December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

RE: [Noise] was Re: Givin
by pjn＠nworks.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

In> I guess I don't really have to worry too much, though. It is illegal In> for children to possess such items publicly, and any parent who In> condones it is simply breaking the law. I don't blame the child, I In> blame the moronic parent who let's it happen. You would be suprised at what kids can get away with without their parents knowing... P.J. pjn(a)nworks.com ... Wndows is jst finefor bacgrond telcomncations. ___ Blue Wave/QWK v2.20 [NR]

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FTP Software Licenses Pretty Good Privacy 07/23/96
by reagle＠rpcp.mit.edu 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

HAMBURG, GERMANY, 1996 JUL 23 (NB) -- By Sylvia Dennis. FTP Software, the Internet/connectivity software company, has licensed Pretty Good Privacy's encryption technology of the same name (PGP). Plans now call for FTP to integrate PGP within its range of TCP/IP (Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol) software. Under the terms of the agreement, PGP has licensed its encryption software to FTP for use in OnNet32 2.0 for Windows 95 and Windows NT, both versions of which will ship in the third quarter of this year on both sides of the Atlantic. Tom Steding, PGP's chief executive officer, said that a critical piece of the company's business strategy is to proliferate the "seamless integration of encryption technology" within e-mail applications programs. "We see this partnership as a powerful combination of two leaders who, together, will use their considerable market weight and technical expertise to promote and enhance the PGP towards becoming a universally accepted industry standard," he said. According to Rebecca Buisan, product marketing manager with FTP, the company has made several enhancements to OnNet32 to integrate PGP into its basic functions. There is now a two icon system which allows users to access a tool bar, designating options to encrypt or decrypt a message, and make a digital signature. Mail messages can also be left on a server or computer in an encrypted format, to be decrypted and read at will. "Experience has proven that cryptography only works if implemented effectively, so that it is simple for the user," she explained. According to Buisan, FTP has conducted extensive human factors testing to fine-tune PGP's cryptographic software into a "flexible and intuitive application that people will be encouraged to use." According to FTP, its implementation of the PGP encryption software is interoperable with current freeware versions available for free download from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) or one of the many other FTP (File Transfer Protocol) sites that distribute the package. The MIT site is at http://web.mit.edu/pgp . PGP was originally developed in 1991 by Phil Zimmerman. The package allowed PC users, for the first time, to send information in a secure encrypted format without fear of intervention. FTP's Web site is at http://www.ftp.com . (19960722/Press & Reader Contact: Manuela Dorken, FTP Software, +49-89-614130, Internet e-mail manuela(a)ftp.com; PGP, 415-631-1747, Internet e-mail info(a)viacrypt.com)

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RE: Brute Force DES
by Chris Adams 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

On 24 Jul 96 06:19:10 -0800, mattt(a)microsoft.com wrote: >To whittle this down to a 40-bit workload, we'd have to save 2^36 >entries* 2^8 bytes/entry = 2^39 Bytes = 512 Gig. Yes, admittedly large. Can you say RAID? I've had an idea for something similar to this, where you have a VERY large database btreed using the file system and subdirectories. This type of thing would REALLY lend itself to Unix, as we could just mount separate drives as branches of the tree. Now, enable NFS and things get interesting... >What's the cheapest form of storage, magtape? How much can you store on >magtape? The entries can be sorted so that lookup doesn't take long even >when you have to mount tapes. Hmmmm... Don't they have some of those 8mm tapes that go to 4-8GM per tape? Anyone have access to one? // Chris Adams <adamsc(a)io-online.com> - Webpages for sale! Se habla JavaScript! // Automatically receive my resume or PGPKEY by sending email with a subject // of 'send PGPKEY' or 'send resume'. Capitalization counts so be careful!

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Data Sources for DES Breaking
by mpd＠netcom.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Given that we might embark upon this public demonstration of the fragility of single DES, what should we use for test data? If a lone Cypherpunk simply encrypts a file with DES-ECB, hides the key in a drawer, and publishes the cyphertext and plaintext for use in a distributed cracking effort, there will of course be the suggestion that the exercise was rigged, and any public policy implications will be lost in the endless "Was So/Was Not" quibbling which will undoubtedly take place after the crack is complete. Given that most of the people currently singing the praises of single DES live in the banking industry, which has so far resisted all reasonable suggestions that it is time for them to move to something stronger, it would seem almost obvious that this crack should be done on some form of live financial data, such as might be obtained if one were to capture bits passing over publicly accessible phone lines between various financial institutions, ATM machines, and centralized computer facilities. The ideal data would be replete with prepended fixed headers which could be used as a wedge for a known plaintext attack, and should be sufficiently sensitive that breaking it will result in scandalous tabloid headlines and numerous opportunities for Cypherpunks to promote their policy agenda in the media. DES is, after all, a prime example of the type of encryption one gets when the government, rather than the brightest minds in the private sector, are in charge of determining National Crypto Policy and mandating the use of "approved" techniques. I would suggest we obtain the test data for this exercise as soon as possible, and widely disseminate it on the Net. There is no need to wait until we have distributed cracking software ready to go before doing this, and having the actual data to play with while munging the code together may lead to some new insights as to efficient ways to attack the problem. -- Mike Duvos $ PGP 2.6 Public Key available $ mpd(a)netcom.com $ via Finger. $

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Schelling Points, Rights, and Game Theory--Part II
by tcmay＠got.net 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

As promised in Part I, here is more on the application of Schelling points to the discussion of "rights" (property rights, rights of parents to tell their children what to do, etc.). We saw that Schelling points, as developed by Richard Schelling and others, are essentially "lower entropy" points. (In fact, I suspect there are formulations which involve so-called "maxiumum entropy" methods which would reproduce the theory of Schelling points; Cover and Thomas hint at this in their "Information Theory" book.) How does this apply to rights? Let us take as an example the contentious issue of "parent's rights," "children's rights," and societal issues involving schooling, child abuse, indoctrination into the body politic, citizenship, etc. * Viewpoint #1: Parents have absolute control of what their minor (under some age, usually 18 and/or resident in their homes) children read, watch on t.v., listen to on the radio, etc. They can control the comings and goings of their minor children, whom they may associate with, etc. * Viewpoint #2: Children, even minor children, have certain basic rights to access to information, access to t.v., radio, music, and books. Even access to crypto! * Viewpoint #3: The State and/or Community has an interest in the upbringing of a child and may take steps to direct the education and exposure to information of children, even in contravention of the wishes of parents. There are of course various shadings of these viewpoints. And examples can be found to defend each of these viewpoints, and also to attack them. (For example, what of the Christian Scientist who lets his 5-year-old die of an easily-curable disease because he believes injections are unGodly? What of the 10-year-old who is taught in public schools how to use condoms (or how to clean dirty needles), in contravention of the wishes of the parent?) Cutting to the chase, I submit that nearly all societies have "evolved" an approach that says: -- "While I may think you are raising your child in a way different from how I would raise him, I cannot take over the raising of your child, and I cannot be in your house/tent/cave/yurt at all times, or even at _any_times, so I will basically not interfere unless something really egregious happens." This is a "Schelling point" in the same way that territorial boundaries develop and are mutually adhered to, for the most part. The _costs_ of extending beyond the Schelling point boundaries is deemed to be too high, and the boundary persists. (Boundaries may jump around, as conditions change. And wars still exist to try to imbalance or move the boundaries. Nothing says the Schelling points are fixed in stone, only that the points are not completely random, and that there is a kind of order out of the chaos.) This is summarized in the most important of all Schelling points: "Live and let live." In the absence of a direct threat to one's self or family, and in the absence of other compelling evidence of a need to intervene, much energy and grief is saved by not trying to intervene in the lives of others. (I believe many of the themes we talk about, here and in libertarian circles, come together in this way. The view of John Rawls, that "justice" is that which an ensemble of people of people would pick, even if they did not what station in life they would be born into, closely fits with this Schelling point model.) ObCrypto Sidebar: The "fair" method for dividing a pie between two people is well-known: "You cut, I choose." This *game theory* result is central to many cryptographic protocols (though it may not always be apparent at first). And the protocol can be extended to 3 parties, and proabably to N. Research is ongoing on this, including Cypherpunk Robin Hanson's work at Caltech. My essay here is not a formal, footnoted proof of my claims, naturally. But I believe my claims to be basically correct, and to offer insights into the debate about "rights"...certainly a Schelling point or evolutionary game theory interpretation of what we call "rights" is superior to an appeal-to-God or "natural rights" interpretation. To get back to the issue of children's rights: I will not expend my energies and risk my life to forcibly gain entry to my neighbor's "castle" to make sure his 7-year-old son is able to view "Power Rangers" when his "rights" to do so are denied by his father. Nor will I pay for cops, Child Protective Services, and a powerful bureaucracy to enforce these "rights." Nor will I demand that this parent send his child to the church I deem most appropriate, nor the school I deem most appropriate, etc. That is, "practical and economic" issues lead me to the conclusion that parents basically can tell their minor children what to do, and that only truly egregious cases, such as clear cases of severe beatings, warrant the interference by the State. The same applies to cryptography. While there are dangers with any technology, including cryptographers, most societies have eventually evolved a system in which one is secure in one's home and papers. Orwell's vision of video cameras in all homes (actually, only of the elites, as the "proles" were unmonitored) has not come to pass, and even in nominally totalitarian states like the U.S.S.R. and P.R.C. there was considerable privacy in the home, at least after the worst of the terrors in the 1930-70 period. (I am not endorsing these states, naturally, just noting that even these states had to recognize the Schelling points of (mostly) not trying to send cops into private residences to enforce marginally-important rules.) Forceful advocates of children's rights, such as Mike Duvos, will no doubt find many points to use to argue for intervention on behalf of children. And in some case, I would even agree. But the basic principle, the "right" of a man to control his own castle, and the "right" not to have people nosing around inside his home, and the very real economic point that a parent pays for services and good consumed in his house, means that the balance of rights _must_ be in the direction of Viewpoint #1 above. Parents are free to raise their children as they see fit. They feed and clothe them, they talk to them about ideas and beliefs, they control the television set and the radio channel tuned to, and so forth. This is basic reality. To change this basic reality would require intervention from outside. And this is too high a price to pay for illusory gains. (I say "illusory" because I don't think intervention from outside would produce better-educated children, though it might produce more controllable citizen-units.) This essay has concentrated perhaps too much on "parent's vs. children's rights," but this is what sparked my desire to write an essay on Schelling points and why certain so-called rights appear to have evolved. I believe the game-theoretic and evolutionary approaches, mixed in with economics, offer the most solid grounding for the discussion of rights. Comments, as always, are welcome. --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, Licensed Ontologist | black markets, collapse of governments. "National borders aren't even speed bumps on the information superhighway."

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Re: When books are outlawed
by Alan Olsen 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 06:07 PM 7/24/96 -0400, you wrote: > ><< On Our Backs magazine>> > >That's "Off Our Backs". Very much at the forefront of the >PC-gestapo-thought-police trend. > >Also has a _fabulous_ running comic strip about the reality of lesbian >relationships. "Dykes to watch out For", if my memory serves me well. Off Our Backs is a PC lesbian magazine. "On Our Backs" is an S&M Lesbian magazine edited by Suzie Bright. It is not anything resembling PC. (Ms. Bright does not have a nice oppinion of Dwarkin and her fellow travelers, to put it mildly.) ObOff-Topic: If you ever get the chance to hear Suzie Bright speak on one of her tours, by all means go. It is well worth the time! --- Alan Olsen -- alano(a)teleport.com -- Contract Web Design & Instruction `finger -l alano(a)teleport.com` for PGP 2.6.2 key http://www.teleport.com/~alano/ "We had to destroy the Internet in order to save it." - Sen. Exon "Microsoft -- Nothing but NT promises."

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No Subject
by JMKELSEY＠delphi.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- [ To: cypherpunks ## Date: 07/19/96 08:13 pm ## Subject: Message pools ] >Date: Wed, 17 Jul 1996 23:19:59 -0700 >From: Bill Stewart <stewarts(a)ix.netcom.com> >Subject: Re: Message pools _are_ in use today! >>2. The authorities already have identified a suspect, call him "Bob," and >>wish to know if he reading (and perhaps decrypting) messages to "Alice." >>As several of us have noted, #1 is tough--real tough. The authorities would >>have to contact 10,000 or more ISPs who have local newsfeeds and subpoena >>their logs of who read which newsgroups...assuming such logs are even kept >Getting everybody is tough. Getting a lot of the potential suspects, >however, isn't as tough as it looks - the vast majority of home Internet >users are on AOL, Compuserve, Prodigy, UUNet, Netcom, or (RSN) AT&T. >Anonymous Message Pool users are a bit more likely to use niche-market ISPs, >especially under pseudonyms, but if the number of users increases >significantly there'll still be a reasonable proportion on the big carriers, >which are probably more cooperative and probably keep more complete logs. There are two other factors. 1. If you're trying to figure out who anonymously posted the ``All faggots must die'' message on alt.sex.motss, you have a very large number of potential suspects. However, if you're trying to figure out who anonymously posted the ``how to manufacture nerve gas'' post, your suspect list is quite a bit smaller. The condition for technical information about cryptography or computer security is similar. 2. It may be that the way you test your suspects is parallelizable enough that you can do a ``dictionary attack,'' in which you go down a list of people who you might suspect of posting something for one reason or another, and test the hypothesis that each of them actually did post it. Suppose I have such a test which can rule out 75% of my suspect list. This becomes a useful tool--especially if I can track multiple posts by the same user and rule out more and more of my suspect list as more and more messages are posted. I wouldn't count on even heavily-chained anonymous remailer messages to protect my identity from moderately wealthy and determined attackers, if I did many anonymous posts. Writing style and topic alone may narrow the suspect list down to a manageable number. ># Bill Stewart +1-415-442-2215 stewarts(a)ix.netcom.com ># http://www.idiom.com/~wcs --John Kelsey, jmkelsey(a)delphi.com / kelsey(a)counterpane.com PGP 2.6 fingerprint = 4FE2 F421 100F BB0A 03D1 FE06 A435 7E36 -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.2 iQCVAwUBMfZezUHx57Ag8goBAQGe+AP/fYWAfHmFwVdYvoQjAtcIAH5csUb2pWQi GYfsluIY1Wn2sPTxf+2GoVvfmwRlhAgwGtOTav83tsP8KN6uB6MJTe3NO67gL7Cx W1U7yNgC0Ebuyoxr4Hi4p3d0s57wroscy15O7/XgZ3Fcu+yi0lSoJOML86hipCUc plb/XsYBLLE= =sEbh -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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Re: Distributed DES crack
by talon57＠well.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Matt Blaze scribes: >My estimate is that an FPGA-based machine that can do a single DES >key every four months (eight months to exhaust the whole keyspace) >could be built with off-the-shelf stuff for comfortably under $50k >(plus labor, plus software development costs). A prototype board >should cost under $1000 and will help prove the concept and get a >more accurate cost estimate. I expect to build such a prototype >machine myself, and, if it works as I expect, maybe the whole >thing. >-matt If the price is reasonable, I for one would be willing to donate the bucks for a FPGA chip or two to see this get built: -------------------- | Chip donated by | | talon57(a)well.com | -------------------- The very existance of this device in the real world would make our point better than anything I've yet heard. Imagine being at a hearing and having the physical device sitting there before the judges...... Brian

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Re: Game Theory and its Relevance to Cypherpunks
by James A. Donald 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 03:21 AM 7/21/96 -0700, Llywarch Hen wrote: > What Timothy May espouses is not the appearance of craziness but actual > insanity itself. The best way to convince others you are crazy is to actually be crazy. More practically, if you organize your nuclear forces so that any serious war is likely to escalate uncontrollably into the battle of armageddon, regardless of your intentions and desires, which is how the American government organized its nuclear forces in Europe, then you can pretty much guarantee you will not have to face a serious war. --------------------------------------------------------------------- | 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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Twenty Bank Robbers -- Game theory:)
by ichudov＠galaxy.galstar.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Here's a puzzle for our game theorists. Twenty cypherpunks robbed a bank. They took 20 million bucks. Here's how they plan to split the money: they stay in line, and the first guy suggests how to split the money. Then they vote on his suggestion. If 50% or more vote for his proposal, his suggestion is adopted. Otherwise they kill the first robber and now it is the turn of guy #2 to make another splitting proposal. Same voting rules apply. The question is, what will be the outcome? How will they split the money, how many robbers will be dead, and so on? igor

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