December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

Re: Cylink
by aba＠dcs.exeter.ac.uk 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Paul Robichaux <paul(a)poboy.b17c.ingr.com> writes: > Andrew Loewenstern writes: > > Any ideas on how this will change the legal status of RSAREF and PGP? > > Then Perry Metzger replied: > > I'm much more interested in how this changes the legal status of the > > D-H derived encryption systems like ElGamal, and how it alters the > > patent status on the DSS, which is basically also derived from the > > same root. > > What I'm waiting to see is who sues RSADSI for recovery of royalties > paid to Cylink. Imagine how Apple, Lotus, and all of the other > bigcorps using RSA must feel right about now: they licensed a patent > from the wrong people, and it appears that RSADSI may have known that > their rights had expired. It's sooo gratifying seeing the err, ever so slightly litigious folks from RSADSI get a dose of their own medicine. :-) Does it apply to RSA and hence PGP by way of RSAREF, and a claimed general patent on PK, or was this court decision on specific DH patents only? If so I hope the proud new owners have better marketing sense than to stomp on their huge advertisment of RSA, PGP. Adam

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Pauline Hanson's One Nation news letter
by Global Web Builders 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

IF YOU WISH TO BE REMOVED FROM THE MAILING LIST PLEASE RESPOND WITH "PLEASE REMOVE" IN THE SUBJECT LINE. NO NEWSLETTERS ARE SENT OUT WITHOUR A PRIOR REQUEST BEING RECEIVED. ____________________________________________________________________________ _________ Issue 1.2 6th September 1997 nsw Dear supporter, Firstly I would like to thank you all for the excellent feedback that I have been getting through the Internet. For your information nearly 150,000 visits have been recorded on One Nation web sites since April this year - that is over 1,000 a day! Secondly, a very big thank you for those who have offered to make donations through email. We have had donations of up to $1,000 to Pauline Hanson's One Nation through the Internet this month - a very big help as we move towards the next federal election. For those who have requested advice on how to offer financial support please send your cheque made out to Pauline Hanson's One Nation and post your cheque with your details to: National Director, Pauline Hanson's One Nation, P.O. Box 2000, Manly, NSW, 2095 The Internet is proving to be a very valuable tool in communicating what I say, not what the media would have you believe that I say. It is also your opportunity to communicate your concerns to me. Pauline Hanson's One Nation branches are now opening at the phenomenal rate of ten a week. For all those involved a big thank you. We are starting to get things moving for the future of our Australia - One Nation. For those of you who are not aware I will not be standing for a Senate seat, even though the Australian Electoral Commission cut my federal seat of Oxley in half - right through the middle of Ipswich. I believe that the only way that can I continue to play a leading role for the party and for Australia is by staying on as a federal member of parliament. As yet, I have not decided whether to stand in the revised seat of Oxley or to stand for the seat of Blair. For those of you wanting to join your local branch, I will shortly be putting up the URL for key contact details on-line on a state by state basis. I apologise for the delay in providing these details, because of our phenomenal growth, in the meantime please feel free to contact the national headquarters of Pauline Hanson's One Nation in Sydney at (02) 9976 0283 for information. Key Internet addresses: The Hanson Phenomenon: http://www.gwb.com.au/hanson.html Pauline Hanson's One Nation press releases: http://www.gwb.com.au/onenation/press Here is a small extract from some words by a Canberra supporter: One nation uniting the continent, One nation, proud and free, One nation for all of Australia, One nation for you and me. Pauline Hanson's One Nation Pauline Hanson

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USA Today on Fear of Credit Cards over Net
by futplex＠pseudonym.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

USA Today reports in its 9/20/95 edition, on the front of the Money section, that "Few Feel Safe Making On-Line Transactions". A survey of 427 "computer users" by USA Today and Intelliquest yielded the results below. [The article doesn't say whether the survey was conducted before or after news of the bad seeds hit. <sigh>. I only bought USA Today because my best friend gets her 15 minutes of fame below the fold on page 7D of the Life section today.] I'm not sure exactly what "sending a credit-card number to a commercial on- line service" means. Apparently it's seen as slightly safer than phoning it in, but much riskier than snail-mailing it in to an ISP. How much do PC users trust: Automatic teller machines 77% Banking by phone 62% Banking by computer 57% Using a credit card or calling card at a public phone 57% Writing a credit-card number on a catalog order form 43% Sending a credit-card number to a commercial on-line service 34% Giving a credit-card number over the phone 31% Sending a credit-card number over the Internet 5% (margin of error = +/- 4.7%) Raph also gets mentioned, mainly for "human interest" I'm afraid :/ Even those familiar with the Internet do not routinely use it for financial transactions. Raph Levien -- a computer science Ph.D. candidate reached via Internet -- says he has only used his credit card once over the Internet. About a year ago, he bought three CDs: Best of Alan Parsons Project, Enya and Beethoven's Ninth. Levien is a member of the group cypherpunks, which announced on-line Sunday night that hackers found the security flaw in Netscape's software. Still, Levien says Netscape's system "is among the safest that there is." -Futplex <futplex(a)pseudonym.com>

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Freeh Testimony
by John Young 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Thanks to Declan McCullagh we offer FBI Director Freeh's September 3 testimony to the Judiciary subcommittee chaired by Senator Kyl: http://jya.com/fbi-gak.txt (58K)

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Junger v. DoC Docs
by John Young 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

We offer recent exchanges between Peter Junger's attorney and BXA on the several encryption classification requests Peter described here a few days ago, including "twiddle," "fiddle," non-US PGP, ROT13, Adam Back's 3-line of Perl RSA, Paul Leyland's one-time pad, RC2 and RC4, and crypto links to foreign sites: http://jya.com/pdj2.htm Peter's message on this is at: http://jya.com/pdj-update.htm And the original Junger v. DoS (now Junger v. DoC) case filings: http://jya.com/pdj.htm

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Wayner on Crypto Mimicry
by John Young 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

The New York Times, CyberTimes <http://www.nytimes.com> September 5, 1997 Behind Encryption Debate: Using a Mimicry Applet By PETER WAYNER What is the true meaning of a message? This is the question that Louis J. Freeh, the director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, would like every Internet service provider to start wondering. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Related Article Encryption Tops Wide-Ranging Net Agenda in Congress (September 4, 1997) ------------------------------------------------------------------------ In testimony before a Senate subcommittee on Wednesday, Freeh suggested that the companies carrying the e-mail of the country should be able to provide a way "for the immediate, lawful decryption of the communications or the electronic information once that information is found by a judgeto be in furtherance of a criminal activity or a national security matter." The only problem is that data is so easy to mutate that it is hard to determine what is the true message. Even after discounting the jokes about the doublespeak of politicians or the beautiful lies that lovers spin to seduce, there are deeper questions of whether it is ever possible to find the correct message in data. This applet shows how data can be mutated into innocent-sounding plaintext with the push of a button. In this case, the destination is a voiceover from a hypothetical baseball game between teams named the Blogs and the Whappers. The information is encoded by choosing the words, the players and the action in the game. In some cases, one message will lead to a string of homeruns, and in other cases a different message will strike out three players in a row. See the FAQ for more information. The applet takes a few minutes to load. When it is ready, you'll see three text-input windows. The first window is where you type the message that you want the applet to encode. The second, larger window is where the mimicry-encoded message appears. Mimicry can be reversed by pushing the second button. The output is replicated at the bottom. Remember that any error in the text can mess up the result. There are plenty of limitations to this system. It only sends uppercase letters and spaces. Lowercase letters are converted to uppercase, and anything else is converted into a space. How do I use to send "innocent" messages? Type your message into the top window, push the first button and then cut the blather out of the second box. Most of the new browsers will let you do this, but some older browsers don't have this capability. Upgrade to Netscape Communicator 4.0 or Microsoft's Internet Explorer 3.0 for this feature. To unscramble the "innocent" message, the receiver needs to call up this page and paste your message into the second box and then push the second button. The hidden message will appear in the bottom window.

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by 37166040＠usa.net 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

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High Profile Detainee Seeks Legal Help
by Robert Hettinga 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

--- begin forwarded text X-Sender: evian(a)escape.com Mime-Version: 1.0 Date: Thu, 4 Sep 1997 16:56:25 -0400 Reply-To: Law & Policy of Computer Communications <CYBERIA-L(a)LISTSERV.AOL.COM> Sender: Law & Policy of Computer Communications <CYBERIA-L(a)LISTSERV.AOL.COM> From: Evian Sim <evian(a)ESCAPE.COM> Subject: High Profile Detainee Seeks Legal Help To: CYBERIA-L(a)LISTSERV.AOL.COM September 3, 1997 Mr. Kevin Mitnick has been detained in Federal custody without bail on computer "hacking" allegations for over thirty months. Having no financial resources, Mr. Mitnick has been appointed counsel from the Federal Indigent Defense Panel. As such, Mr. Mitnick's representation is limited; his attorney is not permitted to assist with civil actions, such as filing a Writ of Habeas Corpus. For the past two years, Mr. Mitnick has attempted to assist in his own defense by conducting legal research in the inmate law library at the Metropolitan Detention Center (hereinafter "MDC") in Los Angeles, California. Mr. Mitnick's research includes reviewing court decisions for similar factual circumstances which have occurred in his case. MDC prison officials have been consistently hampering Mr. Mitnick's efforts by denying him reasonable access to law library materials. Earlier this year, Mr. Mitnick's lawyer submitted a formal request to Mr. Wayne Siefert, MDC Warden, seeking permission to allow his client access to the law library on the days set aside for inmates needing extra law library time. The Warden refused. In August 1995, Mr. Mitnick filed an administrative remedy request with the Bureau of Prisons complaining that MDC policy in connection with inmate access to law library materials does not comply with Federal rules and regulations. Specifically, the Warden established a policy for MDC inmates that detracts from Bureau of Prison's policy codified in the Code of Federal Regulations. Briefly, Federal law requires the Warden to grant additional law library time to an inmate who has an "imminent court deadline". The MDC's policy circumvents this law by erroneously interpreting the phrase "imminent court deadline" to include other factors, such as, whether an inmate exercises his right to assistance of counsel, or the type of imminent court deadline. For example, MDC policy does not consider detention (bail), motion, status conference, or sentencing hearings as imminent court deadlines for represented inmates. MDC officials use this policy as a tool to subject inmates to arbitrary and capricious treatment. It appears MDC policy in connection with inmate legal activities is inconsistent with Federal law and thereby affects the substantial rights of detainees which involve substantial liberty interests. In June 1997, Mr. Mitnick finally exhausted administrative remedies with the Bureau of Prisons. Mr. Mitnick's only avenue of vindication is to seek judicial review in a Court of Law. Mr. Mitnick wishes to file a Writ of Habeas Corpus challenging his conditions of detention, and a motion to compel Federal authorities to follow their own rules and regulations. Mr. Mitnick is hoping to find someone with legal experience, such as an attorney or a law student willing to donate some time to this cause to insure fair treatment for everyone, and to allow detainees to effectively assist in their own defense without "Government" interference. Mr. Mitnick needs help drafting a Habeas Corpus petition with points and authorities to be submitted by him pro-se. His objective is to be granted reasonable access to law library materials to assist in his own defense. If you would like to help Kevin, please contact him at the following address: Mr. Kevin Mitnick Reg. No. 89950-012 P.O. Box 1500 Los Angeles, CA 90053-1500 --- end forwarded text ----------------- Robert Hettinga (rah(a)shipwright.com) Philodox e$, 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA "... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity, [predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire' The e$ Home Page: http://www.shipwright.com/

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drand48() bug
by Arve Kjoelen 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- jws(a)neon.netscape.com writes: > Most of the unix machines do the same thing. On SGI machines > that have the hardware cycle counter, its value is used in place of the > srand48(usec), lrand48() sequence. BSDI the code used srandom and random. Kun Luo, one of our grad students here recently found a bug in Sun's implemen- tation of the drand48() function. We reported it to Sun, and they acknowledged the bug exists - it seemed to be the first time they had heard of it, though. The bug affects Sun's ANSI C compiler shipped with SPARCWorks3.0 and consists of the following: If you're compiling using the - -Xc flag (strict ANSI C, no SUN C compatibility extensions), the function drand48() is BROKEN. It ALWAYS returns the number 9.000000, no matter what you seeded it with using srand48(). to reproduce, compile the following program under Solaris 2.x using their C compiler AND the -Xc flag: #include <stdio.h> #include <stdlib.h> #include <sys/types.h> #include <time.h> void main(){ double number; int num = 1000; srand48((int)time(NULL)); while(num --){ number = drand48(); printf("%lf\n", number); } } By the way, Cyphepunks mail seems to indicate that Netscape uses lrand48() instead of drand48(). lrand48() is NOT broken. The potential for disaster is high, though, for anyone blindly trusting vendor-provided pseudo- random number generators. How many products are out there using drand48() as part of their random number generation scheme? - -Arve - -----BEGIN PGP PUBLIC KEY BLOCK----- Version: 2.6.2 mQCNAzAvqdwAAAEEAKRdBFn7O/h+wz3tOQwHWvaFKS6gi+UezzCXli/QnuCrJcUE agvlVVZ/PzKG5i23VdbghyHsVElvKzRW/D1pYor6xSluCftXzSxbCuiEIe2SXUsH 65AqFN688upXzRKHcq3bU/eKB7xUOGqCDot8AzModnwE+XWCgdqn8CTZCNGhAAUR tCJBcnZlIEtqb2VsZW4gPGFram9lbGVAZWUuc2l1ZS5lZHU+ =csFb - -----END PGP PUBLIC KEY BLOCK----- -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.2 iQCUAwUBMGAusNqn8CTZCNGhAQEYdQP4+UGvLJKoQPWPLFMENDIPY1QSIuQdQxdt fTzWRNXsPadE4N40bHgucqZQG8Ze55JsKIrrhL9RZFIVx+ygxsmsSHsocu/kFbSW E7RNWMvoaoRAmB4KkWF+ofqRWl9Qo+r00CvgX1brsOdpjySVIkxml8/L7R/RBuQL aFNV5OBz2w== =saUT -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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Re: FBI calls for mandatory key escrow; Denning on export ctrls
by Robert Hettinga 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

--- begin forwarded text Date: Thu, 4 Sep 1997 09:58:00 -0400 (EDT) From: Peter F Cassidy <pcassidy(a)world.std.com> To: dcsb(a)ai.mit.edu Subject: Re: FBI calls for mandatory key escrow; Denning on export ctrls Mime-Version: 1.0 Sender: bounce-dcsb(a)ai.mit.edu Precedence: bulk Reply-To: Peter F Cassidy <pcassidy(a)world.std.com> Friends, The campaign to bring all communications technologies under state/military control is progressing almost exactly as planned. On my desk is the Jan. 1992 memorandum from Brent Scowcroft, former national security advisor to Bush, outlining the digital telephony/crypto control strategy. The president, Scowcroft wrote in the memorandum, had advised: "Justice should go ahead now to seek a legislative fix to the digital telephony problem, and all parties should prepare to follow through on the encryption problem in about a year. Success with digital telephony will lock in one major objective; we will have a beachhead we can exploit for the encryption fix; and the encryption access options can be developed more thoroughly in the meantime." Digital Telephony legislation was passed in October of 1994 - after the directors of the NSA and FBI visisted senators who were sitting on it and placed holds on it - one for idealogical reasons, the other for horsetrading later in the session. Within days the holds were removed, the legislation flew through both houses in voice votes, if memory serves, and Clinton, a war protester who has become a virtual puppet of the military intelligence system in communications policy, signed it about a week later. Everyone has a telephone yet the opposition couldn't muster enough popular dissent to crush the legislation. This makes me fear for the future of crypto, the conscious users of which define a much smaller universe than telephone users. Most interestingly, the FBI didn't even have real facts on wiretaps to prove its case. A recent academic study indicates that the wiretapping stats that the FBI used to "prove" its case - the absolute necessity of wiretapping - were in large part falsified. (Starting in the early 90s, requests for wiretapping suddenly shot up, while, if you check later, the numbers of executions of the orders and subsequent arrests and prosecutions stayed flat.) PFC > > All encryption products sold or distributed in the U.S. > must have a key escrow backdoor "like an airbag in a car," > law enforcement agents advised a Senate panel this > afternoon. > > FBI Director Louis Freeh also told a Senate Judiciary > subcommittee that "network service providers should be > required to have some immediate decryption ability > available" permitting agents to readily descramble > encrypted messages that pass through their system. > > This marks the most aggressive push to date for > mandatory domestic key escrow (or "key recovery"), > which means someone else other than the recipient can > decipher messages you send out. Now, the easiest way > to win such a political tussle in Washington is to > control the terms of the debate. And nobody > understands that rule better than Sen. Jon Kyl > (R-Arizona), chair of the Judiciary subcommittee on > technology, terrorism, and government information. > > Kyl opened today's hearing not by saying its purpose > was to discuss crypto in a balanced manner, but that > he wanted "to explore how encryption is affecting the > way we deal with criminals, terrorists, and the > security needs of business." Then he talked at length > about "criminals and terrorists" using crypto, and > child pornographers "using encryption to hide > pornographic images of children that they transmit > across the Internet." > > Kyl also stacked the three panels. Out of seven > witnesses, five were current or former law enforcement > agents. No privacy or civil liberties advocates > testified. Some companies including FedEx apparently > dropped out when told they'd have to pay lip service > to key escrow if they wanted to speak. > > Dorothy Denning, a Georgetown University professor of > computer science, did testify. Kyl made a point of > asking her if she still supported key escrow systems > (two recent articles by Will Rodger and Simson > Garfinkel said she was changing her mind). "I think > key recovery offers a very attractive approach," > Denning said. What about export controls? "In the > absence of any controls, the problem for law > enforcement would get worse," she replied. > > But when Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif) asked if > Denning would support a *mandatory* key escrow system, > the computer scientist said she wouldn't. "No, because > we don't have a lot of experience we key recovery > systems... a lot of people are legitimately nervous." > > (Keep in mind that although Feinstein supposedly > represents Silicon Valley, she's no friend of high > tech firms. She opposes lifting export controls; in > fact, she says that "nothing other than some form of > mandatory key recovery really does the job" of > preventing crime. Of course, Feinstein doesn't have a > clue. She talks about whether businesses would want "a > hard key or digital key or a key infrastructure." Yes, > folks, this is in fact meaningless blather.) > > Marc Rotenberg, director of the Electronic Privacy > Information Center in Washington, DC, says, "Simply > stated, the Senate train is headed in the wrong > direction. But of course this doesn't answer the > question of what will ultimately be resolved by > Congress? There's a very popular measure in the House > right now that's heading in a different direction." > > Rotenberg is talking about Rep. Bob Goodlatte's SAFE > bill, which is much more pro-business than S.909, > the McCain-Kerrey Senate bill that Kyl supports. Now, > S.909 doesn't mandate key recovery; it only strongly > encourages it by wielding the federal government's > purchasing power to jumpstart a key recovery > infrastructure. > > But Kyl would go further. At a recent Heritage > Foundation roundtable on encryption, I asked him, "Why > not make key recovery technology mandatory -- after > all, terrorists, drug kingpins and other criminals > won't use it otherwise. Kyl's response? Not that it > would be a violation of Constitutional due process and > search and seizure protections or a bad idea. Instead, > he told me he simply didn't have enough votes... > > -Declan > > --- end forwarded text > > > > ----------------- > Robert Hettinga (rah(a)shipwright.com) Philodox > e$, 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA > "... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity, > [predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to > experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire' > The e$ Home Page: http://www.shipwright.com/ > > > > For help on using this list (especially unsubscribing), send a message to > "dcsb-request(a)ai.mit.edu" with one line of text: "help". > For help on using this list (especially unsubscribing), send a message to "dcsb-request(a)ai.mit.edu" with one line of text: "help". --- end forwarded text ----------------- Robert Hettinga (rah(a)shipwright.com) Philodox e$, 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA "... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity, [predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire' The e$ Home Page: http://www.shipwright.com/

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