December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

Re: So, what crypto legislation (if any) is necessary?
by JonWienke＠aol.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

>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

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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: Witch Hunts
by tcmay＠got.net 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Bruce Zambini wrote: >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 I don't buy this. If you consult the archives, circa the fall of 1993, you'll find that while Detweiler/S.Boxx/etc. repeatedly begged me to engage him in debate, I declined. So, what was the "effective" part? I thought his insults, rants, forgeries, screams, shouts, and general gibbering detracted from his real points, such as they were. I'm beginning to think there must be a personality type or behavioral pattern at work here. Others in recent months have also had their ideas buried in a stream of insults, rants, and CAPITAL LETTERS! The pattern seems to be the same, though I doubt any of them are Detweiler. --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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Article on PGP Viacrypt
by walter＠cithe302.cithep.caltech.edu 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Hi Folks, There is an interesting article by Simon Garfinkle in this morning's(Apr 2nd) electronic version of the San Jose Mercury news. Its on the index page so I don't think you need an account to read it. The article deals with the new key management features and extensions in Viacrypt and how PRZ is upset since it allows employers to read their employees messages. The URL is: http://www.sjmercury.com/business/priv401.htm -Chris walter(a)cithe501.cithep.caltech.edu

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Re: [NOISE] Cable-TV-Piracy-Punks
by tcmay＠got.net 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

thus demonstrating that the system had only moderate security. Enough security to stop an attacker from attacking a specific instance of the chip, but enough ^ not security to prevent attacks completely.

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Re: SQUID's (fwd)
by Jim Choate 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Forwarded message: > > > Apparently you are grossly unfamiliar with the > > characteristics and capabilities of SQUID's. To help you > > catch up... > > Actually, I am quite familiar with Superconducting Quantum > Interference Devices and the one existing commercial application > of the technology, a magnetometer probe containing a liquid > nitrogen cooled SQUID chip at its tip. There are several commercial probes available, not a single source as you claim. The Air Force has used them in experimental fighter programs for several years allowing hands-off flying (in a simulator) with quite good results. Quite a few neurophysiologists use them along with NMR to map the neuronal activity of the human brain on a neuron by neuron basis. The folks who make the various flavors of super-conducting wire use them to test for imperfections in the product. I sugest that your familiarity with the SQUID technology might be a little dated. Take the time to contact Conductus. > > [Biography of Mr. Squid deleted] > > I will still laugh at suggestions that Mr. Squid can remotely > read the EEPROM in my smart card, however. I didn't make that assertion. I clearly offered it as a source of education and entertainment. I even went so far as to specificaly predicate my recital with this caveat. While Mr. SQUID might be able to do it, the other commercial probes out there would have no problem from reading your smart card on a transistor by transistor state if that is what were required.

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Tamper-Resistance in VLSI
by tcmay＠got.net 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 12:06 AM 4/1/96, Mike Duvos wrote: >However, I will observe that whenever technology is put forth for >criticism on this list, there are always a few people who insist >upon maintaining that anything can be easily defeated. > >"All you have to do is <blank>" they exclaim, where <blank> may >be replaced by "Quantum Factoring", "SQUIDs", "Scanning Tunneling >Microscopy", "NP=P", "The EPR Effect", "Nanomachines", or some >other exotic notion which would be lucky if it had even achieved >a laboratory demonstration under carefully controlled conditions >much less a practical application to the problem in question. > >Common to all such claims is a gross underappreciation of the >engineering difficulties involved, in this case those related to >reading logic states buried in a densely integrated digital >device without destroying them. Something that isn't easy to do >even if the device has been designed specifically for the purpose >of permitting such observation in a laboratory environment. While I agree that reverse-engineering/analyzing the internal states of VLSI devices is much harder than some are claiming, it is not the case that a chip must have been designed with this in mind for it to be possible. When, then, is it possible, and when is it not? There is no simple answer; I'd have to look closely at the device, its packaging, how many layers of metal are involved, the size of the target node to be measured, and a raft of other things. >Such distractions, unfortunately, are why good physics rarely >gets discussed in sci.physics, and why discussions on this list >about nuclear bomb design, tampering, and hacking frequently take >off in the crackpot direction. > >The bad eventually drives out the good, and few of the competent >posters are going to continue to comment on a thread which has >degenerated into the "You don't know anything. Mr. Squid can >read your smart card and your brain waves too" level of >interaction. Well, this is my third post tonight on this thread. I admit that it has little to do with practical list issue (but then, what really does?). Howvever, this happens to be an area of primary expertise for me (device physics, voltage contrast, SQUIDs, sensing small charges, and tamper-resistance), so I'm making comments to correct the various misapprehensions here. As to tamper-resistance, there is some exciting work being done on "fingerprinting" of chips, some of which has been publically presented. I'm under an NDA on some of this, but I can say that the cost of reverse-engineering a smart card chip or satellite decoder chip is about to take a quantum leap upward. --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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Re: [NOISE] Cable-TV-Piracy-Punks
by tcmay＠got.net 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 11:56 PM 3/31/96, Randy Catoe wrote: >>"Perry E. Metzger" <perry(a)piermont.com> writes: >> >> > Or to people with access to scanning microscopy techniques >> > like STMs or AFMs. I suspect that there are lots of >> > techniques that can be successfully used. It used to be that >> > using them required the sort of facilities only available at >> > a large semiconductor manufacturer, but now I suspect that >> > it would be easy for a student at a major university, and >> > probably less easy, but still perfectly feasible, for a >> > person working at home with lots of sophisticated but fairly >> > available equipment like STMs. >> >The proof would be in the pudding, would it not? Are their >documented cases of smartcard scavenging? Intel produced an "encrypted EPROM," for use in coin-op game machines and in similar applications, in the early 80s. My voltage contrast lab was able to use our machine (which I invented and my group then developed and deployed to major sites within Intel) to read the internal data streams out from internal nodes, thus demonstrating that the system had only moderate security. Enough security to stop an attacker from attacking a specific instance of the chip, but enough security to prevent attacks completely. Does this qualify as a documented case, coming as it does directly from the guy who lead such a scavenging attack? --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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Key signing - LA & SF
by don＠cs.byu.edu 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- I will be in the Los Angeles and San Francisco areas briefly at the end of April. Anyone who would like to trade keysignatures, please email me. (Unfortunately my ability to get around will be somewhat limited) Don ObCypherpunks: I read cpunks by NNTP from nntp.hks.net. Let me assure you, the apparent noise level has gone down by 90% from when it landed in my mailbox. Many thanks to those who provide this service. - -- <don(a)cs.byu.edu> http://students.cs.byu.edu/~don PGP 0x994B8F39 fRee cRyPTo! "It is not worth an intelligent man's time to be in the majority. By definition, there are already enough people to do that." - G. H. Hardy ** This user insured by the Smith, Wesson, & Zimmermann insurance company ** -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.2 iQB1AwUBMV8iosLa+QKZS485AQGVJgL/TED+T/49jMtNRbCAHJdo+IkSOTx7Ajrx Ox7+ABlcbCYKudLE70qh7RDdz9TI2sojB6FZ0vyoLGdVM61ljfd9YzZfq/kVXsyY EZ4HM2nGInXBQFo+rfQcn7JbXAT3agz/ =NZjK -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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Re: [NOISE] Cable-TV-Piracy-Punks (fwd)
by tcmay＠got.net 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 7:54 PM 3/31/96, Jim Choate wrote: >Forwarded message: > >> > Presumedly the state of the EEPROM cannot be deduced by any >> > external examination of the card, and any attempt to >> > incrementally abrade the card down to the relevent circuit >> > elements should completely obliterate the minute charge >> > differences which represent the data. >> >> They aren't immune to the laws of physics. If it can be put together, >> it can be taken apart. I can even surmise HOW it can be taken apart. > >You wouldn't even have to take it apart. Just subject it to analysis using >SQUID's. Using this technology you would not even have to physicaly touch >the card, let alone remove any parts of it. Well, I worked on SQUIDs (Superconducting quantum-interferometric devices) in 1972-3, and also worked on electron-beam analysis of microprocessors and memory device in 1980-84, and I can assure you that SQUIDs cannot do what you want them to do. I'll be happy to supply additional details if there's sufficient interest. --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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