December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

Tessera
by perry＠bacon.imsi.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

I saw my first Tessera PC-MCIA card last night. Quite a scary piece of hardware. Its cheap, its fairly well engineered, and its based on our favorite escrowed key technology. "Mycotronics. We make fascism affordable." Perry

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No Subject
by Anonymous 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

On Wed, 27 Apr 94 08:45:30 EDT, perry(a)bacon.imsi.com (Perry E. Metzger) writes - > "Mycotronics. We make fascism affordable." Perry, While I agree with your sentiment, it's "Mykotronx." - spooge

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Re: Tessera
by Phil G. Fraering 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Perry, how do you know it's well engineered? Phil

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Re: Information on Internet/Cryptology
by wcs＠anchor.ho.att.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Yeah, the Internet is awfully big these days. (I started reading Usenet in the early 1980s when there was less than 1/2 MB per day of news and you could really read it all at 1200 baud :-) It's busier now...) For cryptography, the interesting places I know of are: - Usenet newsgroups: sci.crypt is the main technical crypto newsgroup talk.politics.crypto is the main random-discussion newsgroup alt.privacy.clipper is intended for Clipper discussions alt.privacy is a general-purpose priovacy newsgroup (there are others.) alt.security.pgp is for discussion of PGP and how to use it - cypherpunks mailing list (send mail to cypherpunks-request(a)toad.com to get help) is a fairly buysy (25-50 msgs/day) mailing list which deals with topics like writing crypto code, discussing protocols, using crypto to build privacy, political activism, etc. Signal/Noise ratio is usually pretty good. - ftp sites (file transfer protocol - log on as "anonymous", password=yourlogin, rsa.com - RSA's ftp site ftp.funet.fi - Finnish University Network ftp site, where most of the interesting code that's outside the US goes. garbo.uwasa.fi - Another good site in Finland; I think the name's right. ftp.csua.berkeley.edu (formerly soda.berkeley.edu) - home of the cypherpunks ftp archives ftp.eff.org - Electronic Frontier Foundation's ftp includes some crypto discussions There's also the World Wide Web, which I don't currently have software for, so I don't know if there are good Web sites yet (I've seen a lot of Web addresses go by, but most seem to really be ftp sites.) For finding code, "archie" is useful - telnet to ds.internic.net or archie.ans.net or archie.rutgers.edu , log in as archie, no password, and then type help to find out how to use it - it tells you where to find code for ftp. (Most archie sites actually tell you "There are too many users on right now, here's a list of other archie sites", and you randomly pick one in Korea or Israel or somewhere that's not too busy :-) Good luck! Bill # Bill Stewart AT&T Global Information Solutions, aka NCR Corp # 6870 Koll Center Parkway, Pleasanton CA, 94566 Phone 1-510-484-6204 fax-6399 # email bill.stewart(a)pleasantonca.ncr.com billstewart(a)attmail.com # ViaCrypt PGP Key IDs 384/C2AFCD 1024/9D6465

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Re: anti-clipper t-shirt
by Eric Johnson 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

: I've already ordered my "1984" T-shirt, but saw the reference to another : anti-Clipper T-shirt, as well. What are the gory details on the non-1984 : shirt (price, where to order, size(s?), etc). I think that was probably my shirt you are referring to (the "original" 1984 shirt :-). Both John Blair and I were at CFP '94, and we both got the "We're behind schedule" line from a NSA employee who was representing only himself at the conference. The shirt idea I had was to take the Big Brother Inside logo that has been floating around, and use that for the front of a "anti-clipper" shirt, as you put it. On the back, I originally planned to use a !Key Escrow (the words Key Escrow inside a universal red circle/slash), but decided to use the "We're behind schedule" instead. Who knows, maybe there is another shirt in the making... My shirts are supposedly printed (I haven't seen them yet). I've received several orders, but I have been deliberately circumspect on the list; I made one "RFI" (request for interest) to cypherpunks. All the rest of my "advertising" has gone to those who initially expressed interest via email. To see John's .gifs: http://phoenix.aps.muohio.edu/users/jdblair/t-shirt.html (for those who don't have it, John is jdblair(a)nextsrv.cas.muohio.edu) To see my .gifs: ftp://pmip.maricopa.edu/pub/1984.gif ftp://pmip.maricopa.edu/pub/bbi.gif If you are interested in ordering a shirt from me, send email. --Eric

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Re: Crypto scripting language
by Hal 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

From: peace(a)BIX.com > I wrote a cryptographic scripting language that has been implemented in > a commercial product. I hesitate to post it here due to its length. > If there is a place to send it where it can be archived for public > down-load, I could do that. I am in the process of writing it up for > a symposium, but have other things that I would rather do. If I could > modify it to improve it's integration w/ telescript, I would like to > do it, but I don't have telescript, does anyone here have it? I'd like to hear more about your scripting language. You could post it for ftp to soda.berkeley.edu, or if it is something which should be export- controlled you could consider asking mpj(a)csn.org to put it up on his U.S.-only site. In the mean time, perhaps you could describe the language here. What is its syntax like? Interpreted or compiled? What kind of special crypto support does it have? If you actually own the rights to it, I'm sure we would be interested in looking at it. Re Telescript: I sent away a few months ago for General Magic's press kit. Telescript is a scripting language which they describe as being like "Postscript for net communications" (not an exact quote). Later this year, PDA's (Personal Digital Assistants, like Newton) will be released which run GM software, including the Magic Cap software. Magic Cap provides a graphical user interface that is said to be easier to use, with pictures of desks, buildings, etc. for the user to tap on. It will also run Telescript for its communications. As I understand it, users will use Telescript to write agent scripts, which will then be sent into the net where they can seek out information, negotiate payment if necessary, even trade or sell things. RSA is used for authen- tication and protection. It appears that these agents will require special software platforms where they will run. They won't just be able to surf the internet as it is today. Instead, they will only run on Telescript servers, where typically sellers of goods, services, and information will have their own agents waiting to make deals. AT&T is starting up a special network specifically for this purpose called PersonaLink. (It will also do ordinary email, presumably, as this would be a subset of agent capabilities.) In considering whether Telescript could become a new standard for commun- ications and networking, one flaw I see is that it appears that the software itself must be proprietary. This would suggest that it will be difficult to see Telescript servers spread through the Internet as WWW or gopher has done, for example. The internet as it is today does not mesh that well with pro- prietary software. Perhaps GM has a strategy for this but my impression is that they intend to create their own network and put their efforts there. I don't have any information on the language itself, so it's hard to judge its suitability for crypto based protocols. The RSA authentication and encryp- tion is built in at some level, but I don't know whether it is transparent (which would make it hard to replace) or explicitly called from the scripts (which might suggest that other alternatives could be hooked in). But the fact that the language is communications-oriented, and perhaps there- fore is already set up to deal with the unreliability and delays we often see with electronic communications, could be a good starting point. Hopefully when the PDAs hit the shelves in a few months we will start to see more infor- mation on Telescript. Hal

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Re: Milgram & Authority
by wcs＠anchor.ho.att.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Duncan writes: > Privacy 101 - A few years ago, Rebecca Schaefer told the State of > California where she lived. Her killer used that information to find her > and kill her. Only give out your address on a need to know basis. The San Francisco papers had a few articles a week ago about the San Francisco police giving out somebody's address from motor-vehicle records to her ex-boyfriend who was stalking her, as well as other private data - he got the information several times as she moved around. It's supposedly a misdemeanor, but of course the computers don't keep track of who requested what data, so they don't know which cop you can't trust. (Anybody who tries stalking me using motor vehicle records will either wonder how I keep all my furniture in that little box, or else have to figure out how to find my streeet address from my mailing address, not that that's real hard...) Bill

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Re: clipper not end of world
by Dan Day 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

> From: Mikolaj Habryn <dichro(a)tartarus.uwa.edu.au> > Seems to me, if one is talking about videophone type devices, > they are transmitting quite a great deal of info, and stegging in a > message is quite feasible, is it not? You don't even have to do much of a > hardware modification. Do something like having an HF carrier tone in the > background, that anyone listening to it can't detect without the knowing > what they're listenong for. Or insert a microburst transmission - it'll > look like static. In one of his novels, James P. Hogan had a clever way to insert clandestine messages. There was a moon-earth communications link, and the traffic over the link was monitored to make sure no one was giving away secrets from the installation on the moon to a mole on the earth end. The problem was that they were doing the surveillance on the cleaned-up data stream. The transmission protocol had the semi-standard error correction, whereby blocks of data were transmitted, the checksum was calculated and compared, and bad blocks were thrown away followed by a request for a resend. The spies on the moon merely contrived to send the occassional "bad block" which actually contained the message they wanted to piggyback on the datastream. A listening post monitored the raw data stream and extracted those "bad blocks" which had the right data signature, and the hidden messages were stored and decoded. The people checking the received data which passed the error check never saw the message and assumed all was well, since their own communications gear had already editted it out of the data stream.

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RSA-129 Cracked
by cyphpunk＠aol.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

"Business Wire MORRISTOWN, N.J.--April 26, 1994--A Bellcore scientist has guided an international team in cracking a code once thought uncrackable. The team consisted of three academics and more than 600 volunteers on the Internet from around the world, and the code they cracked was based on a 129-digit number called RSA 129. The renowned number is: 114,381,625,757,888,867,669,23 5,779,976,146,612,010,218, 296,721,242,362,562,561,842,93 5,706,935,245,733,897,830, 597,123,563,958,705,058,989,07 5,147,599,290,026,879,543,541 The 129-digit number is called RSA 129 for its originators, Ronald Rivest, Adi Shamir and Leonard Adleman (RSA). The three embedded a message using the code in 1977 and challenged anyone to crack it. The achievement of Arjen Lenstra and the team has important implications for future security technologies, since the codes protecting such security are often based on the difficulty of factoring very long numbers--that is, breaking a number down into prime numbers. (A prime number is only evenly divisible by one and itself). In France, similar codes protect telephone ''smart cards.'' And they have other applications besides telecommunications--in banking, in the security systems of nuclear power stations, and in the military. Lenstra, Bellcore's factoring expert, guided the global effort to factor RSA 129. Lenstra designed the computational software used by the Internet volunteers, and the software used in the final stages of factoring. Dr. Paul Leyland, a computer-systems manager at Oxford University in England, and two students, Derek Atkins, from M.I.T., and Michael Graff of Iowa State University, monitored the day-to-day progress and managed the hundreds of volunteers on the Internet. ''In 1977, this would have been unimaginable,'' says Bellcore's Lenstra. ''The evolution of computing technologies and of the Internet has made the network vulnerable -- but, ironically enough, provides the means for protecting it by enabling the use of larger numbers than would have been feasible or necessary a few years ago.' Bellcore, on behalf of most of the nation's local telephone companies, evaluates the security of networks. This includes studying cryptographic systems and trying to break them. To ensure 'trustworthy networks,'' Bellcore examines ways to protect the privacy of information traveling on the networks as well as information stored in network databases. This role is critical, as the emerging information superhighway will foster new ways of doing business electronically. The ability to factor large numbers could potentially threaten many security codes based on a widely used cryptographic system created by Rivest, Shamir, and Adleman. The RSA system is based on the principle that it's infeasible to factor large numbers equalling the product of two large primes. Lenstra and the team broke RSA 129 down into two prime numbers, one of 64 digits, one of 65. Identifying these two primes allowed them to break the code. The numbers were: 3,490,529,510,847,650,949,147,849,619,903,898,133, 417,764,638,493,387,843,990,820,577 32,769,132,993,266,709,549,961 ,988,190,834,461,413,177, 642,967,992,942,539,798,288,53 3 The RSA code acts like a locked box with two keys. One key is a large, composite number which the owner may distribute publicly. Anyone can use that key to open the box and put a message in for the owner. But once the message is put in, the locked box can only be opened again by the owner, who has the second key, which is composed of the two factors of the composite number. Only the owner knows these numbers, because he or she has purposely constructed the composite number from two large prime numbers. ''Cracking the RSA code provides a very useful benchmark on the difficulty of factoring numbers, and thus provides very useful guidance to users of the RSA cryptosystem as to how large their prime numbers should be,'' says Rivest of MIT. The use of modern security technology, such as the RSA system, is an important aspect of Bell Atlantic's ability to provision a secure information highway, says Ravi Ganesan, Manager of Center of Excellence for Electronic Commerce at Bell Atlantic. ''These security tools are critical enablers for the long-term viability of electronic commerce technologies, which we are aggressively pursuing,'' he adds. ''Consequently, the analysis of these security technologies, and the quantification of their strength and vulnerabilities, is critical. In this context, the efforts of Arjen Lenstra and others at Bellcore in providing Bell Atlantic state-of-the-art evaluations of important security tools is invaluable.'' Background This attack on RSA 129 originated last summer after Bellcore's Lenstra was asked by Atkins, Leyland and Graff to suggest a factoring challenge that would involve volunteers on the Internet. Lenstra proposed the formidable RSA 129. The team eventually involved volunteers on every continent but Antarctica. Volunteers worked in the Australia, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Holland, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Japan, New Zealand, Norway, Portugal, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, the United States and Venezuela. ''We wanted to demonstrate, in public, how a team of enthusiasts could factor a number of the same size as those being used to protect commercial information,'' Leyland says. As the international mathematical challenge began, the problem was broken into thousands of tiny pieces and sent to the Internet volunteers to perform the preliminary calculations on their computers, on their own time. Graff corresponded on the Internet with potential volunteers, dividing the work between them. They then sent the results to Atkins at M.I.T. to be checked for accuracy. Atkins arranged for the use of a file server at M.I.T. to collect and process the work of the volunteers. He also handled system administration, making sure the data was backed up regularly. Leyland became the team's chief trouble shooter, and also produced regular status reports to keep the volunteers informed and interested. Once compiled and checked, the data was sent to Lenstra, who in turn assembled the data in one mammoth calculation on a MasPar supercomputer to produce the factors of RSA 129. ''Just as it was impossible to predict in 1977 that RSA 129 would be broken, so it is impossible to predict how quickly other such codes can be broken,'' Lenstra says. ''But the ability to break codes is getting better all the time, aided by increasingly powerful computing tools. Bellcore's work supports its customers in designing and implementing telecommunications systems that use longer numbers to assure the privacy and security of information traveling and stored on their networks,'' he added. Bellcore performs research and other technical services for the telecommunications companies of Ameritech, Bell Atlantic, BellSouth, NYNEX, Pacific Bell, Southwestern Bell and U S WEST, as well as Cincinnati Bell, Inc., The Southern New England Telephone Company and other leaders in industry and government." "BELLCORE NEWS RELEASE: BROKE CODE THOUGHT UNCRACKABLE 4/26/94" _San_Jose_Mercury_News_, 27 April 1994:Business Section.

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Re: Rights are on the CP agenda
by Phil G. Fraering 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

>Perry, I would suggest that you leave the list if you don't like it. Your >only contributions have been snide little flames, anyway. >tw Hmm, werner(a)mc.ab.com. Tim Werner. Let me fire up nn... Okay, setting for ten days... (1st offence)... Plonk!

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