December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

Re: Fate of Ecash if RSA is cracked?
by norm＠netcom.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 8:01 AM 6/3/96, Perry E. Metzger wrote: >Dr. Dimitri Vulis writes: .... >> This'll happen, probably sooner than later. > >Why do you assume that? There are plenty of problems that are >provably not solvable in non-exponential time even if P=NP. What makes >you think this one is going to be solved? > >.pm The "Idea Futures" forum has established odds on this. The current odds are currently 60% that a 1024 bit number will be factored by 2010 and 30% that a 512 bit number will be factored by 1997. See <http://if.arc.ab.ca/IF.shtml> for Idea Futures and <http://if.arc.ab.ca/bin/summary> for odds for various questions.

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Re: Saw this on CNN: Anonymous Stock tips over IRC as bad???
by rick hoselton 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

>Perry E. Metzger writes: >> Timothy C. May writes: Suggestion #1: Never get your legal advice from cypherpunks newsletter. Suggestion #2: If you absolutely can't resist going against Suggestion #1, then listen carefully to Perry. As just a lowly programmer around here, I have often been told that I would be breaking the law if I trade on some piece of information before it becomes public. I am not such an "insider" that I must register my trades 90 days in advance. I've read the actual statute. (though I am not a lawyer and, these days, even lawyers don't know what a law means until the final verdict) You might also want to ask Ivan Boeskey(sp?). I think he's out of Federal prison by now. He's the guy that cut a deal with the Feds to give him time to sell a few billion dollars worth of stock before being arrested, so that he could pay his fine. Once he was arrested, the value of those stocks fell. It looks to me like he and the Feds traded on inside information so that he could pay his fine for trading on inside information. He still went to jail, and he had enough money for good lawyers. Imagine what would happen to me! >IANAL, but I think you must be wrong about this, Perry. If this were >the case then, as an employee of company XYZ, I would never be permitted >to buy XYZ stock (which is clearly not the case) since I *always* have >information that others outside the company do not (about staff changes, >product plans and such). I suspect the deciding factor must have to do >with the ability to execute actions which have substantial direct effects >on the stock price (i.e. buying a company, declaring dividends, having a >massive downsizing, etc.). > > >-- Jeff >

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Re: CWD: "Jacking in from the "One that Got Away" Port
by jim bell 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 10:19 PM 6/3/96 -0500, Declan McCullagh wrote: >(By Brock Meeks / brock(a)well.com / Archived at http://www.cyberwerks.com/) > > > CyberWire Dispatch // Copyright (c) 1996 // > A virtual tactical nuke was hurled into the arcane subculture of > encryption technology Monday when RSA President Jim Bizdos revealed > that his company's Japanese subsidiary had developed a monster chipset > capable of scrambling voice and data real time with a so-called "key > length" of up to 1024 bits. I don't mean to be overly critical, but why not provide for the possibility of longer keys? The RSA key only has to be exchanged and decoded once per call, presumably, which suggests that there shouldn't be a problem to do 2048-bit keys. Admittedly, 1024 bits will be good for many years, but... > That key length stuff is just so much gibberish to those playing > without a scorecard, so let me drill down on it for you. Basically, > the longer the key length, the harder it is for a message to be broken > by "brute force" automated attacks. Current U.S. laws prohibit the > export of any encryption device with a key length longer than 40-bits, > or roughly the equivalent of Captain Crunch decoder ring. For hardcore > math types, I'm told that a 1024-bit key length is 10 to the 296th > power more difficult to break than 40 bits. I sure do wish they'd get things like this a bit more accurate... Oh, well, I suppose it doesn't really matter... Jim Bell jimbell(a)pacifier.com

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Paper about electronic cash and common currencies available
by Robert Hettinga 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

--- begin forwarded text Sender: e$(a)thumper.vmeng.com Reply-To: Wolfgang Roeckelein <wolfgang.roeckelein(a)wiwi.uni-regensburg.de> Mime-Version: 1.0 (NeXT Mail 3.3 v118.2) Precedence: Bulk Date: Tue, 4 Jun 96 11:14:41 +0200 From: Wolfgang Roeckelein <wolfgang.roeckelein(a)wiwi.uni-regensburg.de> To: Multiple recipients of <e$(a)thumper.vmeng.com> Subject: Paper about electronic cash and common currencies available Hello everybody, our paper titled "A Common Currency System for Spontaneous Transactions on Public Networks" is available online under http://www.whu-koblenz.de/~wolfgang/CommonCurrency/ Perhaps somebody might be interested. Thank you for your attention, Wolfgang Roeckelein --- Dipl.-Wirtsch.Inf. Voice: +49 941 943 2998 Wolfgang Roeckelein Fax: +49 941 943 4986 Uni Regensburg E-Mail: roeckelein(a)wi.whu-koblenz.de Universitaetsstr. 31 Wolfgang.Roeckelein(a)wiwi.uni-regensburg.de D-93053 Regensburg (MIME and NeXTmail ok) Germany WWW: http://www.whu-koblenz.de/~wolfgang/ GCM/B d-- s: a- C++ US+++$ UX+++ P+ L E? W++ N++ w-- O-(++) M+ !V PS++ PE Y+ PGP(++) t+ 5? X? R+ tv b++ DI D++ G e+++>++++ h+ r++>% y? (Geek Code V3.x) --- end forwarded text ----------------- Robert Hettinga (rah(a)shipwright.com) e$, 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA "If they could 'just pass a few more laws', we would all be criminals." --Vinnie Moscaritolo The e$ Home Page: http://www.vmeng.com/rah/

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Re: Class III InfoWar: TST Article
by jya＠pipeline.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

On Jun 04, 1996 12:29:02, 'Dan Haskovec <dhaskove(a)ucsd.edu>' wrote: >Here's the reply I got from a friend that I forwarded it to.... > > >and the verdict is... NetMYTH! I checked the cite in the article on >cyberterrorism... no such article ran on 6/2/96 in the Times >(London)... nor, in fact, in any newspaper available on Nexis... >just thought I would let you know... Gosh, Dan, your friend may want to double-check. After reading Winn Schwartau's post, I bought a copy of The Sunday Times here in NYC late Sunday in which the article led at the top of the Front Page. Be glad to fax anyone a copy who may want such, ahem, verification. E-mail me a number. However, I acknowledge that there is a chance that the TLAs, or Net security/info war consultants (like Schwartau, et al) planted the article, a fake to generate scare-funding and boost conference attendance. Or maybe it's a classic Brit joke, a spoof -- or a sting by the Intergalactic Net Police. Strange terrorist ripoffs happen -- incredible IPOs, vaporware millionaires, and such.

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Re: (VTW) BillWatch #48
by Carl Ellison 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

The NRC gets points for putting out a report that will become useful in the months to come. The White House gets an 'F' for their handling of encryption policy. Even in the face of two expert studies on their policy, they continue to stick to a failed, unpopular policy. <<<< I was at the EPIC conference yesterday (6/3) -- where Whit Diffie, BTW, presented the same argument Steven Cherry gave in this BillWatch -- but at the end of the EPIC conference we had Scott Charney of DoJ on a panel about what the OECD is doing (pushing Clipper internationally) and we kept going round with him on the administration's pushing of Clipper (N). [One attendee described this as "forum shopping" -- looking for a friendly place to push Clipper.] There were people battling him over his alleged representation of the USA at the OECD -- claiming he was misrepresenting the country by pushing Clipper. His response was that the Executive is empowered to do all international meetings/negotiations/.... After the meeting ended it hit me what the problem is and I mentioned it to PRZ. We're complaining that the Executive has gone rogue -- is disobeying the will of the people. PRZ likened it to Nixon's war in Cambodia. So, maybe it's nothing new -- just a new playing field for the same old game. - Carl +------------------------------------------------------------------------+ |Carl M. Ellison cme(a)acm.org http://www.clark.net/pub/cme | |PGP: E0414C79B5AF36750217BC1A57386478 & 61E2DE7FCB9D7984E9C8048BA63221A2| | "Officer, officer, arrest that man! He's whistling a dirty song." | +-------------------------------------------- Jean Ellison (aka Mother) -+

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Asendmail v0.5beta
by Ben Holiday 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Okay, so i'm an idiot. :) I ran out the door in such a hurry on friday that I didn't bother to make the asendmail package globally readable. Apologies to everyone who tried to get a copy and got a permission denied. It is now really and truely available from: http://www.infonex.com/~ncognito/asendmail.tar.gz Sorry for the hassles.

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No Subject
by qut＠netcom.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

ncr terminals are the most 31173 D0Dz

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Where are the cryptographers going to come from?
by nelson＠crynwr.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

> >----- Forwarded Cyberia-L message (DAVID POST <postd(a)EROLS.COM>) -----< > Someone else pointed to a recent story in the Economist, which > listed the leading encryption software/services companies > worldwide, each of which is Israeli. > > Bidzos made the claim, and many others echoed, that the export > controls are in the process of doing nothing more than ceding a > potentially lucrative market to others, a market in which the US > might otherwise be expected to be the dominant player. It may > even, in the eyes of some, be too late to undo this damage. Not only that, but where are the cryptographers of the future going to come from for the NSA to recruit? Israel?? Oh right, foreign nationals privy to our own highest secrets, give me a break. Do they intend to train them themselves? If so, that's identical in principle to universities granting tenure to their own graduates. You get inbred that way, so universities don't do that. The principle behind crypto secrecy presumes that other people don't have the secret. Once they do, you only hurt yourself by trying to keep a double-edged sword in the closet. The NSA believes that they can and should discard any amount of benefits of crypto in exchange for avoiding any harm of crypto. They are wrong. -russ <nelson(a)crynwr.com> http://www.crynwr.com/~nelson Crynwr Software | Crynwr Software sells packet driver support | PGP ok 11 Grant St. | +1 315 268 1925 voice | It's no mistake to err on Potsdam, NY 13676 | +1 315 268 9201 FAX | the side of freedom.

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cycle market
by bryce＠digicash.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- I was trying to think what I would use a cycle market for. The only thing that I wait for more than a minute on currently is compiling. It might be quicker to ship my source code to a remote compilation service with big pipes and big engines. Considering that I've got a Pentium 120 on my desktop, though, those would have be pretty big engines to make up for the time lost in transmission of source and compiler output (both compiler messages and object files.) Just musing out loud. Regards, Bryce -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.2i Comment: Auto-signed under Unix with 'BAP' Easy-PGP v1.1b2 iQB1AwUBMbQ/d0jbHy8sKZitAQHRFgL/Ydkbb4ieFryq1ZRwAVPR0/gksKdVMJ88 rWXGmqpHh810mi1vqgEjWL3XSJL1ogoN6GXuvpZQufvN0ldShOr+fDiodYX6g53K gK+6Z5WTUzTS6Wn1I/IGuSQ86Om4+JOg =MQ0q -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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