December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

Re: Simple Hardware RNG Idea
by tcmay＠got.net 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 5:57 PM 9/30/95, zinc wrote: >regarding the use of radioactive material for generating random >numbers, lantern mantles are fairly radioactive. i'd say they would >be able to emit sufficient particles for OTP use, especially if one >builds a device that just constructs the pads all the time (ie, it >just sits there making various pads of X min length and Y max length, >storing them on a hard drive, or RAM if you're that rich). you just >request a pad from the machine when you need it and encrypt whatever >with it... Thorianated lantern mantles are only slightly radioactive. The counts per second is what matters. This will be a function of a lot of things, not the least of which is the detector area and the fluence of alphas intercepted. At the risk of repeating myself, there are easier ways of generating essentially random numbers. --Tim May (P.S., as my last word on this for a while. You may have heard that RAM chips can have bits flipped by the alpha particles emitted by low levels of uranium and thorium present in packaging materials. And that cosmic rays can do the same thing, at a lower error rate. Well, I discovered these effects in 1977 and wrote the original papers on this "soft error" effect. I'm not making an appeal to authority here, just telling you why I'm skeptical of all of these proposals to make a radioactive decay-based random number source. There are much easier ways.) ---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---- Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, tcmay(a)got.net 408-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero Corralitos, CA | knowledge, reputations, information markets, Higher Power: 2^756839 | black markets, collapse of governments. "National borders are just speed bumps on the information superhighway."

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Re: Operation Stop The Aliens
by Alan Olsen 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 09:11 AM 9/30/95 -0500, you wrote: >-- [ From: FELIX R. WILSON SR. * EMC.Ver #2.3 ] -- > Attachment: natltr.txt Code: 00H7GFL \ Created: 09-29-95, 06:21 PM [34 Kb] > >The Attached File Is For Viewing It I In Text Format Please Forward To >Everyone on the net work. and post to every board " Please.." >//BEGIN BINARY MAIL SEGMENT: What the hell is going on here! Why am I suddenly seeing spam from every nazi wannabe on the net? Some of this crap has been posted to the Cypherpunks list. What kind of weird reputation do we have in the outside world? I would venture to guess that we have more anti-authoritatians here than authoritarians. Are these people that clueless (or stupid) to post that crap here? So far, I have been getting neo-nazi spam, Christian Nazi spam, Libritarian nazi chain letter spam, and (why do I expect vikings to desend from the ceiling) a whole lot more. The next thing I expect to see here is "evil aliens are stealing my luggage" spam. I expect this bozo will have his account removed pretty quick... Maybe we need a few national stories about the horrible things that happen to people who spam mailing lists and newsgroups. ("Suddenly a wrecking crew showed up at their house and leveled it to the ground.") | Minister of Forced Caffinization in the DNRC | alano(a)teleport.com | |"The moral PGP Diffie taught Zimmerman unites all| Disclaimer: | | mankind free in one-key-steganography-privacy!" | Ignore the man | | -- PGP 2.6.2 key available on request -- | behind the keyboard.| | http://www.teleport.com/~alano | <fnord> |

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Re: my favorite random-numbers-in-software package (unix)
by David K. Merriman 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 03:46 PM 9/30/95 -0400, you wrote: ... <deletia> ... >The basic idea is that you exploit randomness in the drift between >the processor clock and the rate at which interval timer interrupts >occur. Such drift occurs even on idle processors. randbyte() assumes >that there's at least about .4 bits of "entropy" per interrupt, which is >(probably) a safe assumption on modern processors. Randomness introduced >by the OS (scheduler, etc.) can add to the overall entropy, but shouldn't >be relied upon by itself. > >An advantage to this approach (using clock skew) is that the randomness >doesn't depend on external events like user input, network traffic or >processor load. That makes it especially attractive for generating keys >on unattended servers, e.g., for generating Diffie-Hellman exponents. >Note, however, that very (very) slow and heavily-loaded processors may >not provide enough cycles to the truerand process between interrupts for >these assumptions to hold. Also, all bets are off on processors that use >a single clock source for both interval timing and CPU clocking. Even with the exclusion of processors using single-source clocking for interval and CPU timing, this would *seem* to be somewhat hazardous. Any two clocking mechanisms that are 'mixed' are going to result in a number of harmonics, or beat frequencies. While your system - at any given instant - is quite likely to have a decent amount of randomness in it, I'd hazard a guess that repetitive use would result in a discernible pattern. Even something as 'coarse' as an interrupt timer has a finite range that it can (must) operate in. Even if the CPU oscillator is based on a ceramic resonator (nowhere near as stable/accurate as a crystal), the clock on it is going to stay within +/-1% (worst case, for a *really* cheap oscillator) of frequency, and drift not more than some number of Parts Per Million per Period. Mixing the innate (relative) accuracy of two oscillators, and the necessarily limited amount of drift that they're capable of, would seem to result in an unacceptably low-yield source of 'real' randomness. Of course, I'm kind of math-impaired when it comes to crypto, so my 20+ years of electronics (hardware) experience may not apply in this case :-) Dave Merriman This is a test (3 UUE lines) of the unconstitutional ITAR - 1/713th of the PGP executable. See below for getting YOUR chunk! ------------------ PGP.ZIP Part [015/713] ------------------- M=$<(&L`#*IPP",(G6(,,S,`P](<2RWU96XCW86/JBYV8A\D8@X'HB_9H#&\X MX'PCUB.,13B"X8`R?^J-:UB.M_`U\>[#)BS&5$0C,Y#^1CS>1`\T1QTXX6!3 M8H,),S$8G>&.WP(8IRA`-M['+`Q%&_C"">5-F%LX@<_Q$;*P'',Q$Z/AA[8M ------------------------------------------------------------- for next chunk to export --> http://dcs.ex.ac.uk/~aba/export/ <><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><> My web page: http://www.geopages.com/CapitolHill/1148

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Re: NetScape's dependence upon RSA down for the count!
by jbass＠dmsd.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Ok, several people have asked: > Please explain to me how you can break SSL using the above method. I > don't follow your line of thought. How could my fake www server > intercept and redirect packets to netscape.com short of hacking a DNS > server? client -> filter Client sends packet with K(c) filter -> Server filter forwards packet with K(f) filter <- Server Server sends encrypts with K(f) client <- filter filter re-encrypts with K(c) As the protocol progresses the filter also uses the master key, and follows the renegotiation as the master key expires. The existance of a working filter is enough to invalidate the security in NetScape's claims. hacking a DMS server is one way, spoofing a DNS reply to named is easier, simply packaging the filter into a router/bridge close to the server is more effective ... even if hacking the incoming phoneline/T1 line to the server and inserting a very transparent bridge AKA a phone tap. There is enough dollars to make the risks ... :) John BTW ... how do I join for these two list? Where are they archived to catchup with past traffic?

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Auto-signing
by gmixo＠alpha.c2.org 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

would someone please send me information about any autosigning services.... like the gratis auto-signing.... and others like it.... thanks gmixo

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Re: NetScape's dependence upon RSA down for the count!
by jbass＠dmsd.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

> jbass(a)dmsd.com writes: > > client -> filter Client sends packet with K(c) > filter -> Server filter forwards packet with K(f) filter <- Server Server sends encrypts with K(f) > > client <- filter filter re-encrypts with K(c) > > > > As the protocol progresses the filter also uses the master key, > > and follows the renegotiation as the master key expires. > > Yeah, but in order for this to work, the fake server needs to know > netscape.com's private (secret) key, no? > > -jon No ... the public part of any server private key is held by the filter and not returned to the client. The client only encrypts with public keys provided by the filter. The Server only encrypts with public keys provided by the filter. The filter has cleartext of the entire session. John

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Re: NetScape's dependence upon RSA down for the count!
by jbass＠dmsd.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Ok ... one more time ... the filter has to replace the client/server keys in the packet stream with it's own ... John

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Re: NetScape's dependence upon RSA down for the count!
by Don.Stephenson＠Eng.Sun.COM 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Yes, but the certificate that contains the public key of the server is digital signed by the certificate authority (CA). To create such a certificate requires the secret key of the CA. The public key of the CA is contained in the client software, which uses it to verify the validity of the server certificate. - Don > From jbass(a)dmsd.com Sat Sep 30 17:15:36 1995 > Date: Sat, 30 Sep 95 16:50:05 -0600 > From: jbass(a)dmsd.com (John L. Bass) > To: www-security(a)ns2.rutgers.edu, cypherpunks(a)toad.com > Subject: Re: NetScape's dependence upon RSA down for the count! > > > Ok ... one more time ... the filter has to replace the client/server > keys in the packet stream with it's own ... > > John > >

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Linux RSA Library (fwd)
by Flame Remailer 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

From: Jim Kinder <jkinder(a)nat.com> Newsgroups: comp.os.linux.announce Subject: RSA Encryption Utilities. Followup-To: comp.os.linux.development.apps Date: Sat, 30 Sep 95 14:28:37 GMT Organization: Network Application Technology Lines: 39 Approved: linux-announce(a)news.ornl.gov (Lars Wirzenius) Message-ID: <cola-liw-812471317-27882-1(a)oravannahka.helsinki.fi> NNTP-Posting-Host: kruuna.helsinki.fi Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- I have a set of Encryption Utilities for Linux cyrpt - Unix sytle crypt(1) command using homebrew alogorithm rcrypt - Beter version of crypt primegen - Unlimited size prime number generator rsacrypt - Unlimited key size RSA encryption system. rsadecrypt - Decryption for rsacrypt genkey - Generate RSA keys. This package is similar to pgp, but the algorithms are more transparent, and the key size is unlimited. It uses a C++. I wrote all of this code myself and I will give it away to whomever wants it. I am planning on using it to write an encrypted mail system. If you want this code I will e-mail it to you in uuencode format. - -- Send comp.os.linux.announce submissions to: linux-announce(a)news.ornl.gov PLEASE remember a short description of the software. -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.2i iQCVAwUBMG1OyIQRll5MupLRAQFHeAP9GO7IJSu0eqWbnVKWUSk/RQZU+5jwRuEv U1TzLaRZO4F5GXG3E4awx0RonuDtOeOZ/wCls7MONlk3JP0YigpxY23jA3pbfUhx 5JdbVYrbdNm5yi18GlRgsGdhkzIyTXPB7s/F2tUAxC80fxC85LM7O1RFINRrgUrc QDIOmJNZVMM= =Q9w9 -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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Re: "Notes" to be Eclipsed by "Netscape"
by Rich Salz 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

> I've seen Notes running ... > but my access to it was only marginal. > But, knowing the software, it wouldn't surprise me if there were > some serious bugs in the security code. Er, sounds to me like you're leaping to some conclusions... At any rate, one of the designers of Notes's security was Charlie Kaufman (formerly of Digital, recent author of a security book mentioned here) and he is No Slouch. /r$

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