December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

Re: META: Lycos & Searchable archives
by loki＠obscura.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

If you mail to an open list or post to news you are shouting through a megaphone on a street corner. If you don't want everyone to know what you said, use a remailer (this group above all others should do that). -Lance At 9:56 PM 11/29/95, Leslie Todd Masco wrote: > >Someone has expressed concern to me that the cypherpunks archives are >searchable via Lycos. Said person doesn't mind having the archives >searchable to the smaller audience of people who go to the we-site, >but is unhappy about net-wide searches turning up cypherpunks articles. > >Can we try to find a consensus on this? My initial inclination was to >shrug the concern off (properties of information, etc, as well as c'punks >being a more-or-less anarchy and the express desire for some sort of >searching mechanism for c'punks), but I thought I'd double check as I've >been mostly out of touch for the better part of a year. >- -- >Todd Masco | "life without caution/ the only worth living / love for a man/ ---------------------------------------------------------- Lance Cottrell loki(a)obscura.com PGP 2.6 key available by finger or server. Mixmaster, the next generation remailer, is now available! http://obscura.com/~loki/Welcome.html or FTP to obscura.com "Love is a snowmobile racing across the tundra. Suddenly it flips over, pinning you underneath. At night the ice weasels come." --Nietzsche ----------------------------------------------------------

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Spam the Sign II
by anon-remailer＠utopia.hacktic.nl 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Looks like Spam the Sign I was a little premature.

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Re: ecash lottery (Was: ecash casino)
by tcmay＠got.net 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 1:20 AM 11/30/95, Ian Goldberg wrote: >[Disclaimer: The following post is a gedanken experiment. It should not > be interpreted as condoning or encouraging anyone to break any > laws, no matter how stupid the laws are.] I, on the other hand, have no compunctions about "condoning or encouraging" various kinds of actions. When condoning and encouraging becomes criminal, I hope I'll be gone. (Wiseacres will cite hypos in which encouraging a crime, such as a rape, makes the encouragers culpable. A far cry from condoning and encouraging tax evasion, gambling, etc.) On to Ian's proposal: ... >Now: there's likely no Web-of-Trust to the various PGP keys involved, >so the lottery's Reputation will have to be built up. A good way to >do this is to have smaller prizes being won fairly often (e.g. by matching >the last digit/few bits), so that it's obvious the lottery is not just >collecting money without awarding prizes. Have to be _very_ careful here. A variety of scams can be developed which show lots of "small" winners, but which fail to show any large winners. The lottery operators can make a lot of extra bucks by simply not paying off the large winnings, in various ways. More robust protocols may be possible. In particular, I recall that Eric Hughes was working on something he called "encrypted open books." While banking was the obvious domain, it seems plausible that the same methodologies could be adapted for lotteries (some isomorphisms between accounts/balances and tickets/winnings?). I don't follow Ian's proposal in enough detail to comment on it, but thought I should point out the scams over nonpayment of winnings and the "encrypted open books" notions (from sometime in '93, as I recall). Personally, I have long had great _hopes_ for using crypto for non-sanctioned gambling, but I'm pretty skeptical that many people will do it. For one thing, anyone knowledgeable enough to be comfortable with the crytography knows that gambling when a house cut exists is a lose. (And gambling with no house cut is, at best, a wash.) --Tim May Views here are not the views of my Internet Service Provider or Government. ---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---- 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: META: Lycos & Searchable archives
by tcmay＠got.net 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 5:56 AM 11/30/95, Leslie Todd Masco wrote: >Someone has expressed concern to me that the cypherpunks archives are >searchable via Lycos. Said person doesn't mind having the archives >searchable to the smaller audience of people who go to the we-site, >but is unhappy about net-wide searches turning up cypherpunks articles. > >Can we try to find a consensus on this? My initial inclination was to >shrug the concern off (properties of information, etc, as well as c'punks >being a more-or-less anarchy and the express desire for some sort of >searching mechanism for c'punks), but I thought I'd double check as I've >been mostly out of touch for the better part of a year. I'm not sure how we'll find a consensus, and I don't relish the thought of seeing hundreds of responses to your point, but....here's my vote. I say any self-respecting Cypherpunk should realize immediately that _every_ word one has ever posted to Usenet, mailing lists, and other public or semi-public fora will soon be instantly retrievable. (The rates of growth of the Net and of storage densities make it clear that archiving _all_ past public messages is not much harder than archiving only the most recent ones...thus, I predict, in 2005 one will be able to buy a disk or disks of _all_ Usenet traffic prior to, say, 2003.) More immediately, the person or persons who object to Lycos/Deja News/Excite searches of their words face an uphill battle. Satisfying them would mean making the various archive sites (currently only yours, Todd, but other sites also store the traffic) unavailable. So, I say: "Get with the program." Don't say anything under your True Name that you don't want job interviewers to pull up in their pro forma searches of your Usenet involvement. (Thank God the U.S. has none of those damned "data privacy laws" which might interfere with how people access the Net.) --Tim May, who has said many, many controversial or even embarassing things over the years, but who thinks anyone offended by his comments is not someone he would want to deal with anyway. Views here are not the views of my Internet Service Provider or Government. ---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---- 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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Crypto-Grams #1-#4, from Americans for Tax Reform
by Declan McCullagh 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

[From Jim Lucier and Americans for Tax Reform. These have been faxed to the Hill all week, a different one each day. --Declan] ************ Attention, House Commerce Committee: Send this email to a friend in France, and you both could go to jail print pack"C*",split/\D+/,`echo"16iII*o\U@{$/=$z;[(pop,pop,unpack"H*",<> )]}\EsMsKsN0[lN*1lK[d2%Sa2/d0<X+d*lMLa^*lN%0]dsXx++lMlN/dsM0<J]dsJxp"|dc` The above two lines of code in the perl computer language implement the world-standard RSA encryption algorithm. They can handle an arbitrarily long key-length and encrypt a file of any size. Therefore, these 147 keystrokes constitute an ITAR-controlled munitions item for export purposes. A popular T-shirt at computer conventions has a similar version of RSA in machine readable bar-code form. The T-shirt is a munition too. Sending this code in an email to a friend in France constitutes a go-to-jail federal offense for "exporting" a munitions item. Your friend in France may run afoul of local laws that ban cryptography except as approved by the French government. Fortunately, you are perfectly legal if you just write the code on a postcard. The fact is, it requires no great programming skill to write tiny programs that produce very powerful encryption. There^"s one web site we know of that has about a dozen^oand an ongoing contest to see who can write the smallest one. Over the next few days, Americans for Tax Reform will share with you some interesting encryption facts. On Friday, we will tell you where to find the "tiny encryption" contest. If you took math at the middle school level and had access to a published algorithm, you could possibly write your own encryption program. The math is little more exotic than multiplication, prime numbers, factoring, and a little modular arithmetic, all of which were SAT questions. The basic principle is that multiplying two large prime numbers together is easy, whereas factoring their product to find the original input is hard. This is the one-way function that makes public key cryptography possible. For a more complicated explanation with real mathematical notation, see the account published by Peter Wayner in the September 6 New York Times Cyber Times. Or you can get a textbook such as Bruce Schneier^"s Applied Cryptography, which is on the shelf at Border^"s Bookstore in downtown Washington, DC. The bottom line is that public key encryption is no secret and has not been for quite some time. Trying to ban or control it serves no purpose. You might as well ban arithmetic. The House should pass H.R. 695, the Security and Freedom through Encryption (SAFE) Act, as approved by the Judiciary and International Relations Committees. The other bills need a reality check. Their mathematics simply does not add up. For more information on cryptography, see Wayner^"s very accessible column in the New York Times Cyber Times at http://www.nytimes.com/library/cyber/week/090697patent.html, his July 29 New York Times op-ed about how the Framers of our Nation used cryptography, and his excellent reporting generally. ### ***************** Attention, House Commerce Committee--Crypto-Gram #2: Bit length is irrelevant for export control purposes? the real test is prevailing market standards Yesterday we disclosed that strong cryptography requires about the same level of skill from a computer programmer that building a hot rod requires from an auto mechanic-which is to say that any bright and industrious 19-year-old with cheap tools and a greasy set of Chilton's manuals can do it. What the final product lacks in finesse and aesthetic judgment, it more than makes up for in brute power. Another thing we pointed out is that bit-length used in any cryptographic system is independent of the underlying algorithm. The code fragment we presented yesterday works equally well with 40, 128, 1024, 2048, and even 4096-bit keys. The only practical limit is where key lengths get too cumbersome to handle computationally. This is not to put the strength of 1024-bit crypto, which is very secure, on the same level as 40-bit crypto, which is clearly not secure. Indeed, these days 40-bit crypto could theoretically be defeated by a well-planned high school science project incorporating a handful of $20 Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) chips. (Parents of boy and girl scouts seeking electronics merit badges, take note.) The point is that anyone who can write 40-bit crypto into an application can just as easily write in 80 or 128-bit crypto. Either key length can work with exactly the same code. Thus by limiting key-lengths for export to 40 or even 56 bits, we do not prevent foreigners from learning the "secrets" of programming for longer key lengths. If foreigners can program any crypto at all, they can already program any key length they want. So what limits key length for export purposes? Market choice. The computer world is already standardizing itself around 128-bit key lengths for several reasons. First, in binary terms, 128 bits is a round number. Second, given current technology, experts feel that 70 to 90 bits is about the range necessary to guarantee security without become unwieldy. Finally, looking toward the future the market discounts current standards to account for rapid technological growth and possible surprises. Therefore 128 bits is what buyers want and suppliers offer. The Trusted Information Systems Website (www.tis.com) lists 1,393 sources of cryptography worldwide and many of the most popular are 128-bit. Siemens-Nixdorf, Brokat, and Expresso are all examples of popular European technology that computers with American products. The Europeans are perfectly capable of selling and creating 128, 256, and 512-bit cryptography on their own if buyers want it. If this is where the market is going, Americans should supply the products first. ***************** Attention, Members of Congress from Ohio-Crypto-gram #3: You need the SAFE Act to Protect Your Phone Cell phone communications are not secure. Any idiot would-be felon with a few hundred bucks and a modified Radio Shack police band scanner can intercept your calls and tape them for the New York Times-or the London tabloids, as both England's Prince Charles and Princess Diana learned to their sorrow. Another big problem with cell phones is the cloning of numbers-when again modified police band scanners intercept non-encrypted analog cell phone numbers and steal the electronic identity (plus billing information) of the unwary caller. The thousands of telephone numbers stolen daily in this way give criminals an unlimited supply of cell phone numbers which they can use for free and switch rapidly to avoid detection. This is perhaps the biggest criminal telecommunications problem there is. There are three solutions. First, pass more federal laws against it, which is ineffective. Second, put anti-cloning chips in cell phone handsets, which works until someone rips out the chips and solders over them. Or third, switch to digital cell phones with encrypted signals. This stops the problem cold. Major U.S. manufacturers and designers make dandy digital cell phones, but they can't export their best products to fast-growing markets like Hong Kong because selling U.S.-made phones equivalent to the most popular cell phones already in use in Hong Kong would violate U.S. export controls. So the U.S. manufacturers, including one also in the email business, largely have to stay home and watch the competition make money. But wait, there is more: even your best U.S. digital cell phone has a hole in it because the dumbed-down encryption mandated by the U.S. government happens to be flawed. You are probably okay with the cell phone of your choice, but you can't be sure. Your political speech is literally on line with the encryption debate-plus your personal business, your financial records, and your medical information. It's impossible to build a mandatory backdoor into all communications with a sign on it that says "Uncle Sam with a search arrant only." If criminals know the backdoor is there, they will certainly discover where it is, what it looks like, and how to kick it down. Other countries, such as France, with a stronger tradition of wiretapping than that of the U.S., are given to full-blown political scandals when collaboration between state-owned telephone companies and national intelligence services puts transcripts of sensitive conversations in papers like Le Monde. Just ask Charles Pasqua, who is not now President of France or a holder of high office due to precisely such an instance. Published reports have suggested that the Charles and Diana tapes resulted from security services checking up on the Royals. Mr. Oxley from Ohio defends his dubious amendments to the Security and Freedom through Encryption (SAFE) Act on the basis that he simply wishes to defend the type of wiretaps he performed in his previous line of business. The problem is, Mr. Oxley does not represent the FBI in Congress; he represents the people of Ohio, digital and analog cell phone users alike. They may have different views. ***************** On the 210th Anniversary of the U.S. Constitution--Crypto-gram #4: Celebrate the Constitution's Birthday: Pass SAFE George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and the Founding Fathers routinely wrote letters in code. This is because in Colonial times letters were often intercepted, just as emails and cellular telephone calls are today. Jefferson actually des igned his own encryption machine, using a method considered ingenious and effective even today. With company like this, it is no wonder that top libertarian and conservative opinion leaders are speaking out on encryption: "? We have a First and Fourth Amendment Right to speak in a manner of our own choosing and to be secure from government searches. Just as we have the right to speak in Spanish and Greek as well as in English on our computers, we have a right to speak in code on our computer or on our cell phone so that our messages will be private." Phyllis Schlafly, Washington Times August 12 1997. "Congress should pass the SAFE Act sponsored by Rep. Bob Goodlatte and a host of Democrats and other Republicans. This bill is critical to protecting privacy on the Internet and to thwarting theft and industrial espionage? But Washington is gumming up t he works. The Feds fear effective encryption because it might hobble their finding ways to tax on-line commerce." Steve Forbes, "Fact and Comment," Forbes Magazine, April 21, 1997. "Now the Clinton Administration and supporters of S. 909 are doing their best to require that U.S. users of strong encryption give law enforcement officers access to their keys via a "key recovery" system. They might just as well demand that every family give the federal government a copy of the house keys, just in case the government ever needs them." Solveig Bernstein, Cato Institute, Washington Times, July 19, 1997. "Nothing could be more perverse than to turn the power of the digital era to empower individuals into a more invasive means of government surveillance and control. I believe that the Administration's positions will not withstand Constitutional challenge. The question to ask is why ?we should waste our time and money pursuing something that, in a Jeffersonian sense, is so patently un-American and which, in the practical sense of Moore's Law, is simply wrong." George A. Keyworth, II, former Science Advi ser to President Reagan, Progress and Freedom Foundation, Commerce Committee Testimony, September 4, 1997. The SAFE Act simply affirms traditional American Constitutional principles that Americans should be free 'in their persons and possessions from unreasonable searches and seizures,' and they should be allowed to conduct their legal business with a minimum of interference from the state. These are indeed truths which we should hold self-evident." Grover Norquist, Americans for Tax Reform, Judiciary Committee Testimony, March 20, 1997. ### ------------------------- Declan McCullagh Time Inc. The Netly News Network Washington Correspondent http://netlynews.com/

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Top Ten Things to Give to Law Enforcement
by Tim May 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 3:09 PM -0700 9/18/97, Declan McCullagh wrote: >I just got off a phone with an industry lobbyist. The conversation went >something like this. > >"Can there be a compromise?" I asked. "I don't think there can be one that >will satisfy all three or four parties involved." (I was thinking: law >enforcement, national security, business, and privacy interests.) > >The answer: "I don't think compromise is the right word. But we need to >give something to law enforcement." > Top Ten Things to Give to Law Enforcement: 10. Our first-born children. 9. A lifetime supply of toilet plungers. 8. The Master GAK key Craig Livingstone was able to snarf off the IBM PROFS system before being fired at the White House. 7. A napalm strike called on their chief critics in Congress. 6. An 80-pound suitcase from Tajikistan, to be opened only by Lous Freeh. 5. .... etc. The Feds have shown their hand: they want a ban on domestic cryptography ---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---- Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, ComSec 3DES: 408-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA | knowledge, reputations, information markets, Higher Power: 2^1398269 | black markets, collapse of governments. "National borders aren't even speed bumps on the information superhighway."

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Re: Netscape gives in to key escrow
by nobody＠REPLAY.COM 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- At 11/30/95 3:07 AM, Futplex quoted: >> http://www.cnet.com/Central/News/govt.html ... >--------------------------------------------- ... > said Clark. He added that an invincible security system for the Net is > possible, but such a system won't be built unless the government has a stake > in it. "That's where key escrow comes in," said Clark. >--------------------------------------------- "A stake in its heart," more like. Futplex then wrote: ... >Netscape's web pages. I hope they will at least have the courage to put out a >"We Support Clipper II" press release. Now the question is, how much of a >role does Netscape Communications intend to play in implementing GAK, and >what can we do to counter it ? Well, spamming the sign won't do. Aleph One's suggestion -- an NS-hack or "virus" -- doesn't make any sense: if Perry or someone would vet a hacked copy, I'd use it in a second. But hacking it would involve a violation of the license, so hacked versions couldn't be offered in any above-ground way: there'd be no way to certify a hacked copy with a trusted nym's key. Netscape is between a rock and a hard place: I think it's safe to say that, were all things equal, NS would support strong crypto. The fact that NS has decided otherwise suggests that some pressure was applied: Clark says as much. This leads me to believe that one possibly effective (and possibly dangerous) tactic might lie in a seriously sustained attack on NS's reputation -- keeping up a meme-drumbeat of "you can't trust Netscape, that's all, you'll get ripped off." I think we should try it -- TODAY, now, persistently and loudly, until NS comes around. I'm not saying that this'll be enough, but it's a start. TODAY. And I really don't care what it takes: calling cronies in the press, spreading innuendo, redoing NS icon sets so there's a spy from "Spy Versus Spy" loitering behind the N... I've seen some nice "NO Netscape" tags on GNU-related pages. Let's do it. Hieronymous FB DD B5 C8 FB F4 52 41 F0 0F A0 6E 99 43 75 06 -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.2 iQBVAwUBML1vc73g0mNE55u1AQGfdgIAsldR3e9UQZG9//38B9LrU/HnCSzaY1kB RMOcBdab5EZ2X9BXkA7lIdDJUUqHOykuv1oyFDtitWRsXxmaTb0cuw== =0FmD -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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Because they want to be "players"
by Tim May 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 5:53 PM -0700 9/18/97, Declan McCullagh wrote: >But wait... The version of SAFE "as is" contains the ***FIRST EVER*** >domestic restrictions on encryption! Why should it be passed intact? For >the sake of Beltway politicking and deal-cutting? > >It includes very, very troubling severe criminal penalties for the use of >encryption in a crime. When encryption is in everything from light switches >to door knobs, any crime will include crypto, no? It would be like >criminalizing "breathing air in the commission of a crime..." Yes, SAFE is an evil bill. And anyone who supports the "use a cipher, go to prison" language (*) is guilty of a most serious crime. (* Some object to this slogan, saying that crypto use is not actually outlawed. Well, neither were guns outlawed when the billboards went up in California and other states: "Use a gun, go to prison." The meaning is clear.) >Why not just say "stop SAFE altogether?" No new laws are better than bad >new laws. And even if the crypto-in-a-crime provisions are yanked, SAFE may >be a bad bill. I wrote about this in June: Indeed, I also condemned it earlier this year. .... >Why are these organizations -- CDT, VTW, Wired, EFF, ATR -- urging it be >passed intact, as is? Why should Americans give up their rights so business >can make more money on encryption exports? > Because they want to be "players." And to be "players," they feel they have to get in their at the pork barrel and bargain away our rights. Fuck them all. They are all scum. (The ACLU is far from perfect, but I am gaining new respect for their absolutist stance on most civil liberties issues. I am assuming that the ACLU will not support the "speak in Spanish while committing a crime and get an extra 10 years" language? This, by the way, is what the "use a cipher" language is exactly parallel to.) --Tim May The Feds have shown their hand: they want a ban on domestic cryptography ---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---- Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, ComSec 3DES: 408-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA | knowledge, reputations, information markets, Higher Power: 2^1398269 | black markets, collapse of governments. "National borders aren't even speed bumps on the information superhighway."

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Applied Cryptography Questions
by nobody＠REPLAY.COM 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

A couple questions about Applied Cryptography (Second Edition) 1. What on earth is a Neural Net? 2. Consider the Chinese Lottery attack vs a processor bank. ADVANTAGES Distributed computing, no easy bombing target. DISADVANTAGES 39% inefficient Need specialized hardware [for speed] or transmission of alogrithms for any specific alogrithm Not on all the time If value(crack) * cracks/chip > cost of chip, then why not have the gov buy the chips? Its probably cheaper that way. 3. How does one cryptoanalyize a Feistel Network? Is there a general method? 4. Does there exist an n such that a keyspace of 2^n is trivial to crack [ie a matter of miniutes] on a PC but is difficult to crack for a big commercial company or even a major government? [this question relates to Merkle's puzzles, when a 40-bit key seems a bit weak.] 5. Is there an errata yet?

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Re: ecash lottery (Was: ecash casino)
by tcmay＠got.net 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 6:22 AM 11/30/95, Bill Frantz wrote: >At 20:38 11/29/95 -0800, Timothy C. May wrote: >>Have to be _very_ careful here. A variety of scams can be developed which >>show lots of "small" winners, but which fail to show any large winners. The >>lottery operators can make a lot of extra bucks by simply not paying off >>the large winnings, in various ways. > >With complete anonimity, the scam I would think of first is giving other >nyms of myself all the big payoffs. Yes, this is a good example of one of the scams. If the lottery can't/won't reveal True Names of winners--a basic design criterion--then clearly people may have doubts. The whole thing can be cast as follows; "Send us money and we'll put your name in a hat. We'll let you know if you win, but we won't tell the public who won." (This problem is quite similar to voting protocols, so we might look to "fair voting" protocols for ideas.) My intuition (hand-waving) is that an anonymous lottery is possible, but I haven't looked at the details. Certainly multiple trusted holders of keys (escrow agents) would help make the lottery fair. Maybe bit commitment would help (each player buys the right to play, then "commits" his number. A public reading of the winning number occurs, and the winner can reveal his winning number (anonymously if he wishes, providing he had registered his hash....). --Tim May Views here are not the views of my Internet Service Provider or Government. ---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---- 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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