December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

Re: [Noise] Perrynoia in the Comics
by tcmay＠got.net 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 6:05 PM 10/26/95, Alan Olsen wrote: >At 08:13 AM 10/26/95 -0400, you wrote: >> >>Alan Olsen writes: >>> This has no real crypto relevence, but some anarchistic relevence. >> >>Alan; >> >>As much as I found the comment interesting, it probably belonged >>somewhere like libernet-d, not here on cypherpunks. > >I posted it on Cypherpunks becuase it is the only list I take where such >political views are even mentioned. I thought that people on the list would >enjoy it. I prefaced it with [noise[] so that people who would object would >skip over it. Evidently that disclaimer is not enough anymore. I found Alan's comment about the comics interesting, as even Alan's critic apparently did, and hardly harmful to the overall noise level. It gave in a short snapshot a vignette of "pop culture" views of surveillance. At less than 1% of the size of the latest EPIC crosspost to our list (or was it EFF, or VTW?) it hardly will affect the list in any significant way. Many of us have posted movie reviews, book reviews, even mentions of Alison Armitage sightings. The list is more than just about Java and Netscape, though newcomers may not know this. --Tim May Views here are not the views of my Internet Service Provider or Government. ---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---- Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, tcmay(a)got.net 408-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero Corralitos, CA | knowledge, reputations, information markets, Higher Power: 2^756839 | black markets, collapse of governments. "National borders are just speed bumps on the information superhighway."

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Re: newsweek oct 30 Levy digital cash article
by cman＠communities.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

[stuff about losing e-cash] They already point out that you shouldn't hoard money on your own machine. I've been doing what I can to pitch in and help out, including some suggested edits to their materials. Here's my suggested rewording of that section: ========= Ecash that you keep on the hard drive is like cash. It can be erased accidentally in the event of a hard drive crash or other system problem. While we do have safeguards against this, there is a possibility you could lose money if your ecash files are lost. Money in the Ecash Mint is also like cash. Although the Mint is well- secured and maintained by computer professionals, it is a new, somewhat experimental system. Also, it is connected to the Internet. While we have taken many steps to ensure the Mint's security, we cannot at this time make the same guarrantees we'd make for a regular bank account. Because of these factors, we strongly urge you to keep your balances in the Mint and on your hard drive fairly low. A good rule of thumb is to have no more money on your personal computer than you'd be comfortable carrying in your wallet in a typical American city. Don't leave more money in the Mint than you'd be comfortable leaving stashed in a drawer in your house. ================

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Re: Mark Twain Bank's DigiCash offer
by John Gilmore 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

The two big drawbacks for me in this offer are: * The contract gives them the right to demand that I pay for anything that they spend investigating their "rights, remedies, and security interests". Not if I sue them. Not if they win. ANYTIME. I could send them email, and get back a bill for the employee time spent answering it. And I've agreed to pay such bills, if I sign their contract. > 13. Costs, Expenses and Interest. Customer, on demand from Bank, shall pay > to Bank all costs and expenses incurred or paid by Bank for any reason in > connection with this Agreement and relating to protecting, enforcing and > determining Bank's rights, remedies and security interests, including but > not limited to, attorneys' fees and costs . . . * You pay 4% -- in the BEST deal -- on every transaction. The high-initial-fee merchant account still charges you 2% on the way in, and 2% on the way out. You don't even have to spend any of it, you pay for just moving money among your accounts. If both payer and payee are using one of the low-initial-fee accounts, the total loss could be as much as 10%. There's lots of little drawbacks too. I sure hope the competition arrives soon. John

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idle CPU markets
by Wei Dai 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

With many high speed personal computers on the Internet and the deployment of low transaction cost Internet payment schemes, it seems inevitable that markets for idle CPU cycles and memory will develop. An interesting problem is to try to predict who this market will benefit, and what the market will be used for. So far it seems that cryptanalytic problems (e.g. factoring and brute forcing of keys) have the highest marginal value/MIPS among problems amenable to loosely coupled distributed computation. However, I think it would be wasteful if the demand in idle CPU and memory markets were to be dominated by cryptanalysts since (non-academic) cryptanalysis is basicly a zero-sum game. When a key is broken, no wealth is created, rather it is transfered from the owner of the key to the cryptanalyst. What other problems would benefit from easy access to lots of distributed CPU cycles? Wei Dai

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Re: One Time Pad encryption over the Internet, securely? (fwd)
by chen＠intuit.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Corby, > I *had* to forward this to you. Can you give him the answer, or are you > bound by an NDA? I can't remember. > > Corby Unfortunately, I am bound by an NDA. However, I am not violating the NDA by saying that Craig is correct. There is no way to do a one-time pad except by doing a one-time pad. In other words, it is not possible to generate synchronized, truly random key streams at remote locations non-algorithmically. One-time pads have a property that no other encryption scheme has. If I am an attacker and I somehow gain access to all of the key material and all of the plaintext that two communicating parties have so far used, I am still unable to decipher the next transmission. *Only* one-time pads have this property, and there is no way to achieve it without negotiating a key stream out of band. OTPs also have some other properties that are more mathematical in nature. For instance, the probability of getting any particular bit of plaintext from a given ciphertext is equal to the raw probability of getting that plaintext by itself. In other words: p_P(x_i | c) = p_P(x_i) where P is the plaintext space, x_i is the plaintext, and c is the ciphertext. Furthermore, p_K(K) = 1/|K| which means that all keys are used with equal probability, irrespective of plaintext and ciphertext. Hope this helps! - Mark - > Forwarded message: > > From firewalls-owner(a)GreatCircle.COM Thu Oct 26 03:39:33 1995 > > X-Delivered: at request of corby on doom > > X-Authentication-Warning: miles.greatcircle.com: majordom set sender to firewalls-owner using -f > > From: Craig Bishop <csb(a)connect.com.au> > > Message-Id: <199510260745.RAA16385(a)koromiko.off.connect.com.au> > > Subject: One Time Pad encryption over the Internet, securely? > > To: firewalls(a)greatcircle.com > > Date: Thu, 26 Oct 1995 17:45:13 +1000 (EST) > > X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL21] > > Mime-Version: 1.0 > > Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII > > Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit > > Sender: firewalls-owner(a)GreatCircle.COM > > Precedence: bulk > > > > I was contacted and asked whether I was interested in software which > > which used a one time pad for encrytion. > > > > It comes from Elementrix an Isreali company is offering encrypted email, > > ftp and what they call "personal firewall" software. > > > > This software uses a One Time Pad via a patent pending method. I am no > > encryption expert and the information available is limited but it would > > seem to me that there is no way to do this over the internet securely. > > > > See, http://www.elementrix.co.il/ > > > > Cheers, Craig > > > > -- > > Craig Bishop - Internet Security Analyst > > csb(a)connect.com.au > > http://www.connect.com.au/people/csb/ > > > -- Mark Chen chen(a)intuit.com 415/329-6913 finger for PGP public key D4 99 54 2A 98 B1 48 0C CF 95 A5 B0 6E E0 1E 1D

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Re: newsweek oct 30 Levy digital cash article
by daw＠quito.CS.Berkeley.EDU 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- In article <199510272049.NAA29753(a)netcom7.netcom.com>, Vladimir Z. Nuri <vznuri(a)netcom.com> wrote: > > if this is true, I wanted to point out in my post that this is a property > that real cash does not have. you cannot ever say to your bank from which > you withdrew cash, "oops, I lost a piece, could you replace it? also, if > someone spends the piece that I lost, tell them they can't?" [...] > or, the bank might say, "oh, well, that cash was not spent yet. we can issue > a replacement and bar the cash from being spent". this idea of "replacing" > cash is of course unique to the electronic realm. if the bank does it, > the consumer would be required to notify the bank before the cash is > spent, again another unusual property unique to e-cash. > Hrmm, is this really unique to e-cash? It sounds pretty similar to traveller's checks. (I do like your suggestion that e-cash service providers should write a FAQ listing all the properties of their ``cash''!) - --- [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 iQBFAwUBMJLLRCoZzwIn1bdtAQE2cwGAzWzY/2tqwjLpMSEr210r607j5mxUskJT 3L8qyQOCTMLjrZWfAwmQZ28yAszojBm+ =23AU -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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COS_sec
by John Young 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

10-23-95. NYPaper: "An operating system to keep the wide spaces open while providing security. Providing tools to build hangouts in cyberspace, protected by encryption." Denise Caruso's column. Electric Communities began work began in 1993 on the Cyberspace Operating System, or COS, designed to manage the resources of shared computing -- like security and bandwidth -- just as operating systems like the Macintosh OS or Windows 95 manage resources inside a desktop PC. The team is inventing some technology, including a programming language (compatible with Sun Microsystems' new Java language for Internet applications) and a design concept for software building blocks which it is in the process of patenting. In addition, staff cryptographers are weaving encryption throughout the system to make it absolutely secure and private. COS_sec (6 kb)

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PIS_tst
by John Young 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

10-26-95. Wash Rag: "CIA & The Justice Dept. Ground Rules for Disputed Territory." Officials told the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence that the Clinton administration has made improving cooperation between the CIA and the Justice Department a priority, so they can routinely exchange sensitive information on a growing list of topics that embrace both domestic and international activities -- such as terrorism, organized crime, narcotics, alien smuggling and arms proliferation. PIS_tst (6 kb)

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SPI_bux
by John Young 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

10-22-95, NYPaper: "When Spies Look Out For the Almighty Buck." "The fact of the matter is that the intelligence agencies are the center where all this is put together -- the economic, the political and the security concerns," said Robert B. Zoellick, a former top State Department official who handled much of the economic portfolio in the Bush Administration. "And perhaps that makes sense, because they should have more detachment than the individual economic agencies would." "Economic Espionage." Editorial The C.I.A. has not made a convincing case why it should start from almost no base to build a center for economic intelligence and analysis when the Government can hire outside experts or look to agencies like the Treasury Department that already have more knowledgeable staffs. William Casey had many faults as Director of Central Intelligence in the Reagan Administration. But he did know a thing or two about economics. Whenever he wanted economic intelligence, Mr. Casey often said, he would ask a businessman, not an intelligence analyst. SPI_bux (14 kb)

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RE: Let's Not Merge Mailing Lists, OK?
by tcmay＠got.net 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 8:11 PM 10/26/95, Ali Bahreman wrote: >Being subscribed to cypherpunks is not a prerequisite for following the list; >thanks to its hypermail archive and numerous filters. No,. of course it isn't. But copying the www-buyinfo(a)allegra.att.com mailiing list on a post, as you and some others did, is much more than following the list with hypermail and other such tools: it is actively posting to two mailing lists. Sometimes this is OK, but often it results in two lists only marginally educated in the issues of the other list. I replied at more length to Ali in private, but will say here that anyone is welcome to join the Cypherpunks list and to read up on the FAQs and archives of past discussions. --Tim May Views here are not the views of my Internet Service Provider or Government. ---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---- Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, tcmay(a)got.net 408-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero Corralitos, CA | knowledge, reputations, information markets, Higher Power: 2^756839 | black markets, collapse of governments. "National borders are just speed bumps on the information superhighway."

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