December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

Ultimate Paranoia
by nobody＠REPLAY.COM 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Fellow Cypherpunks, I have been lurking around for some time and I have learned alot, But I have a few questions that I either haven't seen posted or I've missed all together. I keep PGP stored on a removable hard drive and keep it under lock and key when it's not in use. I write and encrypt messages on a stand-alone computer, that I only have access to. My passphrase is rather long and full of gibberish, But I still fear the other things that I can not control. Does anyone make and sell a device that emits white and pink noise? How do you take the randomness collected from radation sensors to create a truly random sample for creating a PGP key? Is there anything else that I might be missing besides lining the walls & computer in tin foil? :^) Thanks for your help! -Murphy --

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Re: Lan Manager security
by daw＠beijing.CS.Berkeley.EDU 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- In article <9601221620.AA11356(a)capybara.transarc.com>, <lws(a)transarc.com> wrote: [ ... the LanMan / Samba(?) password authentication protocol ... ] > The password is uppercased and truncated to 14 bytes (or padded to 14 > bytes with nulls). This is split (0..6,7..13) into two DES keys > which are each used to encrypt a static 8-byte value. The resulting > 16 byte key is stored at the server. [...] > To authenticate a connection, the server issues an 8 byte random challenge. [...] > The client then pads the 16-byte key to 21 bytes (with zeros, natch), > splits it in thirds, {0..6}, {7..13}, {14,15,NUL,NUL,NUL,NUL,NUL}, > uses each third to DES-encrypt the challenge, concatenates the > ciphertexts, and returns the response to the server. Oh yeah, this protocol again. I remember looking at it a while ago; many thanks to Andy Brown <a.brown(a)nexor.co.uk>, who showed it to me and kindly gave me lots of information. It's pretty crappy, IMHO. It's very weak against dictionary attacks (assuming I have a sniffer). For instance, if you use a password which is less than 12-14 characters long, it will be very easy to recover bytes 7..13 of your password. After that, it will often be simple enough to extend the password backwards if it is based on a dictionary word; even if the password is purely random, this reduces the strength of the password to an effective length of 7 bytes. Also, there is no salt used in the password hashing function, so precomputed dictionary attacks are easy (e.g. the "Exabyte attack", where you precompute the hash of each likely password and store each result on a huge tape.) Unfortunately, I don't have time right now to follow up with a sample exploit program or anything. Sorry 'bout that. Microsoft should have used a real crypto-quality hash function (e.g. MD5), instead of trying to synthesize one from multiple concatenations of DES. The technical details on the attacks follow. Call the bytes of the password P_0 .. P_13, the 16-byte key K_0 .. K_15, and the response R_0 .. R_23; and call the challenge C and the static 8-byte server key S; K is generated by DES encrypting S with P, and R by DES encrypting C with K. I know C,R and want to find P_7 .. P_13. First, try all possible values of K_14, K_15; the right value can be recognized when C_16 .. C_23 encrypts to R_16 .. R_23 under K_14, K_15, 0, 0, 0, .. Now that we know K_14, K_15, I can try the likely values of P_7 .. P_13; wrong values can be quickly discarded by trial encrypting S under P_7 .. P_13 and noting whether the last two bytes of the ciphertext equal K_14, K_15. Each remaining guess for P_7 .. P_13 gives me a candidate for K_8 .. K_13; I can check all K_7 possibilities to see if there's any for which C_8 .. C_15 encrypts to R_8 .. R_15 under the K_7 .. K_13 candidate. If there is such a K_7, the guess for P_7 .. P_13 is almost certainly correct; if not, try another candidate for P_7 .. P_13. If there are N likely values of P_7 .. P_13, this recovers the true value of P_7 .. P_13 with about N trial encryptions. Note that there is no salt used; in fact, if I'm willing to do N precomputed trial encryptions, recovering the true value of P_7 .. P_13 takes N / 2^16 work. Once I've found P_7 .. P_13, if I'm willing to do M precomputations [where M is the number of likely values of P_0 .. P_6], then recovering the true value of P_0 .. P_6 can be done with about M / 2^8 trial encryptions. (If I'm not willing to do precomputations, it'll take M trials.) Did that make any sense? - --- [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 iQBFAwUBMQQYSioZzwIn1bdtAQFKkAGAqcC2ZoZsSHEUiqU8envvqHLI9vfi4xnf aexUGBX10peIeh3TSzq9RcMU2c8FxT45 =xQGr -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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The Collapse of Ideas in a Pop Culture
by tcmay＠got.net 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Someone sent me a note asking about my recent comment that I no longer read "Wired." I replied to him by citing the trendy, busy, information-overloaded, and personality-oriented nature of "Wired"...and its dozen or so direct competitors, mostly GenX rags, plus the several dozen or so tangentially similar magazines that fill shelf after shelf in the Barnes and Noble and Supercrown sorts of superstores. Here's what I said to him: --- And "Wired" is frustratingly repetitive, trendy, over-busy with graphics, sidebars, etc. And the mine of good topics is being mined by several dozen other mags, such as Access, RayGun, Mondo, Details, etc. etc. Many of these are aimed at GenXers, with an explicit focus on personalities rather than ideas. (How many of these mags have had Traci Lords on the cover, for example?) I grew up with "Scientific American" as my standard: long, detailed articles. (And even their articles are getting shorter and more pop-oriented.) --- The Cypherpunks relevance, I think, is that many of the ideas we espouse just cannot easily be covered in a "personality" piece, or in a "freak of the week" (to paraphrase Dave Mandl) photo shoot. Journalists who want "some quick shots" of "Cypherpunks talking about privacy" do a disservice to the deeper ideas. To be fair to journalism, I think several journalists--whose names I have mentioned before, but won't here--do a fine job of in-depth reporting. They are the Jules Bergmanns of our modern age. (If you don't know who Jules Bergmann was, you're a GenXer and can't be held responsible for your ignorance :-}.) There is some hope. When people ask questions about what terms mean, about where to find more information, we don't refer them to articles in "Access" about how former porn queen is really big on PGP, or squibs in "Interview" about how Seattle's java houses are going apeshit over Java....we refer them to "Applied Cryptography," to "The Puzzle Palace," and even to articles on digital cash in "Scientific American." I wander through the cavernous bookstores that are so common these days, with miles of aisles, and wonder how I ever got educated in an era when a "big" bookstore was a Brentano's that would now fit in just the _magazine_ section of a Borders or Bookstar or Barnes and Noble. (Hmmmmh, attack of the killer Bs?). The answer is that in-depth study of ideas hasn't changed much. The Tofflerian idea of "overchoice" is solvable by simply ignoring the ephemeral cruft that threatens to engulf us. --Tim May Boycott espionage-enabled software! We got computers, we're tapping phone lines, we know that that ain't allowed. ---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---- Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, tcmay(a)got.net 408-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA | knowledge, reputations, information markets, Higher Power: 2^756839 - 1 | black markets, collapse of governments. "National borders aren't even speed bumps on the information superhighway."

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[Fwd: Re: Netscape + Verifone]
by Jeff Weinstein 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Howard Melman wrote: > > On Mon Jan 22, 1996, Perry E. Metzger wrote: > > > REDWOOD CITY, CA - Netscape Communications Corp. and Verifone > > Inc. will devise a system to make electronic payments on the internet > > more secure. > > > > Anyone know anything about this? > > Reported in today's Wall Street Journal > > http://update.wsj.com/update/edit/w-netsca.html > > Basically Verifone's credit card processing technology > (credit card verification) will be bundled with Netscape's > Commerce server. > > Netscape also announced that the software will use new > encryption technology being developed by MasterCard and > Visa. I don't know what this quote means: > > That technology would break sensitive information like > credit-card data into 1,024 bits of information, instead > of the 128 bits used currently, theoretically making it > much more difficult to steal. This is typical "the reporter doesn't understand the difference between RSA and symetric cipher key sizes" reporting. What it really boils down to is that export software can use larger key sizes for certain application specific encryption. For example if you limit what is being encrypted to fixed length financial information such as credit card numbers and ammounts you can use keys larger than 40 bits. --Jeff -- Jeff Weinstein - Electronic Munitions Specialist Netscape Communication Corporation jsw(a)netscape.com - http://home.netscape.com/people/jsw Any opinions expressed above are mine. Subject: Re: Netscape + Verifone From: melman(a)osf.org (Howard Melman) Date: 22 Jan 1996 12:05:53 -0800 Approved: usenet(a)netscape.com Newsgroups: mcom.list.cypherpunks Organization: Local Mail/News Gateway References: <199601221912.OAA07923(a)jekyll.piermont.com> Sender: daemon(a)tera.mcom.com On Mon Jan 22, 1996, Perry E. Metzger wrote: > REDWOOD CITY, CA - Netscape Communications Corp. and Verifone > Inc. will devise a system to make electronic payments on the internet > more secure. > > Anyone know anything about this? Reported in today's Wall Street Journal http://update.wsj.com/update/edit/w-netsca.html Basically Verifone's credit card processing technology (credit card verification) will be bundled with Netscape's Commerce server. Netscape also announced that the software will use new encryption technology being developed by MasterCard and Visa. I don't know what this quote means: That technology would break sensitive information like credit-card data into 1,024 bits of information, instead of the 128 bits used currently, theoretically making it much more difficult to steal. Howard

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No Subject
by jf_avon＠citenet.net 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- To: cypherpunks(a)toad.com From: jf_avon(a)citenet.net date: jan 22 1996 Hi! I read the work Cypherpunk often in alt.security.pgp and alt.privacy I had no idea what it is. So I hit Lycos and it led me to various, but unfortunately unclear articles. So, here is my question: what is cypherpunk? I suppose, from the adress, that it is some type of mailing list. If yes, could anybody send me the "how to subscribe" file? Thanks. JFA -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.2 iQCVAwUBMQQtqgOWptJXIUrtAQHUOwQAr5vF68AwsnWE39eMKhy6Vj67ke0JkjRM GN8q+6hSO5egg7l/T7XZidrnHDa7hpK0xJ8SoUJXAgG6oIpGJZcjzS3FqgxVeFiL lVONV/ac1PQt0cDDTQ2kTdFEYWOCAGJBRjVa0tO4W2CKY1IavqrQ+23cJkDxVh8e O1a/X1n5TVA= =HSGk -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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[noise] Internet censorship in the workplace
by Pete Loshin 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

A front-page article today in Network World about censoring access to sex-related Internet resources at the office. Apparently, at Texaco, "a woman vehemently opposed to pornography" has been assigned to review logs showing who's been looking at what. Workers who log onto remote sites from Texaco to disguise their interests have not been fooling this individual. -Pete Loshin pete(a)loshin.com

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Re: CIA Stashes and Looted Gold?
by nobody＠REPLAY.COM 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

U.S. Hid Weapons In Austria Vienna, Austria, Jan 21 (AP) -- Fearful of a Soviet takeover after World War II, the United States hid at least 79 weapons caches in Austria for anti-communist partisans. According to the newspaper Kurier, a U.S. congressional committee monitoring CIA activities found documents on the weapons caches that had not been known to the Clinton administration. A report Saturday in the Boston Globe prompted Hunt to inform the Austrian government, Kurier said. The Boston Globe report said CIA agents stashed the weapons while the U.S. military conducted loud military maneuvers. However, Fritz Molden, a former Austrian journalist, said Sunday that the secret weapons depots were established at the initiative of the Austrian government led by Chancellor Leopold Figl, and planning for them began in 1948. He claimed that some depots were also placed in the Soviet occupation zone in eastern Austria. Molden told the APA he had acted as a liaison between the Americans and the postwar Austrian government. However, it was not clear why the information was not handed down to subsequent governments. -- Austria demands details on secret US arms depots Vienna, Austria, Jan. 21 (Reuter) -- Austria's leadership Sunday demanded the United States supply details of 79 secret U.S. arsenals scattered across Austria. "The Americans should give us a plan indicating where the weapons depots are, how serious they have to be taken and what dangers they pose," Chancellor Franz Vranitzky said. Speaking on television Sunday, Vranitzky cautiously indicated the possibility of secret stockpiles from the other occupation forces -- France, Britain and the Soviet Union. "Approaching the other three occupation powers and asking them whether they too still have secret depots on Austrian soil will be dealt with in a very pragmatic and sensible way," Vranitzky said. The chancellery said the U.S. government was working on an exact list detailing the locations of the depots, and U.S. Ambassador Hunt promised to furnish details as quickly as possible. The television said experts assume each of the arsenals contained sufficient weapons and explosives for 150 anti-communist guerrillas and could also contain significant amounts of gold. Austrian television said that while the U.S. foreign ministry had assured Austria it would act as soon as possible, the CIA, which alone knows the exact locations of the arsenals, has remained silent on the issue. -- Postwar leaders acted with U.S. on arms caches Vienna, Austria, Jan. 22 (Reuter) - Austria's postwar leaders cooperated with the United States to stockpile arms around the country in a top-secret operation to safeguard against a Soviet attack, an ex-resistance fighter said Monday. Fritz Molden, who acted as a liaison officer between the resistance and the allied powers, said that if the Kremlin had discovered the plan to organize an anti-communist underground, Soviet troops would have immediately annexed eastern Austria. "It was all top secret. There were no archives, no papers made, no protocols written," Molden told Reuters. Molden said he was surprised that Austria's current political leaders were unaware of the arsenals. Details had appeared in two books, one of which he wrote 16 years ago. Austrian media speculated that the arsenals were part of a wider anti-communist strategy by the United States, which feared Soviet expansionism following the end of World War II. Newspapers cited the Gladio operation in Italy, set up as a secret Cold War resistance group in the 1950s to fight any Warsaw Pact invasion. Austrian experts estimated the depots held enough weapons and explosives for 150 anti-communist guerrillas and might also contain gold. They said likely sites included graveyards where digging would have gone unnoticed. Molden said arms were transported on U.S. trucks and trains into Vienna, which was surrounded by the Soviet eastern zone, and then secretly passed on to Austrians who risked their lives stashing the weapons away. He suspected most arsenals in western Austria were handed over to the Austrian army and gendarmerie after 1955 and that the arms sites in eastern Austria might now also be empty. --

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Re: Query over PZ
by dmandl＠panix.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 12:00 AM 1/23/96, tallpaul wrote: >Anonymous User had a question over PZ's politics. > >PZ has posted to the list and thus has, I believe, his address available to >list subscribers. > >How did PZ answer the question privately when Anonymous User posed the >question to PZ on private e-mail? > >If Anonymous User did not first pose the question to PZ privately, why did >he post it to the list publically? Seems to me Ms. Anonymous wasn't taking it seriously, but was posting the news clip here for our amusement, or to show the kind of shabby work some journalists do, or to scare us by demonstrating how insane rumors get started. I can't imagine that anyone who knows the address of the cypherpunks list and can use an anonymous remailer could take a ridiculous claim like that seriously. --Dave. -- Dave Mandl dmandl(a)panix.com http://www.wfmu.org/~davem

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IBM knuckles under
by Edgar Swank 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

IBM TO PROVIDE GOVERNMENT WITH ENCRYPTION KEY FOR NOTES IBM has agreed to provide the U.S. government with a special key that would enable government agents to more easily decode electronic messages, in exchange for permission to export a version of Lotus Notes that includes 64-bit security. The arrangement provides government officials with a key to the first 24 bits of security code, meaning that they only have to crack the remaining 40 bits to decrypt a message. U.S. Notes customers already use a 64-bit system. "We were desperate enough to try to negotiate a short-term, pragmatic solution," says Notes developer Ray Ozzie. "But we do not believe this is the right long-term solution... Our customers have been telling us that, unless we did something about the security, we could no longer call it a secure system." (Wall Street Journal 18 Jan 96 B7) -- edgar(a)Garg.Campbell.CA.US (Edgar Swank) The Land of Garg BBS -- +1 408 378-5108

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New Nym Server
by John Perry 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

The following message is a courtesy copy of an article that has been posted as well. Hello Everyone, I'm proud to announce the new nym server at nym.alias.net. The address for the nymserver is: nymrod(a)nym.alias.net (Catchy name huh?) Anyway nymrod is running Matt Ghio's latest nymserver code. It's been tested and I think (cross your fingers) all the bugs have been worked out. It works the same at the nym server at c2.org and gondonym. If you need a quick tutorial, send email to: help(a)nym.alias.net Enjoy!!

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