December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

RE: Workers Paradise. /Political rant.
by Duncan Frissell 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 10:18 AM 9/16/96 EST, jbugden(a)smtplink.alis.ca wrote: >Two questions, two observations: >Do you have health insurance? >Do you have life insurance? > >I have commented on your line of reasoning before and and it still seems to me >that an important part of the discussion is missed. Specifically, that anyone >can "save for a rainy day" and still not be able to provide for events that can >always happen: Heart attack, stroke, car accident, pinched nerve that leaves you >in excruciating pain and unable to work for several years. However, one can also prepare in the traditional way by having friends and family. If you have same, you will always have enough to eat and someone to take care of you (and also to kick you in the ass when you need it. >I don't think that a reasonable person would argue that medical insurance should >be outlawed because everyone should take care of their own needs. A social >safety net is simply a form of health and life insurance. Statistical arbitrage >if you will. By spreading the risk you minimize the cost. Somewhat actuarily unsound however. If "the welfare" or SS were private charities or insurance schemes, their management would be in prison for self-dealing and fraud because of the high overhead of welfare and the Ponzi scheme nature of SS. Note too the recent article in the Economist about how European firms are raising capital in the UK and the US because it is available there in private pension savings while European government retirement systems suck loads of capital out of the system leaving nothing but massive government debts. DCF

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Re: 56 kbps modems
by azur＠netcom.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

>>> People who seemed to know used to say that 'the Shannon limit' >>> set an absolute upper limit around 40 kbps. Has Shannon been >>> proven wrong, or what? >>Well, it all depends on the signal-to-noise ratio. Also, if the noise is >>not white gaussian the situation can be even better. > >Or it can be worse. Almost all voice traffic in the US these days, >either once it gets to your local telephone wire center or maybe before, >is carried on T1 digital connections, which use 64kbps digital voice - >it's sampled at 8000 samples/second, A/D converted using a non-linear >8-bit scale called mu-law (or A-law for Europe), and (for the most common >framing format) has a signalling channel stego'd onto the LSB of every 6th >byte. >If you knew which the "robbed bit" was, you could get 63 kbps of digital data, >but since you don't, digital signals are limited to 56kbps since they >can't trust any of the low bits (analog doesn't lose much from this.) > Couldn't you just 'assume' you knew which bit was 'robbed' and test to see the result? If you were wrong, couldn't you advance/retard your clocking and via a process of elimination sync with the 'robbed bit? --Steve PGP Fingerprint: FE 90 1A 95 9D EA 8D 61 81 2E CC A9 A4 4A FB A9 --------------------------------------------------------------------- Snoop Daty Data | Internet: azur(a)netcom.com Grinder | Voice: 1-702-655-2877 Sacred Cow Meat Co. | Fax: 1-702-658-2673 7075 W. Gowan Road, #2148 | Las Vegas, NV 89129 | --------------------------------------------------------------------- Just say NO to perscription DRUGS.

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Re: Workers Paradise. /Political rant.
by paul＠fatmans.demon.co.uk 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

> tcmay(a)got.net (Timothy C. May) writes: > > Crypto Anarchy means getting rid of deadwood the old-fashioned way. > > Starting with the lying old fart himself. The Vilus bot is at it again, I suggest a 2 line cypherpunks FAQ along the following lines: Q> What do it do when I join the list? A> Killfile *(a)bwalk.dm.net Datacomms Technologies web authoring and data security Paul Bradley, Paul(a)fatmans.demon.co.uk Http://www.fatmans.demon.co.uk/crypt/ "Don`t forget to mount a scratch monkey" -----BEGIN PGP PUBLIC KEY BLOCK----- Version: 2.6.3ia mQCNAjH9j+cAAAEEAMBvREiQR0ot9dFCO0TiSCSunAYLv2g1Bc6I3bz8FzKXNH53 6mieJf/W4rD+CxJpT0q9RQaaoRtkHJLwbjfK2il3D7mEahMAyqvF/xRJNqkXfhM3 sRJM0Jh43l+W0M5vwokbEbk25/bxWWGspTsLD3YHbzKnG6pOcL5OPIRbv66xAAUR tCdQYXVsIEJyYWRsZXkgPHBhdWxAZmF0bWFucy5kZW1vbi5jby51az6JAJUDBRAy NwfvNkCBjDT0xHEBATQPA/9TORmN/UjNecj03q4anpvdyCLiez5sKuNbnYK50RiP Jj4QpWWvST3smyQ0A86DrZY/re056MXwQmARESx0rFZxdnD0oORICl5r8dJLIy3b j8rbA5olXwZwKz73/X5s13v/pvHYX4cIsbVK8NHXqh5llSKt6TBAuGgkIGF29z5k C4kAlQMFEDI3B9mdtf/umVkv7QEBcRYD/1FBteLqsUmr81euxqqnnrpLlyHb58B/ 9sdATuua4uSjX46hXDZ264YozspNrzSB4NEdrmXOWVX3fiE0ga6XkSSkIeF23V90 En37Z0BdbFzgF00FRYTFyTq8eezQrdg/+rBPUsZUmG5wpq3e12FKHQsX01i+1mB2 YmqqwCV5e95eiQCVAgUQMh8uSb5OPIRbv66xAQEqJwP/fxQyiCasjFcbDpsFfsYp put5cCC/9pOx6X3DlbKShPMpUOS+A9HsTEmJQN8Iawv1nSwPdtc2cR/GhW6ilVjW LSloGdMVLabm9pGpZZMkRaZlXFUkOv7VhfgsUiL+vIDryBCAwUZCzQiWycjt/cPi mUqFH41Z7NkyO8ZFdi5GGX0= =CMZA -----END PGP PUBLIC KEY BLOCK-----

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Redundancy in XOR encryption
by paul＠fatmans.demon.co.uk 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- I have a question I hope someone here might be able to answer: As the method of cryptanalysis of XOR (Ie. index of coincidence) relies on redundancy in the plaintext, would the following be strong: Compress P to get perfect compression (ie. 0 redundancy) Encrypt F (the compressed text) using a repeated key XOR of course this is all rather theoretical as there is no such thing as perfect compression, but I just thought it might be interesting to see if this is indeed strong, superficially it appears so to me... -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.3ia Charset: cp850 iQCVAwUBMj2TvL5OPIRbv66xAQGRpgP+LU0Y8sxzO6rObCYAQdrD8/R/iDJN3m0Z 4ZetS7jcbz7wT6bj2l7Usb0F4h/YMhxtl0y9EQ91ozg35jfRKdy2IwUoMDvqsVSZ wKmaM/DpEt2LDyRQnzIvlNYQp6/eXQoBUb7r9SH/dZbjM7culpjzJLhd07Nx5okE jUmPNBLm9m0= =RHie -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- Datacomms Technologies web authoring and data security Paul Bradley, Paul(a)fatmans.demon.co.uk Http://www.fatmans.demon.co.uk/crypt/ "Don`t forget to mount a scratch monkey" -----BEGIN PGP PUBLIC KEY BLOCK----- Version: 2.6.3ia mQCNAjH9j+cAAAEEAMBvREiQR0ot9dFCO0TiSCSunAYLv2g1Bc6I3bz8FzKXNH53 6mieJf/W4rD+CxJpT0q9RQaaoRtkHJLwbjfK2il3D7mEahMAyqvF/xRJNqkXfhM3 sRJM0Jh43l+W0M5vwokbEbk25/bxWWGspTsLD3YHbzKnG6pOcL5OPIRbv66xAAUR tCdQYXVsIEJyYWRsZXkgPHBhdWxAZmF0bWFucy5kZW1vbi5jby51az6JAJUDBRAy NwfvNkCBjDT0xHEBATQPA/9TORmN/UjNecj03q4anpvdyCLiez5sKuNbnYK50RiP Jj4QpWWvST3smyQ0A86DrZY/re056MXwQmARESx0rFZxdnD0oORICl5r8dJLIy3b j8rbA5olXwZwKz73/X5s13v/pvHYX4cIsbVK8NHXqh5llSKt6TBAuGgkIGF29z5k C4kAlQMFEDI3B9mdtf/umVkv7QEBcRYD/1FBteLqsUmr81euxqqnnrpLlyHb58B/ 9sdATuua4uSjX46hXDZ264YozspNrzSB4NEdrmXOWVX3fiE0ga6XkSSkIeF23V90 En37Z0BdbFzgF00FRYTFyTq8eezQrdg/+rBPUsZUmG5wpq3e12FKHQsX01i+1mB2 YmqqwCV5e95eiQCVAgUQMh8uSb5OPIRbv66xAQEqJwP/fxQyiCasjFcbDpsFfsYp put5cCC/9pOx6X3DlbKShPMpUOS+A9HsTEmJQN8Iawv1nSwPdtc2cR/GhW6ilVjW LSloGdMVLabm9pGpZZMkRaZlXFUkOv7VhfgsUiL+vIDryBCAwUZCzQiWycjt/cPi mUqFH41Z7NkyO8ZFdi5GGX0= =CMZA -----END PGP PUBLIC KEY BLOCK-----

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Re: Gaining trust in OCO crypto code
by frantz＠netcom.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

I agree with Norm's points. At 6:59 PM 9/16/96 -0700, Norman Hardy wrote: >At 3:06 PM 9/12/96, Bill Frantz wrote: >.... >>(2) Key generation. There are published ways to encode an RSA secret key >>in the corresponding RSA public key. A key generation algorithm which only >>uses 32 bits of the random number would be hard to detect, but easy to >>break by one who knew its secret. You have to be able to examine in detail >>how keys are generated. > >Actually if you generate 100,000 RSA keys with the algorithm the birthday >effect says that >you will have some collisions. Of course even 100,000 key generations takes >a long time. This statement was not as clear as I wish I had been. The trap door in RSA key generation is sufficient to require careful examination of the source for any RSA key (unless you can take the out Norm suggests as): >If random number generation is specified not to be integral to RSA key >generation, then two or more untrusted programs, from mutually hostile >sources, can generate your RSA key if they yield the same output from the >same input. In paranoia situations I would rather trust my keyboard random >than an algorithm chosen by my enemy. When I started discussing using only 32 bits of the random number, I was thinking of random session keys such as PGP generates for its IDEA cypher. I agree you could detect a small number bits being used to generate these keys by a birthday attack. However, most systems make sure these keys are never revealed outside the system (to preserve the secrecy of the messages). It is not easy to do a birthday audit of e.g. PGP session keys. ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Bill Frantz | "Cave softly, cave safely, | Periwinkle -- Consulting (408)356-8506 | and cave with duct tape." | 16345 Englewood Ave. frantz(a)netcom.com | - Marianne Russo | Los Gatos, CA 95032, USA

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Re: Snake Oil FAQ 0.4 [comments appreciated]
by tcmay＠got.net 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 2:06 AM 9/17/96, The Deviant wrote: >Not to mention, the basic flaw of OTP.. if you have the only copy of the >key, and the key is non-repetitive, how do you send the key to another >person without being just as insecure as not encrypting it in the first >place... almost any OTP claims are gonna be snake oil. Not quite. Many cryptographic messages have a *time value*. The canonical example is "Attack at dawn." A one-time pad carried by a unit out onto the battlefield is eminently valuable for receiving such time-critical messages. Many other examples abound: embassies receiving instructions from the home country, travelling businessmen exchanging messages with the office, Air Force One receiving encrypted transmissions from NORAD, and so on. This is why OTPs are still in use by the military, embassies, etc. Granted, asymmetric key systems have various advantages, discussed here all the time, but to say almost any OTP claims are snake oil is untrue. (Many claims about OTPs _are_ of course snake oil, but usually in that they are not true OTPs in the Shannon sense.) --Tim May We got computers, we're tapping phone lines, I 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: 2^1,257,787-1 | black markets, collapse of governments. "National borders aren't even speed bumps on the information superhighway."

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Re: Risk v. Charity (was: RE: Workers Paradise. /Political rant).
by azur＠netcom.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

>On Mon, 16 Sep 1996 19:58:25 -0400, Black Unicorn <unicorn(a)schloss.li> wrote: > >Remember the original purpose of social security. A government fund which >was self sustaining because it only gave out what was put in and gained by >investment. Not quite. You'll remember that SS was pitched to the masses as such during the Great Depression, but its true purpose was to allow older workers to quickly retire and make room for the largely unemployed men in their prime, family raising, years. > >> A social safety net is simply a form of health and life >> insurance. Statistical arbitrage if you will. > >Yes, but not for the reasons you would cite. Social safety nets prevent >rioting by the lower classes, revolution and general civil disorder >because they appease the masses. Indeed this is a form of health and life >insureance for the middle and upper classes. No doubt. See my previous comment. > >> By spreading the risk you >> minimize the cost. Yes, some people will take advantage of the system. >> But like a virus, a robust system should be able to withstand this form >> of attack. > >This is absolutely silly. Speading the risk alone does nothing. The cost >for those who can pay is increased, and the cost for those who cannot pay >is made 0 (it already was 0 incidently). > >It is also the reason the taxpayers (and not the savings and loan >community at large) were forced to bail out the failed financial >institutions. Namely, because premiums were not tied to risk. The FDIC, >as of last year in any event, charges a flat rate fee for all financial >institutions. This is independent of any risk analysis of their >investments. i.e., a financial institution that invests in trailor parks >in Arkansas pays the same premiums for federal deposit insurance as a >institution that invests in government issued debt instruments. (There is >some ceiling for risk, but not a graduated system below the ceiling). > >The result was (is) an incentive to risky investments. If you are a >financial institution and I tell you "I will charge you $1.00 to insure >$1000.00 of low risk and low profit investments, but I will charge you a >while $1.00 to insure $1000.00 of extremely risky but highly >profitable option and currency investments" which one are you going to >choose? (Hint, you're an idiot if you pick option #1). > >The reason the insurance fund was depleted is because there was no risk >balancing built into the system. The premiums did not cover the losses. >They would have if they were risk adjusted. > Next major recession: Here we go again. >Spreading the risk, by itself, does NOT reduce cost. You must properly >PRICE risk. > >This is the distinction between insurance and welfare. Right on! >Welfare merely hands out money for those who have not bothered or cannot >afford insurance. The result is an INCREASE in cost (taxes) to those who >are coughing up the cash so that they may support. > PGP Fingerprint: FE 90 1A 95 9D EA 8D 61 81 2E CC A9 A4 4A FB A9 --------------------------------------------------------------------- Snoop Daty Data | Internet: azur(a)netcom.com Grinder | Voice: 1-702-655-2877 Sacred Cow Meat Co. | Fax: 1-702-658-2673 7075 W. Gowan Road, #2148 | Las Vegas, NV 89129 | --------------------------------------------------------------------- Just say NO to perscription DRUGS.

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Re: 56 kbps modems
by Remo Pini 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit To: cypherpunks(a)toad.com Date: Tue Sep 17 08:09:26 1996 > > > > On Mon, 16 Sep 1996, Jay Gairson wrote: > > > Speaking of ISDN, how many people, can afford to have a personal ISDN > > line in there house? And then afford to connect to something/someone > > else on a next to permanent basis monthly? > > No problem here. My ISDN bill is a small fraction of my regular phone > bill. > In Switzerland you pay 25 CHF/month for a normal phoneline and 50 CHF/month for an ISDN line (but you get two channels), so basically here it doesn't matter, which technologie you choose. (BTW, usage charge - by the seconds - is the same for both) :) Remo Pini - ------< fate favors the prepared mind >------ Remo Pini rp(a)rpini.com PGP: http://www.rpini.com/crypto/crypto.html - ----< words are what reality is made of >---- -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.3i Charset: noconv iQEVAwUBMj5AlxFhy5sz+bTpAQF2KQgAgzAfEFb/NDW+J1Ub77CsOhCA578hiGFJ +0i2/yQApQFh4nztiAZoa2VeRlJV6TFcueF4wrGLmsZzw1j+jgo6SvW4ZRqZzfjC Ob+1wF2SKskEWKoRkAz/+u+RcEAGiQObgTu4VbM59LSYMfX/oba9OurwClhqhg0y /twMQ1BLUbFLqhZrruLO4rM1H2px+2FhWd6CP2jwEkiC/ghLPzGFPwcMoS1nSAfQ PGCVbajLaLJalD31FjFT1Z48sA+waBkdCISe8DTx2LQfKq+WK2A1CRyNOlNZUZdj ReaFBvciSTc8Eq01RmFZFOwoPvw7uxi8VpqE/xEBvq6v6UxrBF8xPQ== =BEhi -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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The GAK Momentum is Building...
by tcmay＠got.net 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 1:59 AM 9/17/96, David Lesher wrote: >Clarinet sez: > >OTTAWA, Sept. 16 (UPI) -- The federal government has chosen >Northern Telecom's data security software, Entrust { } Public-Key >Infrastructure (PKI)... for gov't use..... > >worth $7.3 million...... Add to this these items: -- the IBM GAK product -- the "Clipper IV" (or is it only Clipper III?) GAK announcement expected "soon" It seems that several of these announcements are happening at the same time, which I doubt is coincidental. As the Republican challenger (whose name escapes me at the moment :-}) is not making an issue out of this, and is not making any issues out of anything related to liberty issues as near as I can tell, Clinton and the national security establishment seem to have free rein (and reign) to deploy GAK> As Lucky pointed out, GAK now appears inevitable. There's probably still time to monkeywrench these schemes, though. A few Blaze- or Wagner/Goldberg-type hacks could undermine confidence in the Key Authority (not to be confused with the Port Authority, which I presume handles i/o port assignments). --Tim May We got computers, we're tapping phone lines, I 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: 2^1,257,787-1 | black markets, collapse of governments. "National borders aren't even speed bumps on the information superhighway."

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Re: 56 kbps modems
by Remo Pini 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit To: erp(a)digiforest.com, cypherpunks(a)toad.com Date: Tue Sep 17 08:20:07 1996 Argh, criticism!!!!! :-0 > > 3. NO transmission over a standard phoneline can have more than 3100 > > baud, because the frequency of anything transmitted over that line is > > band limited to 300hz - 3400hz. (If you have ISDN it's not relevant > > anyway, since you are fixed with 8000hz or 64000 bps->in europe :), > > 56000 bps in usa) > > Personally, by saying that no transmission on a standard phoneline can > have more than 3100 baud, is a statement saying that technology and > science, shall never advance, to a point where things are possible. > If you remember right, just 10 or so years ago, we stated that 2400 baud > was the highest possible baud, and we would never go over. My modem, > running on a standard phone line, is a 28.8 USRobotics modem, with > the software, and hardware upgrades to a 3400 baud, I get on an average > day anywhere from 3500 to 3600 baud for send/receive. On a bad day, I > only get 3100 to 3200. SO I would say, that my phone lines, are cleaner > than most eh? And Yes, I am in the US. > Speaking of ISDN, how many people, can afford to have a personal ISDN > line in there house? And then afford to connect to something/someone > else on a next to permanent basis monthly? Well, if your modems says to "hell with the switch", you can do a lot of things with frequencies. And since the filters in the switch are not that accurate, you *might* get away with 3400 hz, which I doubt. Now if your phonecompany for what reason ever supports more bandwidth, thats good for you, but try to get your 3600 baud = 3600 hz modem to be accepted by the FCC will pose a problem, since it states in the regulations, that a modem has to stick to the 300-3400 hz band limits. > > 4. Most modern transmission schemes work with multiple bits per baud. > > I.e. you transmit 10 bits in one baud if you have a 31000 bps modem. > > the only limitation in transmission speed is the amount of binary > > values you can pack into one baud. that on the other hand is limited by > > the S/N (signal to noise) ratio of your line. If you have a noise of > > 0.9%, you can't use more than 100 steps or you have ambiguous signals. > > since people talk about 56000 bps modems (we tried 34000 modems here > > and they couldn't produce more than 28800 on a very good connection) > > that would mean, that you have to transmit 18 bits = 262144 (!) > > distinguishable signal forms per baud. > What about new ways of splitting the steps and baud more so that it > shows less at a higher level.... Just a question.. Ahh well, I'm > getting a page so I shall finish this now... Answer appreciated.. Huh? - ------< fate favors the prepared mind >------ Remo Pini rp(a)rpini.com PGP: http://www.rpini.com/crypto/crypto.html - ----< words are what reality is made of >---- -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.3i Charset: noconv iQEVAwUBMj5DGBFhy5sz+bTpAQFQtwf/diE965nL6MCKX4ikXDyda9hq4a4yGQmV dxYHxD7ADCu32j+InC0FSCevO9Cjn5SoUhrHxsXHj/ZVaBEXRtJLX9g771FciBAz dqq1kKVVoFOJZGUCLUoHSD56tAU2t8pwXHu0QdnJWSpTLj9BausXGGcLH8PEJlAG 5bi3WP4M95Np/8nXUbR/GHlHiVLULRzDCgRLgVfDYe5NHgft69wXB5S3PoD/QUul ranoj1+4xk92M9SarPzcG8/gboR1EFVxgRdgLIi0zeyO+D0Ler648Btf6BgMdaSd Cr+9mzn/KXmrxHS4t6IPt+ZmZiUhzZHCcuxKrkb1JDz7pP6czhytyA== =0WaE -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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