December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

[Glenn Trewitt: Sorry I'm late to work, I stopped to watch the war...]
by bhayes＠CS.Stanford.EDU 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

FYI .. ------- Forwarded Message Forwarded: Wed, 06 Oct 93 12:15:48 PDT Forwarded: "Simon.Read(a)umist.ac.uk " Forwarded: Wed, 06 Oct 93 12:14:34 PDT Forwarded: "cak(a)parc.xerox.com " Forwarded: Wed, 06 Oct 93 12:12:45 PDT Forwarded: "glassner(a)parc.xerox.com " Return-Path: @Sunburn.Stanford.EDU:trewitt@pa.dec.com Return-Path: <@Sunburn.Stanford.EDU:trewitt@pa.dec.com> Received: from Sunburn.Stanford.EDU by Xenon.Stanford.EDU with SMTP (5.61+IDA/25-CS-eef) id AA24117; Wed, 6 Oct 93 11:09:02 -0700 Received: from inet-gw-2.pa.dec.com by Sunburn.Stanford.EDU with SMTP (5.61+IDA/25-SUNBURN-eef) id AA18716; Wed, 6 Oct 93 11:08:58 -0700 Received: by inet-gw-2.pa.dec.com; id AA24021; Wed, 6 Oct 93 11:07:56 -0700 Received: by miasma.pa.dec.com; id AA17136; Wed, 6 Oct 93 11:07:51 -0700 Message-Id: <9310061807.AA17136(a)miasma.pa.dec.com> To: Barry Hayes <bhayes(a)cs.stanford.edu>, Kim Rachmeler <kim(a)wpd.sgi.com>, Julie King <julie_king(a)qm.sri.com>, Warren Cory <warren(a)cadence.com>, Joe Hughes <eefacjl(a)prism.gatech.edu>, Lia Adams <lia(a)wpd.sgi.com>, Lucy Berlin <Lucy_Berlin(a)taligent.com> Subject: Sorry I'm late to work, I stopped to watch the war... Organization: DEC Network Systems Laboratory (Palo Alto, CA / WRL-1) Phones: H:408-773-9239, W:415-688-1324, DTN:543-1324, Fax:415-324-2797 Date: Wed, 06 Oct 93 11:07:50 -0700 From: Glenn Trewitt <trewitt(a)pa.dec.com> X-Mts: smtp In case you didn't know, SUN has a branch office in Moscow. - Glenn - ------- Forwarded Message From: John (Most modern computers would break if you stood on them) Mackin <john(a)civil.su.oz.au> Date: Thu, 7 Oct 1993 03:44:54 +1000 To: hackers(a)vix.com Subject: Feeling bored? Why not work for Sun's Moscow office! Message-Id: <199310070344.852.hackers.balus(a)civil.su.oz.au> X-Face: 39seV7n\`#asqOFdx#oj/Uz*lseO_1n9n7rQS;~ve\e`&Z},nU1+>0X^>mg&M.^X$[ez>{F k5[Ah<7xBWF<un6={nlL7Om5<0UsuHKjCxs)C$`DP.N'-LLb8=8)"a@d2bG-f7qD2AJ#UZ>-@-ru?& @4K4-b`ydd^`(n%Z{ [Forwards deleted] From: mpiech(a)angkorwat.Russia.Sun.COM Subject: Another Day in Moscow Date: Tue, 05 Oct 93 11:42:31 +0300 Another Day in Moscow Last night (Sunday) around 6:00pm Yevgeny, one of our Russian SE's, called and said I shouldn't leave my apartment because there was a civil war going on in the streets of Moscow. During the day I had walked from my apartment, just east of the Kremlin, through the center over to the Irish House to do some shopping, and everything seemed pretty normal (for Moscow). Anyway, Yevgeny said that a crowd was heading for the Ostankina TV building. So I layed around for a while on my couch, watching some very slow movie about peasant romance, and then Winnie the Pooh (in Russian), and then this really outstanding animation done with Legos (what an obvious and killer idea! maybe old hat for animation buffs, but it was the first time I had seen it) when the screen cuts out and this editor-kinda guy comes on with "cevodnya...bil ochen...tizholi dyen. ...Tyzholi, potomu shto...--trudna guvarit--" "today...was a very...difficult day. ...Difficult, because...--it is hard to speak--" and then the screen went blank. So I switched to the only channel of the eight that was working (no cable, no CNN at my place), and a news report came on and said the TV building had been stormed. Then this station (broadcast from somewhere else in Moscow) played that stupid airplane hijacking Love-Boat movie with Mike Brady as the captain (I never did catch the name, but that it was in Russian didn't seem to reduce the content I could get from it) interrupted every so often with little news blurbs, including a pitch from Yuri Gaidar. I could understand maybe half of all this Russian news and speeches, but the few clips of fighting in the TV building were pretty clear. I finally bailed on the whole scene around 11, after hearing what the BBC had to say about it on the shortwave. I woke up around 6:30 with that strange feeling like the first time as a kid when you find a beehive in your back yard: at first you were really afraid to go near it, but you went a few steps closer, nothing happened, and now you just want to walk up and see what the hell's in the damn thing. I left my apartment around 7:30, and when I got to the street it seemed like just another day in Moscow. Business as usual. I got to the corner and thought, I can just go the the metro and go to work, or--if I just walk down to the Kremlin and see what's going on at Red Square, it'll only add twenty minutes to my commute. Hell, I had taken my backpack instead of the briefcase, and had two cameras in it, might as well have a look. About halfway there I heard a few explosive noises, but they could very well have been a dump truck going over metal plates in the street... I got to Red Square and it was basically quiet. At the north end were some bogus token barricades I'd heard about on the news. As I walked toward them I heard the unmistakable sound of machine-gun fire. Damn, must be just around the corner. The only other time in my life I'd ever heard machine-gun fire was at ROTC boot camp. I got to the other side of the history museum, but again, basically nothing was going on. I could hear all this bloody racket--there *was* a war going on somewhere--but couldn't see anything. I thought about getting on the metro and going to work, but then I thought I'd have a peek at Tverskaya St. (the main street in downtown). It was blocked off, and as I started to walk toward the Pushkin monument I could see the four huge barriers made of old crates, park benches, playground monkey-bar sets, etc. Lots of people were standing around little bonfires, drinking and smoking--kind of like a vigil at Berkeley except for the vodka. There was an armored personnel carrier (APC) in front of Pizza Hut (I hope the picture turns out...). I got up past the City Council building where there was a large crowd of Yeltsin supporters waving tri-colors, but basically nothing was going on (relatively). Still lots of war noises. At this point I figured the war must all be around the White House. I wasn't sure what to do, but somehow I slid into this flow heading toward the noise and wandered through unfamiliar streets of Moscow to the soundtrack from Apocalypse Now. When I got to the American Embassy, I joined a crowd of a few hundred people and watched occaisonal sniper flashes from the back corner of the White House, which I could see in the distance. Riot police occasionally pushed us back. After about twenty minutes, I figured I'd seen as much as I'd be able to, and started to head toward the metro to go to work. I got to Noviy Arbat, and there was a huge line of APCs waiting patiently for action. And then the tanks came. About a dozen T-80s, from where I'd just walked. Ok, I'll get to work a little late. After I'd shot a half a roll of film--tanks in a line, tanks turning the corner, tank boys playing with the guns (what a spooky scene, tanks in the street!)--I started to walk south again on the Garden Ring to go to the metro. But then at the next cross street, which leads to the next bridge down from the White House, I decided I just had to go down to the river and see what everything looked like from there. I got down there and could see the front of the White House, and at this point the sounds of gunfire were rolling down the river and echoing off buildings in a violent cacophony of death-noise. Mesmerised, I slid again into the flow of people heading through the parked cars toward the cauldron, assuming we'd soon reach the police barricade. I felt like I was going to an AC-DC concert. A few minutes later there was a huge explosion, which I later learned was the sound of a T-80 firing its 148mm shell, and several hundred car alarms went off simultaneously. The police barricade wasn't there. Before I knew it, I'd passed the burning hulks of two bombed out busses and was standing in a huge crowd at the base of the bridge in front of the White House, watching thousands of bullets fly between the building and the half-dozen or so APCs in front of it. I couldn't believe I was there: how could people be aloud this close to a bloody war? I kept going. I pushed through the crowd, and worked my way up *onto the bridge*, several hundred yards in front of the now famous but no longer white House. Yes, war as a spectator sport. Why the hell was I here? Why did I *want* to be here? Who let us here? The range of a Kalashnikov automatic rifle is 2km, and I'm standing on a bridge 500m in front a building filled with hardline terrorists armed with these things. It didn't seem to bother the hundreds of other people standing around me, so I pulled out a Canon EOS and started my own shooting. There were already two very large chunks of stone knocked out of the House, and next to the smoking remnant of the Meria building and with the burning busses on the embankment road, the whole picture was kind of grisly. The gunfire stopped for short periods, but mostly just kept going. About fifteen minutes later several bullets ricocheted somewhere within a few tens of yards of us; we all ducked down behind some concrete and then ran towards the middle of the bridge. It felt a *little* safer, anyway, behind one of the metal stanchions of the bridge railing. I ended up this time standing next to couple of British guys, and exchanged a few war-watching pleasantries ("I wonder if the pub's open" "Where's the hot-dog stand?" "You'd think if they're going to have a war, they could at least put out some porta-potties" etc.) There were four T-80s on the bridge, and six directly accross the river from the White House (to the left of our priviledged position; the House was on the right). Through all the noise, I'd assumed the tanks were firing too; it was difficult to tell what was doing what with the sound bouncing everywhere. But then, there was an explosive noise like I've never experienced in my life: the bridge shook, my heart skipped a few beats. All the nonsense murmuring in the crowd died in a nanosecond. Under a huge cloud of smoke, *all* of the remaining glass on the upper part of the House started falling, as if in slow motion. One of the T-80s had fired. I was scared. "Man, these boys aren't playing," one of the Brits mumbled as we crouched meekly behind our railing. After about five minutes my hands stopped shaking just enough to get my camera aimed at the House to get ready for the second T-80 blast. Somehow this was a little different from taking photos of canons firing blanks at Civil War reenactments I went to as a kid. I stayed around for another half hour or hour (time is kind of irrelevant in this situation...) for a third T-80 blast, an ammo truck hit (the thing blew off like a brick of fire crackers for 15 minutes straight), another gunfight in the distance (which I later read was at the Itar-TASS building), and another spray of shots into the crowd where I was standing. This one was more serious--louder and more shots, and the crowd went a little crazier and started running off the bridge. They eventually regained confidence and retook their former positions (I ended up a little farther from the House again). Finally I figured I'd taken enough pictures, wouldn't get much more out of the last few tank shots, and probably wouldn't be able to see much of the surrender when it finally happened; so I walked off the bridge a bit, jumped in a taxi, and went to work. Business as usual. - - --Mike Piech - ------- End of Forwarded Message ------- End of Forwarded Message

1 0

Re: Crypto Idea; Multi-Part Sigs
by wcs＠anchor.ho.att.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Carl's comment that, for RSA, decryption and signing are really identical, gets to the heart of the matter. Hal posted a method for letting N people together do the operations. For N people separately, a trusted mailer run by one of the people can solve the decryption problem (RSA-decrypts the session key using its private key, RSA-encrypts it with the public keys for all the recipients, retransmits), and it's ok to trust it since the list-runner is allowed to see the messages anyway. This nethod tends to require the sign-N-times method of encryption or signature, whish is boring but adequate for many needs, unless you want the users to be anonymous. The N of M signature method from Shamir doesn't work will if you want to preserve anonymity of members of the group, and giving everybody in the group their own copy of the key also may have drawbacks.

1 0

Re: Strong PRNGs
by Matthew B. Landry 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

>Another point: it raises the possibility of an interesting loophole >in the ITAR. Cryptographic hash functions are exportable, as "systems >for authentication", or something to that effect. A random-number >generator based on a hash function should be exportable. After all, >as you say, >> I have many uses for random numbers and none of them is XOR encryption. > >But such an RNG *could* be used for encryption. If you package and >market it as such, you're asking for trouble. But packaged as a >library routine in a simulation library? It's not a fast PRNG, but >it should be pretty good statistically. Does it strike you as ironic that in this atmosphere where "exporting" basically secure products like PGP is illegal, that exporting the tools to generate one of the best possible (in the security sense) encryption systems known to current technology (better than anything that can be implemented in software, anyway) would be _legal_, because it also has ample uses that are unrelated to cryptography? If only One Time Pad style systems weren't so kludgey, this would present the _perfect_ solution to our problems with ITAR and the like. Unfortunately, there are some things they can't do. Oh well... Please don't bother to tell me that we'd need to physically build hardware to generate seeds for the hash functions, because I already know that. I didn't say it was entirely practical, just that it was an interesting bit of irony. -- Matthew B. Landry ml7694a(a)american.edu (Finally!) mbl(a)ml7694a.leonard.american.edu

1 0

PGP removal
by KENUNGER＠delphi.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

I first got pgp2.2 from compuserve ibmsys forum downloads. A few day ago the file finder on cis listed PGP2.3. When I actually looked neither program was there. Sysop says the were removed on advice of his lawyer(not compuserve management ) because of government crakdown. and questios of legality. The not so subtle hand of intimidation by rumor seems to be at work here. Just thought this would be of interest. p.s. I FTPed it from the INTERNET anyway.=======Ken PPUBLIC KEY AVAILABLE ON PGP KEY SERVERS .

1 0

Re: Crypto Toolkit Suggestions
by Phil G. Fraering 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Re: Hiding processes and data via subordinate processes, variables, et cetera... it will probably be a _lot_ better and easier to simply assume that a multi-user unix system isn't secure to begin with, and work out alternatives from there. Phil

1 0

Network Etiquette Question
by DON_HENSON＠delphi.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Just a quick question on network etiquette. Shouldn't it be considered bad form to post a PGP-encrypted message (readable by only one person) to a list like Cypherpunks? Don Henson PGP key on server or on request

1 0

Posting Long Documents
by DON_HENSON＠delphi.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

In the interest of saving money (for those of us who have to pay for our internet access), please DO NOT post long reference documents, such as the 'ASCII version of ECPA' directly to the list. A much better way to get this information out would be to post an anonymous FTP site where the document can be obtained. Would appreciate muchly. Don Henson PGP key avail on server or on request

1 0

Macintosh System 7 Pro, e-mail, encryption
by msattler＠netcom.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

I installed Macintosh System 7 Pro (7.1.1) onto my PowerBook today. I'd heard that e-mail was part of the new package, but I was amazed to see how integral it is. When you start up for the first time you are asked for a userid and a password to protect your "PowerTalk Keychain". A mailbox and a "catalog" appear on your desktop; the latter is a list of entries in different domains (like AppleTalk, EtherTalk, etc.) so that you can authenticate yourself on all the places you exist with one login. E-mail comes free with the system and works automagically when multiple users install the new system. I haven't used a lot of this system since it's so new, but I sent this message because it heralds a new era of turnkey mail/network-identity. I'm investigating how this works with AppleEvents to see how PGP can be seamlessly integrated. A friend of mine went to the product launch at Apple and got a free "signed" RSA user identification voucher. I'd be very interested in hearing from others who have a clue about this stuff. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Michael S. Sattler msattler(a)netcom.com +1 (415) 358-3058 Digital Jungle Software Encrypt now; ask me how. (finger for PGP key) Evil will certainly triumph if good people do nothing at all.

1 0

Re: Standard Headers for Anonymous Remailers
by pierre＠shell.portal.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

> From: Karl Lui Barrus <klbarrus(a)owlnet.rice.edu> > > The attitude expressed by the individual on io.com shows a problem we > will have in educating others - "anonymous posts CAN destroy a civil > conversation". Yes, maybe so, but in my experience on mailing lists, > bbses, etc. I've noticed that "flame wars" and "anonymous posts" have > NO correlation, and are quite independent of one another. > > Since I've seen "flame wars" on systems with absolutely no anonymous > posting facilities (or none that were used), I conclude that civil > conversation is destroyed by strongly held differences in opinions (or > some other factor I can't pin down). I'll second that. The main menaces against "civil conversations" have been, on Netnews, flame wars and wars between two individuals. After the first few messages, the flamers and the opponents are clearly identified. They are usually proudly posting under their usual Name (as they are all fighting for their Reputation, and for establishing their opponent's Incompetence) (... do we recognize anybody yet :-? ) I actually can't remember such a war involving an anonymous poster (as in "using penet or similar"). What destroys discussions (and forces people to leave them...) is the tendency of threads to start genuine, and to end as flame wars. Certainly, for-money systems would tend to shorten flame wars.. On the other hand in the few discussions against anonymous posting, some people were arguing for "accountability" who were clearly forgetting the proportion of people who use handles or pseudonyms as their default setup. These are not anonymous per se, but in the current fickle netnews, what's the difference? (BlackNet would make a difference :-) Only in the most outrageous fraud cases (votes, forgery...) are pseudonyms tracked back to their account holder. Solution (1/2 kidding): Build an anonymous remailer that gives a choice of "obviously anonymous output", or "random pseudonym output". You could even take the pseudonym from the phone book, or from the names of the people who used the newsgroup in the past :-) Pierre. pierre(a)shell.portal.com

1 0

Digital Cash Primer
by DON_HENSON＠delphi.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Shari Steele writes: -> Hey 'punks. Anyone know of an elementary primer on digital cash? I'm trying to get up to speed on this. <-- I would like an elementary primer also. How about posting the info to the list vice just to Shari. Thanks, Don Henson PGP key avail on server or on request

2 1