET news distribution sites, sci.crypt archives, cpunks archives, etc, etc. Generated some interesting discussion anyway. Adam

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e$: Reuters Smells the Coffee + (cyphergroupie confession)
by Alan Penny 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

I might as well confess now and get it over with. Yes I am a cyphergroupie. I do write code, but it is not cypher-code, however I do get paid for it, which along with taking care of my family consumes most of my time. I have a sliver of time that I can devote to reading mailing lists and newsgroups from the internet. If you will indulge me, I write this letter for my own amusement and with the hope that it my spark some interest. > Date: Sat, 12 Aug 1995 10:05:35 -0400 > From: rah(a)shipwright.com (Robert Hettinga) > Subject: e$: Reuters Smells the Coffee > > > --- begin forwarded text > > Mime-Version: 1.0 > Date: Sat, 12 Aug 1995 00:01:58 > From: infocker(a)megaweb.com > Sender: infocker(a)megaweb.com () (from unknown.aol.com 205.188.2.111) > To: www-buyinfo(a)allegra.att.com > Subject: Cyber Economy--Govts. Cannot Control > > Thought Mr. Hettinga might particularly appreciate this perspective. > > Jim Rapp > Alexandria, Virginia > "give me more info" > > As always, do not send the copyright police after me. > > > LONDON - Growing business on the Internet computer network could > allow companies and individuals to avoid taxes and build up a black > economy increasingly out of range of government intervention and > regulation, computer experts say. > [snip] > > "Electronic purses," loaded from banks down telephone lines, > could become the favored means of payment for fast, anonymous and > secure payments, with currencies of choice becoming more exotic, > depending on what is acceptable to dealmakers. Hmm, Lately I have seen an advertisement on TV from a credit card company (it might be CitiBank, I don't recall) describing a new style of credit card (Ringo Star is the spokesman for the card). Its name is "Private Issue". According to the ad you can pick your card design (the picture background of the card), and your billing date. After seeing this "e$: Reuters Smells the Coffee" post I wonder if the Bank/Credit-Card company is easing customers into thinking of private issue cash/credit as a Good-Thing(tm), or it may just be some sort of marketing gimick to sell more credit card. However, I do find the choice of name interesting - "Private Issue". The recent issue of Extropian Magazine (ya, they can be a little kooky, usually there is something interesting said in the magazine), featured a disussion of the privitazation of money (with references to Hayek's book The Denationalization of Money) and its "compatability" with ecash. When I first heard about the concept of privitizing money I thought it could not be done. But lately I have been wondering if it is possible to "sell the idea", especially after seeing the "Private Issue" ad. If you pitched ecash the right way it is possible that it could catch on. I think that the most important part of selling the private currency to small buisnesses would be if the ecash "works" just like credit cards. If any one out there is thinking of a real 'private issue'. I think that this is one of the most important design features for the potential private currency. What I mean by "works" like credit cards is not the transaction tracking bookeeping part, but the physical handling of the transaction at the point of sale. I envision a card reader machine that you run a magnetic strip card through. The machine read/writes the ecash card does what ever cryptographic steps necessary to complete the transaction and the card is handed back to the customer. Credits are transmited to the eash bank/currency issuer and the clerk hands the customer a recipt. It would also be good if the card reader machine could also process transactions with traditional credit cards. You could even have a logo sticker that you put on your shop window to show that you will accept that "new kind of credit-card". Is the bank/credit-card company laying the marketing ground work for a private currency based on ecash? If it is, it is a interesting way of selling the concept, making it a COOL RAD - avant garde thing to use. Other selling points of a private issue could be lack of inflation, better intrest rates and possible tax advantages. Of course the issuer would have to be trusworth (or at least more trusworth than the guverment!). Signing off, while shopping for Cayman Islands bank services... [-------------------------------------------------------------------------] [ Public pgp-key: email penny(a)tyrell.net with subject as 'send pgp-key' ] [ My opinions are mine. I have scored 90% on the the Turing Test. ] [ Alan Penny, penny(a)tyrell.net ]

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VIACRYPT =money for Phil Z ???
by kutek＠ios.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Does anyone know if PKZ get's any royalties from the sale of Viacrypt- it is after all his code, isn't it?.Or is the Viacrypt source entirely different ? Speaking of which code, has Viacrypt been "verified" in any way by some independent agency?

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Re: Q's on Number Theory/Quadriatic Residues
by klbarrus＠infocom.net 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

>How are these square roots? 9 is certainly not the square root of 11, nor is >8 the square root of 29, even modulo 35. What this means is that 9^2 mod 35 = 11, and 8^2 mod 35 = 29. See the list right above the chart that is confusing you. For example, it lists x^2 = 29 mod 35 has a solution: x = 8,13,22,27 So actually there are 3 other solutions... 13, 22, and 27 are also square roots of 29 mod 35. >[ 1/v vs. v-1] >Are these two expressions interchangeable Yes. >3)Speaking of errata, where can I find a copy? Hm... I forgot. I have one somewhere and will send it along if I find it. >Is it possible to predict the possible quadriatic residues, or is an Yes, you can use the Jacobi symbol to determine if a is a quadratic residue mod n. See page 207. >5)From what does Feige-Fiat-Shamir derive its security? Difficulty of factoring. -- Karl L. Barrus <klbarrus(a)infocom.net>

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You are being monitored
by agent＠agents.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

If anybody can determine who this came from pleez post a guess. This is an experiment from inside a program environment. I am serious. -- Tim May

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Use of the IV in DES & stuffing the first block w/ random stuff
by Josh M. Osborne 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

I have recently started writing a small pair of encription and decription programs. I was planning of gennerating the key by taking the MD5 of the text password supplied by the user. Seeing that I have 64 bits left over (MD5 gives me 128 bits, single DES needs 56, tripple DES needs 168 - so I have a bit over 64 bits left in both cases), is there anything useful that I could do with them? Does setting the IV (normally left at zero) buy me anything? Does craming it into the first data block help protect me from known plaintext attacks? (I was going to use CBC so unless they know the first block they can't use a known plaintext attack, right?) Or am I better off putting the extra 64 bits of "key" into the IV, and gennerating a strong random number to stuff in the first block - since the decoder can just ignore that block anyway. (or should I ignore the IV, and stuffing random crud in the first block?) I don't recall Applyed Crypto. addressing these issues, but if I just managed to forget can someone remind me what chapter I need to re-read?

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The Spotlight
by The Gate 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Perry, just a brief correction to the original file > From: Duncan Frissell <frissell(a)panix.com> > To: cypherpunks(a)toad.com > Subject: Phone Card Risks > > One of the plethora of TV Magazine shows featured Tim McViegh and phone > cards last week. Maybe I should post to Risks. > > According to the story, Tim McViegh bought a bunch of phone cards from "The > Spotlight" (famous Klan paper) The Spotlight is more of a rogue faction CIA/FBI Constitutionalist paper than a Klan paper, by my reckoning. Sources available on request.

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Re: You are being monitored
by tcmay＠got.net 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 9:10 PM 8/14/95, agent(a)agents.com wrote: >If anybody can determine who this came from pleez post a guess. > >This is an experiment from inside a program environment. I am serious. > > > >-- Tim May Well, never mind, I guess. I don't think I added this, but I guess I did. So much for my experiment. My new SmalltalkAgents environment has a method for mailing from within a program environment, if a TCP/IP connection is open. This allows Smalltalk programs to directly send mail. On a Macintosh, this is not so trivial. The manufacturer is apparently acting as the collection point, and any name can be put into the From: field. --Tim ---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---- Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, tcmay(a)got.net (Got net?) | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero 408-728-0152 | knowledge, reputations, information markets, Corralitos, CA | black markets, collapse of governments. Higher Power: 2^756839 | Public Key: PGP and MailSafe available. "National borders are just speed bumps on the information superhighway."

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