December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

anon-mail article in LA Times
by Eli Brandt 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Today's L.A. Times had an article, on the front page of the Business section, on the hazards and benefits of anonymous e-mail. It opened with a narrative concerning a fictional ("composite") company whose internal cover-up of project failures was blown by anonymous mail. There are some quotes saying that it bypasses hierarchical stupidity, and some saying that it's for gutless harassers. The article mentions the situation on the Internet, including the basics of remailer mechanics (no addresses, though). Pretty good article, with less than the usual amount of confusion. Is the author on the list? Eli ebrandt(a)hmc.edu

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Traceable Digicash?
by Hal 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

The Magic Money digital cash system, which is based on one of the earliest papers on electronic cash, is traceable. That is, the payer can collude with the bank and together they can recognize when the payed-out cash is turned in. In some situations, this could be beneficial. If people have bank accounts in their True Names, or are otherwise physically traceable when they turn in money, then if someone steals cash or otherwise uses coercion to acquire it, then they will not be able to turn it in without being caught. Virtually all of the digital cash proposals that I am aware of have this property. They protect the payer's privacy very strongly, but they don't offer much protection to the payee. Technically it is difficult to protect the payee because the cash would have to be changed while in his hands so that it is not recognizable to either the bank or the payer. This would require two re-blinding operations, one by the payer and one by the payee, and it is hard to have a system which could do this and still detect double- spending. People might want to think about the pros and cons of traceable cash. It could limit some possible applications. On the other hand, it may be good to help prevent coercion. One of the cash papers (I can't remember which one) mentioned this as an explicit advantage of the cash that was proposed. Does anyone know of any cash systems which protect the payee's privacy? Hal

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Re: anon-mail article in LA Times
by catalyst-remailer＠netcom.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

The Los Angeles Times Thursday, March 31, 1994, p.B1, Business Innovation Pros and Cons of Anonymous Corporate E-Mail By Michael Schrage XYZ Corp. (not its real name) has a problem that's driving top management crazy. A rogue piece of software has appeared that lets employees send electronic mail messages anonymously. There's been a rash of sexually suggestive -- and even obscene -- e-mail sent to several female employees. Unpopular managers have received insulting e-mail appraisals of their style and performance. More ominously, several messages have been broadcast detailing serious problems with several of XYZ's key projects. These were setbacks that had previously been the secret of top management but, thanks to XYZ's global network, have now been instantly distributed worldwide to launch hundreds of e-mail queries and thousands of water- cooler conversations. Like kerosene poured on a fire, this act of e-mail anonymity has ignited once-smoldering resentments into openly burning issues. While half the company is thrilled that anonymity has caused these problems to surface for corporate-wide discussion, the other half is furious that the leakers can't be found and punished. Ultimately, XYZ's top management pulled the plug on its global e- mail system, rewrote the network software to assure that all messages can be tracked at least two ways and issued an edict that absolutely forbids anonymous messages. The traffic that now flows on XYZ's network is excruciatingly polite. This XYZ Corp. example is hardly fictitious; it's an unhappy composite of real-world confrontations that recently occurred in several Fortune 1,000 companies. More than any other e-mail issue, the anonymity option provokes the most heated debate in organizational network design. The right to e-mail anonymity strikes at the very heart of values that organizations either cherish or try to suppress. Some organizations see anonymity as a healthy, essential part of their internal dialogue, a mechanism that promotes free and unfettered comment. Others see anonymity as a sleazy virtual mask that lets corporate mischief makers and malcontents get away with cheap shots at people who have the guts to sign their names to their messages. At one giant aerospace manufacturer, for example, managers are positively grateful that their brainstorming software encourages anonymous contributions. "If we had to attach our names to our suggestions, I think people would be less forthcoming," insists one engineer there who, yes, asks no to be identified. The culture of the company, he argues, makes it difficult for younger engineers to publicly make comments critical of senior engineering decisions. The fact that software anonymity effectively subsidizes the existing culture rather than encouraging a more open and honest exchange of ideas is dismissed as politically unrealistic. "Have you lost your mind?" the engineer asks. The anonymity issue becomes even more intense when one considers the speed at which organizations are linking their e-mail networks together in hopes of creating "virtual" corporations and accelerating the flow of vital data. Companies are hooking up with key customers and suppliers. Suppose at the customer network, anonymous messages are permitted and even encouraged; at the supplier, they're strictly forbidden. When these two companies collaborate on a project, whose e-mail protocol should win? Ironically, the ability to communicate via e- mail may lead more to a hostile clash of values than to the desired goal of better communications. Privacy is relative; anonymity is an absolute. So how does the Internet, the world's biggest and best e-mail network, handle this thorny issue? In fact, it is "illegal" and technically impossible to send an Internet message without a "return address," i.e., without some sort of identifying header. Nevertheless, the Internet has become a hotbed of detailed, intimate and absolutely anonymous communications. Indeed, there is a whistle-blowers Usenet group on the Internet -- a kind of forum -- as well as a support group for victims of sexual abuse. Is it in the best interests of these participants to be readily identifiable? These groups depend on anonymous communications. Market forces have created innovations for anonymity. Because there is a demand for anonymity on the Internet, there is now a supply of anonymity on the Internet. Individuals can send their messages to "remailers" that can strip out the headers containing the authentic return address. These remailers, in turn, can send the messages on to other remailers. In other words, Internet remailers can "launder" messages on the road to their intended destinations in ways that completely obliterate their origins. A company that's on the Internet could use remailers to send e- mail or post messages anonymously, but there are no known Fortune 500 companies that provide such remailers internally. Essentially, the rise of e-mail is forcing companies to decide explicitly what kind of values they want their networks to embody. Should employees be allowed or encouraged to send anonymous e-mail? Or should it be strictly forbidden? Or is there a middle way that creates bulletin boards or other e-mail "Democracy Walls" where individuals can safely post their comments? Whatever the answer to these questions, more and more organizations are painfully becoming aware that their new networks can raise cultural tensions just as easily as they create economic efficiencies. +------------------------------------------------------------------------+ | Michael Schrage is a writer, consultant and research associate at the | | Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He writes this column | | independently for The Times. He can be reached at schrage(a)latimes.com | | by electronic mail via the Internet. | +------------------------------------------------------------------------+

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(fwd) Russians Break RSA?
by tcmay＠netcom.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Friends, I just grabbed this of the ClariNet news feed on Netcom...I'm not supposed to forward anything from this service (so don't tell Brad Templeton!), but this appeared to be too important not to pass on as quickly as possible. Apparently those rumors that the Russians, always topnotch mathematicians, had developed public key crypto in the 1950s or early 60s are true--my hero Kolmogorov developed this when he was technical director at Kryptogorodok, the secret city of Soviet cryptographers hidden in the Urals (and first visited by an outsider, Stephen Wolfram, only a couple of years ago). Here's the report on a news conference announcing the cracking of their Kolmogorov system, which is equivalent to our own RSA. I haven't had a chance to talk to John Markoff, who was at the press conference, to get his comments. --Tim > Xref: netcom.com clari.world.europe.eastern:2783 > clari.news.hot.ussr:3792 > clari. > news.trouble:3258 clari.science.crypto > Path: netcom.com!bass!clarinews > Approved: doug(a)clarinet.com > From: clarinews(a)clarinet.com (AP) > Newsgroups: > clari.world.europe.eastern,clari.news.hot.ussr,clari.news.trouble,clari.sc > ience.crypto > Distribution: clari.apo > Subject: Russian Mathematicians Announce Breakthrough > Keywords: Europe Cryptography RSA > Copyright: 1994 by The Associated Press, R > Message-ID: <russia-cryptoUR7f0_4ME(a)clarinet.com> > Date: Fri, 1 Apr 94 10:40:19 PST > Expires: Mon, 18 Apr 94 12:40:19 PDT > ACategory: international > Slugword: Russia-Crypto > Priority: regular > ANPA: Wc: 116/0; Id: V0255; Src: ap; Sel: -----; Adate: 03-14-N/A > Codes: APO-1103 > > > MOSCOW (AP) -- At a press conference held minutes ago in a > crowded hall, Russian mathematicians announced that a breakthrough had > been made nearly a decade ago in the arcane branch of mathematics > known as "cryptography," the science of making messages that are > unreadable to others. > Leonid Vladwylski, Director of the prestigious Moscow Academy > of Sciences, called the press conference yesterday, after rumors began > circulating that noted Russian-American reporter John Markoff was in > Russia to interview academicians at the previously secret city of > Soviet cryptographers, Kryptogorodok. The existence of Kryptogorodok, > sister city to Akademogorodok, Magnetogorsk, and to the rocket cities > of Kazhakstan, had been shrouded in secrecy since its establishment in > 1954 by Chief of Secret Police L. Beria. Its first scientific > director, A. Kolmogorov, developed in 1960 what is called in the West > "public key cryptography." The existence of Kryptogorodok was unknown > to the West until 1991, when Stephen Wolfram disclosed its existence. > American cryptographers initially scoffed at the rumors that > the Russians had developed public-key cryptography as early as 1960, > some 15 years prior to the first American discovery. After interviews > last year at Kryptogorodok, noted American cryptographers Professor > D. Denning and D. Bowdark admitted that it did seem to be > confirmed. Professor Denning was quoted at the time saying that she > did not think this meant the Russians could actually break the > Kolmogorov system, known in the West as RSA, because she had spent > more than a full weekend trying to do this and had not > succeeded. "Believe me, RSA is still unbreakable," she said in her > evaluation report. > Russia's top mathematicians set out to break Kolmogorov's new > coding system. This required them to determine that "P = NP" (see > accompanying article). Details are to be published next month in the > journal "Doklady.Krypto," but a few details are emerging. > The Kolmogorov system is broken by computing the prime numbers > which form what is called the modulus. This is done by randomly > guessing the constituent primes and then detonating all of the > stockpiled nuclear weapons in the former Soviet Union for each "wrong > guess." In the Many Worlds Interpretation of quantum mechanics, > invented in 1949 by Lev Landau (and later, independently by Everett > and Wheeler in the U.S.), all possible outcomes of a quantum > experiment are realized. > As Academician Leonid Vladwylski explained, "In all the > universes in which we guessed the wrong factors, we were destroyed > completely. But since we are obviously here, talking to you at this > press conference, in this universe we have an unbroken record of > successfully factoring even the largest of imaginable numbers. Since > we are so optimistic about this method, we say the computation runs in > "Nondeterministic Pollyanna Time." Allow me to demonstrate..." > > [Press Conference will be continued if the experiment is a success.] > > MOSCOW (AP), ITAR-Tass, 1 April 1994 > > > -- .......................................................................... 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: anon-mail article in LA Times
by Pat Farrell 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Eli Brandt <ebrandt(a)jarthur.cs.hmc.edu> writes: > Today's L.A. Times had an article, > [stuff elided] > Pretty good article, > with less than the usual amount of confusion. Today's Washington Post's Business section (page F2) has the same article by Michael Schrage. He is acknowledged as a LA Times columnist. Pat Pat Farrell Grad Student pfarrell(a)gmu.edu Department of Computer Science George Mason University, Fairfax, VA Public key availble via finger #include <standard.disclaimer>

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Anonymous phone calls.
by GRABOW_GEOFFREY＠tandem.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

I know how to suppress the transmission of your phone number (caller id) with *67, but I've heard that there is a way to force the routing of call through multiple long distance companies. Since the LDCs don't talk to one another, this should increase the difficulty of tracing and/or tapping a call. Does anybody know how to do this? G.C.G. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ | Geoffrey C. Grabow | "What we demand are rigidly defined | | Oyster Bay, New York | areas of doubt and uncertainty!" | | | -------------------- | | grabow_geoffrey(a)tandem.com | Clipper, SkipJack & Digital Telephony | | | JUST SAY NO!!! | |----------------------------------------------------------------------| | PGP fingerprint = C9 95 0F C4 E9 DD 8E 73 DD 99 4E F5 EB 7A B6 1D | ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

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MAIL: remailer list
by Karl Lui Barrus 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

The only change to the list is a new section briefly describing three other services: Miron Cuperman's, Matt Ghio's, and Jay Prime Positive's. -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Cypherpunk anonymous remailers, 4/1/94 Q1: What are the anonymous remailers? 1: remailer(a)chaos.bsu.edu 2: nowhere(a)bsu-cs.bsu.edu 3: hh(a)soda.berkeley.edu 4: rperkins(a)nyx.cs.du.edu 5: hal(a)alumni.caltech.edu 6: ebrandt(a)jarthur.claremont.edu 7: catalyst(a)netcom.com 8: remailer(a)rebma.mn.org 9: hfinney(a)shell.portal.com 10: remailer(a)utter.dis.org 11: remail(a)extropia.wimsey.com NOTES: 1-4 no encryption of remailing requests 5-11 support encrypted remailing requests 11 special - header and message must be encrypted together 8,10,11 introduce larger than average delay (not direct connect) 1,2,8,10,11 running on privately owned machines 3 features USENET posting 11 features anonymous pools ====================================================================== Q2: What help is available? Look in ftp://soda.berkeley.edu/pub/cypherpunks/remailer (soda.berkeley.edu = 128.32.149.19) chain.zip - program that helps with using remailers dosbat.zip - MSDOS batch files that help with using remailers hal's.instructions.gz - in depth instruction on how to use hal's.remailer.gz - remailer code pubkeys.tar.gz - public keys of remailers which support encryption pubkeys.zip - MSDOS zip file of public keys scripts.tar.gz - scripts that help with using remailers Or try to gopher to chaos.bsu.edu and look in "Anonymous Mail"/Remailer Instructions" ====================================================================== Q3. Other Services: 1. Miron Cuperman's anonymous pool. To subscribe, send mail to pool0-request(a)extropia.wimsey.com. Mail sent to pool0(a)extropia.wimsey.com will be sent to all subscribers of the anonymous pool. 2. Matt Ghio's pseudo-account remailer. Send mail to mg5n+getid(a)andrew.cmu.edu You will receive an encrypted mail address of the form mg5n+eaxxxxx(a)andrew.cmu.edu Mail sent to this address will be forwarded to you. 3. Jay Prime Positive's mail pool Send mail to jpp=0x123456(a)markv.com, and the mail will be encrypted with the key matching 0x123456, and sent to alt.test with a subject line of "Ignore 0x123456" To add a key, send to jpp=poolnew(a)markv.com. The body of the message should contain the public key in pgp format. If there is a key clash, a message with the subject "Ignore jpp=poolnew key already in use" ====================================================================== Q4. Email-to-Usenet gateways? 1: group-name(a)cs.utexas.edu 2: group.name.usenet(a)decwrl.dec.com 3: group.name(a)news.demon.co.uk 4: group.name(a)news.cs.indiana.edu 5: group-name(a)pws.bull.com 6: group-name(a)ucbvax.berkeley.edu NOTES: * This does not include ones that work for single groups, like twwells.com. * Remember to include a Subject: with your post, may cause failures if missing #6 blocks from non-berkeley sites (so use the berkeley remailers :-) ====================================================================== This is the remailer.data file I use with pingmail, a script for pinging anonymous remailers: 01:n:remailer@chaos.bsu.edu 02:n:nowhere@bsu-cs.bsu.edu 03:n:hh@soda.berkeley.edu 04:n:rperkins@nyx.cs.du.edu 05:y:hal@alumni.caltech.edu 06:y:ebrandt@jarthur.claremont.edu 07:y:catalyst@netcom.com 08:y:remailer@rebma.mn.org 09:y:hfinney@shell.portal.com 10:y:remailer@utter.dis.org 11:s:remail@extropia.wimsey.com -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.3a iQCVAgUBLZwz4YOA7OpLWtYzAQGGeQQAuyFqwdZOzFxndIfsCxkU2UMLUCpaRTY6 AVt3KB7uk3YcEYrghxyZhlMcSJp6TywZGfaQbE9edCc4HEMJeUXicVHYgtbazXXm a9gIbSNXb+PTsJMjlqb6fk2uzOq+u2C3RscN8Gh3EVvOg2UVx2PaFcmeGGRRRVQa TrthaeDGjhI= =Loon -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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Patent expiration
by Alan (Miburi-san) Wexelblat 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Someone has just pointed out to me that the basic PKP patents (D-H especially) expire relatively soon now (the D-H patent was issued in 1980). Seems to me this is a strong motivation for the gov to get Clipper in place now; three years from now all the places that won't use PGP because of legal tangles will be able to use it free and clear! --Alan

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Re: Patent expiration
by smb＠research.att.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Someone has just pointed out to me that the basic PKP patents (D-H especially) expire relatively soon now (the D-H patent was issued in 1 980). Seems to me this is a strong motivation for the gov to get Clipper in place now; three years from now all the places that won't use PGP because of legal tangles will be able to use it free and clear! --Alan No. The basic patent on public key cryptography and the patent on Diffie-Hellman key exchange expire in 1997 (the former on April 28; the latter on August 18). PGP uses RSA, which is protected until September 19, 2000.

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How Many Games of Chess?
by kkirksey＠world.std.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

This is tangentially related to crypto. I've been reading A.K. Dewdney's _The New Turning Omnibus_ recently to refresh my memory of all that stuff I learned in undergrad that I'm going to see again on the Comp Sci GRE shortly. :-) Anyway, I was glancing through the chapters on complexity, computabilty, and minimax trees, and I got to wondering something: how many possible games of chess are there? I know that it has to be a finite number, but I'm not sure how to go about finding this number. Any pointers would be appreciated. Ken ============================================================================= Ken Kirksey kkirksey(a)world.std.com Mac Guru & Developer ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- When the going gets tough, the tough hide under the table. -Edmund Blackadder

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