December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

Re: pcmcia
by geeman＠best.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 10:58 AM 2/22/96 +0000, you wrote: >I am just assuming that the Association (PCMCIA) has a way of distributing >specs, etc. You can call them in San Jose, CA @ 408 433 2273 $475.00 for non-members, paper only. $715, paper/CD both. >I also assume they have a web page and all that, maybe >even a citizen-unit subscribed to this mailing list who probably could >point us in the right direction. www.pc-card.com, I believe >I think PCMCIA cards offer a lot of >potential as wallets and general purpose privacy prophylaxis engines. Absolutely, and without doubt. They are coming. >I don't know anything about the technology, but the device drivers, et al, >could be publicly reviewed and recompiled on trusted machines, presumably, >and the device itself could be tested (I assume) with a publicly >available routine that once again one could install from source, etc. There are commercially available drivers, tested rigorously. Fortezza cards and s/w are very solid, as well as other cards derived from that type of technology. Fortezza cards are self-testing. > >how much do the slots cost to add on to pc's that don't already have them? >Is there a parallel interface, for instance, that can plug into a >printer port? SCM Microsystems, 408 370 4888 has a "Swap Box" product. I don't know the cost. >-- >PJ >------------------------------------------------------------------------ > >On Thu, 22 Feb 1996, Adam Shostack wrote: > >> P.J. Ponder wrote: >> >> | obligatory crypto comment: has anyone looked at the iPower card and >> | gotten one to play with? Where else could one get a PCMCIA card that was >> | programmable and had a little memory on it? How hard would it be to make >> | one - in other words, what could we get the cost down to for an >> | encrypting pcmcia card? there couldn't be much to it, really, could there? >> >> I got one, its very badly documented; theres some source in >> Visual basic for windoze. I haven't had time to track down real docs >> so I can do anything. Anyone know who I can call to get real >> documentation? >> >> Adam >> >> >> -- >> "It is seldom that liberty of any kind is lost all at once." >> -Hume >> > >

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The "excrable" e$
by rah＠shipwright.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 3:02 AM 2/24/96, Timothy C. May wrote: >I can only hope that someone soon trademarks the stupid "e$" and thus >enjoins the rest of us from using it. Or, as Mr. May has said in the past, "the excrable" e$. ;-). >(On a serious note, yet another example that the American copyrighting and >patenting engine is overrevving.) Say "amen", somebody. Actually, *I* seem to be the unfortunate wretch who coined (ahem...) the term "e$", as it refers to a dollar digitally spent on the internet. My apologies to those spenders of yen, marks, and pounds. I hope I can take some solice in the notion that all money's fungible. :-). In addition, there's no reason not to use e¥, or e£, if people can read your character maps. One of the reasons I chose e$ is that I believe $ is way down deep in the ASCII character set, and thus most machines will display it. Ethnocentrism and potential trademark enfringements aside, a bit of pronounciation may be useful here: when I see "e$" alone in text, I say "e-money" (again, my apologies), and when I see "e$10.00", I say "ten e-dollars". Speaking of trademarks, I had hoped that by using "e$" everywhere that we could avoid such legal mechanations, in the same vein that various mathematical notation schemes cannot be copyrighted (I think). For the lawyers out there, is it possible to do the equivalent of a GNU GPL "copy-left" with a potential trademark like "e$"? If it is, I'd like to do that. Ubiquity is power, and all that, "excrable" symbols and all... <PlugMode-on> Anyone interested in discussing trends in, or the consequences (economic, social or otherwise) of *financial* cryptography on public networks, is cordially invited to subscribe to the e$ mail list. Send "subscribe e$" in the body of a message to majordomo(a)thumper.vmeng.com, and, after you've subscribed, introduce yourself! The list is unmoderated. <PlugMode-off> Cheers, Bob Hettinga (e$mpressario) ----------------- Robert Hettinga (rah(a)shipwright.com) e$, 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA "Reality is not optional." --Thomas Sowell The e$ Home Page: http://thumper.vmeng.com/pub/rah/

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Re: Internet shutdown Feb 29?
by sethf＠MIT.EDU 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

> This looks completely, totally, and insanely bogus, but I Yes. It would have made a good April Fool's joke. No reality to it whatsoever. > Anybody from MIT ever heard of "Kim Dereksen"? No such person listed as being employed at MIT. You can check how to use the MIT on-line directory by finger help(a)mit.edu There's also no "Interconnected Network Maintenance staff" at MIT, that I know about. > your users will be able to read it. Please pass this message on to other > sysops and Internet users as well. Thank you. This makes it a chain letter. NO! ================ Seth Finkelstein sethf(a)mit.edu

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New WWW Page
by Computer Virus Help Desk 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

I'm pleased to announce the opening of a new Anti-Virus oriented Web Page. http://www.a1.com/cvhd This page allows the download of the latest versions of ALL the popular DOS, WINDOWS and WIN95 Anti-Virus Software as well as links to EVERY major Anti-Virus software developer or distributor in the world. On Line Virus Encylopedia, Anti-Virus Tutorials and other utilities are available as well. The page also contains VERY extensive links to Encryption, Privacy, Military, Intelligence, Government and Law Enforcement Web Pages. Look for the addition of a new "On Line" real-time Anonymous Pre-mailer with remailer chaining capabilities to be added in the very near future. Allen Taylor, Moderator, VIRUS_INFO SysOp, CVRC BBS, (317) 887-9568, Indianapolis, Indiana, USA http://www.a1.com/cvhd

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No Subject
by Raph Levien 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Here follow one cypherpunk's impressions of the Internet Mail Consortium's Security Workshop (http://www.imc.org/security-workshop.html) on Wednedsday 21 Feb 1996. Since there will be official notes of the proceedings, I felt I had a little more scope to convey mood and feelings rather than dry technical facts. After all, I think the buzz will do more to determine what gets deployed than the technical merits. This document is available on the Web at: http://www.c2.org/~raph/report.html The setting ----------- Paul Hoffmann and Dave Crocker recently started the Internet Mail Consortium (http://www.imc.org) This workshop was its first major activity. Dave Crocker moderated the event, skillfully herding almost 70 secure email proponents and representatives from user communities through a very tough subject. The title of the workshop was "Resolving email security," but there was no real expectation that the issues would be resolved that day. What was expected (and what happened) is that people would get a better understanding of why secure email hasn't happened yet, what kinds of things could be done to make it happen. More impressively, there was "room consensus" for a few _very_ positive steps, about which more later. One of the goals of the IMC is to involve users, not just developers. I was ready to "officially" represent the "cypherpunk user community," but fortunately, I didn't need to. In fact, the strongest advocacy of strong crypto came from an employee of a "large service provider in America." Overall, I felt that the user communities were pretty well represented, and all important technical points got made. MOSS is dead, long live MOSS ---------------------------- There were five contenders on the field going into the day, and two and a half at the end. MOSS was one of the casualties. A lot of us were sorry to see it go, but eliminating candidates has got to happen if we're going to have interoperation. It's hard to say exactly what went wrong. MOSS had many advantages, and was a nice, clean, pretty standard. I think what doomed it was the lack of a good implementation. Even though MOSS is no longer considered a serious contender, one piece of it is still very much alive: the multipart/signed message format. At the end of the day, there was strong, nearly unanimous consensus that multipart/signed should be recommended as the signed message format for _all_ of the email encryption protocols. S/MIME: you can dance to it --------------------------- There was a lot of energy around S/MIME. People are implementing it. Internally, it's pretty kludgely, but it does provide pretty good cryptographic services. (as an aside, my favorite kludge anecdote is the fact that X.509 certificates use an IA5 character set rather than ASCII, so that the @ in email addresses has to be represented as (a) instead). The main thing people didn't like about the existing S/MIME spec is the signed message format. In the existing spec, you've got a choice between a message unreadable to non-S/MIME-aware clients, or duplicating the data. Neither alternative is very palatable. Apparently, though, a new version of the S/MIME spec _will_ incorporate the multipart/signed format of RFC 1847. This made almost everybody happy, although I'm sure all those S/MIME developers are a bit unhappy with the spec changing, and having to reimplement stuff. The biggest problem with S/MIME is that the signed and encrypted format reveals who made the signatures. Obviously, this has severe consequences for anonymous mail. Believe it or not, a lot of people care. For example, the car manufacturers do not wish to broadcast the email addresses of their employees over the net. One technical workaround is to do it the MOSS way - first, sign the message, resulting in an intermediate S/MIME message, then encrypt that into a second S/MIME message. I'd recommend that implementors make provisions for such recursive formats; I think it's likely that we'll see a lot of these on the Net. PGP: troubled, but still alive ------------------------------ The consensus was that S/MIME and PGP/MIME are the two viable email encryption protocols. Thus, PGP is still very much alive and kicking. PGP's fabulous strength is that it won't let you down cryptographically. That simply cannot be said for the other contenders. That said, much about the PGP effort troubles me. Perhaps the biggest problem is that there just aren't enough people working on it. >From what I understand, it's pretty much just Derek and Colin, and there's a _lot_ of work to do. I said before that I didn't think the public PGP/MIME release will happen until this fall, and I see no reason to change my estimate. By that time, a lot of S/MIME implementations will already be deployed. One strength of PGP has traditionally been its unity. PGP means one message format (the PGP one), one suite of crypto algorithms (the PGP one), one key format (the PGP one), one application (PGP itself). Most of the other proposals are modular in some way, especially with respect to algorithms. PGP is moving in that direction. The most visible evidence of that is the way PGP/MIME is being done. The prevailing philosophy of the PGP people is that the PGP application itself should not decode MIME formats - that should be the job of a separate application. It seems to me that this is going against the tradition, though. In the past, if you got a PGP message, you just ran it through PGP. Now you won't be able to do that. Also, the existing data formats (while pretty good) are going to get changed. The algorithms are going to "go modular" (although I don't think we'll be seeing a Fortezza implementation any time soon). This is going to cause a lot of pain for the installed base. Will it be worth it? We'll just have to see. MSP: not as bad as you think ---------------------------- Earlier, I mentioned that two and a half protocols survived the day. The remaining one is MSP. It's actually not a bad protocol. It has two features that none of the others have: the ability to label classified messages, and a cryptographically strong signed receipt. Both of these functions are highly important for government users. It looks like government suppliers are going to go ahead and implement it, and the government is going to use it. MSP has been around a while, but the effort to turn it into a serious alternative for general Internet use is quite new. Two specs got published this month: a MIME integration spec (sharing the same problems as the old S/MIME), and a spec for plugging in the RSA algorithm suite. With these specs in place, MSP would not be fundamentally that different than, say, S/MIME. My feeling is that the main differences are cultural. MSP still has a very ASN.1, OSI, governmental flavor. Its proponents are making the effort to be responsive to users, but I think there's still a bit of skepticism about that, perhaps misguided, perhaps not. It was announced that there will be a free reference implementation of MSP, available to US citizens. My kingdom for 40 bits ---------------------- I've been thinking about the 40 bit thing a lot. It makes me very uncomfortable. From the cypherpunk perspective, this should be nothing new or remarkable, but keep in mind that there's a _lot_ of pressure on companies to be able to make money in overseas markets. In one of the "modular algorithms" designs, it's not easy to figure out which algorithms your recipient can understand. Guess wrong, and your message goes out with 40-bit encryption. In my opinion, this is worse than no encryption at all, because it gives the false sense of security. Building such a failure mode into an email encryption protocol strikes me as a bad idea. This is my subjective impression, but I sensed that there was a collective delusion that US software developers would actually be able to sell a 40-bit product overseas. Certainly, Netscape has proved that it is possible, but then again, encryption is peripheral to the value of their product. You'd still be using Netscape even if it had no encryption at all, wouldn't you? How many https: URL's are even in your history.db file? For a "secure email" product, it's a different story. There were a few other things that led me to the conclusion of a 40-bit delusion. First, people still seemed to thing that the cypherpunk 40-bit cracks were a concerted effort by highly expert people, rather than the weekend hacks that could be duplicated by any competent sysadmin or grad student. I don't think the message really got through. If 40-bit email gets deployed, we need to make a few more high-profile cracks just to hammer it in. Finally, there's an almost religious belief that making the choice of algorithms indepenent of the encryption protocol will somehow solve the problem. From the point of view of the user, this is just not true. What the user selects is an encryption protocol, an algorithm suite, and whatever other parts of the spec were left open. What the user selects doesn't have any modularity in it at all. It's either a good protocol or a bad one. Maybe customers today think that 40-bit encryption offers some value, but I think they'll soon be disillusioned. This is something that cypherpunks can have a role in. In the medium to long term, it will become clear that 40-bit encryption offers no benefits, and in fact is dangerous. My advice to US developers: don't even try to export a 40-bit version of your product. Just leave crypto out of the export version. Your product will have better performance and many fewer configuration problems. Include 40-bit in the US product if you have to, but don't allow it to be used silently. For example, put up a little dialog that says, "are you _sure_ you want to use 40-bit encryption? It's not secure, you know." If care about offering crypto in the non-US market, form a partnership with overseas developers to add the crypto. Non-US developers, now is a fabulous opportunity. Get those implementations underway, the sooner the better. Coexistence ----------- Since there is no one single standard that everyone feels comfortable with, we will somehow have to deal with the coexistence of multiple conflicting protocols. Fortunately, this is something the Net is good at. Most serious email vendors plan to "implement everything that's real." That means S/MIME for sure, PGP/MIME assuming they can get their hands on a decent implementation, and MSP if they sell a lot of stuff to the government. If everyone follows this path, then we really will have interoperable secure email. Perhaps over the long term, one of the standards would come to dominate, perhaps not. I know that the deployment of secure email has been a year away for the past decade or so, but now I think it really is poised to happen. The implementation effort is very much real. Over the next few months, we will see some very high profile, mass market implementations. Before that happens, though, the protocols must actually become stable. It's a characteristic of _all_ of the viable protocols that they're still in flux, still in the process of being defined. But at least the direction is clear, largely as a result of feedback from this workshop. Consensus --------- At the end of the meeting, Dave asked the room for consensus on several points. First, there was strong consensus that the encryption protocols converge on multipart/security for their signed message format. Second, it was agreed that the proponents of the surviving schemes get together to list their differences, justify these difference, and commonalize things that don't _need_ to be different, also agreeing on a timetable concluding at the Montreal IETF meeting. I'd say that's quite a remarkable achievement for a such a difficult area. Raph Levien

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Re: Puffer 2.0 Released
by Kent Briggs 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- >>>>> Is PC1 a stream cipher implemented in a "clean room", by reference to an abstract specification of the algorithm implied by the Alleged-RC4 source code, that interoperates with RC4-40 ? <<<<< Yes, I wrote it in Pascal (Delphi) using only the English pseudo-code provided by Bruce Schneier in the 2nd edition of Applied Cryptography. I call my implementation PC1 to avoid any possible trademark hassles. The sample RC4 vector that the State Dept. sent me for my Commodity Jurisdiction request showed that my implementation is correct. And of course, there are no patents to worry about and I'm not under any non-disclosure agreements. RSADSI's government-sponsored monopoly on 40-bit exportable encryption is over. I generate a key by combining a 40-bit pseudo-random salt with 40-bits of secret key material. The secret key material is the lower 40-bits of a salted pass-phrase after running through a SHA-1 hash. All the specs and file formats are included with the documentation. Kent Puffer is available at http://execpc.com/~kbriggs - --- [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 iQBFAwUBMS5jYCoZzwIn1bdtAQF6dwF/XrD1BgPpNbvh1ZDq5bYg52q3PpYpBchj 3BbJgjS0FudNzkysl65vo4klEDEyHYb9 =9frt -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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Alternative to e$
by jf_avon＠citenet.net 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Why not use the name Electronic Cash Unit, abreviated ECU? :-) JFA **** OLD KEY: DO NOT USE ANYMORE UNLESS FOR VERIFYING SIGNATURES **** 1024 bits Key ID:57214AED 1995/10/04 Jean-Francois Avon <jf_avon(a)citenet.net> Key fingerprint = 84 96 76 AE EB 7C AB 15 88 47 87 B0 18 31 74 9F

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Re: "Internet Security: Your Worst Nightmare"
by tcmay＠got.net 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 5:56 AM 2/24/96, an44880(a)anon.penet.fi wrote: >Those were the words beaming on the cover of this week's _Information >Week_. The totally worthless article on internet security contained >this little gem: .... >Complete with a picture of Freeman standing in front of an American >flag. I haven't seen this article, but I wouldn't hold the cover photo of Freeman draped in the flag against him....I seem to recall a few Cypherpunks similarly draped in the flag in a magazine article! The photos used for stories are even more a matter of artistic choice than the editing of the text is. Magazines are competing for rack space with the likes of the several hundred other magazines, and covers are getting more and more garish and more freakish. (I've ranted about this on other occasions, so I won't here.) It's all about sensationalism. I take a jaundiced view of yellow journalism. --Tim May Boycott "Big Brother Inside" 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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consent
by amp 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-- [ From: amp * EMC.Ver #2.3 ] -- -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- I'm not completely sure of the attribution here, as cypherpunks appears to be sending batches of messages to me with grunged From lines. VN> . How exactly is consent extractedH^H^H^H^H^H^ requested? "Government is not reason, it is not eloquence, it is force; like fire, a troublesome servant and a fearful master. Never for a moment should it be left to irresponsible action." G. Washington. Consent is extracted by force of arms. VN> . When exactly is consent identified? I believe that the rulers of this country consider the lack of politicians hanging from town squares to indicate implied consent. VN> . How exactly is government applied to the consentees? VN> (caning, jailing, fines, etc.) And death. VN> . How exactly do consentors change methodologies when they VN> suddenly realize that they, too, can be subject to their own device? I'm not sure what you mean by this. If you are asking how the rulers react when they find themselves subject to their own evil devices, I would say that they generally attempt to change the rules. An example of this is that it is almost impossible to sue a federal officials because of the broad immunity to prosecution afforded by current federal law. VN> . Why should non-consenting citizens live with governing methods VN> which in fact conflict with the pursuit of those three human VN> virtues: life, liberty, happiness? Fear of the goverment monopoly of force? VN> Supposedly, government is devised for ruling the "unruly"; a matter VN> for definition and (dis)agreement which can provide endless hours VN> of amusement for authoritarians, especially in court. And those courts can be used to further browbeat the citizens through inconsistant rulings on vaguely written laws. I believe vague laws are one of america's great evils because of the uncertainty they bring. VN> I hear tell that many who are no longer amused are now learning the VN> many uses of encryption. Thus the list. And arming themselves with more lethal munitions as well. Interesting questions. I believe that there is a larger groundswell of resentment here and elsewhere than governments believe. Consider, when breaking federal law is this easy... #!/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) Then something is _truely_ wrong with the laws. replies to amp(a)pobox.com please. -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.2 iQEVAwUBMS6lIodTfgZXlXydAQEgiAf/ZEqghXk424n4ybj/QXl6yZL21FWvjLJE 37IrvYslw6HLERd3t9k28LC4hUXvhm56c7of3YeUHKsrbTsZyydqrxLE4DaiRkCB mTTkChzvB+LH8V2q5PxMOW/YZQqzcyTnufVQKKHYy68RajLjUErLU5MSl9ICPgMh Kicx04xsueYGPcwD88m5v18uLJPf+LJTZhliqBehHI4Ta7BIi96VgF9lIXfx/GTS FeSru0EMYSn9S82WfnnsZX4sYeVHhvsxWPdRyeFOQHtlJ9hlH6/ehv+94Rzrh2yo s2AoUh/aUfVrZBboCiJCDF9E4gOX1PfsS/Dn9yKo/vW52/cbA1UPjQ== =SjfE -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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Re: Cypherpunks vs. Coderpunks
by attila 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

** Reply to note from Perry E. Metzger <perry(a)piermont.com> 02/13/96 1:29pm -0500 [snip] = The thing that makes Cypherpunks worthwhile is that its a place where = you could, once, get news updates about GAK, information on the latest = research into cryptography, organize mass key crackings, discuss APIs, = talk a bit about the politics of cryptography, etc. = sounds like we're having the sme problems as "democracy" --it soon becomes irrelevant! example: I was out of town for 6 days: I returned to find 1056 messages in the sorted mailbox! yes: 1056 messages which it took close to an hour to delete almost 800 of them as irrelevant. some you can discard automatically depending on the author, some by content, etc. but I agree: it is clutter. = Now, we get anonymous posters putting up bits on corruption in the = DEA, sections of Tsutomu Shimomura's sex life, and other garbage. I = don't give a damn if you think "Perry's a whining asshole; no one = appointed him God", the stuff I'm mentioning is almost totally = irrelevant to the topic at hand. (I *still* see no relevance to the = late great Kevin Mitnick discussion, and frankly, I don't give a damn = if he's in jail.) I also really am not impressed enough with the = justification for why Jim Bell's "ideas" need to be discussed here. = well, it's probably worthwhile to announce the events, but not to comment ad infinitum on the gossip, the inferences, etc. --as you put it: the sex life of TS, particularly at the expense of one long term member. jim bell had the chance to publish his ideas --I read them --once. I may be an "idealistic anarchist," but they are anarchy after the fact of submission to a government. OK, they have been stated, but further discussion needs to move to another forum. auto-trash filter.... another major part of what I auto-trashed were two 50+ threads on some senseless topics which I have already forgotten. I suspect the poor snake was beaten to death by the BC Fat Lady.... = For some people without jobs (I won't name names) there is no problem = with this. However, some of us have trouble keeping up, and = unfortunately Cypherpunks has content that is key to our work and = interests. = THIS IS THE PROBLEM! Even if you do not have a fixed schedule, are not most of not data miners? It cost me over an hour to trim the message list from 1000+ to 200+. WE NEED SOME SELF-RESTRAINT. = Sadly, there isn't another place with the momentum where people are a = bit more polite and talk about the same information. = unfortunately, the more publicity we receive, the more extraneous nonsense will be copied or target to us as a group. = Yet. = well, I justify coderpunks since it breaks the ongoing technical discussions away from the mainstream cypherpunks. most of the information appears in cypherpunks itself, but if I must restrict my time, coderpunks comes first = Perry as you say, Perry: 'I don't give a damn if you think "Perry's a whining asshole; no one appointed him God"' I agree: 'I don't give a damn if they think "Attila's a whining asshole; no one appointed him God"' after all, as far as I know, I'm still "nobody" in the overall scheme, even with a Piled higher and Deeper! who _really_ cares what I think? -attila "Fools fear adversity, but the wise man listens only to his conscience; or in other words, "You've got exactly thirty seconds to get off my property before I start shooting, hippie." --Ching Chow cc: cypherpunks(a)toad.com

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