December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

Crypto Tech Reports
by baum＠newton.apple.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

The following technical reports are FTPable at ftp.cs.uow.edu.au pub/papers Cheers, >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>|<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<< Yuliang Zheng Email: yuliang(a)cs.uow.edu.au Centre for Comp Security Research Department of Computer Science Voice: +61 42 21 4331 (office) University of Wollongong +61 42 21 3859 (dept) Wollongong, NSW 2522 AUSTRALIA Fax: +61 42 21 4329 >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>|<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<< Preprint No. 94-1 Y. Zheng ``Improved Public Key Cryptosystems Secure against Chosen Ciphertext Attacks'' ABSTRACT This note describes an improvement to the first two of the three public key cryptosystems proposed by Zheng and Seberry, which are provably secure against chosen ciphertext attacks. The improvement removes a shortcoming with the original cryptosystems, which occurs when they are used for both confidentiality and sender authentication purposes. Preprint No. 94-2 J. Seberry, X.M. Zhang and Y. Zheng ``Relationships Among Nonlinearity Criteria'' ABSTRACT An important question in designing cryptographic functions including substitution boxes (S-boxes) is the relationships among the various nonlinearity criteria each of which indicates the strength or weakness of a cryptographic function against a particular type of cryptanalytic attacks. In this paper we reveal, for the first time, interesting connections among the strict avalanche characteristics, differential characteristics, linear structures and nonlinearity of quadratic S-boxes. In addition, we show that our proof techniques allow us to treat in a unified fashion all quadratic permutations, regardless of the underlying construction methods. This greatly simplifies the proofs for a number of known results on nonlinearity characteristics of quadratic permutations. As a by-product, we obtain a negative answer to an open problem regarding the existence of differentially 2-uniform quadratic permutations on an even dimensional vector space. =========================================================================== Newsgroup Co-moderator: Richard Golding, Hewlett-Packard Laboratories compdoc-techreports-request(a)ftp.cse.ucsc.edu Be sure to send questions about specific reports to the poster, not to the newsgroup. ************************************************** * Allen J. Baum tel. (408)974-3385 * * Apple Computer, 20525 Mariani Ave, MS 305-3B * * Cupertino, CA 95014 baum(a)apple.com * **************************************************

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Big Brother Inside Stickers, V2.0
by Matt Thomlinson 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

To everyone that requested/was thinking of requesting the big brother inside postscript: The version I sent out individually this morning was buggy; the 'd' in "inside" filled in. (Too bad corel's screen image and postscript output isn't the same, huh? maybe they fixed that in v4.0?) I've re-exported it and the NEW version should be up for ftp sometime tonight at cpsr.org; Dave Banisar will announce its whereabouts. Sorry for the mixup. mt Matt Thomlinson Say no to the Wiretap Chip! University of Washington, Seattle, Washington. Internet: phantom(a)u.washington.edu phone: (206) 548-9804 PGP 2.2 key available via email or finger phantom(a)hardy.u.washington.edu

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Clipper and Traffic Analysis
by Mike Godwin 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Does anyone here have any thoughts as to whether Clipper enables traffic analysis or tracing more easy than it normally is under Switching System 7? The reason I ask is, I have this sense that one reason the government likes Clipper is that the Law Enforcement Access Field enables agents to draw inferences about who's talking to whom and what they're saying, even without decrypting the actual communications. What do you think? --Mike

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oops
by Robert A. Hayden 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Ok, sorry. Didn't know that L.D. wasn't on the list any more :-) ____ Robert A. Hayden <=> hayden(a)krypton.mankato.msus.edu \ /__ -=-=-=-=- <=> -=-=-=-=- \/ / Finger for Geek Code Info <=> In the United States, they \/ Finger for PGP 2.3a Public Key <=> first came for us in Colorado... -=-=-=-=-=-=-=- (GEEK CODE 1.0.1) GAT d- -p+(---) c++(++++) l++ u++ e+/* m++(*)@ s-/++ n-(---) h+(*) f+ g+ w++ t++ r++ y+(*)

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re: LEAF, SS7
by m5＠vail.tivoli.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

It may be that traffic analysis of Clipper conversations is a question orthogonal to the switching system employed to establish circuits, but the question remains: does the presence of LEAF blocks on circuits simplify the task of traffic analysis? Methinks it does, particularly as the network gets more complicated. While it's tempting to think of this as a clever back-door way of getting some of the FBI "tap-o-rama" proposals implemented, it's not really interesting until nearly everybody is using a Clipper phone. Consider this little flight of fancy: what if, "in the interest of the privacy of the subscribers", Clipper hardware is installed right in each end-office switch? Thus, every phone call is Clipper encrypted as it passes through the network, even if I don't have a Clipper phone. It might even be that Clipper hardware could be installed right at the network interface. Isn't that nice, the phone company is going out of its way to safeguard my privacy. Only thing is, now every circuit I establish is tagged by an LEAF that identifies me... Oh well, enough paranoia for now. -- | GOOD TIME FOR MOVIE - GOING ||| Mike McNally <m5(a)tivoli.com> | | TAKE TWA TO CAIRO. ||| Tivoli Systems, Austin, TX: | | (actual fortune cookie) ||| "Like A Little Bit of Semi-Heaven" |

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I've got the big bro inside postscript
by Matt Thomlinson 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

send me mail if you'd like a copy; I assume it'll be up on the cpsr.org ftp site soon, but.. I hadn't previously released it, but I just made a dump from the .cdr file... mt (it is around 60k .ps, 28k .ps.Z). Matt Thomlinson Say no to the Wiretap Chip! University of Washington, Seattle, Washington. Internet: phantom(a)u.washington.edu phone: (206) 548-9804 PGP 2.2 key available via email or finger phantom(a)hardy.u.washington.edu

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Detweiler abuse again
by qwerty-remailer＠netcom.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Eric, could you repeat that in English, after those drugs wear off ;-)? >maxim, Strengthen all parties, opponent model of universal network >monitoring, identity-based, IP-based entry point, server daemons, >reason for use and development, profoundly broken for the long run, >100% completely distributed salience filter, newsgroup topicality, >everybody has to stay on topic, no exceptions. Please. No offense dude, honestly, you obviously are thinking on a great scale, very fast, but could you recapitulate your ideas in the morning so the rest of us can understand what you are trying to say? -=Xenon=- -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.3 iQCVAgUBLWAeKQSzG6zrQn1RAQHyjwP9F9GYwLQWvjs+Phd0kOsYQseCFjeH/jLj jbQNSLrpOnCm1+jL1hc8Ewv837Bvz/VDcc6Aw/exnemX/8SUw7sZ4V1by7tsKYc+ W2TZTWV0wmfSGyEmrZJrDXUc1issXwKbEgqPoAEbidLbu4ZuqJEbeciaPFb7R7h5 iIjE/3JlDM4= =loKk -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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Re: SCHEME for FULL-SPEC RETURN PATH
by Hal 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

> From: Matthew J Ghio <mg5n+(a)andrew.cmu.edu> > > > From: "Jon 'Iain' Boone" <boone(a)psc.edu> > > > > 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> > ... > > Well, I guess great minds think alike. I'm already working on this. > I've been hacking on in my spare time for about a month now. My program > is about 75-80% done. Here's how it will work: > > You send mail to remail+getid(a)x.edu. Is this some kind of RFC822 hack? It doesn't work on my system. Mail to hfinney+xyz(a)shell.portal.com bounces. Are you assuming some special mail address processing has been installed by the administrators of the machines to handle this "+" hack, or is my machine broken in not respecting it? Hal

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RE: REAL WORLD ENCRYPTION
by Pierre Uszynski 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Sandy writes: > I want to know what the > people on this list intend to do with cryptography in the "real > world." I want to move many of the transactions I do today via snail mail, credit cards, and cash, to electronic medium. Receive bills in email (authenticated and encrypted), pay them in email (e-checks) on a digital bank. Receive statements from the bank in email (authenticated and encrypted). Track the complete transaction in the same medium, mostly automatically, via my email agent. In what can be done now, the systems are disparate, ad-hoc, non-integrated, insecure, expensive, incompatible, etc... in short: junk. And none of the existing systems apply to transactions between individuals. I want transactions between individuals to become practical. I want a complete and usable electronic commerce setup usable not only between me and utilities (phone, electricity, internet), but between me and most other entities (employer pay and expense refunds, rent, other individuals), including across borders, of course. Not only do I want it "integrated" and "open" so I can use it with whoever I damn well please, but I want it light-weight, so payments in pennies become routinely feasible. Efficient payments in pennies allow stuff like routine digital postage, and routine remuneration of authors "as I read", as in shareware books, magazines, and newsgroup postings. I strongly disagree with people who lightly dismiss what they call "digital postage". I think that allowing for digital pennies as part of a general digital payment system would open the door to many useful applications in, yes, pay-per-use ftp, and generally individual pay-per-use access to databases. But both PGP and e-momey won't work until people's mailers and newsreaders allow them to use them easily (that is, until people quit getting stuck with Microsoft's stuff). Even the Unix mailers and newsreaders are not getting updated anywhere quickly enough. That means the first commercial crypto-applications may have to provide the hooks themselves, or rely on what others like General Magic are doing. A pointer to how far we are is that many people still get spooked by 50 messages a day list traffic, and desperatly try to unsubscribe quickly. This means they don't even have a mail preprocessor (procmail, deliver, etc...) A pointer to how close we are is that 3 years ago, this discussion would not even take place, and these pre-processors did not exist yet. Also that people are now opening commercial MUDs. BTW, none of the applications I'm interested in would require IP-level transactions, all would work fine with email-level transactions. That's good, because little of the windows market is going to get IP connectivity anytime soon, whereas most will get email and fax connectivity. The stuff that is being done now is in the right direction, but frankly, it's still too fragmented and impractical to see much use (and that's why I'm not bothering to sign this message). Anonymous posting is the only "application" that sees much use, and even then, I guess it's not fully understood by many users (na vs an, "identity leak", etc...) Pierre Uszynski, pierre(a)shell.portal.com

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Hardware Random Numbers
by arif＠stat.fsu.edu 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

I am looking for a source for Harware Random Numbers for a PC. I would like it to be a simple plug-in, but need it to be fast (at least 100K, preferrable 1 Meg bytes/sec), and good (in randomness properties). Any FAQ, pointers, adresses, phone-numbers, e-mail addresses, etc... would be apreciated.

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