December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

Fwd: Internet security (VERY LONG)
by Robert Hettinga 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

--- begin forwarded text Subject: Fwd: Internet security (VERY LONG) Date: Sun, 18 Jan 98 12:34:36 -0500 From: Somebody To: "Robert Hettinga" <rah(a)shipwright.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 ---------------- Begin Forwarded Message ---------------- Date: 01/17 3:25 PM Received: 01/17 5:24 PM From: Richard Fairfax, richard_fairfax(a)compuserve.com Reply-To: CSA Talk, csa(a)blueworld.com To: CSA Talk, csa(a)blueworld.com The following forwarded mail may have implications for clients with sensitive data. The field encription features in Troi FM Plug-in could prove to be a valuable asset. Richard Fairfax Oakwood Designs ---forwarded mail START--- From: gp-uk(a)mailbase.ac.uk,Net ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Aus: z-netz.datenschutz.spionage: A GLOBAL electronic spy network that can eavesdrop on every telephone, email and telex communication around the world will be officially acknowledged for the first time in a European Commission report to be delivered this week. The report - Assessing the Technologies of Political Control - was commissioned last year by the Civil Liberties Committee of the European Parliament. It contains details of a network of American-controlled intelligence stations on British soil and around the world, that "routinely and indiscriminately" monitor countless phone, fax and email messages. It states: "Within Europe all email telephone and fax communications are routinely intercepted by the United States National Security Agency transfering all target information from the European mainland via the strategic hub of London then by satellite to Fort Meade in Maryland via the crucial hub at Menwith Hill in the North York moors in the UK." The report confirms for the first time the existence of the secretive ECHELON system. Until now, evidence of such astounding technology has been patchy and anecdotal. But the report - to be discussed on Thursday by the commit- tee of the office of Science and Technology Assessment in Luxembourg - confirms that the citizens of Britain and other European states are subject to an intensity of surveillance far in excess of that imagined by most parliaments. Its findings are certain to excite the concern of MEPs. "The ECHELON system forms part of the UKUSA system (see 'Cooking up a charter for snooping') but unlike many of the electronic spy systems developed during the Cold War, ECHELON is designed primarily for non- military targets: governments, organizations and businesses in vir- tually every country. "The ECHELON system works by indiscriminately intercepting very large quantities of communications and then siphoning out what is valuable using artificial intelligence aids like MEMEX to find key words". According to the report, ECHELON uses a number of national dictionaries containing key words of interest to each country. For more than a decade, former agents of US, British, Canadian and New Zealand national security agencies have claimed that the monitoring of electronic communications has become endemic throughout the world. Rumours have circulated that new technologies have been developed which have the capability to search most of the world's telex, fax and email networks for "key words". Phone calls, they claim, can be automatically analysed for key words. Former signals intelligence operatives have claimed that spy bases controlled by America have the ability to search nearly all data communications for key words. They claim that ECHELON automatically analyses most email messaging for "precursor" data which assists in- telligence agencies to determine targets. According to former Canadian Security Establishment agent Mike Frost, a voice recognition system called Oratory has been used for some years to intercept diplomatic calls. The driving force behind the report is Glyn Ford, Labour MEP for Greater Manchester East. He believes that the report is crucial to the future of civil liberties in Europe. "In the civil liberties committee we spend a great deal of time debating issues such as free movement, immigration and drugs. Technology always sits at the centre of these discussions. There are times in history when technology helps democratise, and times when it helps centralise. This is a time of centralisation. The justice and home affairs pillar of Europe has become more powerful without a corresponding strengthening of civil liberties." The report recommends a variety of measures for dealing with the increasing power of the technologies of surveillance being used at Menwith Hill and other centres. It bluntly advises: "The European Parliament should reject proposals from the United States for making private messages via the global communications network (Internet) a ccessible to US intelligence agencies." The report also urges a fundamental review of the involvement of the American NSA (National Security Agency) in Europe, suggesting that their activities be either scaled down, or become more open and accountable. Such concerns have been privately expressed by governments and MEPs since the Cold War, but surveillance has continued to expand. US intel- ligence activity in Britain has enjoyed a steady growth throughout the past two decades. The principal motivation for this rush of development is the US interest in commercial espionage. In the Fifties, during the development of the "special relationship" between America and Britain, one US institution was singled out for special attention. The NSA, the world's biggest and most powerful signals intelligence organisation, received approval to set up a network of spy stations throughout Britain. Their role was to provide military, diplomatic and economic intelligence by intercepting communications from throughout the Northern Hemisphere. The NSA is one of the shadowiest of the US intelligence agencies. Until a few years ago, it existence was a secret and its charter and any mention of its duties are still classified. However, it does have a Web site (www.nsa.gov:8080) in which it describes itself as being respon- sible for the signals intelligence and communications security activ- ities of the US government. One of its bases, Menwith Hill, was to become the biggest spy station in the world. Its ears - known as radomes - are capable of listening in to vast chunks of the communications spectrum throughout Europe and the old Soviet Union. In its first decade the base sucked data from cables and microwave links running through a nearby Post Office tower, but the communi- cations revolutions of the Seventies and Eighties gave the base a capability that even its architects could scarcely have been able to imagine. With the creation of Intelsat and digital telecommunications, Menwith and other stations developed the capability to eavesdrop on an extensive scale on fax, telex and voice messages. Then, with the development of the Internet, electronic mail and electronic commerce, the listening posts were able to increase their monitoring capability to eavesdrop on an unprecedented spectrum of personal and business communications. This activity has been all but ignored by the UK Parliament. When Labour MPs raised questions about the activities of the NSA, the Government invoked secrecy rules. It has been the same for 40 years. Glyn Ford hopes that his report may be the first step in a long road to more openness. "Some democratically elected body should surely have a right to know at some level. At the moment that's nowhere". See also in this week's issue: Pretty good Phil bounces back (a report on the consolidation of the reputation of Phil Zimmermann, creator of PGP). 14 October 1997: Europe's private parts to expand * * * * * ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Hilfe zu den BvD Mailinglisten? An- oder Abmelden? Mail an bvd-majordomo(a)ibh.tfu.uni-ulm.de, Subject: egal, Text: help ODER: http://www.fh-ulm.de/bvd ---forwarded mail END--- ----------------- End Forwarded Message ----------------- <Somebody's .sig> --- end forwarded text ----------------- Robert Hettinga (rah(a)shipwright.com) Philodox e$, 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA "... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity, [predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire' The e$ Home Page: http://www.shipwright.com/ Ask me about FC98 in Anguilla!: <http://www.fc98.ai/>

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Signed document - a thought...
by Jim Choate 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Hi, I was pondering the security issues regarding signed documents and key security. It occured to me that in all the discussion it is assumed that the document is transmitted after the key is transmitted. It seems to be that a higher level of security could be obtained by submitting the signed document first and then submit the signing key. This way when the document goes out Mallet has no idea what key to replace and any fudging of the document will destroy the sign. Then when the key goes out if it is replaced the document won't pass testing either since the server already has a unmod'ed copy. In short, instead of having each author have a signing key, have each document have a signature key and always submit the signed document prior to the signing key. After all it's the document and not the author (who we assume is already using an anonymous submission mechanism) we wish to verify from the end users perspective. The mechanims provides a means for the data haven server to verify the authenticity of the document and this allows them to pass that trust on to the end user in the same sort of way. ____________________________________________________________________ | | | The most powerful passion in life is not love or hate, | | but the desire to edit somebody elses words. | | | | Sign in Ed Barsis' office | | | | _____ The Armadillo Group | | ,::////;::-. Austin, Tx. USA | | /:'///// ``::>/|/ http://www.ssz.com/ | | .', |||| `/( e\ | | -====~~mm-'`-```-mm --'- Jim Choate | | ravage(a)ssz.com | | 512-451-7087 | |____________________________________________________________________|

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Unofficial transcript of Bernstein hearing published
by John Gilmore 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

EFF has published an unofficial transcript of the hearing in front of three judges at the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco on December 8. The hearing discussed whether the export controls on cryptography are an unconstitutional prior restraint on publication. See http://www.eff.org/pub/Privacy/ITAR_export/Bernstein_case/Legal/ There is no news on the judges' decision from that hearing. John Gilmore Electronic Frontier Foundation

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CAD Stego (fwd)
by Jim Choate 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Forwarded message: > Date: Sun, 18 Jan 1998 19:31:38 -0500 > From: John Young <jya(a)pipeline.com> > Subject: CAD Stego > This repeats a suggestion from 1994 about using computer > assisted design programs to conceal text or other data: > 3. The scale feature is useful to reduce, say, a text > of any length, or any digital object, to the size of a pixel. Assuming your color palate is deep enough to support the compression. > 4. Or, the text can be distorted by scale and dimension > to appear to be a line serving another function. Don't you think they are going to wonder why *that* line is so varied in color? Or assuming deep color pallettes, why so many colors are selected when only a few dozen are actualy used in the drawing? > Then the message could be distorted or hidden as > described above, for piggy-backing on an innocent- > looking document issued, I suspect they'll wonder why that particular file is so much larger than the other graphics files with the same number of layers. > 7. Big shortcoming: how to securely transmit the location > (virtual coordinates) of the hidden message and what Look for the pixel that has the unique color mapped onto it. > 8. Medium shortcoming: Full-featured CAD programs are > expensive, however, the popular lite versions are cheap > and can usually read the pricier output. And can't handle more than a few dozen colors and limited layering. This suggestion is unworkable in application. ____________________________________________________________________ | | | The most powerful passion in life is not love or hate, | | but the desire to edit somebody elses words. | | | | Sign in Ed Barsis' office | | | | _____ The Armadillo Group | | ,::////;::-. Austin, Tx. USA | | /:'///// ``::>/|/ http://www.ssz.com/ | | .', |||| `/( e\ | | -====~~mm-'`-```-mm --'- Jim Choate | | ravage(a)ssz.com | | 512-451-7087 | |____________________________________________________________________|

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New Software Controls
by John Young 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

TH points out that there's a broad new provision in the BXA Wassenaar rule for controlling telecommunications software under Category 5, Part I - Telecommunications, quote: You might want to highlight the following section ... not sure of the entire context ... but this isn't something that I'd seen before. It looks like control of any software that can transmit data. c.3. ``Software'' which provides the capability of recovering ``source code'' of telecommunications ``software'' controlled by 5A001, 5B001, or 5C001; For the citation see: http://jya.com/bxa-wa/cat51.htm#5D001c3 --------- We've broken the rule into several components for easier access to the Commerce Control List revisions. See: http://jya.com/bxa-wa-rule.htm

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Voice Coding Controls
by John Young 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

DM notes of the BXA Wassenaar rule for voice coding: After looking at some of the Wassenaar docs, I was surprised to see that the CCL wants to regulate speech encoders that operate at less than 2400 bps. Surprising because it was encoding, not encryption, that was being regulated. This is disturbing. This at first seemed to put some of the Nautilus development team's software in jeopardy, but I believe that by the letter of the law (or regulation) that all coders in Nautilus are not subject to the CCL, as they only go as low as 2400 bps and not less than. For citations of voice coding in Category 5 - Telecommunications: http://jya.com/bxa-wa-cat5.htm#5A001b10 http://jya.com/bxa-wa-cat5.htm#5A991b6a

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Re: non-transferable signatures (Re: Crypto Kong penetration.)
by James A. Donald 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-- At 10:48 PM 1/16/98 +0000, Steve Mynott wrote: > SMIME of course despite bad cypherpunk karma is easy and > maybe even works between mailers. Easy indeed, if all the keys from Verisign are correct and secured. It is indeed very easy to use SMIME. To use it so that it actually accomplishes the intended result is not so easy. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG Np4QfrajG+6u2ZHUc2AFBH0uTX9nCJxCUi7E2bpk 3CGDysj2FaqaZYBM4bRe6dvLCkbb0ltwLns5aFPQ9 --------------------------------------------------------------------- We have the right to defend ourselves and our property, because of the kind of animals that we are. True law derives from this right, not from the arbitrary power of the state. http://www.jim.com/jamesd/

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Re: how to release code if the programmer is a target for (fwd)
by Uhh...this is Joe [Randall Farmer] 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

[Choate said he wouldn't "address" my message if I didn't post it to the list, so...] > > Eternity delivers data. It's up to the user to verify that the data is > > what they want > > > The original question was how to verify the eternity server source code. > > Assume for a moment that as a user of an eternity server the source is the > data I want. Ok... [...] > > * A random user who has the public keys of at least (thresh) number of the > > cypherpunks, optionally the key of the author of the document/product before > > the system becomes questionable, perhaps by looking in the NY Times > > for 1 Jan 1999 which has a full page ad taken out by Cypherpunks Anonymous > > with the PGP public keys for the 100 leading cypherpunks. > > Pretty expensive and rather unrealistic I suspect. The NYT ad? I think that was at least partly a joke (besides, if some cypherpunks did take out an ad, I'd predict propaganda in 2/3 of the page and fine-print PGP-key fingerprints in the rest :). > Where does this random user come from? Why does it matter? As long as she's competent enough to choose good verifiers and verify that those verifiers verified the code in question, it all works out in the end. > What is '(thresh)'? What good would an anonymous key signature provide? Thresh is the number of signatures from trusted people/keys required to trust a section of code, a value set by the user. An anonymous sig would be very little good but I think he was talking about including the author's sig if he's not anonymous. > [...] How do we know that some number of these cypherpunks aren't turned? We don't. There is no way to operate without *some* trust; this reduces it from the code being shown to be secure if the author is not spookized AND The author is capable to check his/her code AND the key he signed it with is good to the code being good if those conditions are true for one (or a few) of the many cypherpunks on the user's trusted list who signed the code. > Are you proposing that the user test all 100 of the signatures? Well, I think he's proposing to have a script check them and the user personally make sure the script is doing what it should. > Which realistica[l]ly is the only way to verify any given one of them. Not > very many people will go to that extreme simply for grins and giggles. > > > * The piece of code to be verified is bloody long, that is, longer than > > any one cypherpunk can afford to verify alone (shooting practice, > > installing the minefields and poison gas sprinkler system, etc. take > > lots of time) Not to mention churning out that propaganda for the NYT ad, becoming tolerant to pepper spray, preparing various fake identities for use, proving Blowfish secure and then breaking it, constructing a doomsday weapon using only a straightedge and compass, etc. > > The standard is programs over ~10k lines is not comprehensible by a single > individual on a line by line basis. Might be, but this code has to be more than just understood -- it must be painstakingly checked for subtle flaws and bugs. Welcome to the world of adversarial quality control. > > > * The user can tell by visual inspection that a small compilation > > system does what they want it to do, and can understand basic logic > > enough to tell what signatures imply. > > 'small compilation system' of what? What who wants it to do? The author? > Mallet? The end user? The C/Java/whatever compiler, I suppose, and also the signature checker, and she's checking that they carry out their stated purposes. ... > > 2) The user wants to run the code, because it's Just That Cool. > > We're talking here about users who want to get data that is illegal or > otherwise incriminating or dangerous to one group or another. In particular > let's consider the situation of a Lebanese freedom fighter in Isreal or > perhaps a 'Free Burma' revolutionary in China. I think the issue was one of users who want to get eternity server source they can trust -- not necessarily getting it *from* Eternity. > > > 3) No one can verify the entire code. So, Cypherpunks begin signing > > small sections of the code with their own previously-established key. > > Their keys are established as their reputation is established on > > the list, or perhaps by personally meeting these people, in the > > traditional PGP web of trust scheme. There is no central Cypherpunks > > Registry, just a decentralized mesh. > > Which doesn't effect the ability of Mallet to resign that code at the users > end in order to break the users local security. Unless you're exposing a new weakness in the trust model PGP uses, Mallet can't do that, providing the user has done good key authentication and hasn't listed one of Mallet's goons as a trusted code-verifier. > > > 4) The user executes the compilation script. > > [material describing script verification deleted] > > Mallet can re-write said script [...] Yup, that's why the user has to check it by hand. Lots easier to check a script and a compiler for doing their functions than to check an eternity server for subtle bugs. > > > I fail to see how the specifics of Eternity are relevant -- it's > > just basically a PGP web of trust issue. The transport is irrelevant -- > > it's untrusted code until it's been verified by people the user > > trusts. > > The end user may not have people available to trust is the point. Well, if you can't verify it yourself and you can't trust other people to verify it, my advice is to give up; you cannot be sure of *any* public keys in that case, so any message you encrypt might be encrypted to one of Mallet's keys; any sig you check might be signed by one of Mallet's keys. > The reason the transport mechanism is relevant is that it is much easier to > spoof a verification script if the user is not going to be surprised with 24 > hour turn around on requests, whereas a responce time measured in minutes > lessens the window of opportunity to Mallet significantly. If Mallet is a NSA spook who's half as good as my hacker buddy Phat Atta and knew about the script ahead of time, the user can't trust the script without verifying it herself, whether it takes milliseconds or millenia to get the response. > > It may come as a surprise to you and others but not everyone in the world > can pick up a phone and call a 100 people all over the world and not raise > some suspicion. Ah, but either I am more mistaken than usual or you only need a few of the signers to be trusted, not all of them. > > > Implementing a keyserver in Eternity has the same issues > > While it is perfectly permissible to design Eternity or any data haven with > inherent key servers, I believe it is a bad idea from a design perspective > because it makes the code even larger, decreases the potential for monetary > motives for indipendant key servers to appear, and if the server is > compromised then the key server is also. Not sure, but I think he's talking about putting up a key server in Eternity (i.e., the rolling hills where data can roam without fear, as opposed to putting it in the Eternity). > It is more expensive if Mallet can be forced to deal with two [independent] > operators then a single monolithic operator. > > [rest deleted] --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Randall Farmer rfarmer(a)hiwaay.net http://hiwaay.net/~rfarmer

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Re: CAD Stego (fwd)
by John Young 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Jim Choate wrote: >This suggestion is unworkable in application. Why the focus on color, the easiest thing to avoid using, or layers, ditto? Superfluous for serious CAD, these dainty decorations from Martha Stewartville. Most messages could be concealed in "hatched" objects, bit-bloated as they are, indistinguishable from the elements used to hatch. All black and white; maybe a dot of red for cashmere dupe. In fact, CAD is so bloated with dumb cad-jockey features, and sleazebag work-monitoring logs, it puts most ordinary programs (even air-boss MS) to shame, and could hide a herd of rustled Mex longhorns as easily as the Bush family hides dryhole oil reserves, without any more trickery than sandpapering new boots to look worn. Anyway, Jim, I gather from your remarks that you've not fiddled for endless low-paid months and years to figure out how to cheat the evil bosses and automatic work-snoop feature, while onion-siphoning the Net for horny fare under guise of urgent file transfer to foam-mouth ne'erpays. Underground (so to speak) swapping of digital work avoidance tips is a huge use of global bandwidth riding on the backs of big fat docs for globular structures for maggoty thugs. (Although not nearly as gigantic as the porn trade stego-supporting Net infrastructre growth -- over 50% of Net traffic and rocketing.) Who knows how much illicit info is riding the porn river in and out of the most secure sanctums of tyrants?

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let's do it: NYT ad with hash of fingerprints (fwd)
by Jim Choate 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Forwarded message: > Date: Sun, 18 Jan 1998 23:21:38 GMT > From: Adam Back <aba(a)dcs.ex.ac.uk> > Subject: let's do it: NYT ad with hash of fingerprints > I would have thought you would take out a cheap personals section > advertisement and print one hash output and a URL. The hash ouput > would be the hash of the hashes of a chosen set of public key > fingerprints. This doesn't provide the same sort of protection the original full page ad is supposed to provide. That full page ad will be accessible as a referenc a hundred years from now in just about every library in the country. The link to a webpage won't be. Distinctly different security animals. ____________________________________________________________________ | | | The most powerful passion in life is not love or hate, | | but the desire to edit somebody elses words. | | | | Sign in Ed Barsis' office | | | | _____ The Armadillo Group | | ,::////;::-. Austin, Tx. USA | | /:'///// ``::>/|/ http://www.ssz.com/ | | .', |||| `/( e\ | | -====~~mm-'`-```-mm --'- Jim Choate | | ravage(a)ssz.com | | 512-451-7087 | |____________________________________________________________________|

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