December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

GSM A5 Papers
by John Young 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

We would be grateful for assistance in obtaining copies of the following papers, particularly the first: S J Shepherd, "Cryptanalysis of the GSM A5 Cipher Algorithm", IEE Colloquium on Security and Cryptography Applications to Radio Systems, Digest No. 1994/141, Savoy Place, London, 3 June 1994, (COMMERCIAL-IN-CONFIDENCE). S J Shepherd, "An Approach to the Cryptanalysis of Mobile Stream Ciphers", IEE Colloquium on Security and Cryptography Applications to Radio Systems, Digest No. 1994/141, Savoy Place, London, 3 June 1994, (COMMERCIAL-IN-CONFIDENCE). S J Shepherd, "Public Key Stream Ciphers", IEE Colloquium on Security and Cryptography Applications to Radio Systems, Digest No. 1994/141, pp 10/1-10/7, Savoy Place, London, 3 June 1994. These are listed on Dr Shepherd's bio at: http://vader.brad.ac.uk/finance/SJShepherd.html

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Futures Doomed
by John Young 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

More on the future of money in the NYT today, "Crime's New Cash of Choice," the Euro, which plans larger denominations than the mobs' favorite $100 US. If the Euro catches on, it says, the USG could lose billions in interest-free loans on stashed C-notes, unused except in the underground -- which the US turns a blind tax eye to because more revenue comes from the seignoriage. http://www.nytimes.com Or: http://jya.com/euro-threat.htm On competing millenarist doomsaying, the NYT has on page one a report on an exercise last month which revealed how ill-prepared the US is to handle a germ attack, with PDDs coming shortly to address anti-terrorism (with a Czar), and the squabbles among competing agencies for intel fed shock scenarios leading to terrific stockpiles of money antidotes, preferrably all non-fictional, but not likely since the report says that the PDD the President gets aroused at is Richard Preston's "The Cobra Event" -- sold out for miles around the bunkers' intake vents of the germs' most wanted. http://jya.com/germ-threat.htm Bear in mind that Kennedy's hard-on for James Bond shaped a generation of whiz kids looking for gory galore, the fathers of natsec implanted kids now in late boomer breakdown seeing the future all too clear, inclined to predict their end The End.

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Re: Hettinga promoted to Head Critic In Charge...
by John Young 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Asgaard wrote: >But Timothy C. May never 'claimed' any such things outside of an >entirely humorous context. On the other hand, *you* obviously had >some kind of fit some months back, feeling singled out by 'M', but >now are remembering it completely backwards. This is true. And helpful to file for future reference. Data show that Tim's thoughts are not what they appear to be in text. The needle -- yes, the mind-reading machine's analog -- jumps all the way to left, Bizarre Humor, whenever no mercy emissions emanate from the hilltop bastion's outgoing array. Only unclues take Tim's deadpan assays for deadshot intent. Those black talons are black jokes, Bob, laugh. You never been shot at to keep you dancing? Don't stop, though, or the fun ends.

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80% of cash is in underground economy!
by ichudov＠algebra.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

A surprising finding from New York Times: Economists once believed that just 10 percent of all currency in circulation was tied up in the underground economy. Now it turns out that 80 percent is closer to the mark. Most of it is in $100 bills, which are the largest available and now account for well over half the value of the nation's paper money. American banks and businesses hold very little cash. American households are also loath to keep much of it lying around. Yet according to the Federal Reserve there is enough currency floating around to make it appear that every American family of four has $6,000 or so in cash stashed under the mattress, including three dozen $100 bills. And despite the ubiquitousness of credit cards, ATMs and electronic transfers, the sea of cash has been growing much faster than the nation's gross national product. - Igor.

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Screw You Packet
by Illuminatus Primus 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

http://www.theonion.com/onion3315/screwyoupacket.html BACK * 22 April 1998 _________________________________________________________________ WASHINGTON, DC--In an effort to streamline degradation of the American populace and consolidate all forms of bureaucratic hassle into one convenient mailing, federal officials announced Monday that, beginning in 1999, the government will issue all citizens an annual "Screw You" packet. The packet, which is to be distributed in conjunction with federal tax forms, will condense the government's countless methods of abuse into a single handy 9x12 envelope. "The federal government's current citizen-persecution system is inefficient and wasteful," said Sen. Alfonse D'Amato (R-NY), who spearheaded the congressional task force that developed the "Screw You" packet. "This compact packet is not only cost-effective, it's user-friendly and intuitive. Simple instructions and easy-to-remember acronyms make the filing process as quick and painless as possible." The packet's easy-to-understand forms will free citizens of the nightmare of red tape normally associated with federal filings. Filling out and returning the "Screw You" packet is mandatory and easy. Here's how: The first step is to calculate your Economic Mobility Factor using the convenient EMF 1138 calculation sheet included in the packet. Those with an Economic Mobility Factor of 90 or above may mail or fax forms SC0089-L and SC0065-DD to their local Screw You EMF Processing Center. They may also drop them off at SYEMFPC kiosks conveniently set up at post offices and public libraries across the U.S. Those with an EMF between 30 and 90 must submit their forms in person to a Screw You EMF Processing Center Clerk. Such applicants must meet with the SYEMFPCC, and should arrange appointments via the State Application Auditing Appointment Bureau. Once an appointment date has been set by the SAAAB, a Screw You Appointment Confirmation Card will be mailed to you within three to four weeks. Upon receipt of the Screw You Appointment Confirmation Card, applicants will be required to register the appointment with the Screw You Appointment Registry Bureau. Failure to register the appointment within a 48-hour period will result in a fine automatically added to your estimated SYEMF-1138 quotient. The amount of the fine can be determined by using Screw You Fine/ Penalty Schedule 565612, which is available at all local Department of Fiduciary Adjustment branch offices. If there is no DFA office in your immediate Screw You zone, district, state or township, you should contact the Federal Department of Fiduciary Adjustments in Washington, D.C., and ask to speak to a Citizen's Outreach Representative who will look up the predetermined fine on SYF/PS565612. There is a $50 processing fee for any and all telephone queries to the FDFA. Those wishing to charge the $50 fee can do so by making three copies of forms SYEMF-1138, KSJU-387-SK, SKSP-90-EZ, and SC-2389, along with computer code 0100010 and ACC-842, and forwarding them to the Federal Department of Fiduciary Adjustments Postal Processing Center in Colorado Springs, CO. Forms received by the FDFAPPC will be processed and returned to applicants within six to eight weeks. Those who wish to have their forms returned in less than six to eight weeks may file a Fiduciary Calculation Acceleration Form 9056 at their local SYEMFPC. FCAF-9056 forms will be available Monday to Tuesday between the hours of 7:45 a.m. and 8:15 a.m., and are distributed on a first-come, first-serve basis. Completed forms should be returned to the FDFA in Washington, DC. All FCAF-9056 forms that have not cleared authentication via the FDFA in Washington, DC, will be rendered null and void, and will not be forwarded to the FDFAPPC in Colorado Springs. Applicants who misdirect their FCAF-9056 forms will draw a $10 per SYEMF-1138 fine. The fine must be paid within 36 hours, or the applicant will be subject to house arrest and strip-search by the Armed Outreach Response Team, an independently operated division of the Screw You Outreach Consortium. _________________________________________________________________ BACK * 22 April 1998 © Copyright 1998 Onion, Inc., All rights reserved. View masthead for more information. Questions/comments? Please consult our contact information page.

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Re: Futures Doomed
by Duncan Frissell 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 11:53 AM 4/26/98 -0400, John Young wrote: >More on the future of money in the NYT today, "Crime's >New Cash of Choice," the Euro, which plans larger >denominations than the mobs' favorite $100 US. If the >Euro catches on, it says, the USG could lose billions in >interest-free loans on stashed C-notes, unused except >in the underground -- which the US turns a blind tax eye >to because more revenue comes from the seignoriage. Why haven't the undergrounders adopted the SF1000 note (just under $700 these days)? Nice denomination. DCF

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Fwd: Whitehouse news flash!!!
by Iwar 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Subject: Whitehouse news flash!!! From: WhiteHouse(a)aol.com Date: Sun, 26 Apr 1998 20:02:19 -0700 (PDT) Reply-To: twang38(a)aol.com <a href="http://free4you.hypermart.net/promo2.html">Click Here for more information!!</a>

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NTT Develops Secure Public-Key Encryption Scheme
by Nobuki Nakatuji 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

http://pr.info.ntt.co.jp/news/news98e/980416.html Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corporation (NTT) announced today the development of Efficient Probabilistic Public-Key Encryption (EPOC), a highly secure and mathematically verified public-key encryption scheme that encrypts information on the transmission side with a public-key (encryption key) and then decrypts it on the receiver side with a secret -key (decryption key). Encryption technology has become necessary to prevent information on the Internet from being monitored by others without authorization. Public-key encryption is being widely researched as a practical means of encrypting communication for security. The paramount feature of any public-key encryption schemes is ensuring that figuring out the decryption key from the encryption key is as difficult as possible, to prevent unauthorized use of ciphered information. The RSA*1 scheme uses factoring and the elliptic curve encryption scheme*2 uses elliptic curve discrete logarithms, both of which can take a supercomputer a very long time to determine the key. It has not been verified, however, that either scheme provides the necessary security to prevent ciphered information from being broken by a method other than factoring or elliptic curve discrete logarithms. The Rabin encryption scheme*3, which also uses factoring, offers no algorithm other than factoring for computing the complete plain-text, but it has not been proven that any bit of plain-text cannot be computed. EPOC is a practical scheme in that the computer computation workload for encrypting and decrypting is about the same as that for the RSA and elliptic curve encryption schemes. Also, EPOC is a highly secure scheme which uses a trapdoor discrete logarithm*4 as the key mathematical technique and can be broken only by factoring. Factoring is difficult to accomplish, even with a supercomputer, and the probability that an efficient solution to factoring will be found soon is very low, because mathematicians have been studying the problem for years. EPOC ensures that partial, as well as whole, texts cannot be broken. Finally, EPOC uses probabilistic encryption, so re-encrypted text is encrypted differently each time, unlike the Rabin and RSA scheme, which use deterministic encryption. NTT now plans to incorporate EPOC in systems for enhanced security on the Internet. Public-key encryption is used primarily for key distribution, because computation load is greater than that for secret-key encryption*5, so EPOC will be used in existing encryption modules for key distribution. Other applications will also be developed. In particular, EPOC is suitable for electronic voting and anonymous telecommunication since it has a homomorphic property, unlike the RSA, Rabin and elliptic curve encryption schemes. The theoretical details will be presented at Eurocrypt '98 in Finland this June. Notes: *1: The RSA scheme was developed by Rivest, Shamir, and Adleman in 1978 and is based on the difficulty of factoring. It was the first public-key encryption scheme. *2: The elliptic curve encryption scheme was proposed independently by Miller and Koblitz in 1985 and is based on the difficulty of elliptic curve discrete logarithms. The basic technique is based on a scheme developed by Diffie and Hellman in 1976. *3: The Rabin scheme was developed by Rabin in 1979 and is based on the difficulty of factoring. It was the first public-key encryption scheme to verify the impossibility of breaking a complete text without factoring the public-key. *4: A trapdoor discrete logarithm is a newly discovered discrete logarithm problem that can be solved only if a secret-key is known. *5: Secret-key encryption differs from public-key encryption in that the sender and the receiver use the same key for encryption and decryption. ______________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com

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Serpent - A New Block Cipher Proposal for AES
by Nobuki Nakatuji 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Serpent - A New Block Cipher Proposal for AES Over the last six months, I have been working with Ross Anderson and Lars Knudsen to develop a candidate block cipher for the Advanced Encryption Standard. Our algorithm, called Serpent, is described in a paper that will appear at the 5th workshop on FastSoftware Encryption.A reference implementation by Frank Stajano, a research students of Ross, is available here. The authors' home pages can be found both in http://www.cs.technion.ac.il/~biham/, http://www.ii.uib.no/~larsr/, and http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/users/rja14/. The authors' email addresses are biham(a)cs.technion.ac.il, larsr(a)ii.uib.no, and rja14(a)cl.cam.ac.uk. ______________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com

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Prologue 14/0 -- Passoword: cypherpunks
by Toto 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

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