December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

Re: NetScape's dependence upon RSA down for the count!
by Don.Stephenson＠Eng.Sun.COM 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Yes, but the certificate that contains the public key of the server is digital signed by the certificate authority (CA). To create such a certificate requires the secret key of the CA. The public key of the CA is contained in the client software, which uses it to verify the validity of the server certificate. - Don > From jbass(a)dmsd.com Sat Sep 30 17:15:36 1995 > Date: Sat, 30 Sep 95 16:50:05 -0600 > From: jbass(a)dmsd.com (John L. Bass) > To: www-security(a)ns2.rutgers.edu, cypherpunks(a)toad.com > Subject: Re: NetScape's dependence upon RSA down for the count! > > > Ok ... one more time ... the filter has to replace the client/server > keys in the packet stream with it's own ... > > John > >

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Linux RSA Library (fwd)
by Flame Remailer 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

From: Jim Kinder <jkinder(a)nat.com> Newsgroups: comp.os.linux.announce Subject: RSA Encryption Utilities. Followup-To: comp.os.linux.development.apps Date: Sat, 30 Sep 95 14:28:37 GMT Organization: Network Application Technology Lines: 39 Approved: linux-announce(a)news.ornl.gov (Lars Wirzenius) Message-ID: <cola-liw-812471317-27882-1(a)oravannahka.helsinki.fi> NNTP-Posting-Host: kruuna.helsinki.fi Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- I have a set of Encryption Utilities for Linux cyrpt - Unix sytle crypt(1) command using homebrew alogorithm rcrypt - Beter version of crypt primegen - Unlimited size prime number generator rsacrypt - Unlimited key size RSA encryption system. rsadecrypt - Decryption for rsacrypt genkey - Generate RSA keys. This package is similar to pgp, but the algorithms are more transparent, and the key size is unlimited. It uses a C++. I wrote all of this code myself and I will give it away to whomever wants it. I am planning on using it to write an encrypted mail system. If you want this code I will e-mail it to you in uuencode format. - -- Send comp.os.linux.announce submissions to: linux-announce(a)news.ornl.gov PLEASE remember a short description of the software. -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.2i iQCVAwUBMG1OyIQRll5MupLRAQFHeAP9GO7IJSu0eqWbnVKWUSk/RQZU+5jwRuEv U1TzLaRZO4F5GXG3E4awx0RonuDtOeOZ/wCls7MONlk3JP0YigpxY23jA3pbfUhx 5JdbVYrbdNm5yi18GlRgsGdhkzIyTXPB7s/F2tUAxC80fxC85LM7O1RFINRrgUrc QDIOmJNZVMM= =Q9w9 -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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Re: "Notes" to be Eclipsed by "Netscape"
by Rich Salz 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

> I've seen Notes running ... > but my access to it was only marginal. > But, knowing the software, it wouldn't surprise me if there were > some serious bugs in the security code. Er, sounds to me like you're leaping to some conclusions... At any rate, one of the designers of Notes's security was Charlie Kaufman (formerly of Digital, recent author of a security book mentioned here) and he is No Slouch. /r$

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Re: Operation Stop The Aliens
by James Caldwell 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

To whom it may concern: This fellows proposed actions are those of a blind fool who cannot see the forest for the trees. A such he is nothing more than part of the problem. He sees foreign immigrants, legal or illegal, as being a problem. The problem he is seeing is not any problem created by the immigrants who are looking for something better, but one created for the very purpose of distracting such fools as him from the underlying problems his state this Nation faces. He has bought the lie spewed by the talking heads and other psycological operations that have told him to think the 'illegals' are causing some sort of problem. Prop 187 and such proposals are nothing more than a method to have implemented systems and plans, not to correct the alledged problem, but to implement an underlying plan that was the desired goal from the start; namely a national ID and tracking system. This is a typical tactic, race against race, religion against religion, etc. all to divide us into small, blind, ineffective, bickering groups who have little voice and no cohesive political power. If his actions do not accelerate what is already occuring then the real enemy is alseep, as it is a wonderful opportunity for further psycological operations that will benefit them in numerous ways.

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Digests No Longer Available
by skaplin＠skypoint.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Due to some personal issues, I am being forced to cut back my net involvement. Cypherpunks and its digests are a causality of this. Effective immediately I will no longer be keeping digests of the list. Hopefully in a few months I'll be back. Sam

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Re: NetScape's dependence upon RSA down for the count!
by jbass＠dmsd.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

> BTW your 'offer' is silly- this is not a trivial amount of work, and you > would not deserve any credit for coming up with so ordinary an > attack. Write the code yourself, or pay the market rate for it. > -- > Eric Murray ericm(a)lne.com ericm(a)motorcycle.com http://www.lne.com/ericm So is the Tee Shirt offer, and so is cracking the RSA public key algorithm ... the point is that at least two teams did it. My offer is trival in $$'s I agree, but the challenge I offer is to focus on the weaknesses of SSL rather than it's strengths (large keys). I suspect this is easier than most people think, so maybe I should offer a Tee Shirt instead? I suspect the certificates can be attacked in one of several ways. The most likely is that the filter can use the servers certificate and fake, forge, or simply subsititue a valid one in the filters name for the client. This might mean that the filter has to become a trusted server as well. I don't see any problems with the filter playing client to the server given the SSL protocol. Another is since the clients are often distributed over the net, that another filter is installed recognize clients and alter them on the fly to avoid the client/filter problem in the future. Another tack is based on getting very close to the server (in a bridge or router in the direct path to the server) in which the filter might acutally be able to get the get valid certificates signed in the servers name, while eating the real requests. The reality is that all three parties are strangers, and I have had doubts about the very nature of certificates & public key in this case. John Bass DMS Design

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T-shirt on French TV
by Rich Salz 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Timing is everything... I happened to be flipping the channels while on the TV in my hotel room Friday evening between 8 and 8:30 when I saw someone wearing the UK crypto shirt on a talk show on French TV3. I know no French. A guy was standing up wearing the shirt, turning around, holding it out for the camera, etc. Someone sitting down was talking about it to the moderator -- I heard words like cryptographique a few times. When the speaker pointed to the "may be illegal in France" part, the guy took the shirt off and the crowd laughed. The segment was about 10 minutes. /r$

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Re: NetScape's dependence upon RSA down for the count!
by Bill Stewart 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

>What you have described is the classic 'man in the middle' attack. >Netscape claims that SSL V.3 is immune to the MITM attack in >appendix D.4 of the SSL V.3 spec. > >You will need to get the 'filter' (MITM) key signed by Verisign. >Or hack Verisign's server-key-signing key. Or hack the Web of Trust used to verify the server's identity. It _is_ still a Web of Trust even if it's a fascistly-hierarchical tree; as long as it's possible to get a certificate without heavy contractual obligations, you can hack it, since the software has no way to check, now that Netscape is being nice and open and allowing non-Verisign certs. Remember that anybody can be a CA, and keys can be signed by multiple CAs. Verisign Business CA signs Carol's Certification Consultants' key. Carol signs Bob's Better Browser Business's key. Bob runs a server, selling really cool web tools. Verisign Business CA signs Moriarty's Mallet Makers' key. Moriarty signs Mr. X's personna key (trust us.) Mr. X makes a key called Bob's Better Browser Business, looking suspiciously like the real thing, only it's signed by M . X, and nobody bothered telling Bob about it. Alice, using Netscape, encounter's http://www.Bob'sBetterBrowser.com/, and decides to order a Better Browser. She gets Bob's public key and X.509 certificates by pressing a button, and receives a key and a pile of certs. Since it's not a secure session yet, is Mr. X intercepting them and sending her _his_ key and cert for "Bob" and his personna key with cert from Moriarty and his key and cert from Verisign? So Mr. X rips off Alice and/or Bob somewhere here, and Alice decides to sue Bob, who says "Hey, that's not my key, see my real set of certs", so they go off after Mr. X, who they can't find, and then go after Moriarty, who says "Hey, it's just a personna certificate; all I guaranteed was that I didn't sign more than one with the same name on it", which in fact appears to be true, and while after one case you can't be sure that there really wasn't a Mr. X somewhere, if three or four people start walking in saying Mr. X ripped them off using a key that Moriarty signed, maybe somebody'll think it's a movement... And remember that if you can finesse a signature, you can fake a Diffie-Hellman session with authenticated keyparts into tolerating your MITM attack, because you can convince Alice's browser into accepting the fake key for Bob, and as far as Bob knows, Alice is just another web-client that he doesn't know from Adam. Now, X.509 certs don't limit themselves to hierarchical or Web use, and most advice on using them recommends limiting the depth of a tree/web that you're willing to trust. Unfortunately, X.509 certs don't even have a comment field, much less a standardized "how much do you trust this person you're signing" field, though I suppose you can cram a bit into the X.400/500-style name formats. So if people want to really trust their digital signature system to prevent forgeries, then either there's got to be a law demanding lots of government- approved is-a-person nationalized ID card Internet Driver's License stuff, or else there's a market need for companies providing heavy-duty contractual backing for their key signatures (e.g. "In return for us signing your CA key with our high-trust CA key, you agree to accept $XM of liability for any misuse of keys you sign with it and to force anybody whose key you sign to also sign a contract like this one"). Probably a need for some standards to go with it. There's also a need for browsers and any associated certificate checkers to provide good user interfaces (so the _user_ can read the signature chain) and good tools to help the user decide what to trust. At minimum, the user interface probably should support things like different required amounts of trust for different categories of communication, e.g. business vs. personal letters vs. politics vs. smuggling. [This whole posting has been very annoying to write; I've just gone and argued that you can munge an X.509 hierarchy back into the Web of Trust and avoid the special-case treatment of Very Important CAs by just signing the top nodes of a hierarchy yourself and treating them like any other web-of-trust chain, and been thanking Netscape for allowing us to use open protocols instead of depending on Big Organizational Infrastructures that are run by the CON, and now I find myself posting a counter-example that says sometimes you have to be very careful and/or reinvent Bigness to avoid getting ripped off. But, hey, while it's not a demonstated hack, it's at least the theory for pulling one off, so even if it doesn't get me a T-shirt, at least it wins me a GIF of one :-) ] #--- # Thanks; Bill # 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: NetScape's dependence upon RSA down for the count!
by Don.Stephenson＠Eng.Sun.COM 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

> From ses(a)tipper.oit.unc.edu Sat Sep 30 20:43:51 1995 > My currently recommended approach is to enforce the verisign requirement > that all valid hostnames for the server be included in the certificate as > CN values. This allows the check to be made below the application layer. > Unfortunately a lot of currently issued certificates are non-compliant > (even Verisign and netscape :-); any fully automated implementation needs > a static table of hostnames aliases- interactive applications can > display certificates for manual review. I don't think binding hostnames to certificates helps much because both hostnames and IP addresses can be spoofed and DNS servers can be subverted. The important thing is the binding to the "service" name or definition (e.g. InterState online banking service). > This is not really much protection. Getting hold of any key is much > easier than getting a specific key, and don't forget there are a number > of vulnerable keys floating around until their expiration dates pass. Well of course, if the secret key of the server (or worse yet, certificate authority) is compromised, all bets are off. That's true of just about any protocol you can dream up. Are you just referring to the problem of accurate and up to date certificate revocation lists (CRL) being available ? If so, you're right, this is a very difficult problem to solve without having a truly reliable and pervasive key-distribution & CRL system deployed throughout the world. - Don

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Re: SAIC bought InterNic, but who is SAIC? A spook contractor!
by Rich Salz 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

One of the most interesting things SAIC does is run places that monitor seismic events. S.E.'s, by the way, are things that might be earthquakes but could be A-bomb tests. SAIC ran the Center for Seismic Studies in Arlington, VA. Rick Adams, co-founder of UUnet, made one of their machines, seismo, the UUCP hub of the world for a couple of years. /r$

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