December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

Dirty Jobs Ad
by nobody＠REPLAY.COM 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

NY Times, Sept 13, 1995. For the outawork: C.I.A.'s Chief Calls Covert Action a Must Washington, Sept. 12 -- The Central Intelligence Agency will maintain, and perhaps increase, its covert operations abroad and continue to hire informers from terrorist cells, military regimes and drug syndicates, the new Director of Central Intelligence said today. The Director, John M. Deutch, called espionage "the core mission of the Central Intelligence Agency." That mission has been questioned by critics of the C.I.A. in Congress and the foreign-policy establishment, who wonder whether the rewards of secret information are worth the risks of undertaking covert operations and recruiting murderous and corrupt foreign agents. -----

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Whitehouse "dissident" web site monitoring?
by an215712＠anon.penet.fi 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

- ---------------------------------------------------------- WHITE HOUSE MONITORING OF DISSIDENTS ON THE INTERNET The National Security Agency presumably can monitor subversive communication on the Internet without leaving any trace by "sniffing packets" at traffic nodes. For purely political purposes, however, the White House may be forced to do the monitoring in-house, which means that they leave traces everywhere they go. With just a superficial search for such traces, The Washington Weekly has uncovered intensive monitoring of "dissident" Internet sites by the White House. It turns out that computers from inside the White House have kept pretty good tabs on information available on Whitewater, Vince Foster, and Mena at a few key repositories on the World- Wide Web, a subset of the Internet. Just three such sites: "The Washington Weekly, "The Whitewater Scandal Home Page" and "Whitewater & Vince Foster," were accessed 128 times by four computers from the Executive Office of the President between August 28 and August 31. If the White House is showing a similar interest in other sites on the World Wide Web, that would amount to a monitoring operation of considerable magnitude. Tim Brady of the Yahoo! World-Wide Web index says that his company alone has indexed approximately 725 political sites. That monitoring effort would be nothing, however, compared to the effort required to follow all anti- Clinton discussion on the Usenet, another subset of the Internet. The White House did not respond to an inquiry (attached below) asking for an explanation and asking whether this constituted "casual browsing." Interestingly, the week after the White House snooping of files, which included a series of articles by J. Orlin Grabbe on Vince Foster's ties to the NSA, the following little piece appeared in Newsweek Magazine: "Conspiracy theorists perked up when Deborah Gorham told Senate Whitewater investigators in June that her boss, the late deputy White House counsel Vince Foster, asked her to put two secret notebooks from the National Security Agency in a White House safe. The suggestion that Foster dealt with the NSA sparked feverish speculation on the Internet that he was involved in espionage. The reality appears more prosaic. The White House won't give details, but sources say Foster's files dealt with legal questions about national emergencies...." Does the White House follow anti-Clinton discussion on Usenet newsgroups just as closely? The White House posts press releases to Usenet in collaboration with the Artificial Intelligence Lab at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. But MIT System Administrator Bruce Walton says that the White House does not use the same server for reading netnews. It would be difficult - although not impossible - to find the server that the White House uses for reading or receiving netnews and check for traces on that server. Readers may be tempted to post a threat to the President on a newsgroup just to see if they get a visit from the Secret Service the next day. That experiment is not advisable. It is a criminal offense. But Usenet just might be a faster conduit for getting the attention of the administration than the email address that the White House has published for the president. Attachment: THE WASHINGTON WEEKLY _________________________________________________________________ August 31, 1995 Virginia M. Terzano White House Office of the Press Secretary The White House Dear Ms. Terzano: It has come to my attention that several dissident sites on the World Wide Web have been visited by White House computers this week. Apparently, all information regarding Whitewater, Foster, and Mena has been transferred to White House computers. Specifically, the sites, "Washington Weekly" (http://www.federal.com) "The Whitewater Scandal Home Page" (http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~crow/whitewater/) "Whitewater & Vince Foster" (http://www.cris.com/~dwheeler/n/whitewater/whitewater-index.html) have been visited by White House computers ist1.eop.gov, ist6.eop.gov, ist7.eop.gov, and gatekeeper.eop.gov between August 28 and August 31, and a total of 128 files have been transferred to those White House computers. For all sites, this constitutes a significant increase over previous access by White House computers. In light of this information, I have the following questions: (1) Does this constitute "casual browsing" by White House staff, or is it, in light of the considerable time and effort spent during regular business hours, part of a monitoring or intelligence operation? (2) For what purpose is the information transferred to the White House used? (3) Does the White House keep information from these web sites on file, and does the White House keep a file on the persons responsible for these web sites? (4) Is the April 9 statement by David Lytel of the White House Office of Science and Technology to Amy Bauer of Copley News Service that the administration does not monitor anti-Clinton activity on the web still operative? Thank you very much for your cooperation in this matter. Sincerely, Marvin Lee The Washington Weekly Copyright (c) 1995 The Washington Weekly (http://www.federal.com) ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- To find out more about the anon service, send mail to help(a)anon.penet.fi. If you reply to this message, your message WILL be *automatically* anonymized and you are allocated an anon id. Read the help file to prevent this. Please report any problems, inappropriate use etc. to admin(a)anon.penet.fi.

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Re: Scientology tries to break PGP - and
by aba＠dcs.exeter.ac.uk 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

> Why would they use your copy of the program to decrypt the file? > They could just use a version that lacked this 'feature'. Of > course, they still couldn't get at the real plaintext unless you > gave them the key, but you are right back to the same old standoff > where they say, "Give us your key," and you (try to) say, "No." I agree, you can't rely on them using your doctored program, it must be resilient to them having a copy of all of your software, and their own fresh copies of software, and a backup of each copy before starting, and still provide pluasible deniability. Here's an idea to do just that, perhaps something which could be added to a future PGP. I reckon this is what you'd do: % pgp -es duress % pgp -es msg % stealth < msg.pgp > msg.stl % cat msg.stl >> duress.pgp % pgp +makerandom=1234 noise % cat noise >> duress.pgp % pgp -a duress.pgp % mail someone < duress.asc The pgp +makerandom=<size> <file> is an undocumented feature of pgp > 2.6 (not sure exactly when it got added, Colin Plumb pointed it out when I asked him about ran nos for stealth). So what this means is that you are using PGP it's self to hide a stegoed message. This would be good for the guy from FACTnet (forgotten his name) who just got hit by the CoS, he could hold out for a while, then give up his key, the duress message would appear, and the real message would be explained by having a script to do this on his HD, and having long since burned the disk with a script to do the above on it: % pgp -es msg % pgp +makerandom=4567 noise % cat noise >> msg.pgp % pgp -a msg.pgp % mail someone < msg.asc ie the idea is that you pad your message to a fixed size for the express purpose of hampering traffic analysis (of the type of my, Alice did have a lot to say to Bob that day). It would be even better cover if the thing had gotten sent through a remailer, as this kind of thing is expected of type I remailer traffic (before mixmaster which does the packetizing for you). So the duress message really looks like this: +---------+---------------------------+--------------------+--------+ | pgp hdr | IDEA encrypted duress msg | stealthed real msg | noise | +---------+---------------------------+--------------------+--------+ the IDEA block has a length field, but you can increase the length without damage to include the following stealthed stuff as the underlying stuff which is IDEA encrypted will know it's length on decryption, and the following junk will just be discarded. So, Alice and her secret key ring (encrypted) gets nabbed by the Charlie (CoS?), and coerced into divuling her passphrase. And if and when it is noticed that the message was longer than it ought to be (CoS that smart? substitute the NSA and they'd notice for sure), Alice explains away the junk on the end by pointing them to the fact that all of her messages where exactly (say) 16k long, and that she was using a the noise only script, and that the message really is this: +---------+---------------------------+-----------------------------+ | pgp hdr | IDEA encrypted duress msg | noise | +---------+---------------------------+-----------------------------+ Having this built-in to PGP provides plausible deniablity as you have no extra software which might look incriminating unless you managed to dispose of it first, if it comes as stock. Even as a standalone it would be feasible, but you'd need to be careful to hide the first script, maybe on an encrypted drive or something. This is not good tho as you ideally want nothing left, just a standard pgp implementation, and they have no way to prove anything, they can be suspicious, but suspicion can't put you in jail, and if you say there is no message, only random junk for padding purposes to foil traffic analysis this would be plausible, especially if they really had captured a whole load of 64k messages. You really need to use stealth2 for that, as stealth1.x gives the game away for determined attackers, but for stealth2, I need some cryptographic opinions on whether this is secure: 0 < x < N N is RSA modulus, and converting that to a number x' in the range: 0 < x' < 2^(int(log2(N) + 1) + 64) (ie the next power of 2 over N multiplied by 2^64) and the transformation supplied by: x' = N * f(MD5(x)) + x where f(y) is a function which converts from range 0 <= y < 2^128 to a range 0 <= f(y) < scale. Scale some constant defined in terms of N, and n other randomisation. Is that safe? x is random, and will be different even for a repeat encryption of the same file, as PGP is using a random IDEA session key. So are there any brute force attacks on that which would be cheaper than attacking 128 bit IDEA? PGP's random number generator also makes extensive use of MD5, so I'm taking the use of MD5 as secure as a given. If it is thought to be dangerous for some reason (it is after all some kind of signature on it's self, presume that you know N, and x' but not x, the question is can the equation be brute force reversed in a less than 128 bit brute force attack. I'm neglecting to consider the rand() calls, which I'm not expecting to add security, but are just a mechanism to stir the value with to get more random nos, as occasionally the alogrithm needs more than one, if the first fails, etc. The other approach, presuming that you can get to the data before they can, is to use secure drive, and securely wipe (or physically destroy - data on floppy) the encrypted key. Then you can give your passphrase without concern. Could land you in trouble for destruction of evidence or some such tho, so innocent, plausible deniability would be better. Adam

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CYPHERPUNK considered harmful.
by Peter Trei 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

I mailed this yesterday, but it never showed up on the list. -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- V Z Nuri has actually stolen my thunder a bit here, with his post on 'crypto confrontation', but I've been working on this stuff since Friday. I have a somewhat different approach, and I'd like to see some comment. "CYPHERPUNK" considered harmful I would like to propose that we, the 'cypherpunks', are making a strategic error, which will make it far more difficult to achieve the goal we share. I realize that many will bridle at the notion that we have a common goal, but I think that most of the participants in this list will agree with the following: "Strong cryptography is a powerful new technology, of which the widespread and unfettered use should be encouraged." Our error lies in our approach to encouraging the widespread use of crypto. It is an error of hubris - overweening pride. We too often think of ourselves as an elite - smarter and better in various ways to our non-cpunk neighbours. We refer to these others as 'Joe Sixpack" and other such derogatary terms. The problem is that in doing so we are marginalizing ourselves. We call ourselves 'cypherpunks'. While this is derived from the SF term 'cyberpunk', consider the image we are creating for ourselves: A 'punk' is a marginalized young adult, one who rejects the norms of his or her society, and takes delight in irking those around him with his or her rejection. The older of us will think of James Dean in 'Rebel Without a Cause', or Brando in 'The Wild One'. Later, you get images such as Peter Fonda in 'Easy Rider', and more recently, Sid Vicious and other icons of the 'punk rock' movement. These punks are often romantic figures, but in reality they started marginalized, remained marginalized, and died marginalized. They were ineffective in changing the core values of the society in which they lived (yes, I know that most the examples I've given are fictional characters, but I'm talking about the type of people they are modeled on). We, the 'cypherpunks' have embraced this label, taking pride in our technical abilities, and acting as if we can institute 'cryptoanarchy' without getting a majority of the population to support us. This is a bad approach. The overwhelming majority of the US population is not alienated from the US government, and regards with suspicion those who are. I suggest that we drop the term 'cypherpunk' - it has the wrong connotations to get our ideas into the mainstream. I don't have a perfect replacement yet: 1. I want to get away from the strings 'crypt' and c[iy]pher- they sound too cloak-and-dagger. 2. It should imply that the labelees are level-headed, responsible citizens, not longhaired weirdos. 3. It should make itself difficult to invert - the classic example is the pro-choice/pro-life dichotomy, where each side refuses to acknowledge the other's terminology. 4. A cute and apropos acronym would help. Many on this list have been advocating cryptography primarily as a means of liberating ourselves from an intrusive and overcontrolling state. This is a goal that leaves most Americans cold - they correctly regard their country as one of the most free in the world, and are alarmed by people who want major changes in the status quo. To get crypto accepted into the mainstream, we need to make it something the average person expects and wants to use, for goals that make mainstream sense - not for some distant, idealist utopian cryptoanarchic libertarian dream. Crime is a major political hot button these days. Advocating crypto for preventing crime is probably the best approach we have to getting the meme into the mainstream's ear that "I need good crypto". - -------------------------------------------------------------- Towards this goal, I have written a short Q&A that could be used as a model when discussing cryptography with non-cypherpunks. These are UNFINISHED DRAFTS. I would welcome additions, corrections, completions, and modifications. Please do NOT repost to other locations until they are finished. I'm trying to avoid wild anti-state tirades, giving mainstream reasons for people to take pro-cryptography positions. - ------------------------------------------------------------- Q: Why should I use cryptography? A: To protect yourself against crime. Criminals have already been caught installing "sniffers" on the Internet, and capturing passwords and other data. Cryptography will protect you from this. It will also protect your company against industrial espionage, and reduce fraud by providing unforgeable and undeniable digital signatures. Cell phone companies currently pay $XXXX million every year due to cellular fraud. This vast level of crime could be reduced to near zero by cryptography, with a corrosponding reduction in cellular rates. On top of this, a great deal of crime is committed by tapping cell phone conversations - something that can be done by any teenager (or gangster) with a simple scanner. Even the British royal family have had their privacy invaded by this method. Encryption can protect your phone conversations, and make them as private as regular phones. Finally, strong encryption can make the Internet safe for commerce and trade. [We need more data on the 'sniffer' attacks which have occurred - I know there was one on BARRNET about a year ago, and I understand that there have been others]. Q: Won't criminals be able to evade wiretaps by encryption? A: In theory they could. However, the FBI has not reported a single case where cryptography has been a barrier to wiretaps [I think this is correct - any counters?]. It turns out that criminals have not been using strong cryptography. Even if they did start to do so, audio and data bugs can still be planted. Criminals *have* been tapping the unencrypted data that flows through and is stored on the Internet, and tapping cell phone transmissions to commit cellular fraud. Encrypting your data and communications will help protect you against them. Q: Aren't LEAs worried that strong encryption will make it more difficult for them to catch crooks? A: There's an old saying that's apropos here: "When you're up to your ass in alligators, it's easy to forget that you're trying to drain the swamp." The reason we have LEAs is not to catch crooks; their purpose is to prevent crime. Catching crooks is simply one method of doing so. Cryptography provides a method of preventing crime before it happens, and putting the crooks out of business. To give a couple of analogies: 1. If your house was strongly built, and no one could enter without your consent, you would not worry about burglery. If every house was similarly robust, burglers would be out of a job. 2. Similarly, if your car could not be broken into, damaged, or moved in any way without your cooperation, you would not worry about car theft, or pay for theft insurance. If all cars were similarly protected, car theft and carjacking would no longer exist as crimes. LEAs tend to focus on the small number of investigations which may be hampered by good cryptography, ignoring the vast number of crimes which would be prevented by the same technology. This is a classic example of failing to see the forest for the trees. The widespread use of cryptography would reduce crime to a point where many LEA employees could retire. Q: What's this 'key escrow' thing? A: Some government agencies have been trying to figure out methods which simultaneously permit US citizens to use strong cryptography against criminal eavesdroppers, while retaining the ease with which LEAs can currently tap your calls. The schemes generally involve something mistitled 'key escrow', in which copies of cryptographic keys would be stored at sites accessible by LEAs. Q: Why do you object to it? A: This is a bit as if your local police department ordered you to send them copies of all of your house, car, and office keys, so that they could enter whenever they felt it warranted, without your knowledge. Even assuming no keys will be leaked to criminals from such a valuable archive, it's an incredible boondoggle. The inital cost is tens of millions of dollars per year, by the most conservative government estimates. In reality, it's likely to be hundreds of millions a year, all to enable LEAs to investigate a type of crime which does not yet occur, and may never occur. Q: But isn't escrow required only for export [like I said, I haven't finished] - ------------------------------------------------------ Cute signature quotes are needed. example: I lock my house. Don't you? I lock my car. Don't you? I lock my data. Do you? Use cryptography to protect yourself against crime. - ------------------------------------------------------ Up to this point, I've been an advocate of crypto without using it for much of anything - a classical case of 'I don't have anything that needs it'. I'm going to start clearsigning my messages with PGP. My new key is <ptrei(a)acm.org> is included here, and has been put on the MIT server. No signatures yet (sorry I didn't get together with Perry in Danvers). Here's my key: - -----BEGIN PGP PUBLIC KEY BLOCK----- Version: 2.6.2 mQCNAzBST7QAAAEEAMs3b6h0lmwbELWbwoVwBVTInb3Gt0YWSamxbC/DJZ4YHqCh 2+aFZKGGlRfoaAeUeus/Vf0oLffwBMmXspSp86P1Nbk/jlR3TdwTqZA4BpcsylF9 68hJYQjrqQRoibXNyNc6O6/yyqm0MUkE1zcZAM3mW0dGV4d5+1QxhKXe9s8VAAUR tB1QZXRlciBHLiBUcmVpIDxwdHJlaUBhY20ub3JnPokAlQMFEDBSUEJUMYSl3vbP FQEB9Z4D/i2vJclQg4iCnHq1H02DR7az533GoRlxWIjOXd/Y1HrxSyFWcA6zTRM1 8FVFPJw4vL0qbynyCXKKTSmN4kzfSSN/Tt60UKy7i3DWZIL6J0kQIbNUxt6mMB76 4Qk3yFWebf14hg7w3e42Hngf6Nw0ZGjLdLieSlixFgg3CAFXmWVa =DsOh - -----END PGP PUBLIC KEY BLOCK----- KeyId = DEF6CF15 Key fingerprint = 07 4A 45 4E 09 F8 30 1F 78 97 AD 18 24 4E 19 E3 I'm signing this with 'pgp -sta' on a Windoze NT machine. Could someone check the sig and tell me if it computes? Thanks, Peter Trei - ------------------------------------- -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.2 iQCVAwUBMFXLXFQxhKXe9s8VAQEhewP9GFus8GXNygG3rjQqrx1uIW6Cb2QxtMZG igKwDaSZQpp3a9Q8oQfSCbK6da6TotOOSZhI9EYG6Es31eoDhyomn2HR/Bompocl hmkQgMqasJW37Rs1/Vw4uBfdoq0o0FiC8jLkvSj7j+pDP6FB890pWzTtEJ+t+Hqd au6NALhGo14= =jTar -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- gah - pgp has munged the dashed lines for the pubkey. Here it is again: -----BEGIN PGP PUBLIC KEY BLOCK----- Version: 2.6.2 mQCNAzBST7QAAAEEAMs3b6h0lmwbELWbwoVwBVTInb3Gt0YWSamxbC/DJZ4YHqCh 2+aFZKGGlRfoaAeUeus/Vf0oLffwBMmXspSp86P1Nbk/jlR3TdwTqZA4BpcsylF9 68hJYQjrqQRoibXNyNc6O6/yyqm0MUkE1zcZAM3mW0dGV4d5+1QxhKXe9s8VAAUR tB1QZXRlciBHLiBUcmVpIDxwdHJlaUBhY20ub3JnPokAlQMFEDBSUEJUMYSl3vbP FQEB9Z4D/i2vJclQg4iCnHq1H02DR7az533GoRlxWIjOXd/Y1HrxSyFWcA6zTRM1 8FVFPJw4vL0qbynyCXKKTSmN4kzfSSN/Tt60UKy7i3DWZIL6J0kQIbNUxt6mMB76 4Qk3yFWebf14hg7w3e42Hngf6Nw0ZGjLdLieSlixFgg3CAFXmWVa =DsOh -----END PGP PUBLIC KEY BLOCK----- Peter Trei Senior Software Engineer Purveyor Development Team Process Software Corporation http://www.process.com trei(a)process.com

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Re: GAK/weak crypto rationale?
by Hal 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Responding to msg by futplex(a)pseudonym.com (Futplex) on Wed, 13 Sep 2:11 AM >Your paraphrase of Nelson's statement strikes me as >remarkable. Doesn't "we are not concerned with bad >people using crypto among themselves" run completely >counter to all the hyperbole about terrorists planning >OKC II with PGP ? Does anyone have an exact quotation >? At any rate, sign me up as a "bad person".... I think this is setting up the rationale for software key escrow. One of the big loopholes in this idea has always been that it would be easy for bad guys to superencrypt or otherwise bypass the legal encryption. The response has been that the systems will be designed so that compliant systems will not interoperate with rogue systems. And the counter-response to that was that criminals (and privacy advocates) would use software which would operate compliantly with conventional programs and maintain privacy when talking to other rogue programs. This new line will be used to respond to this argument, I think. Even if it is admitted that there is no way for the government to be able to tell what the criminals say amongst themselves, it will still be useful to be able to tell what they say to other people. Therefore software key escrow will be argued to still be useful even though it can be defeated. Hal

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FUZ_fat
by John Young 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

9-13-95. W$Japer: "Software May Dry Up Money Laundering." Can artificial intelligence be used to combat crime by ferreting out money laundering? Officials at law enforcement, defense and intelligence agencies like to think so. They have suggested creating a sophisticated computer program to screen records of the more than 700,000 electronic money transfers involving U.S. institutions each day and to flag suspicious ones for further investigation. By using AI, they hope to stop some of the $300 billion in profits from drug deals and other illegal activities that they estimate is laundered world-wide each year. But in a report issued yesterday, the congressional Office of Technology Assessment says any such plan would face considerable obstacles. [Cyberian Joel Reidenberg, an OTA advisor, is quoted.] FUZ_fat

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