December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

Check Cloning frenzy and attack on anonymous accounts
by Black Unicorn 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Cypherpunks might want to take note of the recent flurry of news program stings on banks which do not demand 12 pieces of identification in order to open an account. The latest horseman, check "cloners." Two networks have now run hidden camera stings on banks where they offer all manner of obnoxious fake identification and open accounts in silly names. The "purpose" being to expose the ease with which a dreaded check "cloner" can open an account to transfer your funds into. The process goes something like this: Check cloner gets account number from ATM slip or otherwise. Check cloner prints up 30 "checks" in any name at all with magnetic ink account number on the bottom for the benefit of automatic readers at the bank. Checks are written to the account in false name and withdrawn. For some reason, the focus seems to be on the ease with which one opens an account- rather than with the need to safeguard account information, and the lack of oversight by banks. Of course, the liability for these crimes is with the bank, which cleared a check without the proper signature. Of course, the immediate solution, rather than insuring the banks pay their liability for their insecure payments and check clearing system, and their printing account information on any piece of paper they can find, is going to be a crackdown on account identification- and probably legislation. (Note that often banks take months to pay the shortfall- when they do at all). New accounts can expect to have to cough up significant identification and I predict a re-newed call for national identification credentials. Tell the banks they have to pay within 2 days of the presentation by the duped depositor of the fraudulent checks and I would lay odds that the banks would be screaming bloody murder for a more secure payments and check clearing system than the trash they have now. Of course, because of the ignorance of the media, this will never happen. Of course, paying in cash will never be looked to as an answer either. Typical creeping statism. I suggest those of you who open clandestine accounts open a flurry now, before things get tough.

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Re: Why ecash is traceable
by Donald M. Kitchen 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Excellent discussion on the subject, actually. However, your idea of the "first person to the bank" maintaining anonymity via remailer block is flawed. First of all, if a collusion with the bank is being taken into account, presumably sufficient enough resources are involved that someone may try and track the reply block. Mixmaster (as your messages mentioned by name) would be necessary to eliminate the chance of tracking the block through combinations of replay attacks etc. (Which reminds me, has anyone implemented an Expiration date on Type I remailers yet?? I remember someone telling me it was being put into the RFC) However, mix does not have a reply block system. Nor are there any Type I -> Mix gateways, for reasons mentioned months ago. (PS, For historical sake, I was a strong supporter of a Shamir Sharing Shell Game[tm] with the type I message. Everything during those months came out of a rant program, so I can hardly expect you to have saved them) Soooo... Anyone up for a Shamir Sharing Shell game? Of course, a drop box system would be *much* sexier. Combined with, say, an encrypted socket, or maybe MIXing a packet straight to your door. (Every client a mix site, remember? Just make yourself a mix key and give it to the drop box. I figure if the TLA has you by then, you might as well trust the drop-box operator too) ObMiscCrypto: Cypherpunk archives seem to have been down for a month, and a mailto:// didn't wake anybody up. I got a message from Bob Silverman, apparently he would not be opposed to giving his software to the C-punk key Cracking Ring, Inc. as a group on the understanding that the group lend him some factored numbers. He reports having no PGP key, so getting a PGP sig won't be happening. Perhaps someone who knows him or someone who knows about factoring software would volunteer to get the goods? ObHiMom: Hi Mom. -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.2 iQB1AwUBMFk9cMLa+QKZS485AQHEpgL8C2N2eioUPaMqLlbzFL29F5zvq50J1o1+ nyoVxV51U4mglT40J8XZmF3/+15mN0aDbbA1NbOzd/7x20TeXnOwGGRHB2iHF0NB k++VRMrwX85MZ5snlf/c0l5XGnxKEuU6 =7hGk -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- <don(a)cs.byu.edu> fRee cRyPTo! jOin the hUnt or BE tHe PrEY PGP key - http://bert.cs.byu.edu/~don or PubKey servers (0x994b8f39) June 7&14, 1995: 1st amendment repealed. Death threats ALWAYS pgp signed * This user insured by the Smith, Wesson, & Zimmermann insurance company *

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Re: Why ecash is traceable
by Bill Stewart 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

I first reacted to Hal's posting about the way Tim did. I got confused by the "Charlie" issue, but I think I see it. >Why not "online clearing" as the preferred model, then? It's probably still possible to do _some_ tracing in an online system. As in the previous example, Alice is going to conspire with the bank to catch Bob, _before_ she pays Bob the money; afterwards is too late. Alice creates an account Alice2 and spends the cash. Then she pays Bob the same cash. When Bob tries to deposit it, the bank notices it's already been spent, and does one of 1) rejects the payment using the normal double-spending prevention (not very useful for kidnapping/ransom cases, since Bob may kill the victim or whatever) 2) detects the double-spending but uses special-case software to tell Bob they're accepting the payment, and trace his account or trace the place he's depositing it from, or not actually credit it the money they're sending him a receipt for, or whatever. If Bob wants to prevent the bank from tracing his deposit back to him, he'll need an anonymous on-line connection; this would probably need to be some sort of packet laundry, which is easy enough to implement, or at least a fancy firewall. If Bob is a real Bad Guy (as opposed to Alice being the Bad Guy), Bob will probably set up some kind of temporary account at the bank to deposit the money in, followed rapidly by withdrawing the money and abandoning/closing the account. If Bob is a kidnapper, he probably kills the kid; if he's just an undocumented retailer, he may not ship the pharmaceuticals, or may start announcing that Alice is a probable narc. >[online clearing vs. double-spender detection] >I'm persuaded that the second approach, involving protocols for revealing >double spending, is much messier than the "he who gets there first" >protocol. The online clearing model largely emulates how real physical cash There are difficulties, with online clearing, though - with physi-cash, Bob can look at it and say "it looks good/bad" without actually possessing it; with online clearing, he can lie about "it was pre-spent", and there's no way to let him check the cash except by either giving it to him or using messy all-or-nothing-disclosure-of-secrets techniques (e.g. Alice and Bob flip a coin to decide whether Bob gets to spend a pre-committed digibuck or Alice gets to demonstrate that it's ok and spend it first) though an online system could reduce this problem substantially by recording the time that a given digicash was spent and reporting that time in double-spending rejections (a first-spending at approximately the same that Alice gives Bob the money and he deposits it is obviously suspicious; it doesn't actually identify which one of them cheated, though they'll both know (unless it was the bank cheating). A first-spending time substantially before that implicates Alice.) >Well, since Alice knows her own blinding factors, she will always be able >to say to the bank: "My cash will look like this. Watch for it." Unfortunately, it's probably a lot harder to design a blinding system that lets the payee blind the cash without allowing him to create forged bills (at least forged bills based on a hard-to-identify original bill.) >My hunch, just a hunch, is that Chaum has been concentrating on the >particular protocols which avoid online clearing and which avoid avoid the >payer/payee untraceability for pragmatic reasons. Pragmatic as in >"politically wise." maybe so... #--- # Bill Stewart, Freelance Information Architect, stewarts(a)ix.netcom.com # Phone +1-510-247-0664 Pager/Voicemail 1-408-787-1281 #---

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Re: Scientology/Wollersheim as test case for key disclosure
by Bill Stewart 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 02:42 PM 9/9/95 -0400, Phill wrote: >One solution to this problem would be to modify PGP so that the session key for >the document was released rather than the passphrase for the public key. The >former would provide only read access, the latter would allow th scientologists >to forge Wollerstein's signature on other material. In addition many of the >documents may be subject to privillege. It wouldn't be hard, though I'm not sure it's much different from requiring the owner of the public key to decrypt the document in the first place. It does give you some verifiability (somebody else can take the session key and demonstrate that encrypting it with the recipient's public key does or does not produce the encrypted-key string in the document being verified.) If that's what you plan to use it for, you would also need to have the entire padded session key and not just the session key itself. Total amount of work to implement - another command-line option, a print statement, and maybe another command-line option and bit of code to allow decryption of a public-key-encrypted document using a command-line-supplied session key. #--- # Bill Stewart, Freelance Information Architect, stewarts(a)ix.netcom.com # Phone +1-510-247-0664 Pager/Voicemail 1-408-787-1281 #---

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RE: Mixmaster status
by Alan Olsen 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

>Let me be crystal clear. >1) I will not support any version of Mixmaster that is weakened. >2) All future clients will be able to generate the current message format. >3) All future servers will be able to read the current message format. >4) There will always be a free version of the client with source code. But will the commercial version of the server come with source code? >While I have not discussed it, I can not imagine that there would not also >be a free version of the server code (with source). Without remailers what >is the point of the client software? Will Mixmaster become the Netscape(tm) of remailers? And when is the IPO? ];> | Visualize whirled keys | alano(a)teleport.com | |"It's only half a keyserver. I had to split the | Disclaimer: | |other half with the government man." - Black Art | Ignore the man | | -- PGP 2.6.2 key available on request -- | behind the keyboard.| | http://www.teleport.com/~alano | <fnord> |

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Re: cryptography eliminates lawyers?
by liberty＠gate.net 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Brian Davis wrote: <snip> >Last I checked, FDA, UL, or state bar association approval does not >*require* you to take, use, or hire the approved drug, toaster or lawyer. >Market forces are still at work, albeit in a filtered environment. The filter is weakest from UL, yet I trust its output the most. >Just a first cut. And even that can usually be gotten around. Getting around David KeSSler involves about $30 million and a *bunch* of lawyers. Skipping this first cut, even with far safer products (IMO) than "Proscar," can lead to an armed raid of your doctor's office. If state bars can usually be gotten around, why take three of them? JMR -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.2 Comment: Freedom isn't Freeh iQCVAwUBMFk2Jm1lp8bpvW01AQESMwP/abBCBbhGKOjVFFkjl4elOcTA3oD9WgEa e+AsmtuLSEstvSfZ6u3CxO5sfu0lka0erBsVyDjqWs97WlvQOD0qX+3O91hoURp4 pytfTSE+MtTlIQCIoxVBMgjOYplNLOOYmnomksypJFpOzyuofoYnIScfRLkAWvAB SFEqvrCtfP8= =cfgW -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- Regards, Jim Ray "When making public-policy decisions for the government, I think one should ask oneself which technologies would best strengthen the hand of a police state. Then, do not allow the government to deploy those technologies." -- Phillip Zimmermann, talking to himself. (Congress sure-as-hell wasn't paying attention!) ----------------------------------------------------------------------- PGP key Fingerprint 51 5D A2 C3 92 2C 56 BE 53 2D 9C A1 B3 50 C9 C8 Key id. # E9BD6D35 James M. Ray <liberty(a)gate.net> ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Help Phil! email zldf(a)clark.net or see http://www.netresponse.com/zldf _______________________________________________________________________

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Re: Linking = Showing = Transferring?
by aba＠dcs.exeter.ac.uk 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Rich Salz <rsalz(a)osf.org> writes: > >Suppose we interpret Linking = Showing as > > > >For all web pages x and y, > >Showing(x) and Linkto(x,y) --> Showing(y) > > Then we would be fools. No more so than buying a book means you > have instant access to all resources mentioned as footnotes or in > the bibliography. > > Put more simply, *you have to click on Y* so they're not the same. Another even more subtle problem is inline images, can you say that a page with an inline image sourced from a foreign site must obey the foreign jurisdiction. I would assert this is so, because the web surfer's *browser* imports the relevant parts of the page from whatever locations (and jurisdictions) they are in, and displays them as one page. Take a look at: http://www.obscura.com/~shirt/ which is the www space Lance kindly donated for the UK munitions-T. The relevance to this discussion is that www.obscura.com is of course in the US, whilst the inline graphic is in the UK for ITAR reasons, the is of: #!/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) ie the html looks like: <img src="http://www.dcs.ex.ac.uk/~aba/obscura/rsa.gif"> So that the image is *imported* by the *viewer*, and not supplied by www.obscura. This means that people outside the US can also view the page with out anyone breaking any laws, even though it appears to contain (allegedly) ITAR contravening material. Same would apply quite nicely to porn from the netherlands etc. [as an aside, any one got info on how you go about converting gifs to transparent gifs - I want the above to be transparent so that it still works on other than a black background in case other people use it on other backgrounds] Adam

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Newbie Crypto question: MOD?
by Childers James 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Ok folks, I recently received "Applied Cryptography" as a gift, and just have one question: How does the MOD function work in crypto functions? It seems to work differently than what I've seen before, i.e.: C/C++ MOD. I also didn't see anything in TCM's FAQ... If this is considered noise, I apologize in advance. "Freedom is meaningless unless | ic58(a)jove.acs.unt.edu - James Childers you can give to those with whom| No man's freedom is safe you disagree." - Jefferson | while Congress is in session EA 73 53 12 4E 08 27 6C 21 64 28 51 92 0E 7C F7

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Re: SecureDrive News - Win95 yes, Iomega zip drive no
by Alan Olsen 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 02:33 AM 9/16/95 PDT, you wrote: >I'm sorry to report that SecureDrive does not support the Iomega ZIP >drive. I believe that's because the TSR driver supplied with the >hardware does not support a DiskBIOS interface. > >I had thought that Secure Device, another real-time encryption system, >would support this drive, since it works through a device driver >mapped to a dos file. But an actual trial proved otherwise. The >problem is that the DOS file must be present when the CONFIG.SYS >DEVICE= statement for the SECDEV.SYS is processed. But the zip drive >driver is a TSR that doesn't get loaded until after all DEVICE >statements have been processed. There's no particular reason that >Iomega couldn't have written their driver as an MSDOS device driver >rather than a TSR, in which case SecureDevice would probably work, but >they didn't, so it doesn't. There is a Win95 driver for the Zip drive that does not a TSR. It is a parallel to SCSI driver that is added through the "add hardware" control panel. I am not certain as to the order that the drivers load. I will have to test it. (The driver was released on the 9th of this month with little or no instructions.) Having encrypted Zip drives would be VERY useful. I will see if Borland's latest update for the C++ compiler has any additional information as to some of the driver interface issues (I doubt it, but it is worth a try). It is supposed to arrive "any day now", but it is backordered so who knows when I will get it. I may have to spend the bucks and get the Microsoft development disc subscription again. It will most likely have the information needed to convert the drivers to something Win95 will understand. | Visualize whirled keys | alano(a)teleport.com | |"It's only half a keyserver. I had to split the | Disclaimer: | |other half with the government man." - Black Art | Ignore the man | | -- PGP 2.6.2 key available on request -- | behind the keyboard.| | http://www.teleport.com/~alano | <fnord> |

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Rosing's Elliptic curve documentation question
by dan＠milliways.org 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

I was reading Mike Rosing's documentation for his elliptic curve system from the Cypherpunks FTP site. In it, he uses the notation: sum a_i*b^2^i Now, like a good little Calculus 2 student, I assumed this must be a regular summation. But if so, which is the index of summation, and what are the bounds of summation? Someone want to give me a clue as to what this notation means? Dan Bailey *************************************************************** #define private public dan(a)milliways.org Worcester Polytechnic Institute and The Restaurant at the End of the Universe ***************************************************************

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