December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

Re: PGP 2.confusion (fwd)
by Robert A. Hayden 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

This was sent to just me by mistake, and I'm forwarding with permission of Jay. ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Fri, 27 May 94 21:26 PDT From: Jay Prime Positive <jpp(a)jpplap.markv.com> To: hayden(a)krypton.mankato.msus.edu Subject: Re: PGP 2.confusion Date: Fri, 27 May 1994 23:49:55 -0500 (CDT) From: "Robert A. Hayden" <hayden(a)krypton.mankato.msus.edu> Do we (the cypherpunk community) perhaps need to come up with EBP 1.0 (Even Better Privacy) that abandons the RSAREF patent problem with some other public-key system that is functionally equial and just as safe? EBP would have to provide the two critical functions of PGP -- digital signatures, and key distribution. There exist signature standards other than RSA. Perhaps the USA's DSS can be exported. If not, there may well be other systems out there. Feel free to implement DSS, or others. But the critical problem seems to be encryption. Or more exactly the key distribution problem. How do I and my secret corespondant share a secret key? I only know of four kinds of solutions. Send the key via a secure channel. Secure chanels are hard to find, and as history teaches us, not fully secure. (Read Kahn for instance.) Use a trusted key distributer. Trusted. Ha. This is cypherpunks list. Public key cryptography. The problem is that PKP (or is it RSADSI?) claims pattent rights to the whole PK ball of wax. The Diffe Helman key exchange (oblivious transfer?) pattent will expire the soonest, and it can be used in the future. The really exciting result, IMHO, is from crypto 92 that I mentioned a while back. If A and B can hear a source of bits S with some errors, then they can generate a shared secret which even an eves dropper with much greater (listening) resources can't discover. This is exciting. Is it pattented? Does it work on the internet? I don't know. Unfortunately all of these suffer from various active tapper attacks. More unfortuneately, on the internet active tapping isn't very hard to arrange. If you can come up with aditional solutions, or ones more resistant to active tappers, please publish. j'

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The Assault on Unicorn has Begun
by tcmay＠netcom.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Earlier today I predicted that Unicorn's satisfaction with tmp's "apology" would be short-lived, that the so-called apology actually looked like a dead ringer for Detweiler's "abject apology" to the Cypherpunks list several months back. I predicted that Detweiler/tmp's latest "apology" would presage a major new assault. Faster than I imagined, it arrive tonight. Filled with invective, forgeries, thinkly veiled death threats, and more accusations that Black Unicorn is the mastermind of a plot to cause the collapse of Western governments (let's hope Unicorn's Swiss clients are spared this one). Unicorn challenged me today about when the last time I responded/defended myself against tmp's rants--I said it was a couple of weeks ago (and then to expand on a point, not to answer the juvenile rants). Generally, any response, no matter how reasoned, not matter how measured, produces a ten-fold resonse from Detweiler. It's pointless to respond. Detweiler is apparently now persuaded that Unicorn cannot touch him, and plans to go for the jugular. If Unicorn's True Name and True Phone Number is known to LD as a result of their recent negotiations (which were apparently moot), I expect we'll see this soon enough in Detweiler's phony sig blocks. (Fortunately, in all the months LD has been attaching my phone number, 408-688-5409, in his various sig blocks, I've never gotten a phone call asking what the hell is going on. Restores my hope.) Anyway, the action is raging in talk.politics.crypto. For whatever reason, Detweiler has to date made only limited use of remailers. All hell will break loose when he really starts. --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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Why it is legal to export PGP under ITAR
by nobody＠shell.portal.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

The US ITAR law exempts many things from export restrictions, among them, materials availiable in public libraries. It gives no special definition for a library. My American Heritage Dictionary defines "library" as, among other things, "An orginized collection of recorded data arranged for ease of use." IOW, an ftp site. Which means that if a program is available from a public ftp site, you're legally allowed to export it. :)

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Quantum Computers
by jamesd＠netcom.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Ken Kirksey writes > lost in the discussion on quantum computers and cryptography. Can > anyone give me the Reader's Digest Condensed Version (TM) of the > theory behind quantum computers, or maybe point me to a good journal > article or two? Many thanks, No readers digest version. It is very heavy going, and any simplified version is necessarily misleading. The key articles are D. Deutsch, Quantum Theory, the Church--Turing Principle and the Universal Quantum Computer, Proc. R. Soc. Lond., Vol. A400, pp. 96--117 (1985). E. Bernstein and U. Vazirani, Quantum Complexity Theory, Proc. 25th ACM Symp. on Theory of Computation, pp. 11--20 (1993). Set aside a long time for understanding them. If your quantum theory is weak, you will need to brush up on quantum theory first. --------------------------------------------------------------------- We have the right to defend ourselves and our | property, because of the kind of animals that we | James A. Donald are. True law derives from this right, not from | the arbitrary power of the omnipotent state. | jamesd(a)netcom.com

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Re: PGP 2.confusion
by ghio＠andrew.cmu.edu 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

"Robert A. Hayden" <hayden(a)krypton.mankato.msus.edu> wrote: >Do we (the cypherpunk community) perhaps need to come up with EBP 1.0 >(Even Better Privacy) that abandons the RSAREF patent problem with some >other public-key system that is functionally equial and just as safe? Sounds good to me... which public key system did you have in mind? :)

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Re: Why it is legal to export PGP under ITAR
by Matthew.Ghio＠andrew.cmu.edu 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Is there anywhere I can ftp a copy of the ITAR law?

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Re: v2.6 for the rest of us
by Paul K. Strong 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

<nobody(a)shell.portal.com> wrote: >Or maybe you could just keep on using PGP 2.3a and stop worrying about it. Hey, I don't care if you Americans want to stick with v2.3a. I just thought that you wouldn't be able to add your v2.3a key to USA keyservers and would therefore move onto v2.6 (not to mention that v2.3a infringes RSA's patents and some people like to stay legal). The fact is some people will move onto v2.6 and I would like the ability to communicate with them. ***************************************************************************** * Paul Strong Fidonet: 2:254/438 (weekly mail check) * * * * pauls(a)dcs.rhbnc.ac.uk Finger for PGP v2.3a public key * *****************************************************************************

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Announcement: PGP 2.6ui -- unofficial international release
by mathew＠mantis-consultants.co.uk 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- This is to announce an unofficial release of PGP, based on 2.3a, modified for interoperability with MIT's PGP 2.6. The files are on ftp://ftp.demon.co.uk/pub/pgp/ 2.6ui-readme The file README.1st from the 2.6ui release. pgp26ui-src.tar.gz UNIX source distribution, compressed with gzip. pgp26ui-src.tar.gz.sig Detached signature for pgp26ui-src.tar.gz. pgp26uis.zip DOS source distribution, archived with Info-ZIP. pgp26uis.sig Detached signature for pgp26uis.zip. pgp26uix.zip DOS .EXE distribution, archived with Info-ZIP. pgp26uix.sig Detached signature for pgp26uix.zip. pgp23a-26ui.patch.gz Context diffs to go from 2.3a to 2.6ui, gzipped. I tried to upload to ftp.funet.fi, src.doc.ic.ac.uk and ftp.dsi.unimi.it, but the net seems flaky today. The following changes have been made from 2.3a: * Reads encoded data produced by both MIT PGP 2.6 and PGP 2.3a. * Writes data either in the "new" format used by MIT PGP 2.6, or in the old PGP 2.3a format. Option settable via a command line switch or config.txt setting. Default is old 'compatible' format. * No time-bomb code in it. If you want to switch version byte like MIT PGP does, you'll have to do it manually on September 1st. There's no advantage in doing so, unless you want it to look like you're running MIT PGP. * You can choose the version text which you want to have appear in ASCII armoured files. The default is 2.6, and if you're in the USA you probably don't want to change it, as a well known net.personality tends to harass people whose PGP armor says anything else. Again, this can be changed via command line or via config.txt. * Displays and accepts 8 characters of the key ID. Hence there's less chance of two keys having the same visible ID. * Makefile entries have been added for sunos5cc and sunos5gcc, for people using SPARC workstations running Solaris 2. I have personally tested the sunos5gcc build on Solaris 2.3, and it compiles cleanly. A line for NeXTstep Intel has also been added (next486). * The file idea68k.s has been removed, at the request of the author. It was obsolete. Better 68k routines are available; for example, suitable routines for the Amiga are available on Aminet. * A message has been added to the key generation section, reminding the user that MIT PGP 2.6 will only handle keys of 504-1024 bits. This version has no key length crippling, however. * Memory allocated with _fcalloc and freed with _ffree in ztrees.c and zdeflate.c, to avoid memory leakage in the MS-DOS version. * The -w option wipes files with pseudo-random data, to try and ensure the file is wiped even if you're using a disk compressor. Note that this still isn't perfect; DOS can randomly duplicate bits of cleartext files in partially-used clusters, and those fragments won't be removed if the original file is wiped. * Branko Lankester and Paul C Leyland's patches have been applied, so that newer key certification signatures automatically replace older ones. This also fixes a bug in the display of new keys with multiple signatures. This version was assembled by mathew <mathew(a)mantis.co.uk> from the standard PGP 2.3a sources, and from source code patches obtained from the net. All patches were scrutinized carefully before being applied by hand. No binary patches were used. The DOS executables were built by mathew using Microsoft Visual C++ version 1.0 (MS C v8). No RSAREF source code was used; in fact, I used no source code from MIT PGP at all. I haven't even looked at the MIT sources. (No, really.) Thanks to those anonymous individuals who tested the program against MIT 2.6... Disclaimer: This software is nothing to do with Mantis Consultants, and is without warranty or guarantee of any kind. Using it in the USA is probably very naughty. If you have any patches to fix bugs or add features, feel free to mail them to me, and I'll consider adding them to any future unofficial release. mathew <mathew(a)mantis.co.uk> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6 iQCVAgUBLeYh7HzXN+VrOblFAQFYFAP6Ar+1OKDoUg/5A0p6ZljmP/9Z3IZIx797 NPi2/ELLhZyWWCcsrhLxxPgux4+5WEJ2+FlK0FM10UlWFy7FuieXCWwprMM8Ug0A zfpAdxrQP4F7r0lozM2c8HFOtsse2ISxLOsNcObfgSCBfJKBu9c1nJ0/VvnJ42nA EA/vG3KwgyI= =FDlY -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- -- Seeking a decent bug-tracking system for Windows, DOS, UNIX, Mac... http://www.mantis.co.uk/~mathew/

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Re: Email Stalking on CNN
by lile＠netcom.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

I heard it too. I thought, gosh too bad she didn't know about kill files.... :( -lile

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Re: My 2.3a Key is listed as a 2.6 (Aaargh!)
by danisch＠ira.uka.de 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

> As to not being allowed to have or use 2.6 in Europe, what makes you think so? I didn't think in european law, I was thinking in US law. It is prohibited to export, it is prohibitet to use (patents) and the day will come where it is prohibited to be european and we get arrested after coming to the States... ;-) > I may be wrong, but I thought the only obstacle was that it may not be exported > to us due to ITAR. Once it's available here there's nothing wrong with having > or using it. Do you think they will accept this if they put us in jail after entering an american airport next time? Just a stupid question: Do I violate american law when I transfer files from United Kingdom to Germany? In some cases the internet packets are routed through american machines because the connection Germany/Britain is lousy slow. Hadmut

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