December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

EMO_ney
by John Young 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

3-30-96 Economist, three related E-money reports: "Trials of digital cash and smart cards seem to be going on everywhere. Who will win the race to control tomorrow's money?" "Digitising dollars." Citicorp's Electronic Monetary System could make all forms of physical money redundant, and, if it wins broad acceptance, could help to solve some of the financial industry's most intractable problems. "The foreign exchange market: illiquid lunch." Diminishing liquidity; settlement risk; impact of electronic brokering. EMO_ney

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New release of SFS available
by pgut001＠cs.auckland.ac.nz 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

I have just uploaded version 1.19 of SFS to the grumbo.uwasa.fi FTP site as: 551004 Apr 01 01:19 grumbo.uwasa.fi:/pc/crypt/sfs119.zip This release contains a number of major improvements over previous versions. The most important is that it follows recommendations on the use of encryption software to be released later today in a joint announcement by the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe and the US State Department. To this end the new version of SFS will abandon the use of MDC/SHS in favour of a classified algorithm which the both NSA and GCHQ are confident will protect non- confidential data. Although the exact algorithm details cannot be published due to its classified nature, it can be revealed that it uses prime number cycle wheels, a system still employed today at the highest levels. This algorithm improves on MDC/SHS by using a massive 2048-bit key, which would take billions of years to exhaust via a brute-force search. However in order to satisfy the requirements of various organizations such as the Chinese government (who need to ensure that no nasty outside influences pollute the minds of their citizens) and to allow the originators of the 83.5% of all Usenet traffic which contains porn to be prosecuted (a recent example being the widely publicised move by the Office of the Bavarian Illuminati to force Compuserve to drop all sex-related newsgroups), SFS 1.19 will store 2032 bits of the key in the clear along with the encrypted data. The head of the FBI Louis Freeh has been quoted as saying that "this will provide adequate protection against your little sister or your mother, while allowing law enforcement agencies to investigate people using encryption for illegal purposes". The head of the French DSSI agrees: "There have been too many cases of industrial espionage by foreign government intelligence agencies. For example in 1993 one such agency acquired over $1 billion worth of business for their own countries' companies in this manner. SFS 1.19 will protect against this problem, while allowing us to maintain control over French national security interests". The German government has tentatively approved SFS 1.19 for public use provided that it undergo a few small changes to comply with an updated form of the the Fernmeldeanlagen Ueberwachungs-Verordung (FUeV), which will require that all German users of SFS be connected to a central system to which copies of all keys used, times of encryption and decryption, identities of users, and copies of all encrypted data, be automatically forwarded. The Minister of the Interior Manfred Kanther stated that "this should fulfil the requirements of the German government for monitoring possible criminal use, although I might change my mind about this in a minute or two". Peter.

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Re: What backs up digital money?
by jf_avon＠citenet.net 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- >Mark Neely - accessnt(a)ozemail.com.au said: >Well, doesn't this beg the question - the "desire" by people to own them >is not as a result of advertising, but the fact that society has long >fixed them as standard units of "currency". > >If all those centuries ago marble was decided upon as a central >unit of currency, we'd all be killing ourselves to get some, not because >of any aestetic beauty. I do not think so. The common never holds value because value, especially in a crude civilisation, is related to rarity or difficulty to produce and obtain. AFAIK, gold was considered a value in every civilisation. If some did not consider it a value, then, they either ignored it's existence or had so much that it was not a value. Marbles are easy to make in most civilisations. They therefore cannot be used as a value standard. One problem with e-$, as pointed out by many, is that it has to have a *perceivable* value. Backing it by something physical that is already valued might be the best way to launch it. Otherwise, it will have the statute, if not legally, at least in the mind of the average Joe, the same as junks bonds. JFA -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.2i iQEVAwUBMV7fLMiycyXFit0NAQEGfAf8C3/kwoJ4Fnk7W7UP0P92+TGtgn3HAf/q AJ9V13iZVuX9hI96lP9PPixWryz0olI6D2df6c509peCoND4JUUXj2eBhJ0U/tHz 3Xw2D2oCep0fgm8NC6TzBBobrzcTExM41N5BG8H76SAJk9bz9zoHRx5OH2HVNCvu WyRXA0g2C9N6v0FpmQaQ2C0ose5c/WVQ9Yk/JmMgc0kw0HaT6VVVDfAkz+jTjCbj +0fh3gLREUdkx3pHXQ6ulfrZ4VoSz1qHSXCVKLy5kODieIYAMkZ0k/aYnbxPZRyX oHmk5kIKP9dO5Ao064ViJACi8gAYlwFp7YOSCexpJRDz0b7UMtO9/g== =a251 -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- PGP key at: http://w3.citenet.net/users/jf_avon Jean-Francois Avon <jf_avon(a)citenet.net> ID:C58ADD0D 96/03/01 fingerprint: 52 96 45 E8 20 5A 8A 5E F8 7C C8 6F AE FE F8 91 Unsollicited commercial e-mail will be proofread at a rate of 165 $ U.S. per hours. Any sender of unsollicited commercial e-mail will be considered as to have accepted the above ment- ionned terms.

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Re: What backs up digital money?
by Robert A. Rosenberg 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 15:25 3/28/96, Black Unicorn wrote: >> > At 1:46 PM 3/27/96, Scott Schryvers wrote: >> Between those times the net amount >> of money in bank accounts was reduced, by exactly the amount of >> circulating dcash. > >Ditto uncashed checks. Only Teller's/Cashier's and Traveler's Checks. These represent the conversion of Cash into a promise to pay when the Check is presented. This is the same as dcash. An Uncashed Personal Check (unless it has been certified [which withdraws the money from the account at Certification time]) only represents an unsecured claim on the monies in the account (ie: the Bank has no knowledge of its existence or amount until it is presented for payment/clearance).

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Re: Question about integrity of Blind Signature
by jamesd＠echeque.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 11:51 PM 3/31/96 +0800, Chein-hsinLiu wrote: > Hi! >I have some question about ecash protocol. In ecash protocol, we represent >money by a sequence number which is signed by bank. And for privacy, we >use blind signature. But when we send bank a pesudo sequence number-- >X*PK(r) (X:sequence number we want, r :random number to cheat bank) >then we can get SK(X*PK(r)) from bank, and get money by SK(X*PK(r))/r=SK(X). >But if we divide SK(X*PK(r)) with r', we can get another money? It confuses >me. How does it preserve the integrity of the money, and let people divide >r on the SK(X*PK(r)) ? The sequence number is not a sequence number, nor is it just any random number. It is a random number of some special form, so that the chance that the "other money" will be of this special form is remote. For example one might demand that every second hex digit was the number 7, and the other digits were random. When we divide a valid money number by r, we will not get another valid money number. > It confuses me very long time. Thanks for any help! > Chein-hsin Liu 4/1/96 > > --------------------------------------------------------------------- | We have the right to defend ourselves | http://www.jim.com/jamesd/ and our property, because of the kind | of animals that we are. True law | James A. Donald derives from this right, not from the | arbitrary power of the state. | jamesd(a)echeque.com

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Re: Witch Hunts
by jim bell 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 04:15 PM 3/31/96 -0500, Bruce Zambini wrote: >On Sun, 31 Mar 1996 JonWienke(a)aol.com wrote: > >> >My preferred and soon to be permanent e-mail address:unicorn@schloss.li >> >"In fact, had Unicorn not existed, potestas scientiae in usu est >> >Detweiler might not have had to invent him." in nihilum nil posse reverti >> >00B9289C28DC0E55 E16D5378B81E1C96 - Finger for Current Key Information >> >> Unicorn = Detweiler = Agent Provocateur > >Well, I won't say it's impossible. > >However, for those of you who are relatively new to the list, Mr. Unicorn >has been a regular (and useful) contributor to the list. My belief in >this has been unwavering. Excepting, of course, the recent Unicorn/Bell >flamefest, which we all get sucked into occasionally. The fact that you are willing to include the name "Unicorn" in that "flamefest" should hold a clue as to the source of the problem. >My opinion of Mr. Bell on the same issue has varied widely; however, he >has participated (in recent times) in more flamewars on the list than >anyone, including the usual flamers (ie Perry, me, etc.). I do, however, promote one of the most controversial ideas you've probably ever seen discussed on the computer networks. You might well imagine that doing so would tend to attract people who are like moths attracted to a flame. Thus, a "flamewar." Notice that Unicorn tries to flame me on practically every subject he can, which should be another clue as to his motivations. If you've ever had a controversial work published in a mass-media outlet (and the Internet is turning into just such a thing) you'll notice that you'll get unsolicited letters from people, some of whom aren't quite "all there", and people who obviously have their own ax to grind. Often both. (I had a guest editorial published in the Portland Oregonian newspaper about six years ago, so I speak from experience.) Usually that ends quickly; people have short memories and are distracted by newer events. In the computer network area, however, the opportunity for follow-ups is ever-present. That's why I'm not surprised about people like Unicorn. It would probably be excessive to say "he's crazed," but he clearly spends an unusual amount of effort. Check out the CP archives a few days ago; I did an experiment, choosing to not to respond to nearly all of his notes. He kept writing! >It is also interesting to note that Mr. Unicorn talks knowledgably about >several fields; Mr. Bell talks about one field, and there are those who >would dispute his knowledge about it. Quite the contrary: While my degree is in Chemistry, most particularly Organic Chemistry (but also Physical chemistry, solid-state chemistry, and inorganic chemistry), I am rather knowledgeable about physics (including nuclear, high-energy, semiconductor, astrophysics, etc), electronics (analog and digital; I was frequently mistaken for a EE student during my college years), optics, computer hardware, a smattering of computer software, radio (I'm a ham) and a few other fields. This, however, is the "Cypherpunks" area, and with the exception of some bomb-trigger discussions a few weeks ago, much of that knowledge isn't commonly shown in the majority of the discussions here. It's odd, therefore, that you would suggest that I "talk about one field," as if that was somehow my limit. If anything, it shows that I (at least in your eyes) pay more attention to the subject of the list than Unicorn. If you really want to start talking about some of these other fields, I'd be happy to, but I don't think that would improve the specificity of the list. Other people might object, as well. We go on enough tangents as it is. >I have had an e-mail correspondence with Mr. Bell that lasted several >messages. In it, we were both civil and friendly; I post this now not to >take sides in the flamewar, but merely to note that, in my opinion, it is >improbable that Black Unicorn is Detweiller, and that, although I missed >the origin of this thread, it is likely a suggestion from Mr. Bell or one >of his associates, intended to discredit him. This sounds like a conspiracy theory. I don't have any "associates." And I have never posted on any list, echo, USENET group, or bbs under an alias, and I am posting with my real name. I'm listed in the phone directory for Vancouver, Washington, and I've never had an unlisted telephone number. Until Unicorn is willing to identify himself with the same amount of verifiable detail, it is in his direction you should look for conspiracies. >If Mr. Unicorn is indeed Detweiller, it is in the mold of Vlad Z. Nuri, >who (while almost certainly Detweiller) has produced useful contributions >on the list, while refraining from acting out. What, exactly, is your definition of a "useful contribution"? >It is also worth noting that the original Detweiller, in a sense, played >De Sade to Tim May's Rousseau, in that he used an unorthodox, but >effective, critical technique. (This is, in fact, one reading of De >Sade's "pornography" -- an interesting counterexample to what was >trumpeted on _Both_ sides of the recent Firing Line debate: that >pornography or obscenity is, whether or not protected, devoid of any >intellectual content.) Somebody ( I don't recall who) once opined to me that Unicorn behaves toward me somewhat like Detweiler behaved towards Tim May. I probably missed most of that, but I can see the similaries. This doesn't make him Detweiler, but it suggests that his motivations are similar. One last thing: On re-reading your note, I noticed that your writing style is rather... how shall I say... familiar. Care to discuss how you did it? Did you use a program? Jim Bell jimbell(a)pacifier.com

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Re: [NOISE] Nasty-Quibble-Punks
by jim bell 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 04:06 PM 3/31/96 -0800, Mike Duvos wrote: >"Perry E. Metzger" <perry(a)piermont.com> writes: >Uh huh. > > > Incidently, EEPROMs don't work by simply charging a > > capacitor or something silly like that. No insulator is > > perfect, no dielectric is perfect, and charge would > > eventually leak away were that the case. However, if it > > were, it would be fairly easy to determine the state of a > > cell without having to get particularly close to it. Beyond > > that, there is this insane notion you seem to have that a > > charged object will lose its charge if the "insulator" is > > "stripped off" -- I wasn't under the impression a vacuum, > > for instance, was a particularly good charge carrier. > >Uh huh. Turns out Perry is wrong about this. I believe that UV EPROMs and probably EEPROMs do indeed work by storing charge on a buried, totally-isolated capacitor. The capacitor is charged with a system called "Fowler-Nordheim tunneling," which involves placing a relatively high voltage on a nearby electrode and causing the thin interface to temporarily conduct. (It's odd. That's why it's called "tunnelling.") The charge, surprisingly enough, is stable for years, in fact decades, and probably (statistically) centuries at room temperature. The reason the charge stays around so long is that the insulator, silicon dioxide, is extremely good. It has to be. If the capacitor were, say, 1 picofarad, and the resistance was 10E18 ohms (a billion gigohms) the resulting time constant would be 1E6 seconds, or about 12 days. Since EPROMs obviously hold data far longer than this (well over 100 times longer, or else our computers wouldn't work!), and since the capacitance is probably not nearly 1 pf, that tells you that the effective resistance is far above 1E20 ohms. UVEPROMS are erased, naturally enough, by exposing them to UV light, which is usually produced by a mercury vapor lamp. This UV causes enough electrons to be excited into upper electron shells in the insulator to temporarily turn it into a slight conductor, and the charge dissipates. I think EEPROMs are erased by, more or less, reversing the voltage on the charging electrode. As for keeping the charge when that insulator is stripped off, that would be a problem. It isn't that a vacuum isn't a good enough insulator; it is, but it would be hard to imagine a technique to strip off an SiO2 insulator that doesn't also allow a substantial amount of charge to flow. You could strip it off with HF (hydrofluoric acid) but that's electrically conductive. Even a gas-phase process would probably result in enough conductive products to discharge the capacitor. Ion-beam milling would also remove SiO2, but as the name implies that's applying a current to the system. Fortunately, all this is moot: Since the floating gate is inherently part of a transistor, it isn't necessary to expose it to detect its charge state: Just activate the transistor in-circuit BTW, some PLD's have a so-called "security bit" which (when set) is designed to prevent reading of the state of the rest of the programmed bits. Years ago it occurred to me that if you knew where this particular bit was stored, you could expose this bit location alone to a UV source through a tiny mask to discharge it. Finding that location wouldn't be all that hard: Just expose the chip with a series of exposures, moving a linear mask slightly, and eventually the security bit will erase. Note the location of the mask, and rotate the mask 90 degrees and repeat the process. At that point, you've located the bit (this may require a few iterations), so you expose the target part through a tiny pinhole (Edmund Scientific sells them in many different sizes, exposing only that security bit location. Jim "Mr. Bell talks about one field" Bell (Let's see, I covered solid, liquid, and vapor phase chemistry, a bit of particle physics (ion-beam milling), semiconductor physics, minor optics, electronics, some trivial math, and maybe even some detective work!) jimbell(a)pacifier.com

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NYT on CFP
by John Young 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

The New York Times, April 1, 1996, p. A14. Pioneers of Cyberspace Move Into Wider Arena By Peter H. Lewis Cambridge, Mass., March 30 -- Cyberspace is dead, many of its electronic pioneers said at a conference here this week. As the Internet population has grown into the millions, what was once a small, self-regulating society of academics and computer wizards has been engulfed by mainstream culture. But in their efforts to preserve the libertarian spirit of the electronic frontier, the original members of the cyberspace community have emerged as a political and social force. "Last year, it was still possible for people to say cyberspace is a different place, subject to different laws and different rules and that there is a Net culture," said Hal Abelson, a professor of computer science and engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology here. "Now you have such a large percentage of the population on the Net, it just is not sensible to talk about this as some other place anymore. What you are really talking about now is the communications fabric of the country." In what was seen as a clear sign of Internet users new power, several members of Congress announced, by telephone and through the Internet, new legislation and initiatives at the gathering here, the annual Computers, Freedom and Privacy Conference. The proposals include the formation of an Internet Caucus in Congress and a Senate blll to relax the Government's laws restricting the transmission of secrets over the global information network. "Washington is coming to thls conference in droves," said Daniel J. Weltzner, deputy dlrector of the Center for Democracy and Technology, one of several public-interest groups that seek to influence Government policy related to cyberspace, "and I think it's very exciting and promising. It's the coming of age of this community." The members of Congress were wooing more than 500 of the Internet's most prominent champions, who had gathered to discuss issues that were once esoteric but are now affecting millions of people worldwide: questions of privacy, electronic copyrights, computer crime, the nature of free speech, digital pornography, electronic cash and grassroots electronic democracy. The Computers, Freedom and Privacy crowd included its usual assortment of computer hackers, academics and self- described crypto-anarchists, and even one man wearing video goggles with an antenna apparently sprouting from his head. But it also included others who wanted to assess the fusion of cyberspace and real space: Federal judges, lawmakers, White House policy experts, corporate executives and law-enforcement agents. Senator Conrad Burns, a Republican from the real frontier state of Montana, chose the conference to announce, by telephone, new legislation that would remove nearly all current Government restrictions on the export of mass-market encryption software, which is used to send secret messages over computer and telephone networks. Senator Burns's legislation would also block the Administration from imposing as a Government standard any form of data encryption that would give law-enforcement agencies the ability to decode messages. The Senator's bill places him squarely at odds with the Clinton Administration and the Justice Department. But Mr. Burns said the use of robust data encryption would foster the rise of electronic commerce, distance education and digital communicatlons, which his large, rural state desperately needs in the 21st century. While the bill might have little chance of passage this year, conference participants were heartened by what appears to be growing support in Congress for a relaxation of the Government's cryptography policy. The proposal drew some opposition. "I think we'll regret it down the road," said Dorothy E. Denning, a professor of computer sciences at Georgetown University and a computer security consultant to the military. Dr. Denning and others have argued that the use of unrestricted encryption would thwart the ability of law-enforcement and intelligence agencies to conduct wiretaps on messages sent by foreign spies, terrorists, child pornographers and other criminals. On Friday, a bipartisan group of wired lawmakers addressed the conference by telephone and Internet to announce the formation of a Congressional Internet Caucus. Fewer than half of all members of Congress are now on line. Representative Rick White, Republican of Washington, said, "The idea behind the Internet Caucus is to do two things: increase members understanding of the Internet and get more members on-line so that people can contact their elected representatives on the Internet." [End]

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Re: Chaumian ecash without RSA
by jamesd＠echeque.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 08:10 AM 3/31/96 -0800, David Wagner wrote: > The bank picks a secret value k, and publishes g^k. > > To withdraw a coin, Alice picks an x, sets > y = x | hash(x), [ | is concatenation ] > chosen so that y is in G. Alice chooses a random secret blinding factor b, > sends to the bank > A->B: y g^b, > and the bank returns > B->A: (y g^b)^k, > debiting Alice's account. > > Note that this is a (blinded) Diffie-Hellman key exchange with public > exponentials g^k and y g^b; the bank returns the exchanged "secret". > > Alice unblinds this value, computing > z = (y g^b)^k (g^k)^{-b} > and now c = (x,z) is a coin in the digital cash system. Note z = y^k. > > We use the traditional online clearing protocol; to deposit the coin, a > shop S sends > S->B: x, z. > The bank checks to make sure the coin hasn't already been spent, and then > computes > y = x | MD5(x), > checking whether y^k = z. Two irritations with this protocol: 1: A coin is almost twice the size of a coin in the RSA protocol 2: Nobody except the bank can verify that a coin has face validity. The second point is more serious than you might think, as most of us want to see a world where everyone is his own bank and his own credit rating agency, as well as his own publisher. It will obstruct contracts of the form "Anne promises to provide numbers with certain cryptographic properties, provided Bob provides numbers with certain cryptographic properties." With RSA crypto cash, Anne can construct a blinded unsigned coin, and ask Bob to have it signed. For this to be reasonably convenient and practical, we need to have locally verifiable signatures. For computer mediated management of contracts, transactions, and credit ratings, we need contracts such that all intermediate transactions can be reduced to locally verifiable cryptographic protocols. --------------------------------------------------------------------- | We have the right to defend ourselves | http://www.jim.com/jamesd/ and our property, because of the kind | of animals that we are. True law | James A. Donald derives from this right, not from the | arbitrary power of the state. | jamesd(a)echeque.com

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gnutar + pgp filter mode
by danisch＠ira.uka.de 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- The gnu tar archiver allows to use an arbitrary compression program (option --use-compress-program=PROG). This works well with pgp if a small wrapper is used: #!/bin/csh -fb if ("$1" == "-d") then exec pgp -d -f else exec pgp -e -f endif The only problem is that this doesn't work well for larger amounts of data, because pgp reads in all data before starting with its work. Perhaps a future release of pgp will have a real filter mode. Hadmut BTW: Does this "crypto-hook" cause export restrictions to apply on gtar ? -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.2 iQCVAwUBMV/0tmc1jG5vDiNxAQFtAAP/TMuYeYf5q7k1Y8DrBjb6XFKYYFANH3RH FvThWq1BUgI+unH97EZkNkCzZJYT5qmLGk3+JLufCAw/o9YR7jKcldm2LNYJ96t2 BDcSGDF3qx/IUzQBa5NV+gUerNRVSwA3LzkTbXufOxYH0cB3KNcsx3B0bE1rEDa/ GCcJ1L6T+2s= =FMiZ -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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