December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

THE H.E.A.T. IS ON
by Sandy Sandfort 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ SANDY SANDFORT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . C'punks, I'm so happy. I've found Acapulco H.E.A.T. in the New York area (18:00 Saturdays, channel 9). Time for another review. This week's episode, "Code Name: Archangel," had a couple of relevant privacy items, and it was a "no Fabio" zone, as well. Bikinis and gun battles were at a minimum, but those that were, were equally divided between the sexes. Anyway, a neo-Nazi (with a really baaad German accent) named "Steinholtz" planned to steal one of the da Vinci "archangel" panels which was being exhibited in Mexico. It was to be reunited in Germany with the three other panels. The idea was that this would be a symbol for the reunification of all the neo-Nazis, and would inaugurate the beginning of the Fourth Reich. A clandestine, world-wide, TV broadcast of the stolen panel would be used to unify the Nazis. There were also two subplots: one involving a Dutch Mata Hari type, and the other involving two of the H.E.A.T. members. ("Hey Tommy, I don' wan' jew dating my seester.") Anyway, since the bad guys use "antibugging devices," our heroes had to use hand-held through-the-wall mikes to listen in on their plans. Later, they were able to install a "sprinkler cam" right over the swastika covered table around which the plotters sat. (Curiously, the swastika they showed was a left-handed version of the actual Nazi one. No explanation given.) Our guys also had to scope out the church where the panel was being exhibited. There they found infrared heat/motion detectors which they foiled by wearing (heat conserving) wet suits. Hmmm. The panel was also protected by pressure sensitive mats and electronic eyes, but no guards! The last bit of technological chicanery came after the bad guys were captured. Using digital technology, the team spoofed the voice of Steinholtz and had him saying we should all live as brothers. Does was done as a voice-over to scenes from the Mexican festival of Santa Guadeloupe or some such. Gag. S a n d y PS The Stateside boss of H.E.A.T. is played by John Vernon who was "Dean Wormer" in Animal House. He only communicates with the team via encrypted videophone. It's obvious (due to some differences in dialog, pronunciation, etc.) that his scenes are not filmed at the same time or place as the rest of the show. In one episode, he kept referring to "M15" ("em fifteen") while the team talked about "MI5" ("em eye five"). ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

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Nuclear Weapons Material
by iqg1550＠acf4.NYU.EDU 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Let's all rejoice at the birth of the latest member of The Horsemen of The Criminal Apocalypse -- The Nuclear Weapons Material Smuggler. I'm sure his four siblings will make plenty of room for their baby brother.

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any documents about crypto history online?
by Tomaz Borstnar 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Hello! Are there any sources of crypto history on Internet (reachable via mail, ftp, www, etc)? Thanks in advance. Tomaz

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Re: In Search of Genuine DigiCash
by rah＠shipwright.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 11:36 PM 8/21/94 -0400, Jason W Solinsky wrote: >> Of >> course, the issuer could publish the prices based on the compounded >> interest accrued *for each certificate*, for the time period it's >> outstanding, possibly complete with the compounding factors for each >> compounding period used. (a day, a month, a year, or even continuous over >> the life of the instrument) Lot of overhead there, but mutual funds do it >> all the time. You'd want to just take their word for it, I suppose, and >> trust their price, right? > >OK, I see the problem. You are assuming that certificates will be issued >at a consistent set of notional values. (like ten bucks, five bucks ect.) >The correct way to do things [:-] is to set the notional value of new >certificates based on the trading value of old certificates. Suppose the >first certificate had a principal of $10 and is now worth $11, then the >new certificates that I issue will have their principal adjusted so that >including the effect of interest rates, my new certificate is worth as much >as your old certificate. Thus, there is only ONE value that needs to be >published at any given time. Open-end mutual funds do this now, every share is issued at a the price of a dollar. The problem comes when the value of the suspension pool (it's starting like water treatment plant) backing up that certificate increases. A digital cash operation is another open-ended mutual fund. If you don't price it in terms of something real, like a dollar, not in terms of itself, then you introduce an unnecessary level of complexity, not to mention regulatory gobbledegook, because that really is a scrip mechanism. I just think that it's easier all around to keep a constant notional value (a buck is a buck is a buck). Then to mess with a fluid pricing mechanism for something which is supposed to enhance convenience and liquidity in internet commerce. Let banks and governments worry about the relative prices between their currencies, and let that price be the price of e-cash for now. An e-cash issuer has to worry about his competition and the price of their cash. That's bad enough. Occam's razor, KISS principle, and all that. In theory, though it probably won't happen, an underwriter could issue a greater amount of digital cash than regular cash paid for it (e$1.00 for $0.95, for the sake of argument). The cash flow from the interest on the suspension account (due to long cash lifetimes on the net, for example) would be paying for operations, and profits, and a competitive market forces the underwriter to sell at a slight discount. See? This is exactly the way you price bonds. The case of zero interest digital cash is exactly like that of a zero-coupon bond. The ecash is then spent one or more times on the net at its "par" or face amount, and then the underwriter makes money or eats the difference when it is redeemed. > >Seting prices based on convenience instead of value derived? *BLECH*. That >sort of thing is anathema to free markets. There's probably the hoariest old saw in economics which says "The cost of anything is the foregone alternative." Convience *is* value derived. Market liquidity is convience (more like necessity, actually, certainly not anathema, but who's quibbling). Market liquidity is value derived. Cheers, Bob Hettinga ----------------- Robert Hettinga (rah(a)shipwright.com) "There is no difference between someone Shipwright Development Corporation who eats too little and sees Heaven and 44 Farquhar Street someone who drinks too much and sees Boston, MA 02331 USA snakes." -- Bertrand Russell (617) 323-7923

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Future NSA spy machine
by John Young 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Responding to msg by ianf(a)simple.sydney.sgi.com ("Ian Farquhar") on Mon, 22 Aug 9:38 AM >You're talking about silicon fab lines here, Tim. As >far as I am aware, Cray has never fab it's own chips. >Indeed, most of their boards which I have seen (I, II, >Y-MP/8 and Y-MP/EL) have used chips sourced from fairly >well- known vendors, such as VLSI Technologies. > >The original series of systems (I, II and X-MP) >actually used huge numbers of three types of chips. >From memory, one was a couple of NAND gates, one was a >register chip, and the third was a couple of K of SRAM. > More recently, the full Y-MP's have been implemented >in commercial ECL gate arrays (6500 gates per chip for >the full Y-MP's), and the original EL used CMOS 100K >arrays. I have been trying to get one of the computing >industries choicest pieces of marketting junk: the >Cray Y-MP Gate Array paperweight. :) Of course, given >my recent career change, I don't think one will be >coming my way anytime soon for some strange >reason.... Ian, Not asking for state or trade "secrets" but: 1. Is MIPS new "supercomputer" R8000 in the running as array elements for super-supercomputers? 2. Who is in the offing to succeed Cray and others as NSA's grateful suppliers? 3. Will there be more on-base hardware and software production, a "circling of the wagons" as crypto becomes more public? 4. And, thus, an even sharper (and more secret and competitive) line between governmental and commercial crypto hardware and code? 5. Who is NSA (or other TLAs) underwriting as lesser known SRCs, not-for- or for-profit? This is an update on where the jobs are for the "finest mathematicians" other than TLAs. 6. Is NSA (like CIA and NRO) bifurcating into an even more super-supersecret arm and another friendly, public one in response to wider use of crypto and ostensible pressure from the likes of Senators Moynihan and Kerrey? (And the recent RSA to-dos, murder threat, PKP lawsuit, are ploys.) FYI, zero, hopefully minus, security clearance here. Cheers, John

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Notary signing
by nelson＠crynwr.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Does anyone know of any legal problems with a party asserting that they have a notarized photocopy of certain id, representing that a third party is who they say they are? If I take someone's money, get a notarized copy of their id, and sign their PGP key, can I be sued? Obviously, I don't trust any non-lawyers to answer this question, but does anyone know of an encryption-aware lawyer to whom I could pay money for an opinion? -russ <nelson(a)crynwr.com> http://www.crynwr.com/crynwr/nelson.html Crynwr Software | Crynwr Software sells packet driver support | ask4 PGP key 11 Grant St. | +1 315 268 1925 (9201 FAX) | What is thee doing about it? Potsdam, NY 13676 | LPF member - ask me about the harm software patents do.

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Snore while they snoop
by John Young 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Responding to msg by solman(a)MIT.EDU (Jason W Solinsky) on Mon, 22 Aug 1:42 AM Tim says: >> nothing that I've >> seen mitigates the 1984 aspects of Cox's ideas. You say: >I'm afraid I'm not familiar with the aspects of which >you speak. Has he proposed some sort of nightmarish >enforcement system? NY Times wrote yesterday on "metering" of software usage by soft and hard means. This type of monitoring could easily, Clipperly, "1984"-ishly, record and report on other activities of the user. Recall alarms here recently about covert features of operating systems. Harmless looking hard devices may hide even more monitoring features, steganographically (my bag). John

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Re: In Search of Genuine DigiCash
by rah＠shipwright.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 10:17 AM 8/22/94 -0400, Jason W Solinsky wrote: >A buck is NOT a buck. It keeps on going down in value. We should use the >introduction of digicash to finally create a monetary instrument that never >experiences positive inflation. It's important not to pile on too many features, desires, agendas onto a relatively simple financial instrument. The point of digital cash is to provide liquidity for internet commerce as cheaply as possible. Anonymity is a happy benefit. Engineering it for anyother purpose reduces its efficiency. >Incorporate in a foreign land, invest the >money safely, issue and buy back shares according to a fixed formula that >depends only on the valuation of the company, publish your returns and >register the stock as securities in as many lands as possible. You now >have a perfectly legal basis for digicash. The shares will float in the >range of values specified by the stock issuance formula. They will >gradually go up relative to inflation and will be easily traded in multiple >currencies. And it will be really difficult for most governments to attack >the "payable to bearer" nature of the currency because it would encroach on >the rights of all American corporations. No? Or, you can take money in over the window and turn it into digital cash denominated on a dollar basis, priced at that point with discounts or primia as necessary. Occam's razor. >> In theory, though it probably won't happen, an underwriter could issue a >> greater amount of digital cash than regular cash paid for it ... [snip...] > >This will once again make the value of the digicash dependent on when it was >issued. An alternative formulation of this same scheme would have the value >od digi-cash be invariant with the data of issue, but have periodic >redemption dates on which the value of the digi-cash would jump. I find >neither to be desireable. That's true, but the difference in price reflects the estimated future value of that money in a suspension account plus the operating costs of the underwriter, not by some complex pricing methodology which makes the cash more difficult to use. >Market liquidity is increased by convenience to the holder of the securities, >not the issuer of the securities. I cash out my "digiDollar" today, it's a dollar. I cash out my digiDollar tomorrow, it's a dollar. I cash out my digiDollar the next day, it's a dollar. Looks pretty simple to use to me. (a digiDollar is a dollar is a dollar is a dollar) :-). [Oops. I went and concocted some more buzzy language. Occupational hazard. Don't worry, I'll try not to use it anymore, and maybe it'll die gracefully.] Cheers, Bob ----------------- Robert Hettinga (rah(a)shipwright.com) "There is no difference between someone Shipwright Development Corporation who eats too little and sees Heaven and 44 Farquhar Street someone who drinks too much and sees Boston, MA 02331 USA snakes." -- Bertrand Russell (617) 323-7923

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pgp -c,no initialization vector, possible bug, pgp 26ui
by 0x7CF5048D＠nowhere 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- In pgp 2.6 UI When pgp is called with the -c switch, the routine idea_encryptfile in crypto.c is called from main in pgp.c. > status = idea_encryptfile( workfile, tempf, attempt_compression); >int idea_encryptfile(char *infile, char *outfile, > boolean attempt_compression) >{ > FILE *f; /* input file */ > FILE *g; /* output file */ > byte ideakey[16]; > struct hashedpw *hpw; Note that idea key is a 16 bytes. Now idea_encryptfile calls squish_and_idea_file in crypto.c with this 16 byte key. > /* Now compress the plaintext and encrypt it with IDEA... */ > squish_and_idea_file( ideakey, f, g, attempt_compression ); Now squish_and_idea_file calls idea_file in the module crypto.c with the same 16 byte key. >static int squish_and_idea_file(byte *ideakey, FILE *f, FILE *g, > boolean attempt_compression) >{

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Re: Snore while they snoop
by rah＠shipwright.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 12:06 PM 8/22/94 -0400, John Young wrote: >NY Times wrote yesterday on "metering" of software usage by >soft and hard means. This type of monitoring could easily, >Clipperly, "1984"-ishly, record and report on other activities >of the user. Then there's this company called, I think, "Wave" Inc. out of Colorado somewhere. The first time I heard of it was in Peter Huber's Forbes column a year or so ago. The guy who's fronting it is a former chairman of a large defense contractor (United Technologies?). It involves metering application software use down to the second, using PC boards and the internet, or some other WAN equivalent. A dongle is forever... Cheers, Bob Hettinga ----------------- Robert Hettinga (rah(a)shipwright.com) "There is no difference between someone Shipwright Development Corporation who eats too little and sees Heaven and 44 Farquhar Street someone who drinks too much and sees Boston, MA 02331 USA snakes." -- Bertrand Russell (617) 323-7923

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