December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

Digital privacy
by anonymous-remailer＠shell.portal.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

So I was netsurfing and came across CellularOne's home page. So I thought I'd do a little investigative work...this is the same company which advertises that your digital phone conversation is private even in a crowded restaurant! Here's what its WWW server had to say: >The Difference Digital Makes > >Cellular phones play an indispensable role in everyday life in the 1990s. But >>what exactly does digital technology bring to the table? > >Static meets its match. Since digital transmission only recognizes and >converts >variations in the human voice, static is virtually eliminated. >Voices come >through loud and clear. Background noise isn't just reduced, it's >virtually >eliminated. So is cross-talk. > >Capacity three times. Ultimately, digital technology will triple the size of >>the cellular phone information highway. So as we convert, more room will be >>freed up for more of your important calls. Resulting in more calls going >>through faster. On the first try. And fewer calls being dropped. > >Pssst, what about privacy? Again, since your voice is digitally processed, >it's >less likely that anyone could eavesdrop on your conversations. ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ ?Como? This is absolutely amazing! ======================Herodotus===================== Great deeds are usually wrought at great risks. ==================================================== _/_/_/ _/_/_/ _/ _/ _/_/_/ _/ _/ _/ _/ _/ _/ _/ _/ _/_/ _/ _/_/_/ _/ _/ _/ _/ _/_/_/ _/ _/ _/ _/ _/ _/ _/ _/ _/ _/_/_/_/ _/ _/_/_/ _/_/_/ _/_/_/ _/_/_/ _/ _/ _/_/_/ _/

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Re: Digital privacy
by Amanda Walker 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

> >Pssst, what about privacy? Again, since your voice is digitally > >processed, it's >less likely that anyone could eavesdrop on > >your conversations. > ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ > > ?Como? This is absolutely amazing! Well, it is true, from a pragmatic point of view. A neighborhood kid with a Radio Shack scanner can't listen in on digital cellular calls. You have to actually hack a phone, which is a much less prevalent skill. I still think that CDMA+DES is the way to go for secure cellular, but from a purely pragmatic point of view simply going digital does increase privacy. Using analog cellular is like using a walkie-talkie. Amanda Walker InterCon Systems Corporation

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NAS Crypto study
by Adam Shostack 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Last week, the National Research Council posted a question to cypherpunks, asking for opinions. Here's mine (draft form) , I invite comments before I send it in. Adam NAS crypto question 1 ? How, if at all, do capabilities enabled by new and emerging ? technology in telecommunications (e.g., key-escrow ? encryption technologies, digital telephony) and electronic ? networking make it _easier_ for those who control that ? technology to compromise and/or protect the interests of ? individual end users? Please use as the standard of ? comparison the ease _today_ of compromising or ? protecting these interests. We are interested in ? scenarios in which these interests might be compromised ? or protected both individually and on a large scale. Please ? be sure to tell us the interests you believe are at stake. There are several areas in which the privacy of users is being changed by new technologies. The control of the new technologies is fundamental to privacy issues. When control is held by service providers, interests of the end users fall by the wayside. When that control is distributed, then the end users, naturally, have the ability to protect their own interests. Control of technology does not need to be held by service providers, the government, or any other centralized entity. It can be taken, today, by individuals who are concerned enough to do so. I will use as my basis for comparison the ease of compromising the interests of an individual who chooses to protect their communications with the tools available to them, mainly PGP and the remailer network. These tools are not yet trivially easy to use, but they are out there and they are being improved. Since those tools are available today to those who are interested, I will use them as a baseline against which centralized 'security' can be compared. The FBI wiretapping bill creates a new power for government - the right to tap phones. The change is a subtle one with large implications. It creates an additional array of points of failure for a possibly secure network. Law enforcement agents today have the ability, acquired yesterday through an accident of technology, to tap phones. That does not mean that ability should be preserved. It is widely known that this ability has been, and probably still is, abused.[1] (What do you call an illegal wiretap? An anonymous informant.) GAK (Government Access to Keys) codifies a similar accident; that networks are insecure becomes a design feature. [1] I'll be adding references to Bamford & Kahn. In such centrally controlled system, there will be points where the entire system can fail. Those points of failure could expose an entire population of users to information leaks. They may be well protected, but even the NSA has had agents defect. This model is in start contrast to the situation today, where individuals can take responsibility for their own encryption. If there is no centralized back door, no database of keys, LEA fields, and the like, then the security of each key must be breached where it is likely to be best protected, namely in the possession of its user. I would understand the value of my private keys to me, and not disclose them. Thus we have made it substantially easier to damage the interests of end users, while not adding anything to their protection. You could argue that the government has an excellent track record in protecting information. This is only partly true. The government did an excellent job of covering up radiation tests on the mentally ill; it has done a poor job of concealing Social Security numbers, which the IRS prints on the outside of tax documents, claiming the US mail is secure[2]. Only when there are institutional interests at stake does the government show any interest in protecting information about citizens. Doubtlessly, accidental or illegal revelation of keys would be carefully classified, along with the names of the effected individuals. [2] I'll be adding a reference to RISKS digests. The bureaucrat, not having a personal stake in the security of the keys, will be more lax than an individual. No one believes that agents of the government will look out for them as well as they look out for themselves. If they did, perhaps we'd all be happy to let the IRS compute our taxes. It would sure make life easier. But we don't. The individual is always the best protector of their own interests. To hammer on the point, there have been repeated cases of INS employees selling green cards, FBI agents who create rules of engagement later found unconstitutional, and agents of every three letter agency in Washington have sold out to the Russians. To quote an NSA historian who I spoke with about Aldrich Ames at the NSA museum, "Its amazing how cheaply someone will betray their country." If we mandate backdoors in a system, they will be found and exploited. Give end users control of the technology, including source code and access to algorithims, and they are empowered to choose a level of security that is appropriate. The government can not do so, and should not try. A few scenarios to illustrate better my points. ******************* Postulate the existence of a rich and powerful drug lord. He has millions of dollars to protect his large shipments. Lets call him Pablo. Pablo decides he needs to listen in on DEA conversations. Plot A: put in place a system of GAK (government access to keys.) Lets call it Clipper, for convenience. Lets also say that the DEA is using Clipper to protect its phone conversations about Pablo. Pablo finds a low level employee of some key escrow agency. Lets call him Aldrich. Aldrich likes fast cars. Pablo buys Aldrich a fast car, in exchange for 8 or 10 keys, easily smuggled out on a floppy disk. Aldrich has just broken the law, and will doubtless be providing keys to Pablo for a very long time. Pablo, meanwhile, is laughing at the DEA agents, to whose daily phone meeting he listens. Plot B: There is no GAK. The DEA uses PGP, (having gotten copies from European FTP sites so as to not export it to its agents in South America.) The DEA agents hunting Pablo are the only ones with their keys. They know what Pablo does to DEA agents. Pablo can't get their keys, and our heroic agents catch Pablo, and throw him in jail forever. (Naturally, we can substitute any well funded enemy of law enforcement for Pablo. The KGB works well.) ******************* Second scenario. A group of terrorists plan to blow up the world trade center. Plot 1: Our terrorists are smart, and don't call attention to themselves. Despite the FBI's ability to tap their communications, there is no reason to be watching the soon-to-be terrorists, and they set off a bomb. Plot 2: For some reason, there is probable cause, leading to the issue of a warrant. The FBI taps into the communication lines, and discovers that the Terrorists are using VoicePGP. They obtain a warrant, and through the use of an ELINT monitoring device near the computer in question, and get all the information they need. This scenario is different in that the terrorists are in locations known to the FBI, whereas Pablo does not know where the DEA agents are. If the location of the terrorists is not known, it is difficult to tap into their communications links. In closing, by only by allowing end users to continue controlling their own security technology, can you avoid creating a system where the interests of large blocks of users can be easily compromised. Adam Shostack -- "It is seldom that liberty of any kind is lost all at once." -Hume

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LIST: calmness
by ddt＠lsd.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Let me be brief so you can hit the "d" key quickly... :) Please don't go, Tim. You are a very valuable asset. Lurk if you must... Everybody: _please_ tone down the "language," and focus, focus, focus. Let's all try to be more diplomatic. There's value in diplomacy. Let's continue to discuss Netscape, but NICELY. They deserve some respect. Enough MIME stuff for now! MIME is nifty, but this is about Crypto. Reset brain to a low-emotion state, post calmly. Let it stew before sending. Keep this list alive, tend it like a garden. It's important. dave -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6ui iQCVAgUBLvMNc6HBOF9KrwDlAQH7CgP+JQb/T7KG/pJdtAhS9XCYYQGLCiY3Ub0O hSudj0ji5TzwgACWJSMWJv+wmEFzoYIPlEEs3DJjC4LbSV4wz5lGN/3NDCUFc5iH 48wOArC3fTCKkdNJbCsczaDrl5+hdyY5zIwM+4YKF3SEdN0RDtWLiWQaQ56shN6j Kmw9TwBzbS4= =SanU -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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Re: The Thread That Wouldn't Die (Was: Re: McCoy is Right!)
by shamrock＠netcom.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

L. McCarthy wrote: >Right. We went through dozens of messages to establish that some people like >MIME and others don't, just as we did several weeks ago. What a surprise that >not much has changed since then. Bleeding wonderful. And we will go through it again and again and again until the ones who don't like MIME wake up to the fact that MIME is essential for todays and tomorrows email messages, namely solid email encryption that doesn't require much user intervention. Regardless what machine you use and what part of the net you live on. >Good standards are good. There's a revelation. Yep, we sure needed dozens of >messages to rehash that. Right. I agree it shouldn't take dozens of messages to get people to accept that. I have no idea why anyone who followed these threads still won't accept that MIME is a Good Thing and that MIME capable mailers (no mailers that claim to be MIME capable and aren't) are a Good Thing as well. >> > > Everything that has happened with MIME will happen again when people >> > > try to add cryptography to the structure of the net. >> > It seems to me that people are *already* trying to add cryptography to the >> > structure of the net, and that would actually be worth discussing. >> Yeah, like the PGP-MIME draft, which will open up the ability to >> effectively use PGP to more people than anything the cypherpunks have ever >> done :) > >So why not talk about that instead ? But we have. And everytime we do, someone out there says: "But my mailer doens't even handle todays MIME'd messages right. So it won't do tomorrows either." Why do you think this tread keeps comming back? -- Lucky Green <shamrock(a)netcom.com> PGP encrypted mail preferred.

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re: Tim May the Luddite
by anonymous-remailer＠shell.portal.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Luck Green wrote: > I don't see any cheap shots or personal inuendos. Perhaps you missed McCoy's "fucking clueless" post?

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re: Amanda and MIME
by anonymous-remailer＠shell.portal.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

>> I think if we only use MIME, the quality of discussion on the list >> would skyrocket. Eric, you should block all non-MIME posts to the >> list. How could we have been so blind? >Perry wrote: >The anonymous poster should feel happy he's anonymous, as his posting >is embarassingly stupid. Perhaps he'd like to make fun of ASCII next >by posting his next message as sequences of octal digits. Ah, a vintage Perry post: full of insults, little discussion. Perry is unable to handle SARCASM. Perhaps better MIME software will help.

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Re: The Thread That Wouldn't Die (Was: Re: McCoy is Right!)
by shamrock＠netcom.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

L. McCarthy wrote: [regarding MIME] >Well it certainly is not essential for todays messages. > >Drop into alt.binaries.pictures.* > >When the news people wish to transmit pictures of naked girls, etc, >they do not use MIME > >Now maybe they should use MIME, and maybe they will use MIME in >the future, but today, MIME is still bleeding edge. I have dropped into alt.binaries.*. Thanks to my newsreader (freeware), the pictures there are a _mouseclick_ away from my harddrive. Even multi-part posts take ONE mouseclick. MIME isn't even needed here. Capable clients are. And they are avaialable today. All I am asking is that people start using them instead of complaining how difficult it is to do things on the net. --Lucky [who promisses to shut up -- for now]

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Re: The Thread That Wouldn't Die (Was: Re: McCoy is Right!)
by L. McCarthy 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- - -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Lucky Green writes: > L. McCarthy wrote: > [regarding MIME] Note that James Donald actually wrote this quoted text, not I: > >Well it certainly is not essential for todays messages. > > > >Drop into alt.binaries.pictures.* > > > >When the news people wish to transmit pictures of naked girls, etc, > >they do not use MIME > > > >Now maybe they should use MIME, and maybe they will use MIME in > >the future, but today, MIME is still bleeding edge. Lucky Green writes: > I have dropped into alt.binaries.*. Thanks to my newsreader (freeware), the > pictures there are a _mouseclick_ away from my harddrive. Even multi-part > posts take ONE mouseclick. Can you recommend an ftp site for this ? I'll try to get my sysadmins to install it here. (Assuming it's a Unix app.) What is it called ? - - -L. Futplex McCarthy, who likes MIME but is unhappy that his mailer does not properly support it - -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.1 iQCVAwUBLvI9Rmf7YYibNzjpAQEGSwQAllo2RnniOUPmFBwyfqa7Y11DNpTobbJQ i7JxNQKjMmG+FvDepGITUz/8w870sRI7hTTETPcJbn4+gIQiHgqKZqZRMXnmzfQT 45Pc0FJXk3K7W/MmKvs57uJzumlfdGosi9prbA4EyUxLp/ZbUN1FBOwbg2NBe3h/ m79G8qNHqtA= =r6Ye - -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- - --- [This message has been signed by an auto-signing service. A valid signature means only that it has been received at the address corresponding to the signature and forwarded.] -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.2 Comment: Gratis auto-signing service iQBFAwUBLvI+cCoZzwIn1bdtAQGYPgF/S0f4wuxn+/DSE5F1PS6gSBQEvycEYhrh 7vUg+bWqi6smF0WD44DqF2okiswC3J8i =+ptW -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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VAX pgp uploaded to the cypherpunks site.
by Patrick J. Finerty Jr. 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

i have uploaded pgp compiled for a VAX running VAX/VMS to the cypherpunks ftp site. here is a copy of the readme file i included with it. i should note that the reason i did this was primarily to provide pgp to people who do not have access to c compilers or a PC/DOS machine. this is, of course, not meant to substitute for checking the source and compiling pgp yourself. -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- VAXPGP262.TAR.Z is a compressed tar file containing the following docs. NOTE!! - this is _not_ a complete pgp distribution. only the following files are included! - ------------------------------------------------------------- APPNOTE.DOC;1 13/15 25-OCT-1994 10:30:52.79 BLURB.TXT;1 2/3 25-OCT-1994 10:30:31.21 CHANGES.DOC;1 41/42 25-OCT-1994 10:30:53.63 CONFIG.TXT;1 8/9 25-OCT-1994 10:30:23.93 KEYS.ASC;1 12/12 25-OCT-1994 10:30:56.06 KEYSERV.DOC;1 9/9 25-OCT-1994 10:30:31.52 LANGUAGE.TXT;1 135/135 25-OCT-1994 10:30:56.56 MITLICEN.TXT;1 5/6 25-OCT-1994 10:31:00.64 PGFORMAT.DOC;1 72/72 25-OCT-1994 10:30:47.91 PGP.1;1 40/42 25-OCT-1994 10:30:50.14 PGP.EXE;1 326/327 25-OCT-1994 10:58:19.24 PGP.HLP;1 8/9 25-OCT-1994 10:31:00.99 PGPDOC1.TXT;1 164/165 25-OCT-1994 10:30:41.65 PGPDOC2.TXT;1 262/264 25-OCT-1994 10:30:33.21 POLITIC.DOC;1 35/36 25-OCT-1994 10:30:51.42 PUBRING.PGP;1 28/30 5-DEC-1994 23:42:21.16 README.DOC;1 13/15 25-OCT-1994 10:31:01.51 SETUP.DOC;2 32/33 25-OCT-1994 10:30:32.07 - ------------------------------------------------------------- PGP.EXE is pgp2.6.2. compiled on a VAX running VAX/VMS 5.5-2. i compiled the program using the *build.com files that come with the standard pgp distribution BUT with TWO CHANGES. THESE CHANGES HAVE NO AFFECT ON PGP, THEY ONLY AFFECT THE CREATION OF THE RSA LIBRARY THAT IS DISTRIBUTED WITH PGP!! changes were to made to the rsabuild.com file, these were: 1) commented out: $ call compile md2c 2) commented out: $ call compile md5c other than these, no changes were made to the *.com files. i have tested this copy of pgp and it has worked perfectly with key generation and file signing as measured by generating keys on the VAX and then signing a file on the VAX followed by checking the signatures and key on a SUN using pgp2.6.2 that was compiled there. if you have a problem, please write me at: finerty(a)msscc.med.utah.edu pfinerty(a)nyx10.cs.du.edu pfinerty(a)seattleu.edu my pgp key is available via keyserver or finger. - -patrick finerty, jr. - -- patrick finerty -- finerty(a)msscc.med.utah.edu pfinerty(a)bach.seattleu.edu pfinerty(a)nyx10.cs.du.edu U of Utah biochem grad student/slave in the Bass lab easily found at (801) 585-3110 almost anytime. rm 207 wintrobe. -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.2 iQCVAwUBLvERgU3Qo/lG0AH5AQEzbwP/UItMKPKv1dZ8g39aaX6qoQWRsd1tR5ko fIQ65i73qECD0swWxKAEUBKOz1bUo1tPr4u4cEvt3v4JYaUkrKaWZ58H9HkF7v47 SlDzZDHnZytcV1NzjEFsDYLMLFjuE6uMpGK9OjDP/cH4Z+PFkfVN6TNv4g6GL+Pa obY4/vId8sM= =nMyH -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- -- patrick finerty -- finerty(a)msscc.med.utah.edu pfinerty(a)bach.seattleu.edu pfinerty(a)nyx10.cs.du.edu U of Utah biochem grad student/slave in the Bass lab easily found at (801) 585-3110 almost anytime. rm 207 wintrobe.

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