December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

Re: So, what are we going to do?
by smb＠research.att.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

"Jim Sewell" says: > A friend of mine that repaired computers said he ran across an > old disk drive that was used in WWII. There were no disk drives in WWII. There were barely computers. Hell, there was barely magnetic audio storage -- on steel wire! I sent the same reply privately. But disks were used in a WWII voice security system -- phonograph disks... I just learned about this system a few weeks ago. As anyone who has read Kahn knows, the early secure voice systems weren't secure; trained listeners could even understand the scrambled system. Some folks at Bell Labs were asked to design one that would work. The eventual system -- known as SIGSALY, or as Project X (and the end units were called X terminals, which is probably the only time that phrase was ever used for something that is secure...) -- utilized a vocoder and a one-time pad. The one-time pad was recorded on two high-quality phonograph records, each of which held 15 minutes of keying information. SIGSALY terminals were quite large -- they took up 30 seven-foot bays. And they needed a *lot* of air conditioning. But the system did work, even over transoceanic radio links. Churchill had one in his underground office in London, in fact. References are ``Secret Telephony as a Historical Example of Spread- Spectrum Communication'', William R. Bennett, IEEE Trans. on Communications, Vol 31, No. 1, Jan '83, and ``A History of Engineering and Science in the Bell System: National Service in War and Peace (1925-1975)''.

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Re: Detweiler
by lefty＠apple.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

>If Detweiler is a big nut. Why was he involved in the implementation of MacPGP >along with people like Atkins and Finney? If William Shockley was a racist twit, why was he involved in the invention of the transistor? What exactly are they teaching you at Montclair High School? Evidently, it doesn't particularly involve thinking... -- Lefty (lefty(a)apple.com) C:.M:.C:., D:.O:.D:.

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The American money capture
by werner＠mc.ab.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

>Date: Mon, 2 May 94 10:35:54 -0700 >From: hughes(a)ah.com (Eric Hughes) >The Great Depression was pretty clearly caused by deflation in the >money supply. To quote Milton Friedman: > > "All told, from July 1929 to March 1933, the money stock in > the United States fell by one-third [...]" > Capitalism and Freedom, p. 50 On this subject (really from the original post about money), I have several times tried to convince people that the Federal Reserve Bank is a private deal. I don't know where I got this impression, but no one will believe me. Are there some conspicuous facts that I could quote in support of this position? Or, perhaps, an easily obtained and authoritative document which explains just what the heck the Fed really is? I know the head is apppointed by the US gov, but my impression was that the rest of it was just a consortium of bankers to whom the national debt is owed. thanks, tw

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Re: Random #'s via serial port dongle?
by tcmay＠netcom.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Steve Bellovin writes: (quoting me and Perry) > Timothy C. May says: > > I don't think generating random numbers is all that much of a > > priority. The Blum-Blum-Shub C code is available, and I defy anyone > to > > break _that_ PRNG! > > Its partially a question of speed. Many applications, like one time > pads, are just too slow to generate random strings for given normal > techniques. Its partially a question of automation -- I'd like to be > able to generate public/private key pairs on a regular basis and its > hard to do given all the goddamn typing. Its partially a question of > abstract hacker satisfaction -- one would like to know that one's > numbers are RANDOM. > > That isn't a matter of ``abstract hacker satisfaction''. That's a very > strong security requirement: how do you *know* that your keys are > random? > > Tim May suggested using Blum-Blum-Shub. Fine -- but how are you going > to seed it? That's why I want real random numbers -- as a seed to > Blum-Blum-Shub or quintuple IDEA or MD5 composed with SHS' or whatever. > I probably wouldn't use the random numbers in raw form, though -- and > no one else does, either; the real random number generators I've seen > all incorporate some sort of scrambling function. My point, not shown above, was not that a good RNG based on physical sources isn't needed. I would in fact buy one, if only for playing with it, if it was cheap enough (the $25 numbers sounded reasonable). Rather, my main point was that we've seen this proposal for a RNG dongle at least 4 or 5 times before. Sort of like the t-shirt proposals, except with t-shirts the problems are simpler, the pathway clearer, and eventually someone goes ahead and starts the process and t-shirts come out the other end. With crypto dongles discussed here over the past year and a half, there is typically a flurry of "wouldn't it be nice" and "it ought to be easy to reverse bias a diode" and "what about alpha particles?" posts and "why doesn't someone do it?" messages, and, then.....silence. Until the next flurry, of course. I have not called for a cheap RNG, so I am not obligated to put up or shut up. For those who have claimed it ought to be easy, here's your chance! (I worry less about random numbers because I believe an attack on one's PGP messages is much, much likelier to come from inadvertent revealing of one's key and passphrase, through the usual means, than through an attack based on the nonmaximal entropy of the random numbers generated. But if better random numbers are essentially free... Of course, there's then the possibility that one's RNG dongle is actually generating nonrandom bits--maybe NIST and NSA can license RNGs and sell "Ripper" chips?) I'll commit right now to paying $25 for a serial port dongle that "looks like" a standard serial port device (a modem, for example, looking like a modem hooked up at 19,200 or better to the Cosmic Random Number). It won't even have to have drivers to talk to it...I'll buy the dongle first and worry about that later. (The dongle must meet certain basic requirements, such as outputting bits of the right amplitude. No RS-232 connectors with 1K resistors soldered across the pins, please.) --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. "National borders are just speed bumps on the information superhighway."

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Re: Lobbying/Politics/etc.
by lefty＠apple.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Jim Sewell writes: > > The term Cypherpunks is amorphous, thus subject to use and abuse > by the masses. When people like Jeff Davis and Phill Zimmermann > say "The cypherpunks are generally opposed to Clipper" it makes us > an "organization" which, like it or not, does have representatives > and agendas. No, it makes Messrs. Davis and Zimmerman guilty of overstepping their bounds by acting as though they speak on behalf of the amorphous group which makes up this mailing list. My saying that midget Lithuanian plumbers are generally opposed to the free sale of chocalate cherry cordials doesn't make it so. Mr. Zimmerman doesn't represent _me_. I question whether Mr. Davis represents even _himself_. If you want to play lobbyist, go ahead. Leave me out of it. -- Lefty (lefty(a)apple.com) C:.M:.C:., D:.O:.D:.

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Randomness...
by pcw＠access.digex.net 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

>Timothy C. May says: >> I don't think generating random numbers is all that much of a >> priority. The Blum-Blum-Shub C code is available, and I defy anyone to >> break _that_ PRNG! Going in the other direction, does anyone know what sort of random number generator is included with the Borland libraries? What about the Microsoft ones? I'm kind of curious these days for a number of reasons.

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Re: Blum-Blum-Shub source?
by Hal 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

The Blum-Blum-Shub PRNG is really very simple. There is source floating around on the crypto ftp sites, but it is a set of scripts for the Unix bignum calculator "bc", plus some shell scripts, so it is not very port- able. To create a BBS RNG, choose two random primes p and q which are congruent to 3 mod 4. Then the RNG is based on the iteration x = x*x mod n. x is initialized as a random seed. (x should be a quadratic residue, meaning that it is the square of some number mod n, but that can be arranged by iterating the RNG once before using its output.) The only questionable part about the RNG is how many bits of x to use per iteration. The original BBS paper proved that the RNG was secure if you used just the LSB of x each time. Later there was a proof that you could use log-base-two of the number of bits of n bits each time; if n were 512 bits then you could use 9 bits per iteration. Some time back I saw a claim on sci.crypt that you could use up to 1/3 of the bits each time safely, but I don't think that was proven. Hal

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'Independent' Article : Spooks all set to hack it on the superhighway
by nobody＠shell.portal.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Thought the following might be of interest to give some of the European political perspective on encryption, reproduced without permission from the UK 'Independent' newspaper 2/5/94 (anything between {} are my own comments) : Title : Spooks all set to hack it on the superhighway [ On the right of the article, a pretty picture titled 'How E-mail helps criminals avoid detection' - with boxes saying : 'Today when a user transmits messages in code on the Internet, the international computer network, government intelligence services cannot listen in.' 'The US has introduced the Clipper chip, a way of encrypting messages while allowing government intelligence services access to transmissions. This is possible through a "key" used to encrypt the message. The government holds a duplicate key that allows it to decode transmissions.' 'Modern encryption cannot be cracked but if users are forced to use the Clipper chip, intelligence services could then eavesdrop.' 'Europe is opposed to the Clipper chip because it fears that the FBI or CIA could target European businesses. A suggested alternative is that the "keys" to the coded messages could be deposited with a non-government trusted third party' {Gee, yeah, that's a real improvement - me} At the bottom of the picture, a set of small images titled 'Dangerous traffic on the information superhighway', individually 'Terrorism', 'Drug trafficking', 'Neo-Nazi organisations', 'Pornography', 'Industrial espionage', and 'Money laundering'. {Oddly enough, there's not the slightest mention of 'Government privacy abuse', 'Governemnt oppression' and the like... and I wish *I* knew how to send drugs by email : uuencode -heinous_chemicals, maybe ?... As an aside, a British computer magazine reported a couple of weeks ago that a government minister had refused to ban the import of pornography over telephone lines (and hence the Internet) as it would be unenforcable, even in plaintext ! - me} ] >>> BEGIN ARTICLE A ROW is brewing between Europe and America over US plans to allow intelligence agencies to monitor information on computer channels. Washington believes E-mail - electronic messages travelling at the speed of light on the information superhighway - is a conduit for criminals and terrorists to transmit messages without fear of detection. The US plan for a Clipper chip, which lets intelligence agencies crack encrypted computer messages, has raised fears amongst European businesses that sensitive information would no longer be secret if it was vetted by the CIA, the FBI, or GCHQ, the British Government's eavesdropping facility {I would have thought it was *obvious* that it would no longer be secret if it was being decoded by this lot... - me}. E-mail is rapidly taking over from "snail-mail", as postal services are dismissively known. There are 20 million users on the worldwide web of computer networks known as Internet. But in 10 years it is predicted that 80 per cent of trade information will be sent by this method. The Clinton administration, concerned that terrorists, money-launderers and drug dealers will use E-mail to send encrypted information to assosciates, wants to outlaw the use of private encryption on international computer networks. The global censorship plan has run up against opposition from European and American businesses that use encryption to send sensitive information. In a position paper to a consulate of European Union intelligence experts, which has been obtained by the 'Independent', the European organisation representing users of computer security has rejected the Clinton initiative as "totally unacceptable". The statement by the Information Security Business Advisory Group (Ibag), warns European governments to ignore overtures from the US government aimed at restricting access to the information superhighway to users who use encryptions that the government agencies can decode. The European position is that "industry needs to know when its sensitive data has been compromised [by the security services or others]" and that the US eavesdropping initiative will greatly reduce the benefits of the information superhighway. Companies "will be restricted to a very restricted list of 'approved' algorithms [encryption methods]" greatly adding to business costs and making international cooperation difficult. Ibag recently informed the senior officials group on information security that the planned US-style restrictions, or the even stricter French system under which those using cyphers must disclose the keys to the authorities, are "totally unacceptable" to industry. The European group has proposed that companies deposit the keys to their encryption cyphers with "trusted third parties" rather than with governments. With this system, when intelligence agencies want to tap messages, the company will have to be notified. {Unless, of course, they just bribe the 'trusted third party', break in, require the key for 'national security' reasons, or whatever... - me} Chriss Sund, a computer-security expert, said companies faced real dangers of economic espionage by governments. "There was a general instinct among companies to distrust the French", {8-)} he said, who use government controls on encryption "to their advantage". {like the others won't, I'm sure... - me} Stephen Dorrill, an expert on the intelligence services, claims that the US proposal is designed to facilitate industrial espionage. "GCHQ, which has been co-operating hand-in-glove with the US for the past fifty years, {UK-USA agreements, etc - me} finds itself caught in the middle of this US-EU dispute. Britain will eventually have to square co-operation on intelligence and encryption across the Atlantic with the demands of its European partners." Under the US initiative, use of computer or voice encryption that cannot readily be hacked into by the security services of cooperating governments will be deemed suspicious and worthy of surveillance. {Well, they can surveil all they like if they can't break it... - me} These users will be denied access to the information superhighway. {Quite how this would be implemented is unexplained, but presumably would require mandatory use of Tessera chips. Still, of course, completely useless against superencipherment... - me} The US has decided to replace private encryption with the Clipper chip. {Now, I don't know whether they've heard this from US government sources, or whether they're interpreting it that way, or whether they just don't know what they're talking about, but if it's the former, then the general tone of the article with it's "decision" to "replace" private encryption might indicate the US government is taking a more candid stand with its opposite numbers in Europe than it's giving to the people back home -me} This enables government agencies to listen in on conversations and decode data flows at will {wot, no warrants ? - me}. How European governments intend to tackle the problem of terrorists and other criminals using encryption to stay ahead of the law is not known, but there has traditionally been a close working relationship National Security Agency in the US and the GCHQ in Britain. {i.e. 'Buy the new secure British Telecom ClipperPhone, available now from all good high-street consumer electronics stores...' - me} The clash over encryption could have serious implications for the development of the information superhighway, which has been hailed in Brussels and Washington as a way of increasing competitiveness and delivering a boost to the economies of the industrialised world {that they've been working hard to trash for the last fifty years - me}. If European businesses are blocked from using the US information superhighway because they will not bow to US pressure, the EU may be forced to develop its own independent system, adding to the cost and hastening the division into three rival trading blocs, {Oceania, Eurasia and Eastasia, whoops, wrong book - me} the US, the EU and Asia. >>> END ARTICLE So, I'm not really sure how to take this article (other than my first though : 'Thank "Bob" I'm out of here in nine months'). On the one hand, it appears that the US and EU may well be at each other's throats (IMHO, the best place for them) over the actual implementation of the 'escrow', but on the other the European organisations seem quite happy with the idea of giving their keys away as long as they go to a 'trusted third party'. But.... there are certain advantages from this point of view.. aside from the fact that it's just as useless as Clipper, since you can just superencipher with a secret key, if you generate the keys yourself rather than having them generated for you, you could always give them an invalid key ('Whoops, silly me, wrong floppy disk'), then if they did want to crack your encryption they'd have to come round for a visit to get the real key and demonstrate that they'd attempted to tap you. I have no intention of giving my keys to anyone, but if they're going to attempt to implement some kind of pseudo-escrow system, I'd rather this than the Clipper approach. The best news, I guess, is that European businessses want to use encryption, so it looks like a ban would be difficult to enforce. The worst news is the general tone of the article, attempting to link the use of secure encryption to terrorists and drug dealers, and like I said, it would be interesting to know where they got their comments on the US government's plans from, 'cause they sure don't match what's been put out for domestic consumption...

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Re: Random #'s via serial port dongle?
by smb＠research.att.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Timothy C. May says: > I don't think generating random numbers is all that much of a > priority. The Blum-Blum-Shub C code is available, and I defy anyone to > break _that_ PRNG! Its partially a question of speed. Many applications, like one time pads, are just too slow to generate random strings for given normal techniques. Its partially a question of automation -- I'd like to be able to generate public/private key pairs on a regular basis and its hard to do given all the goddamn typing. Its partially a question of abstract hacker satisfaction -- one would like to know that one's numbers are RANDOM. That isn't a matter of ``abstract hacker satisfaction''. That's a very strong security requirement: how do you *know* that your keys are random? Tim May suggested using Blum-Blum-Shub. Fine -- but how are you going to seed it? That's why I want real random numbers -- as a seed to Blum-Blum-Shub or quintuple IDEA or MD5 composed with SHS' or whatever. I probably wouldn't use the random numbers in raw form, though -- and no one else does, either; the real random number generators I've seen all incorporate some sort of scrambling function.

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Timestamp Server Available
by root＠lorax.mv.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

------------------------------------------------------------------------ This is the help file for the Time Stamp Server at timestamp(a)lorax.mv.com. (192.80.84.247) ------------------------------------------------------------------------ This text was taken from the public-key-server(a)martingy.ai.mit.edu and modified with lorax specific information. Time Stamp server software written by Cal Page <root(a)lorax.mv.com> For questions or comments regarding this time stamp server site, contact root(a)lorax.mv.com. Current version: $Revision:$ $Date:$ NOTE! This service is provided to facilitate public-key cryptography for demonstration and educational purposes. It is the responsibility of users of public-key cryptography to ensure that their activities conform to legal requirements. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Question: What is a Time Stamp Server? A time stamp server just echoes back what you send it, except that the date and time are added to the message. Further, pgp is used to 'sign' the message before it is sent back. Question: How do I use the Time Stamp Server? Just send mail to 'timestamp(a)lorax.mv.com' and you will get back a time stamped message. Question: Who signs the returned message? It is signed by "Time S. Tamp <timestamp(a)lorax.mv.com>". Mr. Tamp has also registered his public key with the public key server at public-key-server(a)martingy.ai.mit.edu. Question: What commands does the server accept? If you put 'help' in the subject, you get back this signed message along with whatever else you sent. Question: Is Mr. Tamp's private key available? No. Question: Does this author believe that the PGP/IDEA/RSA method of timestamping has been broken by someone? Yes. The server is experimental, and as the introduction says, it's for research, demonstraton, and educational purposes. Question: What privacy is there for any message I send Mr. Tamp? None! If you want something sensative stamped, just encrypt it before you send it here. I reserve the right to republish none, any, or all of it, to anyone, for any purpose, at any time, anything that is sent. Further, I can do anything with the mailing list, short of selling it to someone. Don't send any government stuff either. I don't want any classified information showing up on this system, as I want nothing to do with it. Question: How do I verify a message received from Mr. Tamp? Just extract the message to a file, and do: "pgp message" Make sure you have loaded an update into your public key ring first, that contains Mr. Tamp's public key, ie: the key for: "Time S. Tamp <timestamp(a)lorax.mv.com>". Question: How can I be sure no one spoofed an entry from Mr. Tamp? You can't. I would be open to suggestions here. Question: I send a 'help' message, but I don't get a reply? Right now, the server wants a valid Reply-To: or From: field in the message header that contains either a '<' '>' pair or a '@' character. If your fields don't have either, it will just dump the message. Further, this is a Linux node, running 0.99.14, and it sometimes can't reply to some addresses, for various reasons. Sorry. Question: Why don't you run PGP 2.4 from Viacrypt? I tried, but they did not have a Linux version. They wanted me to convert their code under NDA, AND pay them $300, something I was unwilling to do. Anyway, I don't charge for any of this. Question: What is the 'Sequence Number:' after the signature? This is the incrementing sequence number of your mail message. Question: What is the 'emd5 =' string? This is an encrypted md5 signature of the signed message. The 'Sequence Number' is used to index into a one-time-pad that is xor'ed with the md5 for the message. Quesiton: Is the one-time-pad data available? No. -- Cal Page | Pri: root(a)lorax.MV.COM compuPage, Inc. | Other: cpage(a)mv.mv.com Brookline, NH. 03033 | 76535.1373(a)Compuserve.COM finger -l cpage(a)mv.MV.COM = C4 80 8E 06 1F 4E 69 2F 2C 2C 65 72 72 EA 5D AC ----- END INCLUDED FILE ----- -- Michael Brandt Handler <grendel(a)netaxs.com> Philadelphia, PA PGP v2.6 public key on request

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