December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

Re: REAL WORLD ENCRYPTION
by an57322＠anon.penet.fi 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Sandy wrote: > >I would like to start a new thread. I want to know what the >people on this list intend to do with cryptography in the "real >world." There are a number of Cypherpunk projects on the drawing >board or already deployed: Stego, encrypted phones, encrypted >and anonymous remailers, stealth PGP, a digital bank, etc. Do >the folks on this list intend to use these tools, or is your >interest only theoretical? > [stuff deleted] >My interest is more than academic. I am one of the Cypherpunks >involved in creating a digital bank. If the 700 or so people on >this list wouldn't open an account in a digital bank, chances are >no one else would either. The same goes, of course, for secure >phones, encrypted e-mail, and all the rest. If the bank provides international transfers then I would be your first customer. -=T.A.Z. ------------------------------------------------------------------------- To find out more about the anon service, send mail to help(a)anon.penet.fi. Due to the double-blind, any mail replies to this message will be anonymized, and an anonymous id will be allocated automatically. You have been warned. Please report any problems, inappropriate use etc. to admin(a)anon.penet.fi.

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Safire Savages Clipper
by Duncan Frissell 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

For personal use only as directed... _______________________________________________ New York Times: Monday, February 14, 1994 Essay William Safire SINK THE CLIPPER CHIP Washington Well-meaning law and intelligence officials, vainly seeking to maintain their vanishing ability to eavesdrop, have come up with a scheme that endangers the personal freedom of every American. Nobody doubts that F.B.I. wiretaps help catch crooks or that the National Security Agency's "Big Ears" alert us to the plans of terrorists. And nobody can deny that new technology makes it easier for the bad guys to encode their communications to avoid the eavesdropping of the good guys. But the solution that faceless Clinton officials are putting forward shows outdated law enforcement rooted in abysmal understanding of the information explosion. The Clinton notion, recycled from an aborted Bush idea, is to put the same encryption chip; in every telephone and computer made in the U.S. This new encoding device, or scrambler, would help you and me protect the privacy of our conversations and messages and bank accounts from each other. That sounds great, but here comes the catch: The Federal Government would know and be able to use the code numbers to wiretap each of us. To the tune of "I Got Algorithm," the Eavesdrop Establishment is singing that it will help us protect our privacy --- but not from intrusion by the Feds. In effect, its proposal demands we turn over to Washington a duplicate set of keys to our homes, formerly our castles, where not even the king in olden times could go. The "clipper chip" --- aptly named, as it clips the wings of individual liberty --- would encode, for Federal perusal whenever a judge rubber- stamped a warrant, everything we say on a phone, everything we write on a computer, every order we give to a shopping network or bank or 800 or 900 number, every electronic note we leave our spouses or dictate to our personal-digit-assistant genies. Add to that stack of intimate date the medical information derived from the national "health security card" Mr. Clinton proposes we all carry. Combine it with the travel, shopping and credit data available from all our plastic cards, along with psychological and student test scores. Throw in the confidential tax returns, sealed divorce proceedings, welfare records, field investigations for job applications, raw files and C.I.A. dossiers available to the Feds, and you have the individual citizen standing naked to the nosy bureaucrat. Assure us not that our personal life stories will be "safeguarded" by multiple escrows in the brave new world of snooperware; we saw only last month how political appointees can rifle the old-fashioned files of candidates and get off scot-free. Whenever personal information is amassed and readily available, it will be examined by the curious, and if it is valuable, it will be stolen by political hackers. Ah, but wouldn't it be helpful to society to have instant access to the encoded communications of a Mafia capo, or a terrorist ordering the blow-up of a skyscraper, or a banker financing a dictator's nuclear development? Sure it would. That's why no self-respecting vice overlord or terrorist or local drug-runner would buy or use clipper-chipped American telecommunications equipment. They would buy non-American hardware with unmonitored Japanese or German or Indian encryption chips and laugh all the way to the plutonium factory. The only people tap-able by American agents would be honest Americans --- or those crooked Americans dopey enough to buy American equipment with the pre-compromised American code. Subsequent laws to mandate the F.B.I. bug in every transmitter would be as effective as today's laws banning radar detectors. Tomorrow's law enforcement and espionage cannot be planned by people stuck in the wiretap and Big Ear mind-set of the past. The new Ultra secret is that the paradigm has shifted; encryption has overcome decryption. Billions now spent on passive technical surveillance must be shifted to active means of learning criminal or aggressive plans. Human informers must be recruited or placed, as "sigint" declines and "humint" rises in the new era; psychic as well as monetary rewards for ratting must be raised; governments must collude closely to trace transfers of wealth. Cash in your clipper chips, wiretappers: you can't detect the crime wave of the future with those old earphones on. --- WinQwk 2.0b#1165

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tracking contacts with clipper
by Brian D Williams 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Tim May notes; >This is an important point, which I've seen mentioned a few times >over the past 10 months, but not given nearly enough attention. To >wit, if Clipjack phones are ever used by dissidents, subversives, >Cypherpunks, etc., then the key block that goes out with every >call--from both ends of course--will make recording the identities >of both parties trivial. I agree with Tim whole-heartedly on this one. If the NSA gets it's much desired "Digital Telephony Initiative" passed it will be a trivial matter both politically and technologicly to intercept and record all clipper key block transactions. The ability of the NSA to do this, and the usefullness of this kind of traffic analysis is left as an exercise for the reader. Brian Williams Extropian Cypherpatriot "Cryptocosmology: Sufficently advanced comunication is indistinguishable from noise." --Steve Witham -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.3a iQCVAgUBLV+pGdCcBnAsu2t1AQGKJQP+KFDQpldLphqjmZAKlLXHE5Hv/uN01OwN jK6Dg0gCuS/ffCyzX3G0E7Zu9EcyMN8v6LWFCDTtpTVJCmsGrxjlapzyyS3QAH3r +HdflypHtd0XEwLIdG2j2XJ3t7sATk5hYgfFG68J2Qw0WSuCrWNc0P2uOCK8XFQ7 meOESkfnsKs= =GOf2 -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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Tracking Contacts with Clipper
by tcmay＠netcom.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

A comment in sci.crypt about how Clipper will make it much easier for the Feds to track who's talking to whom... This is an important point, which I've seen mentioned a few times over the past 10 months, but not given nearly enough attention. To wit, if Clipjack phones are ever used by dissidents, subversives, Cypherpunks, etc., then the key block that goes out with every call--from both ends of course--will make recording the identities of both parties trivial. The "webs of trust" of PGP get replaced by "webs of co-conspirators." An easy way to track down associates. Further, merely using an encrypted phone with a "racketeer-influenced" person could conceivably enmesh one in the conspiracy. (This is merely speculation.) Whatever happened to the "phone remailer" project? The idea, floated about 15 months ago by parties who can speak up should they wish to (I only contributed some ideas, but was not the originator), was to create commercial phone banks that would scramble the origin and destination of call. Somewhat like call forwarding schemes (which wreak havoc with some wiretap procedures) and like the old stand-by of renting a room and having one phone wired to another phone. The idea here was to put these capabilities into a central switch and sell access, various optional services, etc. Out of the country would be even better. (Did you know that some of those ee-vil 900 phone sex outfits have moved to non-U.S. locations? Seems that U.S. law about blocking access, not to mention, antipornography laws, doesn't apply in places like Tijuana.) I could see some tie-ins with Voice PGP (the Soundblaster-based projects supposedly being worked on by several different groups). --Tim May -- .......................................................................... Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, tcmay(a)netcom.com | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero 408-688-5409 | knowledge, reputations, information markets, W.A.S.T.E.: Aptos, CA | black markets, collapse of governments. Higher Power:2**859433 | Public Key: PGP and MailSafe available.

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Typo in article I quoted
by tcmay＠netcom.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Jay Freeman has informed me that the recent NYT article mentioned in a talk.politics.crypto posting I quoted contained an obvious typo: "9/12/94" instead of "2/12/94." Ordinarily this would be of no consequence, but Jay points out--quite properly--that I have a well-known penchant, not to be confused with my well-known pynchont, for using fictional accounts of happenings for satirical effect. The inclusion of a _future_ date was merely a typo, not a hint at satire. So, the article really did appear, or so said the talk.politics.crypto article. (We out here on the beach have to visit our nearest bookstore to actually get a copy of that there New York City paper.) And today's Safire article, provided by Duncan Frissell, is a compelling critique. Admiral Bobby must be really fuming now. --Tim -- .......................................................................... Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, tcmay(a)netcom.com | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero 408-688-5409 | knowledge, reputations, information markets, W.A.S.T.E.: Aptos, CA | black markets, collapse of governments. Higher Power:2**859433 | Public Key: PGP and MailSafe available.

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No Subject
by Dirk Elmendorf 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

unsubscribe delmendo(a)trinity.edu

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SCHEME for FULL-SPEC RETURN PATH
by Jon 'Iain' Boone 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- This is a portion of mail that I sent to bill stewart. Since bill seems to busy to send a critique, could someone else comply, please? Jon Boone | PSC Networking | boone(a)psc.edu | (412) 268-6959 | PGP Key # B75699 PGP Public Key fingerprint = 23 59 EC 91 47 A6 E3 92 9E A8 96 6A D9 27 C9 6C - ------- Forwarded Message Date: Thu, 03 Feb 94 13:45:31 -0500 From: "Jon 'Iain' Boone" <boone(a)psc.edu> How secure do you think this is? Three remailers: anon1+(a)a.edu anon2+(a)b.com anon3+(a)c.org Originator: boone(a)psc.edu (really igi.psc.edu, as Message-ID: shows) Receiver: wcs(a)anchor.ho.att.com ()Ka == contents inside () are encrypted with Public Key of A mail addressed to random+*(a)foo.edu == mail to user random(a)foo.edu, random's mail processor will deal with the +* The sender must encrypt his/her own address with the public key of the first remailer and put it in the X-A-R-P: field. Upon reciept of a message with X-A-S-P: set to non-empty, the re-mailer will strip off its portion of the address and decrypt the rest with its private key. It will add itself to the X-A-R-P: and encrypt it in the public key of the next remailer on the X-A-S-P: If there is nothing in the X-A-S-P: (after having removed its own address), then it needs to be sent to the To: address, so we set the From: address to be the contents of the X-A-R-P: with its own address pre- & post- pended. That way, the reciepient need not change his/her mail agent to respond via the X-A-R-P: (or even need to include the X-A-S-P: in the outgoing response). If the message doesn't have an X-A-S-P:, the remailer checks the "To:" for the contents of what would have been the X-A-S-P: with its own address pre- & post- pended. By stripping off its own address and de-crypting the resultant, it has the next address to send it to. Barring wire-tapping, your privacy is susceptible in the logs (syslog, etc.) of the first remailer (a.edu in my example) or if all the RSA-keys for a.edu, b.com and c.org are broken. To dampen wire-tapping, you could encrypt the contents of the message with padding, making traffic analysis more difficult. Comments? IGI.PSC.EDU: To: wcs(a)anchor.ho.att.com X-A-S-P: anon1+"(anon2+"(anon3+(a)c.org)Kb"@b.com)Ka"@a.edu X-A-R-P: (boone(a)psc.edu)Ka From: boone(a)psc.edu Message-Id: <348723472.AA34890235(a)igi.psc.edu> A.EDU: To: wcs(a)anchor.ho.att.com X-A-S-P: anon2+"(anon3+(a)c.org)Kb"@b.com X-A-R-P: (anon1+"(boone(a)psc.edu)Ka"@a.edu)Kb From: anon1+(a)a.edu Message-Id: <2349458.AA23575(a)a.edu> B.COM: To: wcs(a)anchor.ho.att.com X-A-S-P: anon3+(a)c.org X-A-R-P: (anon2+"(anon1+"(boone(a)psc.edu)Ka"@a.edu)Kb"@b.com)Kc From: anon2+(a)b.edu Message-Id: <8980234.AA23489203(a)b.com> C.ORG: To: wcs(a)anchor.ho.att.com X-A-R-P: anon3+"(anon2+"(anon1+"(boone(a)psc.edu)Ka"@a.edu)Kb"@b.com)Kc"@c.org From: anon3+"(anon2+"(anon1+"(boone(a)psc.edu)Ka"@a.edu)Kb"@b.com)Kc"@c.org Message-Id: <2343.AA123(a)c.org> ANCHOR.HO.ATT.COM: (Reply) To: anon3+"(anon2+"(anon1+"(boone(a)psc.edu)Ka"@a.edu)Kb"@b.com)Kc"@c.org From: wcs(a)anchor.ho.att.com Message-Id: <99234.AA23492383(a)anchor.ho.att.com> C.ORG: To: anon2+"(anon1+"(boone(a)psc.edu)Ka"@a.edu)Kb"@b.com From: wcs(a)anchor.ho.att.com Message-Id: <2342349324.AA2343242(a)c.org> B.COM: To: anon1+"(boone(a)psc.edu)Ka"@a.edu From: wcs(a)anchor.ho.att.com Message-Id: <98234234.AA123213(a)b.com> A.EDU: To: boone(a)psc.edu From: wcs(a)anchor.ho.att.com Message-Id: <7732432.AA52342(a)a.edu> Of course, some work would be necessary to accomodate double-blind conversations. -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.3a iQCVAgUBLV92F4SAMUrxt1aZAQErUQQAggfMfjxAXS0rk9AL5uZTNN9adGNJqMvF gC5QSlgSki2bmUzfeoq/2cSpdUx7vX9LPCGd88+RnnouyhCDhK0a6fOLGgEDrtar miKGU11Ernt/bQC6gwvBa+KuD7pceLM2mPGw9NLxLMwwajP/U6CxL2/bMXIQhxZ0 eMTM76QuEwE= =tfVg -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- #

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No Subject
by Dirk Elmendorf 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Anybody know any anonymous news reader cites? Please send replies to delmendo(a)trinity.edu

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UNSUBCRIBE
by Barbara Katz 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

PLEASE REMOVE MY NAME FROM THIS LIST. I'M BEING INUNDATED WITH MULTIPLE MESSAGES WITH REPEAT INFORMATION. THIS IS NOT OF ANY USE TO ME. KATZB(a)DOWLING.EDU SIGNING OFF - OVER AND OUT

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CARD FRAUD AND COMPUTER EVIDENCE...an article to read
by tcmay＠netcom.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

There's an amazing article in talk.politics.crypto called "CARD FRAUD AND COMPUTER EVIDENCE" which I urge all of you to read. It's 300 lines long, so I'm not attaching it here. It's about a case in England that just concluded. A police constable complained to his local bank (a "building society") that 6 ATM withdrawals on his record were not made by him. The bank checked its "security" procedures and concluded that all was OK and that the man was lying. He was then charged with a crime and the case went to trial. The expert witness on computer security and cryptography, Ross Anderson, the author of the article, has some chilling things to say about the almost primitive level of security in the bank-ATM system. He clearly believed the defendant (the constable) was sincere in his claims and that someone had defeated the primitive security system. If you don't read the article, I'll summarize the outcome here. Spoilers follow, so exit now if you don't want to see them. The man was found guilty of making a false claim (or whatever the precise charge was). This despite his 19 years with the police (not a ringing endorsement to some of us, but you know what I mean) and the ample evidence that many avenues existed for others to have forged his card and gotten his PIN. In fact, the bank had not bothered to investigate several hundred previous anomalies....apparently because these cases had never gotten into a courtroom! The man is now facing the loss of his constable job, the loss of his pension, the resulting loss of his house in all probability, and whatever criminal penalties are handed out. The lessons for Cypherpunks are not clear, but this story makes for a compelling read. I suspect there are some real lessons. --Tim May -- .......................................................................... Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, tcmay(a)netcom.com | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero 408-688-5409 | knowledge, reputations, information markets, W.A.S.T.E.: Aptos, CA | black markets, collapse of governments. Higher Power:2**859433 | Public Key: PGP and MailSafe available.

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