December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

Alleged RC4 source code (message header only)
by sommerfeld＠orchard.medford.ma.us 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

In case any of you had filtered this one out based purely on sender and subject, I've enclosed the *headers* of the message and its first paragraph. The message also contained two source files, "rc4.h" and "rc4.c", implementing a stream cypher which is based on incremental shuffling of a permutation of the numbers 0..255, and seems to be fairly well-suited for efficient implementation in software. For obvious reasons, I'm not including the source files here. ------ Date: Fri, 9 Sep 1994 22:11:49 -0500 Message-Id: <199409100311.WAA12423(a)jpunix.com> To: cypherpunks(a)toad.com From: nobody(a)jpunix.com Subject: Thank you Bob Anderson Remailed-By: remailer(a)jpunix.com Complaints-To: postmaster(a)jpunix.com Sender: owner-cypherpunks(a)toad.com Precedence: bulk SUBJECT: RC4 Source Code I've tested this. It is compatible with the RC4 object module that comes in the various RSA toolkits. ------

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Re[2]: RC4
by Davis, Derek L 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

The RC4 post was subjected: "Thanks to Bill ..." (I think) My copy is gone, but someone must still have it. Please repost at least to cypherpunks. Thanks. The following mail header is for administrative use and may be ignored unless there are problems. ***IF THERE ARE PROBLEMS SAVE THESE HEADERS***. Precedence: bulk Sender: owner-cypherpunks(a)toad.com Cc: cypherpunks(a)toad.com Subject: Re: RC4 From: doug(a)OpenMind.com (Doug Cutrell) To: schneier(a)chinet.chinet.com (Bruce Schneier) Date: Tue, 13 Sep 1994 08:35:40 -0700 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Mime-Version: 1.0 Message-Id: <aa9b76e41c02100329f9(a)[198.211.130.8]> X-Sender: doug(a)bluesky.openmind.com Received: from [198.211.130.8] by BlueSky.OpenMind.com (Mercury 1.12); Tue, 13 Sep 94 8:32:16 -700 Received: from MAILQ by OPENMIND (Mercury 1.12); Tue, 13 Sep 94 8:32:22 -700 Received: from OPENMIND/MAILQ by BlueSky.OpenMind.com (Mercury 1.12); Tue, 13 Sep 94 8:32:47 -700 Received: from BlueSky.OpenMind.Com by beeblebrox.tbyte.com (NX5.67d/NX3.0M) id AA10087; Tue, 13 Sep 94 08:32:47 -0700 Received: from beeblebrox.tbyte.com by toad.com id AA27882; Tue, 13 Sep 94 08:40 Received: by toad.com id AA27888; Tue, 13 Sep 94 08:40:13 PDT Received: from toad.com by relay2.UU.NET with SMTP id QQxhet29743; Tue, 13 Sep 1994 11:45:12 -0400 Received: from relay2.UU.NET by hermes.intel.com (5.65/10.0i); Tue, 13 Sep 94 08 Received: from hermes.intel.com by ormail.intel.com with smtp (Smail3.1.28.1 #12) id m0qka63-000MNxa; Tue, 13 Sep 94 08:48 PDT Received: from ormail.intel.com by relay.jf.intel.com with smtp (Smail3.1.28.1 #2) id m0qka64-000twca; Tue, 13 Sep 94 08:48 PDT

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e$: WSJ, CyberCash, and the Falling Barometer
by rah＠shipwright.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

On the front page of today's (9/13/94) Wall Street Journal Marketing section (Page B-1, lower right hand column) is an article about internet commerce. It talks about a group of companies who formed a consortium called CyberCash. The companies and players include the guy who started Interop, and RSA. They are claiming the ability to do credit cards and bank drafts and they say they are in negotiations with Chaum about licencing digital cash. Anonymity was specifically mentioned as a distinguishing marketable feature of digital cash. They still don't get it, but they will soon enough, I suppose. BTW, there was a veiled reference to Bibliobytes(?). At least the WSJ got their story straighter than the Times did. Like I said before, Secure Mosaic meant that "Wallets" and "Cash Registers" for digital cash were imminent. They're not imminent anymore, they're here, and they were just announced at Interop this week. I should have realized something was up, the barometer was falling at a pretty good clip. It started when I was chatting offline with someone from buyinfo and they said that they were under non-disclosure about something very big, but that I would know about it when Interop opened. Then, last Tuesday, I got an interesting cold call from a stringer for a largeish venture capital outfit in Menlo Park. He was doing due dillegence and wanted to ask me some questions about Internet Commerce, and in particular, about digital cash. I told him what I knew, and referred him to some of the senior members of these lists for much better information. I bent his ear a bit about off-line cash underwriting, and I hope it's healing now. I also sent him all of the traffic I had archived since I subscribed to cypherpunks having to do with the internet and the economics thereof. He had the buyinfo and imp-interest archives already. He seemed to think a "schmooze" conference on e$, including invitations to all the usual crypto suspects, plus people in financial operations, regulatory, political, and the institutional investor community might be a good idea. When I came back from a hike(!) in the White Mountains this weekend, I found at long last a reply to my query to DigiCash, Inc. for information. I answered the beta test questionnaire they sent me and sent it back. The barometric pressure was going down very fast all last week, and I didn't even realize it until this morning. My wife got a membership at the Harvard club. A couple of months ago we decided it was time for me to exercise (I push 350), so I work out in the morning there and walk back to the office in my house here in Roslindale (about 7 miles) about 3 or 4 times a week. (ever see the senior senator from Massachusetts' bare butt? You will... at the Harvard Club) This morning, when I looked at the Journal in the locker room, I let out a whoop. (not from seeing Teddy. From seeing the WSJ e$ article.) I was born in El Paso. I whoop a lot. Everyone in the locker room looked at me like I was from Yale, or something. Jeez. I hope we don't get blackballed. A very happy Tuesday to you all, Bob Hettinga Oh. If anyone's crazy enough to want to work on the technology part (development and integration and eventual operations) for very small startup offline digital cash underwriter, let me know. I've already started talking to a finance guy and a (very) part-time treasury management person. It also looks like the legal stuff has been figured out, or CyberCash wouldn't have done a triple-gainer into the pool like that. Any job offer would be contingent upon funding, of course. ;-). ----------------- Robert Hettinga (rah(a)shipwright.com) "There is no difference between someone Shipwright Development Corporation who eats too little and sees Heaven and 44 Farquhar Street someone who drinks too much and sees Boston, MA 02331 USA snakes." -- Bertrand Russell (617) 323-7923

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Int'l Workshop on Electronic Commerce
by LAURENN%smtpgate＠earth.wri.org 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

With all the discussion relating to financial transactions on this list, I thought I'd forward the following call for papers that appeared in INFOSYS this weekend. -- LaurenN(a)wri.org * CALENDAR OF UPCOMING EVENTS * *The INFOSYS Calendar of Upcoming Events is updated * *fortnightly and can be obtained in the following ways: * * * *--E-mail: send the following one-line message to * * listserv(a)american.edu: get infosys calendar * *--FTP: anonymous FTP to ftp.american.edu; file is \infosys\ * * infosys.calendar * *--Gopher: gopher to auvm.american.edu; choose INFOSYS * *--WWW: http://gopher://auvm.american.edu/INFOSYS * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * ** 0298* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * ** CALL FOR PAPERS - International Workshop on Electronic Commerce Richard Holowczak, Rutgers Univ <holowcza(a)andromeda.rutgers.edu> * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * ACM International Workshop on Electronic Commerce In conjunction with The Third International Conference on Information and Knowledge Management (CIKM'94) December 2, 1994 National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) Gaithersburg, Maryland OBJECTIVE The workshop will provide an international forum to discuss evolving research issues and applications in the area of Electronic Commerce. Invited speakers from industry, universities and government will present their experiences and vision for the future. The Workshop will begin with a kick-off dinner on Thursday, December 1 evening and a full program on Friday, December 2. The final version of the papers will be included in an edited book that will be published by Springer Verlag as part of its Lecture Notes Series on Computer Science. INFORMATION TO AUTHORS Authors interested in participating in the workshop are invited to submit 2-3 page abstract by October 10 to: Prof. Nabil R. Adam Rutgers University 180 University Avenue Newark, NJ 07102 Fax: (201) 648-1459 E-mail: ecomm(a)adam.rutgers.edu Notification of acceptance will be sent by October 25. * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * ABOUT INFOSYS INFOSYS is an electronic newsletter for faculty, students, and practitioners in the field of Information Systems. INFOSYS publishes news items, requests for assistance, announcements of professional meetings and conferences, position notices, a calendar of upcoming events, comments on recent publications, abstracts of papers that authors are willing to share, and other items of interest to the Information Systems community. INFOSYS is published biweekly, more frequently if volume requires it. INFOSYS operates as an electronic mailing list on listserv software at American University in Washington, DC. The editor is Dennis W. Viehland <d.viehland(a)massey.ac.nz>. To subscribe to INFOSYS send the following one-line electronic mail message to listserv(a)american.edu (Internet) or listserv@auvm (Bitnet): subscribe infosys yourfirstname yourlastname (e.g., subscribe infosys John Smith). You will receive a welcome letter that will tell you more about INFOSYS and listserv. Guidelines for submitting articles to INFOSYS are published in the Welcome message each new subscriber receives (or e-mail "GET infosys welcome" to listserv(a)american.edu) Send articles to infosys(a)american.edu or d.viehland(a)massey.ac.nz. * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * ------------------------------ End of NEWSLTR Digest - 12 Sep 1994 to 13 Sep 1994 - Special issue ******************************************************************

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cybercash
by perry＠imsi.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Well, this looks interesting, especially given Steve Crocker's involvement being listed in the article... $whois cybercash.com Trusted Information Systems, Inc. (CYBERCASH-DOM) 3060 Washington Road Glenwood, MD 21738 Domain Name: CYBERCASH.COM Administrative Contact, Technical Contact, Zone Contact: Crocker, Stephen D. (SDC4) crocker(a)TIS.COM (301) 854-6889 Record last updated on 30-Aug-94. Domain servers in listed order: NS.TIS.COM 192.94.214.100 NS.LA.TIS.COM 198.147.66.1 The InterNIC Registration Services Host contains ONLY Internet Information (Networks, ASN's, Domains, and POC's).

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Re: alleged-RC4
by Hal 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Bill Sommerfeld <sommerfeld(a)orchard.medford.ma.us> writes: >Actually, all the %256 operations in the code are superfluous on >8-bit-byte platforms since the indices are declared as `unsigned >char'. Ah, good point. So my "typo" doesn't really matter (although I think it is a typo.) >Probably the only potential weakness I can see is that the `x' and `y' >counters are always initialized to zero when starting off; this means >that an attacker can almost always know the `x' value used to encrypt >each byte of cyphertext they find. I can't see any way to exploit >this, though. It would seem that you could (slightly) strengthen the >cipher by starting with x=state[0] and y=state[1], then cranking the >key generation loop for two more iterations.. A related point is how the key-dependent state-table permutation is set up. The algorithm is, in pseudo-code, for i from 0 to 255 swap state[i] and state[j] where j is incremented by state[i] plus the next key byte, mod 256. Notice the similarity to the naive random-permutation generator: for i from 0 to 255 j = random (256) swap state[i] and state[j] where random (n) returns a random number less than n. This naive algorithm is not quite right, as it generates 256 to the 256th power equally likely arrangements, when there are actually only 256! arrangements and 256! doesn't even divide 256^256 evenly. The similarity I see is that j is chosen in the prepare_key as a slightly complicated function of the key byte and the current state, and we can view this as a key-dependent substitute for random (256). So it would appear that the prepare_key algorithm, even with a fully random key, may produce a bias in the permutation table. A correct algorithm for a random permutation is: for i from 0 to 255 j = random (i+1) swap state[i] and state[j] Here we choose the random number from among the ones we have already done. This algorithm can be easily proven correct. Perhaps it would be better if the prepare_key algorithm did a similar thing, choosing the entry with which to swap modulo the current "i" value plus one rather than mod 256. One implication of the existing implementation is that there may be a simple relation between at least state[0] and the first character of the key. Initially state[0] will be swapped with the value in the table at the position of the first byte of the key. Since the table is initialized to 0..255, this means that state[0] will hold the value of the first key byte after that swap. Now, it is probable that state[0] will be chosen "randomly" to be swapped with a later entry in the table. But as we discussed here a few days ago, there is about a 1/e chance (about 37%) that it will not be swapped after its first guaranteed swap. This means that 37% of the time that this algorithm is used, state[0] holds the first key byte at startup. OTOH if the modification I suggested above were made, no such conclusion could be drawn and I don't see anything simple you could say about the likely permutation after prepare_key is complete. Now, having said this, I don't see any way to exploit this knowledge to attack the cypher. The "lookup, sum, and lookup" structure of the cypher has too many degrees of freedom to allow this information about state[0] to expose a hint of what the key might be, as far as I can see. But it is an interesting aspect of the key setup, nevertheless. Hal

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Key Signing Party?
by John L Tocher 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Anybody interested in having a key signing party in the Los Angeles area? John Tocher Tocher(a)Igate1.HAC.com

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Crackdown in Queensland, Australia?
by rishab＠dxm.ernet.in 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

When I saw the Sunday Mail post here on Queensland's prpposed crackdown on cyberspace (for _child pornography_ if you please! I hereby decree that a concerted effort must be made by all to increase the pedophile population of the Net from 97% to 100% - universal coverage. All new subscribers must provide oridinal photographs as evidence of their tendencies before being given a connection), I thought I'd ask Ian Peter himself. Ian Peter, who is quoted in the article and whom I met in February, replied: > Re the Qld stuff - there really are no firm details yet, its proposed > legislation and may well change before becoming law - and the journos > concerned are going on rumnours because no copies of the legislation are > available yet. > > So it's wait and see! > > [... Ian Peter] ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Rishab Aiyer Ghosh "Clean the air! clean the sky! wash the wind! rishab(a)dxm.ernet.in take stone from stone and wash them..." Voice/Fax/Data +91 11 6853410 Voicemail +91 11 3760335 H 34C Saket, New Delhi 110017, INDIA

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Mailing list for cryptography
by rishab＠dxm.ernet.in 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

"Perry E. Metzger" <perry(a)imsi.com>: > I'm thinking (again) about setting up a specialized mailing list for > discussing cryptography... While I agree with Perry's implication that the CP list does tend to go off track rather often, it _was_ set up specifically to bring together the social and technical aspects of cryptography, and does generate useful discussion on occasion ;-] If you want to discuss only cryptography, there's always sci.crypt... ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Rishab Aiyer Ghosh "Clean the air! clean the sky! wash the wind! rishab(a)dxm.ernet.in take stone from stone and wash them..." Voice/Fax/Data +91 11 6853410 Voicemail +91 11 3760335 H 34C Saket, New Delhi 110017, INDIA

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Social body and crypto
by rishab＠dxm.ernet.in 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

I enjoyed Doug's clear statement on the implications of crypto anarchy on society. It should be compulsory reading for all newbies so that they don't get worried next time Larry Detweiler comes bouncing in raving about EVIL LIES MURDER and pseudospoofing. I'd like to point out, however, that crypto anarchy poses no threat whatsoever to personal or corporate relationships based on physical or other concrete identity (truenames). It just makes these relationships _voluntary_ - no one's _forcing_ you to be anonymous. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Rishab Aiyer Ghosh "Clean the air! clean the sky! wash the wind! rishab(a)dxm.ernet.in take stone from stone and wash them..." Voice/Fax/Data +91 11 6853410 Voicemail +91 11 3760335 H 34C Saket, New Delhi 110017, INDIA

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