December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

another net phone (crypto)
by Mark Hittinger 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

I haven't seen this on the cypherpunk list so I thought I would forward it as an FYI. Interesting that source code is available! >Subject: FWD: Free secure Internet voice communication >From: John Walker <kelvin(a)fourmilab.ch> >Subject: Free secure Internet voice communication > > I've just released to the public domain Release 5 of Speak Freely for > Windows and its Unix counterpart, Netfone for Sun and Silicon Graphics > workstations. Assuming you have a fast enough connection to the > Internet (with reasonably consistent packet delivery time) and/or a > fast enough CPU to perform audio compression in real time, you can > talk to anybody on Earth connected to the Internet who's also running > the program. The Windows and Unix versions have entirely different > user interfaces, but can intercommunicate. Complete source code is > available. > > For communications security, IDEA, DES (less initial and final > permutations), and one-time pad (re-used for each sound packet) > encryption are available. The intensely paranoid can enable any > combination of these. The documentation explains how to use PGP to > securely exchange session keys before a conversation; an automatic > session key generator is provided. DES is included for commercial > users who don't have a license to use the IDEA patent. One-time pad > encryption is for those with machines too slow to run IDEA or DES in > real time. > > I didn't include a public key mechanism because I wanted to avoid all > the confusion. If somebody wants to navigate the narrow strait > between the RSA patent Scylla and Charybdis of export controls, the > programming work to implement public keys is straightforward and the > source code is yours to hack. > > For further information, see: > > http://www.fourmilab.ch/netfone/windows/speak_freely.html > > which describes the Windows version in detail and contains pointers to > the Sun and SGI editions, as well as links to download source code and > a ready-to-run executable for Windows. You can also obtain the > program by anonymous binary FTP: > > Unix source code: > ftp://ftp.fourmilab.ch/pub/kelvin/netfone/netfone5.tar.gz > > Windows executable: > ftp://ftp.fourmilab.ch/pub/kelvin/netfone/windows/speakfb.zip > > Windows source code (for Visual C 1.5): > ftp://ftp.fourmilab.ch/pub/kelvin/netfone/windows/speakfs.zip > > Have Fun! Regards, Mark Hittinger Internet Manager WinNET Communications, Inc. bugs(a)win.net bugs(a)ritz.mordor.com

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The Bad Lie / Re: in defense on Lon Horiuchi
by Anonymous 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Chief Cypherpunks Spokesperson, Anonymous wrote: > In any case, it wasn't really my intention to "compare" the deeds of > Horiuchi and McVeigh. I was merely noting that the defense of > Horiuchi by Herr Direktor Freeh could have been used nearly > verbatim in McVeigh's behalf. As you've pointed out, though, there > /is/ that crucial difference though, isn't there? One of them has a > badge and gets paid by the taxpayers, which makes him a "policeman." My other brother, Anonymous, points out something obvious but often forgotten, since "respect for authority" has been ingrained in us much more than we are generally aware of. "The winner makes the rules." is a truism, and it has a corollary: "So does the tyrant." But nobody ever seems to 'announce' that they are a tyrant. Chairman Mao wasn't a tyrant. Abraham Lincoln wasn't a tyrant. Sadaam Hussein isn't a tyrant. Bill Clinton isn't a tyrant. Well, OK, maybe _some_ of them are tyrants, but only after they are gone, and even then, it depends on who the next winner is. If the winner is, "My other brother, Sadaam." then there is a difference, not just in history, but in the present, from what officially recognized reality is when "My other brother, the-US-backed-shill." is the winner. Many people are impressed with themselves for their brilliance in being able to recognize the truth someone else pointed out, "The winners write history." I am more impressed with people who realize that the winners also write the present. And even more impressed with those who realize that one of the great scourges of our age is that winners *rewrite* the present. We live in the age of the Spin Doctor. Our generation has evolved past the Big Lie, to the 1/2 Lie, to the Bad Lie. We used to be content to smear our enemies with the Big Lie, so that we could round up the Communists and not let them work to feed themself and their families. Then we advanced to the 1/2 Lie, where we would give lip service to freedom of religion/politics and merely subtly discriminate against Communists if they applied for a job. Now we have graduated to the Big Lie, where there are no Communists. A test you can take in the comfort of your own home: Question #1: Yoo hoo! Anybody know what that huge country over there with the billions of people and the nuclear warheads is called? Can you say 'China?' Sure you can... Why is Communist nuclear power, China, not a threat, as the Russians were? Because those in power don't _need_ them to be a threat, right now. How can a country with that many potential consumers possibly be a threat? Look for them to *become* a threat very quickly if they nationalize the McDonald's franchises. Question #2: Who are the 'good' guys? Right! *Our* guys! <trumpets blare> <crowd cheers> <banners fly> Moments In History: WacoShima & RubySaki Remember? When all those Japanese committed suicide when they saw the nuclear bombs coming? For those of you too young to remember this event, it was similar to when all of those Branch Davidians committed suicide when the military tanks sent to 'save' them began firing chemicals and explosives into the Waco complex to get rid of the mosquitos so that the rescue team wouldn't get bitten. The Bad News: DoubleSpeak has come and gone, replaced by the Bad Lie. The Bad Lies: "I didn't inhale." "I don't recall." (dropping the bomb/shooting the child/seeing the money) "It is a 'Police Action,' not a War" "Peace Keeping Force" "It's a 'PeaceMaker', not an 'Instrument of Doom.'" "I promise not to cum in your wallet." "Democracy." And Even As We Speak: Newsworld - CBC (TV) - "Four federal inquiries have found no evidence of price-fixing in the gasoline industry." News Flash!!! New study finds Big Oil Executives psychic! All change prices at the same time, with no collusion. [Please excuse me for a moment, while I PgUp to remind myself what this post is about.] Oh, yeah... > In any case, it wasn't really my intention to "compare" the deeds of > Horiuchi and McVeigh. I was merely noting that the defense of > Horiuchi by Herr Direktor Freeh could have been used nearly > verbatim in McVeigh's behalf. As you've pointed out, though, there > /is/ that crucial difference though, isn't there? One of them has a > badge and gets paid by the taxpayers, which makes him a "policeman." Kevin McHale, Boston Celtic, replying to comment by reporter that his teammate, Danny Ainge, was considered the biggest asshole on the pro basketball circuit: "Yeah...but he's *our* asshole." Say what you want about Waco, but parking ticket payments skyrocketed after the event. Say what you want about Ruby Ridge, but fewer people have missed court appearances for their parking tickets, since then. Say what you want about Jim Bell, but now there is hardly anyone on the Cypherpunks mailing list running around, saying, "NUKE DC! NUKE DC! NUKE DC! NUKE DC! NUKE DC! NUKE DC! NUKE DC! NUKE DC! NUKE DC! NUKE DC! NUKE DC! NUKE DC! NUKE DC! NUKE DC! NUKE DC! NUKE DC! NUKE DC! NUKE DC! NUKE DC! NUKE DC! NUKE DC! NUKE DC! " NON-APOLOGY FOR LONG POSTS -------------------------- 80's Rocker, on the 'new music': "People don't have time for twenty minute guitar solo's anymore, man. They've gotta *be* somewhere." Note to Zooko: My other brother, Anonymous, may be a "vile slander", but he is *our* vile slanderer. Note to 'my other brother, Anonymous': But if Zooko hadn't ripped into you, one of us would have. We're Cypherpunks! The Bad Lie ~~~~~~~~~~~ "Hand me the nine-iron."

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speak freely
by Bob Smart 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

"One Time! This must be some new meaning of `one time' that I'm not acquanted with." - apologies to Douglas Adams. ------- Forwarded Message Date: Fri, 22 Sep 95 16:11:20 PDT From: ari(a)es.net (Ari Ollikainen) Message-Id: <9509222311.AA27810(a)viipuri.nersc.gov> To: RCWG(a)nic.hep.net, ESCC(a)viipuri.nersc.gov Subject: FWD: Free secure Internet voice communication Cc: rem-conf(a)es.net, videophone(a)es.net Found in my mailbox... From: John Walker <kelvin(a)fourmilab.ch> Subject: Free secure Internet voice communication I've just released to the public domain Release 5 of Speak Freely for Windows and its Unix counterpart, Netfone for Sun and Silicon Graphics workstations. Assuming you have a fast enough connection to the Internet (with reasonably consistent packet delivery time) and/or a fast enough CPU to perform audio compression in real time, you can talk to anybody on Earth connected to the Internet who's also running the program. The Windows and Unix versions have entirely different user interfaces, but can intercommunicate. Complete source code is available. For communications security, IDEA, DES (less initial and final permutations), and one-time pad (re-used for each sound packet) encryption are available. The intensely paranoid can enable any combination of these. The documentation explains how to use PGP to securely exchange session keys before a conversation; an automatic session key generator is provided. DES is included for commercial users who don't have a license to use the IDEA patent. One-time pad encryption is for those with machines too slow to run IDEA or DES in real time. I didn't include a public key mechanism because I wanted to avoid all the confusion. If somebody wants to navigate the narrow strait between the RSA patent Scylla and Charybdis of export controls, the programming work to implement public keys is straightforward and the source code is yours to hack. For further information, see: http://www.fourmilab.ch/netfone/windows/speak_freely.html which describes the Windows version in detail and contains pointers to the Sun and SGI editions, as well as links to download source code and a ready-to-run executable for Windows. You can also obtain the program by anonymous binary FTP: Unix source code: ftp://ftp.fourmilab.ch/pub/kelvin/netfone/netfone5.tar.gz Windows executable: ftp://ftp.fourmilab.ch/pub/kelvin/netfone/windows/speakfb.zip Windows source code (for Visual C 1.5): ftp://ftp.fourmilab.ch/pub/kelvin/netfone/windows/speakfs.zip The Sun and SGI versions of this program are quite stable, and should work for just about anybody with an adequate network connection. Porting the code to other Unix workstations with audio hardware should be relatively straightforward. The Windows version has just been finished and until it's shaken down on a variety of machines, networks, sound cards, etc. may not work for everybody. The Windows version requires a sound card with Windows Multimedia drivers (I've tested it on a variety of Sound Blasters of various generations) and a TCP/IP stack that supports WINSOCK (I'm using NetManage Chameleon NFS). Since multimedia and network hardware and drivers vary tremendously from machine to machine, I wouldn't be surprised if some tweaking were needed for various configurations. The CPU speed required interacts with the speed of your network connection; if you have a high-bandwidth connection to the Internet, or you're talking to another person on a high-speed LAN, there's no need to compress sound and the CPU load is minimal; just about any machine will do. If you need to compress in order to squeeze 8000 samples per second into a dial-up connection, then you need a CPU fast enough to run GSM compression in real time: basically we're talking a very fast 486 or Pentium. If you turn on IDEA and/or DES encryption, that also consumes CPU time. Based on my experience with other Windows programs, it will probably take months to track down misbehaviour due to strange hardware and software configurations. Complete, detailed bug reports are welcome. I may not be able to respond individually, but the Web page will track updates as they're released. I have tested the program only on vanilla 16 bit Windows 3.1. The Windows version contains preliminary code to support direct dial-up modem connections, acting as a phone scrambler. Serial port support in most Windows machines is so poor (unless you have a 16550A UART and appropriate drivers, which most people don't) that this feature isn't usable at present. I've left the code in just in case somebody with suitable hardware wants to bash it into working form. If you add features, port the program to 32 bits, fix bugs, etc., let me know so I can make your contributions generally available. -------------------- <http://www.fourmilab.ch/> ------------------- John Walker | A sufficiently advanced Internet: kelvin(a)fourmilab.ch | technology is indistinguishable | from a rigged demo. ------- End of Forwarded Message

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Thanks from NIST
by Declan McCullagh 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Fri, 12 Sep 1997 13:05:56 -0600 From: someone(a)somewhere.nist.gov To: declan(a)well.com Subject: Thanks Thanks for the warning about SAFE. I was too suspicious of the way government works to send any supporting mail and now you have confirmed my reasoning.

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Re: Another Netscape Bug (and possible security hole)
by jcorgan＠aeinet.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

> Irregardless, it's a nasty bug given that you can crash anyone's >netscape. And on Mac/Win3.1, it may even require a reboot. Testing here with Win95 results in the equivalent of a segmentation fault...nicely handled.

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The Fortezza random number generator is not trustworthy
by John Gilmore 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

> Yes Fortezza cards can be instructed to produce a random number through one > of its library calls (someday they'll have a real API). One of the > diagnostic tools I had tested this function. What algorithm do they use? > Haven't a clue. Sources say that the RNG implementation may vary from vendor > to vendor (i.e., GTC, Spyrus, Mykotronix, etc.). A caution. I believe that CAPSTONE chips inside the Fortezza card are highly likely to have back doors in them, above and beyond the Clipper key escrow feature. In particular, the random number generator is probably compromised. Many of the top-secret NSA documents I have received under FOIA about Clipper say things like: "2. I briefed the Board on the CLIPPER and CAPSTONE chips and their capabilities and summarized the recommendations of the 19 November session: [TWO INCHES OF SOLID BLACKOUT] "3. The Policy Board reached consensus on the following points: [TWO LINES BLACKED OUT] a. NSA will provide for the availability from a vendor of a single chip which can be programed for law enforcement access exclusively through a key escrow "law enforcement exploitation field." The chip will have no trap doors or other methods of access. This chip is called CLIPPER. [THREE INCHES OF SOLID BLACKOUT] Note that they explicitly say "The chip will have no trap doors or other methods of access" when talking about Clipper, but all information about Capstone is blacked out. There's no such guarantee about Capstone. The Digital Signature Algorithm embedded in Capstone is the best "host algorithm" ever seen for subliminal channels. A subliminal channel is a means of communication which imparts information but cannot even be detected by third parties. By choosing numbers for DSA signatures that are not completely random, several subliminal channels are available, which can leak information as part of normal digital signatures. This subliminal information can only be read by someone who knows a secret about how the non-random numbers were generated. Gus Simmons, who did seminal work on subliminal channels while at Sandia Labs, wrote a Eurocrypt paper on this a year or two ago. The Capstone chip knows private things like your DSA private key, the last session key you loaded for Skipjack, etc. So it has info that is worth leaking to NSA wiretappers. Now the plot thickens. I submitted a FOIA request for all information the NSA had on subliminal channels. They responded that they had no information! We appealed and got the same answer. However, subliminal channels are clearly part of the crypto literature and knowledge base. They were a major concern when Gus designed nuclear test-ban verification crypto equipment in the '70s. The ONLY way NSA can legally claim to have no information on subliminal channels is if the MERE FACT OF THE EXISTENCE AT NSA of information on subliminal channels is classified. In other words, if their information ABOUT subliminal channels is classified, they can't say they have no documents; they have to say, e.g. "We have ten documents and they're all classified." If they have any documents, they can only legally claim to have no documents if just confirming the existence of the documents would itself reveal classified info. This is called "Glomarizing" and it's named for the Glomar Explorer, a ship which was secretly used for dredging up code books from sunken Soviet submarines. Merely confirming that records existed on the Glomar would have revealed classified information (i.e. that the government was involved; the cover story was that a private company was using it for deep-sea mining experiments). Apparently, merely confirming that NSA knows anything about subliminal channels would reveal classified information. If the mere existence of documents on subliminal channels is classified, it's probably because they are very actively and very secretly using them. And this tends to reinforce my perception that they are using them in Capstone, the heart of the Fortezza card. You're free to dismiss all this as paranoid rambling. However, if you use a Fortezza card to generate your random numbers, you have no way to determine how these numbers are being generated. Are they really random? How could you tell? Would you rather get "random" numbers from a classified NSA-designed chip that's part of a family designed to subvert your privacy? Or would you rather get them from a third-party product whose design you can actually verify? I'd prefer a random number generator where I can pull one "at random" from stock, take it apart, and verify that it really does what its designers say it does. John Gilmore

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Re: "Gnusaic"? Why not a Gnu-Style Web Browser?
by Stephan Somogyi 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 23:23 21.9.95, Alex Tang wrote: > Yes. This has been done. A set of patches for NCSA's HTTPd (for US > folks only) can be found at > > http://petrified.cic.net/~altitude/ssl/howto.html > > I got the patches from the ssleay gang in AU, but i haven't seen them on > their ftp site yet, so if you're outside the states, it'll be available > rsn (i think...) Has anyone already created the necessary patches for Apache <http://www.apache.org/>, or does anyone know whether the Apache dev team would be amenable to including conditional directives to allow the build of a secure version? If anyone is thinking of making the effort to create a publicly available secure server, Apache's probably the best source base to work with. ________________________________________________________________________ Stephan Somogyi Think Tank Grenadier Digital Media

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test
by harka＠nycmetro.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

lag test

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Re: Project: a standard cell random number generator
by Pierre Uszynski 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 9:50 PM 9/20/95, John Gilmore wrote: >You probably can't build a hardware random number generator out of >existing "gate array" gates or "standard cell" cells, because all the >existing gates and cells are designed to behave completely >predictably! It will take designing a new circuit structure. Actually, even without going into the more analog characteristics of these same standard cells (as Tim suggests: threshold measurement, DRAM discharge time, and so on) you can do that using the really basic behavior of really basic standard cells: I did that some 8 years ago around a free-running ring oscillator (a bunch of basic logic gates in a ring). The problem I would look into first is that any such random number generator (even the ones based on measurements of analog quantities) would likely synchronize to some extend to the local noise (like CMOS switching noise in sync with the chip clock). My impression is that if you try and make the thing more impervious to noise, it will be less random too, and the most prominent noise in such chips is not random at all. So, you could try to make it run fast, and place it in a slow chip (like an older style UART), or you could try to kick it out of sync now and then based on some external conditions (maybe) (bus signal arrival time, serial line input, etc). It's not guaranteed it would end up generating anything useful (maybe not even to seed a software PRNG). I still like the idea of using macroscopic events, many orders of magnitude different from system operating frequencies: mouse location and timing sounds good. If you want to get large amounts of random numbers, use a specially designed separate box, well shielded, and running on batteries (like a walkman :-) And a cryptographically secure software hash is always necessary. Pierre. pierre(a)shell.portal.com

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No Subject
by rooster＠ix.netcom.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

IN TOUCH TO THE LOCAL KLAVERN IN THE DALLAS AREA?IF SO THEN SEND ME E-MAIL AT: ROOSTER(a)IX.NETCOM.COM

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