December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

e$: Progress and Freedom Conference this Summer
by rah＠shipwright.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

There was a pointer here to an article in the NYT or WSJ about the conference this summer of the Progress and Freedom Foundation, with muchos net.luminarios (Huber, Myhrvold, Barlow, Brand, Kelly, Dyson, Keyworth, etc.) in attendence. Topics were mostly about e$ and the causes/consequences thereof. I just saw this thing on CSPAN, and I thought it was way cool. Here's how to get it from CSPAN in case they don't run it again. Ask for Tape number 57759-63 CSPAN prices their tapes by the hour, at $35/hr. This tape is $105.00 CSPAN Department 53 Washington, DC 20055 In case I botched something above, or you want to put this on your favorite book-entry transaction account ;-), CSPAN's phone number is 202-737-3220 and ask for Viewer's Services. Cheers, Bob Hettinga ----------------- Robert Hettinga (rah(a)shipwright.com) Shipwright Development Corporation, 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA (617) 323-7923 "Reality is not optional." --Thomas Sowell >>>>Phree Phil: Email: zldf(a)clark.net http://www.netresponse.com/zldf <<<<<

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Hazard of encrypt to self?
by nobody＠eli-remailer 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- I always encrypt stuff when I send it to the remailers. I always encrypt to myself along with the remailer, in case I need to look at the message again. But since trying to decrypt a message reveals the id's of the keys that can decrypt it, this reveals information about the sender of the message that wouldn't be available if I only encrypted to the remailer. A partial solution - I generated a new key pair to use for the encrypt-to-self function (a nice short one). I put some meaningless nonsense in the id, so anyone who observes my message on its way to the remailer will no know it is from Eternal!Optimist(a)anon.penet.fi (copyright 1993, Eternal Optimist [Ha Ha Ha]) 0) 0) =:()]-< <na26436(a)anon.penet.fi> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.3 iQCVAgUBLObHdojvfLxJbYYtAQEZAgP8Db7qpgqy17wmP91/zl5ZioF/53IIugpW eFjJVtT/UC0wEB/wdvQSBuG2xoXFPWxwWraEtWUCvsAP580juKiGSvmpZARxnm30 yfHVuqv+cfo8FYm7KJpWGdSIFmoqvG8h/a4wiGWMg/Dnai5wOZtRt0mWDyftj+gt EzgFJSwTtIc= =xEZA -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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Re: laptop passwords
by Alan Olsen 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 01:22 PM 9/15/95 -0800, you wrote: >I've got a dilema. > 2 laptops that I just purchased at a police auction have passwords, >from what I can tell they are passworded at the cmos level. I would normaly >just pull out the battery and clear the cmos but these are laptops and I'm >not to comfortable about doing that. Any ideas? > >laptop1 - Toshiba Satelite Pro T2400CT >laptop2 - Epson Action Note 500 c I am not familiar with those models, but if they work like a regular AMI bios, try hitting ctrl-alt-delete at the password prompt. On many passworded bios it will get you right past it. That will at least give you enough info to see if there is anything worth saving. (I have no problem giving out that trick since I have found most bios passwords pretty useless unless used against the most clueless of users.) | 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: Digital Fingerprinting
by Alan Olsen 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 12:28 PM 9/15/95 +5, you wrote: >Another way is to place the document in a PItA proprietary graphical >format for transport and viewing only, stego identifier imbedded if >you chose * , so that every portion of the document has some >indentifier imbedded in it. Many obvious and many devious. Electronic >drawings with a harmless and useless circuit(s) added on , software >with do nothing code (by design!:) ). Difficult and time consuming >to do, but for megabuck items, no prob. Automated for an additional >fee of course. Start a service industry for such, make money, pay me >back by running a fast, reliable remailer. I seem to remember a software piracy case from a number of years back. The case was settled by Apple showing that their code had been copied by the copyright "easteregg" hidden in the roms. Made for a quick and effective demonstration in court. (The story may be apocryphal, but it makes for an example as to how such things do have a (supposed) valid use in protecting code from being snagged by other companies.) | 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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PRZ is still at large
by Philip Zimmermann 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

I have received several phone calls today from people who read some sort of April-fools posting on some newsgroup that I had been arrested for PGP-related stuff. Well, it isn't true. I'm still at large. I'm still unindicted. And still not sued. Someone had an idea that this would make a funny April fools joke. I hope this clears things up. Feel free to repost this message to all the relevant newsgroups, because I can't do it because the newsreader at my sight is having problems. I hope this cuts down on the phone calls. Philip Zimmermann prz(a)acm.org

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SecureDrive News - Win95 yes, Iomega zip drive no
by edgar＠highnrg.sbay.org 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- SecureDrive Users, I have seen inquires here and received direct e-mail enquirinq about SecureDrive and WIN95, and the Iomega zip disk. I have recently heard from users that SecureDrive 1.3d does work on Windows 95, although it does force it into "DOS Compatibility Mode", which is a performance hit on disk access. I've also heard that LOGIN does not work from a WIN95 DOS window, so has to be issued outside of Windows. I haven't heard anything specific about SecureDrive 1.4, but I believe it should work the same as 1.3d on WIN95. I'm sorry to report that SecureDrive does not support the Iomega ZIP drive. I believe that's because the TSR driver supplied with the hardware does not support a DiskBIOS interface. I had thought that Secure Device, another real-time encryption system, would support this drive, since it works through a device driver mapped to a dos file. But an actual trial proved otherwise. The problem is that the DOS file must be present when the CONFIG.SYS DEVICE= statement for the SECDEV.SYS is processed. But the zip drive driver is a TSR that doesn't get loaded until after all DEVICE statements have been processed. There's no particular reason that Iomega couldn't have written their driver as an MSDOS device driver rather than a TSR, in which case SecureDevice would probably work, but they didn't, so it doesn't. Hope this info is helpful. If any of you discover any interesting new facts using SecureDrive, please let me know. Edgar W. Swank <edgar(a)HighNRG.sbay.org> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.2 iQCVAwUBMFirU94nNf3ah8DHAQEEHAQAg4IB1XDQdFIxHto1iTPpORjuubUdhRzD t8MT350E0KZVCMSj+Vh4y4wEPw2dmms/QY1iMxuwVV/lja+l9yHaRPuxpi5EjQdv Mi8Sk73M/gcL35TTjUli5dnjzHsJ6uYt5Q51j7s0EspJ1qprQlSlgmNvvOTqDgyf /he5BfEfAU4= =GXYT -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- --- edgar(a)HighNRG.sbay.org Keep Freestyle Alive!

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number theory number theory
by catalyst-remailer＠netcom.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- All right, a number theory discussion! >The integer N is prime if: > 2^N - 2 > --------- > N is an integer. Well, this is false. The above formula is derived from Fermat's Little Theorem, or Euler's Generalization of Fermat's Little Theorem. a^(n-1) = 1 mod n, n prime, gcd(a,n) = 1 ==> a^n = n mod n a^n - n = kn, for k some integer (a^n - n)/n = k, for k some integer now sub in a = 2. However, the converse of this is not true (n isn't necessarily prime if it satifies the formula). Composities that satisfy this are called pseudoprimes. For example, for a = 2, n = 341 satisfies the relation, so 341 is a pseudoprime base 2. Now it works "most" of the time, and in fact one method of testing large integers for primality is to choose a whole bunch of a's and plug in n. If a^(n-1) mod n != 1, the number is composite and can be rejected. But, if a^(n-1) mod n == 1, you can only be 50% sure n is prime. (Roughly speaking; Phil Karn notes that the PGP docs indicate a 50%, I've seen proofs that this pseudoprime test fails 50% of the time, etc. But these are upper bounds; the real percentage seems much lower and I haven't seen a tighter bound on it). There is a "strong psuedoprime" test, in which failure occurs for at least 25% of integers in the range, thus the probability that a composite will pass is at most 25%. Even better is Lucas' test, but it runs a bit slow. However, you can be unlucky and pick a Carmichael number, which will pass the pseudoprime test for all bases relatively prime to n (for all a such that gcd(a,n) = 1). Ray Cromwell advises to choose n = 561, the smallest Carmichael number (an excellent choice!) Carmichael numbers exist, they are relatively rare, formulas exists for generating some of them... Eric Hughes mentions that 1729 is the next Carmichael number... not quite true. 1105 is the next Carmichael number. (But congrats Eric for even remembering the third one!) ;) Now, some other topics: > For any number n which is prime, (2^n)-1 is also prime (Mersenne's > theorem). Hm... some confusion here. A Mersenne prime is of this form (2^n) - 1 where n is prime, but not all number this formula generates are primes. Mersenne primes are related to perfect numbers. An example of a composite of this form: for n = 11, 2^11 - 1 = 2047 = 23 * 89 > For any number n (2^(2^n))+1 is prime. (I might have that wrong, I > don't remember exactly) Well, no. These number are Fermat numbers, and while the first 5 (n=0 to n=4) but Euler showed that the Fermat number for n=5 is composite. As an aside, Fermat numbers satisfy the pseudoprime test. > For any number n, if the square root of (n!)+1 is an integer, it is > also prime. (This is interesting, but rather useless in practice) A couple of issues here: I think you may be remembering a different theorem, a consequence of Wilson's theorem. Wilson's theorem says: for any prime p, (p-1)! = -1 mod p The theorem I think you are referring to is: if P is the product of the remainders relatively prime to m, then P = +/- 1 mod m; +/- = plus or minus The congruence is +1 except in three cases: 1) m = 4 2) m = p^b (m is a power of an odd prime) 3) m = 2p^b (m is twice the power of an odd prime) I'm still trying to either prove or disprove your claim! Two followups relating the the original formula posted: > For any number a, 1<a<=n, n! mod a == 0; therefore, n!+1 mod a == 1. > n!+1 is prime. Prime numbers don't have integral square roots. Good analysis, except for the "n! + 1 is prime" part. The only thing you can say is n!+1 has no factors <= n. For example, n = 4, n!+1 = 25 = 5 * 5. > Well, it was quoted from memory, so it's possible that I made an > error, but it seems to work as stated... > For example : > (4!+1)^(1/2)=5 > (5!+1)^(1/2)=11 > (7!+1)^(1/2)=71 > I can't find a value which produces a result that is a non-prime > integer. (Of course that doesn't prove that there isn't one.) Still working on this... ;) -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.3a iQCVAgUBLanNNYOA7OpLWtYzAQF10wP9GExbaoloiXqFe7AtXb/UzUHXhW3VDC1b mfD0RhgK2i0Dr05RW5FCvj/9i7Jxhrd3E26hTe5g4WckvIcvp+GWhE/5fkdtVMA9 THutX1ukGO/5qCxSRT4hVCeXStAz7tunkF3fcEQjPe8pSSvKxN8tw/wIZzclRDRx JDE4HYRhAz0= =OW8h -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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Web page
by banisar＠epic.org 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Hi bruce, Hows it going? I'm back from DK and the UK. I understand you're just coming back from JP (wow what world travelers we are!). have you heard from Sutherland? Do we have a title? page length? It seems to me that we should take out some of the clipper stuff and put in more on CKE since thats pretty hopt at the moment and will further distinguish us from Hoffman's book. We have also moved upto 56kb FR here in the office. Are you still interested in a home page here? Or do you have one we can link to? Dave David Banisar (Banisar(a)epic.org) * 202-544-9240 (tel) Electronic Privacy Information Center * 202-547-5482 (fax) 666 Pennsylvania Ave, SE, Suite 301 * ftp/gopher/wais cpsr.org Washington, DC 20003 * HTTP://epic.digicash.com/epic

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more number theory more number theory
by nobody＠shell.portal.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- > What estimates exist for the density of large Carmichael numbers, > say 1000 bits long? I'm not sure off hand - maybe Ray can try to check the source of his formula. Carmichael numbers must be square free and the product of at least three primes... I seem to remember a formula for the distribution of square free integers, but can't quite remember it... > test? Are other probability tests like Miller-Rabin any more > provably likely to detect these? Well Phil, you are in luck! Miller-Rabin isn't fooled by Carmichael numbers. There still is a chance for failure, but it doesn't depend on the input (i.e. there are no bad inputs for Miller-Rabin like there are for pseudoprime testing). Failure depends on how many iterations you perform (n iterations = 2^-n chance of failure) and the values of the base you choose. For example, in Miller-Rabin, the Carmichael number 561 is exposed to be composite by choosing a base of 7. I'm familiar with two other primality testing algorithms (I'm no number theory wiz so there are probably more): Lucas' and Lehmer's. Well, Lehmer's method is a modification of Lucas' method. They both are slow, but have the advantage of being true. -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.3a iQCVAgUBLaoM/IOA7OpLWtYzAQEXPQQAy1110rgCUzLtKoaTsWvGCujq3fWD7Ppz A+/2b4NmR9+YmqHl63kb9zKU1/KOfDVXsmE7o0beyRQzSNGzj2I5yEUrnz0IzBLt cy4ooiE3ED/jBBc01MBYhm5v3s9dIMJNXbsw7mBSBasqzEvHHpjH8dnGZA8QXhYT fKTlU7rKa0o= =XgrZ -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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More on ECheques
by John Hemming CEO MarketNet 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

1. I was not suggesting that you put your real bank account number in the program. A test number is perfectly adequate. 2. In the UK people advertise their Bank Account numbers so that people can pay them. 3. If you do use your real bank account number, I will not pay you anything nonetheless.

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