December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

PGP encryption
by marssaxman＠aol.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Are there any shareware/freeware/PD PGP-like encryption systems for the Macintosh? Or is there a Mac version of PGP and I just haven't heard about it? -Mars

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Re: Remailer reply addresses
by gtoal＠an-teallach.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Ah! I'm glad conversation on this thread has picked up - I was afraid no-one was interested. :Graham's suggestion about automatic remailer reply chains reminded me of :a simpler system which I would like to see. :Suppose one site, somewhere, would create new mail addresses upon request, :and map them to encrypted remailer chain blocks. (These are nested remailer :requests, where the outer layer is encrypted for the first remailer and tells :it where to send the message, the next layer is encrypted for the 2nd remailer :and tells it where to send, and so on. No remailer sees anything more than :where it is sending the message and where it received it from.) A new account :is created which maps, say, to a file which has one of these "anonymous return :addresses" in it. Any mail incoming for that address simply gets sent to the :remailer in the file, with the ARA stuck in front of it. That's pretty much what I was thinking of, except you don't need the pseudonym server. I find this stuff easier to talk about with examples than in general, so here's what I'm thinking about: I mail to first remailer (R1). The remailer inserts my reply address into the mail, encrypted, and either mails it to the recipient if I gave one, or to the next remailer if I specified a remailer chain - or to another remailer at random on it's own whim if it feels like doing so. Let's assume it's going to another remailer then. This next remailer (R2) takes the header block with my reply address in it, and prepends what *it* sees as the reply address, ie remailer R1. It then encodes this into an identically-structured reply block, and inserts *that* in the mail instead of the original reply block, before passing it on. This can be repeated as often as desired - the mail will always have only two parts where-ever it turns up - an encrypted reply-block and the text. Let's say it ends up on the n'th remailer, Rn. When the real recipient gets the mail and replies to it, the reply goes to remailer Rn, and Rn can decode the header block. The decoded header block contains an address, and extra text which happens to be a fully-formatted header block itself. This extracted, smaller, header block is put back into the mail instead of the one which was just decoded, and the mail is sent back to the address that was extracted. eventually it goes through umpteen remailers, and R2 passes it back to R1. R1 decodes the header block, finds *only* the address - no nested header block, and passes the mail back to the user at that address. So the whole thing is really a trivial protocol - just <start of header block marker, for remailer to locate it> email address djhfkjsdhfdshf (opaque text from previous encryptions) kjfhkdhfkdhfkd dfkdfkjdfkhdf (possibly on multiple lines) jhldkjodkfdjfljdlfkjldjdl <end of header block marker> Sure, this could be extended to put all sorts of neat features in the encrypted area, but I rather like the simplicity of just keeping it to a plain username@site on a single line. :With this software I could do something which cannot be done today. I could :send mail to which someone could hit "r" to reply, and receive that reply, :without any one person knowing my pseudonym. This is not that much to ask :for! I'd say it is the bare minimum for the use of pseudonyms on the net, :yet we don't have it, after all this time. And look how close we are to :being able to do it. Absolutely! That's what I want too. :With this basic system in place, some of Graham's ideas about time-limited :or use-limited pseudonyms could be applied as well. Other extensions people :have suggested would have the pseudonym server hold messages in inboxes until :people trigger a dump to a freshly created anonymous address. A lot of things :are possible. I agree entirely except I don't see the need for a pseudonym server - just the normal remailer reply address should be enough (so that people who can't create aliases can run this stuff on remailers out their personal accounts) which is why I think the blinded reply addresses should be in the *body* of the mails. (Smart mail software would scan the text for these and handle stuff like indentation etc. It doesn't seem too difficult - I already use procmail for something like this where I scan for PGP blocks in mail and decrypt them on receipt where possible) :But we should walk before we run. Right now I don't feel that we are even :crawling yet. hh@soda seems to have shown us how to walk :-) G

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Rejected mail
by John C. Brice 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

ag588 is rejecting mail from you

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Re(2): Cyber PsyOps & Media
by Harry Shapiro Hawk 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

------ From: imsi.com!perry(a)panix.UUCP, Thu, Apr 14, 1994 ------ Jeff Davis says: > I just got off the phone with David Wilson with the Chronicle of Higher > Education. @ A really well known publication. Actually among staff and administration of colleges, schools, etc., this is a rather well know publication of much note... having the article appear there will certainly educate the the "campus" folks... but to agree with what I think was Perry's intent this not a mainstream publication. /hawk Harry Shapiro Hawk Manager of Computer Services Warwick Baker & Fiore habs(a)uucp.warwick.com

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Re: New anon mailer idea?
by gtoal＠an-teallach.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

: Graham Toal's suggestion for automatic insertion of an encrypted : return address block is interesting. We had some discussion here last : year of a similar approach, although Graham's twist of using a symmetric : rather than PK cypher for the return address is new. A few thoughts: I'm not sure it matters; it was just to focus the mind on the point that even if a PK cypher was being used in practice, it was *in effect* a private key cypher because its security depended in part on keeping the decoding key secret within the remailer. Primarily I suggested something like DES/IDEA because RSA keys are expensive to generate, and for this scheme you definitely need one new password for every incoming mail. : - You'd want this feature to be optional. Some people might not want : their anonymity limited by having their return address recorded, even : in encrypted form. Yes, I agree. I think Eric von Hollander is doing this for *every* posting in the soda implementation he hacked up impressively quickly, and I'm not sure that's wise. (Eric will correct me if I read his docs wrongly) I've a feeling some of his customers might complain when they realise! (*I*'m not complaining - I think it's great that he added this feature so quickly) : - Graham is right about the advantages of use-once (or use-only-a-few-times) : return addresses. Chaum discusses how multiple use of return addresses : allows these systems to be broken, similar to the way Graham describes. I also hope Eric is using individually-created DES keys for every incoming post and not a single shared key. That would be a serious risk. I get the impression he's not, from his comment about the system being vulnerable to known-plaintext attacks. (Eric, if I'm right, could you change your hack to use disposable DES keys asap please?) : - The use of a symmetric cypher is a very nice way of getting the use-once : capability, along with the "burn after reading" effect of a remailer : chain which destroys itself as it goes. But it could be a considerable : burden on the remailer operator to maintain the database. One possibility : would be to fix a maximum time limit on how long the return addresses are : kept "alive" and require some real money to keep them longer. I'm not sure I agree with that. Actually I think the database management might be trivial - here's one suggestion. Let's say the invented random key is a hex string - well, we need 64 bits for a DES key, that's 16 hex digits, so lets be generous and make our random hex string 24 digits instead. We just take the first six digits as an identifying tag and use that tag as a filename to store the rest of the key. The tag is output in front of the encrypted block too, so when you come to decrypting the data, it's a straight file-open call to find the correct key. We don't have the problem here that we do with the pgp key-id's clashing, because if the key generator returns a clash, it can easily generate a second key. (If you're saying that deleting time-expired keys is onerous, well, it's just a case of mastering the unix 'find' command ;-) ) So if you're saying that finding a key will be expensive, I disagree; if you're saying that the database might get rather large, I do agree. Since these reply tokens aren't the same as well-known anonymous addresses, maybe it's sensible to insist from the start that they have a lifetime of no more than (say) a year; which can be shortened by user request on creation, but not extended. This is a plus feature in my opinion, because it avoids the problems Julf has had with lots of stale ID's needing to be purged. : - What we would really like is for the recipient to hit the "reply" button : and be able to send his mail back. It sounds like this system would still : require some cut-and-paste. We already have programs to create encrypted : remailer chain addresses fairly automatically. It would be nice to automate : this last little bit. Unfortunately, there seems to be no easy way to : make this work under Graham's scheme. No, I don't think that any cut and paste is required *at all* over the normal inclusion of the sender's mail in your reply. The remailer could grep the body of the mail for the magic tokens that delimit such a header block, and find it that way. (Allowing for indentation markers etc - not hard - the current usenet voting software does something similar) eg if you had: > : *** Remailer reply block *** > : jdhfkhdfkshfkhgkhfgkhf > : *** End remailer reply block*** in your mail, you can see it's still pretty easy for a program to extract the encoded bit... - just find the magic start token, note the stuff on the line before it, and strip similar stuff out until it finds the end token. : - It doesn't look like this would be an easy drop-in to the current remailers, : unfortunately. The syntax for how the address would be built up as it : passes through a chain of remailers is a little unclear as well. I've discussed this in a previous post. I think it's actually easy. The very first message goes out from the first remailer looking like this: (original text is the single line: username(a)real_site.com ) which encodes to: *** Remailer reply block *** jdhfkhdfkshfkhgkhfgkhf *** End remailer reply block*** which is inserted at the top of the mail. The next remailer extracts the encoded data, and prepares this text: last_remailer(a)wherever.edu jdhfkhdfkshfkhgkhfgkhf and encodes it, and sends it out in the mail in place of the original block, looking like this: *** Remailer reply block *** dfkjgahfskghfghfskhgkfhgfs kjfdskjsfdhgkjfhsgkjhf *** End remailer reply block*** (OK, slight poetic licence here - I'm using 1 1:1 cypher; in fact you'd expect the text to get bigger each time to cover the binary encoding method used) So the net effect is that the encoded text gets larger, but the mail is otherwise identical as it passes from site to site. : The idea does have a lot of promise, though, and I think it is definately : worth keeping in mind for the next generation of remailers. I might even start using them myself :-) One more point... I've been saying that the encrypted reply block is most easily thought about if *all* it contains is an email address. I think in practice you'd probably want to be able to store arbitrary remailer flags in here, like the command 'delete this DES key as soon as you've handled this reply' - this would in fact be more robust than keeping the same information in the DES key file itself, which was my original suggestion. And it would allow fairly arbitrary extension of the whole scheme. One way of implementing it that I can see is if the encrypted part of a block was a series of mail-header-like lines, eg: The cleartext would be: Reply-To: gtoal(a)an-teallach.com Initial-Usage-Limit: 5 Expire-Completely-After: 12/25/94 Decrement-Use-Count-By: 1 Random-Remailer-Hops-Left-In-M&M-Machine: 3 Previous-encrypted-Block: jhufdkjlwhfsjhgflkjfshkjfdhkjffsvjlfsjvkl lkjdhfkldshfksahfkshdgkhfgvkhdfkvbghfdkvhfdkj jhflkdsajhfkljshdfkjhsdkfljhdskhfksdhfkjdshf ljdsfhdkghlksfhglkfdjhglkjfhglkjhfgkjfh which would be wrapped and inserted in the usual way. G

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Re: New anon mailer idea?
by Anonymous 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

> Graham Toal's suggestion for automatic insertion of an encrypted > return address block is interesting. We had some discussion here > last year of a similar approach, although Graham's twist of using > a symmetric rather than PK cypher for the return address is new. [...] This is new? I thought Matt Ghio's remailer at andrew.cmu.edu did this already!?!?

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Rejected mail
by John C. Brice 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

ag588 is rejecting mail from you

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advance info on upcoming Clipper hearings
by Stanton McCandlish 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Date: April 27, in the A.M. Committee: Senate Judiciary; Law & Technology Subcommittee, Chaired by Sen. Leahy Current witness list: Whit Diffie, Steve Walker, someone from the Justice Department, NSA Director. More will follow when available. -- Stanton McCandlish * mech(a)eff.org * Electronic Frontier Found. OnlineActivist "In a Time/CNN poll of 1,000 Americans conducted last week by Yankelovich Partners, two-thirds said it was more important to protect the privacy of phone calls than to preserve the ability of police to conduct wiretaps. When informed about the Clipper Chip, 80% said they opposed it." - Philip Elmer-Dewitt, "Who Should Keep the Keys", TIME, Mar. 14 1994

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1st case of email libel won (fwd)
by Arthur Chandler 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Is this indeed the first such case? ------- Forwarded Message One of the students at our law school has provided the following regarding a recent Australian case of email defamation , and I will post further information she obtains. Archie Zariski * (zariski(a)csuvax1.murdoch.edu.au) * * Senior Lecturer, School of Law * * * Murdoch University * * * Murdoch, Western Australia 6150 * * * Ph +619 360 2761 Fax +619 310 6671 * * * * * * >From _The West Australian_ : Saturday, April 2, 1994 _COMPUTER LIBEL WINS ACADEMIC $40 000_ by Margot Lang Sacked University of WA Academic David Rindos has won $40 000 in a Supreme Court action against Derby anthropologist Gil Hardwick, who defamed him in a computer bulletin distributed worldwide. Dr Rindos' lawyer, Robert Castiglione, said he did not know of another case in which damages had been awarded for defamatory language on a computer message network. "Computer users who use these worldwide bulletin-boards should be aware that they could be exposing themselves to defamation actions," he said. "It's an informal system where people say quite personal things, but making allegations of paedophilia and bullying is going too far." An elated Dr Rindos said it was the first of many defamation actions he planned, adding: "I have to clear my name." About 23 000 people worldwide, mainly academics and students, have access to the science anthropology bulletin board on which Mr Hardwick's message appeared. Dr Rindos, who has a doctorate from Cornell University in the United States, became the centre of an international controversy after he was sacked from UWA last June. The University dismissed him on the ground of insufficient productivity. Protests poured in from academics at international archaeological institutions, many of who [sic] described Dr Rindos as eminent in his field. US anthropologist Hugh Jarvis put his protest in a message on the computer network. Three days later an answering message appeared from Mr Hardwick. Justice David Ipp said it contained the imputation that Dr Rindos's professional career and reputation had not been based on appropriate academic research "but on his ability to berate and bully all and sundry." He said that the message also suggested that Dr Rindos had engaged in sexual misconduct with a local boy. The inference was that these matters had some bearing on his dismissal from the university. "I accept that the defamation caused serious harm to Dr Rindos's personal and professional reputation," Justice Ipp said. "I am satisfied that the publication of these remarks will make it more difficult for him to obtain appropriate employment. "He suffered a great deal of personal hurt. The damages award must compensate him for all these matters and vindicate his reputation to the public." Mr Hardwick did not defend his action. He wrote to Dr Rindos's lawyer: "Let this matter be expedited and done with ... I can do nothing to prevent it, lacking any resources whatsoever to defend myself." ------- End of Forwarded Message

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Re: cypherpunks and politics (Re: USWA)
by jamiel＠sybase.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 11:37 AM 04/14/94 -0700, Timothy C. May wrote: >Jamie Lawrence wrote: >The list is what people make of it. Nothing more and nothing less. If >you have held off on writing 'til now about topics that are of great >interest to you, then why are you surprised that the topics others >write about don't match your interests? First off, don't dismiss me as a whiner. I personally could care less about your personal politics until they overlap with crypto. But you misread my post consistently. Perhaps I did poorly at expressing myself. I haven't been writing due to time constraints. It is not *my* political interests being underrepresented here that I was rambling about. It was the potential loss of other people. Extreme example- If you started to read a book called _Crypto for the Masses_ by someone who rambled on for 400 pages about socialism, and then got to the point and made really valid, cutting observations about the state of crypto, what are the odds you'd read to that section? >Nobody's asking you to be "associated with libertarianism," for >example. That many of us are libertarian-oriented is hardly >surprising, this being the Net. And the nonlibertarians are welcome, >but they seldom make persuasive arguments contradiciting the lib. >views, in my opinion. Certain non-lib (though *I* call him >libertarian!) folks like Dave Mandl are very welcome here, and make >their views known. What I was trying to say was not that I feel torn between being on this list and my own views, but that disregarding what anyone here may or may not believe in, first impressions are gonna chase a lot of people away who otherwise could be sympathetic to many beliefs that seem to be held as important. >> The point is that even if you think anyone with a viewpoint >> opposing yours is automatically stupid and not worth your time >> (and I don't think that too many of you are that bad off ;), >> aren't they at least worth using to further something you >> believe strongly in? It might do well to be careful in >> alienating potential allys by flip political jokes and >> comments. >I don't know if this is a jab at me or not, perhaps for my sin of >poking fun at Ross Perot.....I felt a satirical, but probably close to >the truth, point about Perot's authoritarian streak would make my >point better than a simple statement of my views. I wasn't replying to you so much as using this thread as a jump point for (!!) a new topic, specifically that of perceptions of others Re: this list. No, it wasn't a jab at you (I think Perot is scary as well)- sorry if my comments lent themselves to this interpretation. I do think, however, it would be valid to say that a Perot supporter should be considered a potential ally- as much as a libertarian or even a Clinton supporter. >If you want your brand of politics discussed here, as it relates to >cryptography, privacy, Clipper, etc., then *discuss* it. You can't >blame others for making their own comments. That was not my point. I do not blame others for anything. The goal was to inform others of the perceptions of a relative newcomer to the list who differs significantly in opinion on numerous points in relation to a attracting newcomers to the wonderful world of crypto. If I thought this list didn't interest me, I wouldn't be on it. >--Tim May -j

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