December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

Microsoft "Encrypted" Documents Hack FYI
by llurch＠networking.stanford.edu 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

I would provide the hack itself, but I'm on a Mac that lacks a proper Base64 handler at the moment. For people who only know how to use Netscape, the URL is news:465l8h$6sa@oznet03.ozemail.com.au. -rich From: lyal collins <lyalc(a)ozemail.com.au> Newsgroups: alt.security,comp.os.ms-windows.apps.misc,comp.os.ms-windows.win95.misc Subject: Re: More Microsoft Security Bugs Date: 19 Oct 1995 13:53:21 GMT Organization: not very, at the moment Lines: 366 Message-ID: <465l8h$6sa(a)oznet03.ozemail.com.au> References: <llurch-1510951157410001(a)tip-mp3-ncs-3.stanford.edu> NNTP-Posting-Host: slsyd3p02.ozemail.com.au Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="-------------------------------297591414826100" X-Mailer: Mozilla 1.22 (Windows; I; 16bit) Further to word document password protection, the attached offer a simple way to recover text in such files with this "protection". The source is included - at least one shwareare developer has taken up on this technique and releases a VB based version. cheers, lyal -rich graves, llurch(a)networking.stanford.edu moderator of the win95netbugs list http://www-leland.stanford.edu/~llurch/win95netbugs/faq.html My old PGP key has been compromised. Please finger this account for the revocation certificate and my new key.

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Re: digicash & unix clients
by Marcel van der Peijl 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

sameer <sameer(a)c2.org> wrote: > I haven't seen any listing of the platforms supported by the >live digicash system. Does anyone know where that information is >available? Thanks. It will be the exact same list as ecash trial (but not exactly the same software). It will be available by the time real accounts are issued. Hopefully tomorrow. Working on it. // Marcel van der Peijl, DigiCash bv, http://www.digicash.com/~bigmac/ // "If you had to tell the Whole Truth, you'd never shut up."

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Re: Re: Chaum's cash: backup?
by Marcel van der Peijl 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

"James A. Donald" <jamesd(a)echeque.com> wrote: >>if it was like "real" cash, then it really would be lost. >It is really lost. >Your disk drive contains information the bank *cannot* know. >If you do not know that information either, you cannot prove to >the bank or anyone else that you rightfully possess a legitimate coin. You seem to have different information than we have. Strange. Please reread the press release. I could give a hint: your random state initializer is not the too-often used srand( time( NULL ) ) but user-chosen during installation. Write that initializer down and you can re-generate all coins. The bank can check wether these coins were indeed signed, and, after revealing blinding factors, the bank can also check if they were used. The difference must have been on your disk. This system is not completely operational yet but will be used in the future. // Marcel van der Peijl, DigiCash bv, http://www.digicash.com/~bigmac/ // "If you had to tell the Whole Truth, you'd never shut up."

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No Subject
by Anonymous User 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Was at a party Friday night and ended up having a few beers with a friend who works at a medium-large software publisher. Turns out his company recently received a letter from Netscape to the effect that "we've noticed that there are 'x' copies of Navigator active at your site - you should remember that commercial use requires a license fee", etc. The friend didn't know if the count was per IP address or per "magic cookie installation" (see discussion of a few weeks prior) or some other metric. Not that getting paid for your work is evil, but it looks like Netscape's interest in the use of its browser goes beyond simple curiosity or the sales of advertising to third parties. Is the bean counter number sent to every site, or just to .netscape.com sites?

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Re: Netscape question transformed
by anonymous-remailer＠shell.portal.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Jeff Weinstein writes: >zoetrope(a)infinet.com wrote: >> Why would a compony like Netscape jeapordise themselves by even >> letting out a beta version so hackers have time to find bugs before the >> full version is released. Don't take me wrong I have only been on the net >> fer a little over a year and Love Netscape. And If I knew what I was >> Doing I would love to help them..... > > The reason we do it is that without wide exposure outside the > company, it is virtually impossible to get complete testing coverage. I see. Who has netscape retained to review its software. Can we have some public names who will vouch for the "partial testing coverage" before exposing it to the world?? Firms who will put their name on the line and say that Netscape meets all of the security guidelines say of the IETF -- the Internet Engineering Task Force?? Or does Netscape feel that International judgement will not matter?? > Given the incredible variety of machines, OS's, peripherals, etc. > that are available in the real world, there is no way we could > re-create every possible configuration in the lab. All the more reason I guess to stick to standard. Or don't you agree?? We're not asking you to re-create every possible configuration, but have you benchmarked Netscape against any standards at all?? And which ones?? > We also can't visit every web page, or think of every combination > of features that clever people in the real world come up with every > day. This is true. You can't visit every web page. So what assumptions did you start off with when you first started your code design?? Did you read the appropriate memorandums upon which the Internet is built? Did you assume that every server would be trustworthy?? That would be extremely negligent. That's like a bank trusting everyone who comes in and asks if the bank can cash a check for them. Any comments, Netscape?? Or are you still not making "official" statements. Alice de 'nonymous ... ...just another one of those... P.S. This post is in the public domain. C. S. U. M. O. C. L. U. N. E.

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Re: DejaNews all over again--a URL for Usenet Searching
by Duncan Frissell 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 12:28 PM 11/6/95 -0800, Timothy C. May wrote: > >I usually avoid passing on URLs of interesting sites, in the name of >conserving bandwidth (*), but this one really has me jazzed: > >http://dejanews.com/ > >It allows searching of Usenet archives (a few months' worth, from what I >can see). I'm not impressed since I've been using the subscription version of Infoseek for a while now which lets you search the last month of News and includes mailing lists as well (including cypherpunks). The free version is behind the Net Search button on Netscape but only searches the Web. http://www.infoseek.com A search for tcmay(a)got.net produced more than 200 hits. My Tim you *do* get around. Modesty prevents me from mentioning any newsgroup names. DCF

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Re: DejaNews all over again
by anonymous-remailer＠shell.portal.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

On Tue, 7 Nov 1995 lmccarth(a)cs.umass.edu wrote: > your True Name (verinym) from your name on the net. > Many will want to use > tentacles (*), er, separate pseudonyms for discussions in different parts of > the net. After all, I might not want the c'punks to hear about my past life > as a control freak (pun intended) in alt.config. Just a reminder.... > > (*) Speaking of tentacles, Dejanews reveals that my name is on the long list > of people whose signatures have been appropriated by Detweiler ;) You too, eh?? I wish that Detweiler could (seriously) go back to wherever he came from. Hopefully this time, he can make the attempt ... backwards. I no longer become incensed at his type of spoofing. I understand that a message may look like it appears to come from a site, but it in fact doesn't. Who really knows?? Even a message that is PGP signed isn't guaranteed to be from the person who apparently signed it. Someone might have a web server that asks Netscape Navigator (very politely) to send out someone's secret PGP keyring, or asks Navigator to monitor a person's keystrokes when they enter their password, or heaven forbid their electronic daytimer. Once you have that, it's easy to send a forged PGP SIGNED email. Even worse, most readers of email will tend to believe that an electronic signature is prima facie evidence that a message is from who it appears to be from. It just doesn't work that way. You have to look at the message and use "fuzzy" logic to determine how probable it is that a given message is from the person who it represents itself as coming form. And sometimes, you'll be wrong. Just like the good old, "Dr. Frederick B. Cohen", who posted to this list. Is he really the Dr. Cohen, noted international computer virus expert, the very man who coined the term "computer virus", or isn't he? Is he the man who the US military approached to verify whether missile guidance systems could be compromised by a foreign power utilizing a trojan horse or virus, or not. Do we believe his web page?? Even if we do, do we place a greater degree of trust in his words, than that of say, yours truly, Alice de 'nonymous, or of someone who claims to be Tim May when they BOTH say that there are very serious flaws and deficincies in the Netscape Navigator product? Or do we infer that a "no comment" coming from AT&T and Netscape, acts as confirmation that the *information* in the post is reliably correct. It's impossible to say with certainty. Maybe if someone on this mailing list attended Dr. Cohen's talk today at the Hilton Hotel, in Washington, D.C., and fills us in with what he said, (if we can trust _that_ poster) and we independently verify for ourselves whether what _he_ (Dr. Cohen or Mr. Confirmation) is saying *seems* to be reasonable, then we _might_ be able to say that we _may_ be reasonably certain, that we DO have an international celebrity amongst us and posting to this list, and notifying the world of a serious problem. I mean what would you expect, a Press Release?? Alice de 'nonymous ... ...just another one of those... P.S. This post is in the public domain. C. S. U. M. O. C. L. U. N. E.

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Re: using pgp to make an otp
by Bill Stewart 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 11:31 PM 11/6/95 EST, Derek Atkins <warlord(a)MIT.EDU> wrote: >> PGP output is not random enough to be used for a one time pad. >> The security of a OTP is *entirely* based on the quality of the random >> numbers; they should come from some strong generator. Building good >> one time pads is tough, and usually not worth the effort. > >No, however the output of "pgp +makerandom=XXX filename.dat" _IS_ >random enough for an OTP. The problem then becomes distributing this >data. amp had written: | my point here is that _if_ pgp output is random enough, i wouldn't need | hardware. even i, with my extremely limited programming skills could create | a .cmd file or program that could be used as input for a stream cypher. The output of PGP should be random enough for your application, as long as you don't think you're getting a cryptographically-correct OTP out of the deal. PGP uses its randpool stuff in its random number generation, so there are likely to be at least 24 bytes of real randomness kept around, maybe more depending on the size of your randpool, but the rest of your security comes from algorithm quality and is theoretically crackable like any pseudo-random sequence (albeit requiring exponentially-large crackwork.) It's using IDEA in a feedback mode, so it's better than just repeated MD5s. The output of PGP +makerandom probably is secure enough for most applications, depending on how many bits you're using, what you're doing with it, and how paranoid you need to be. Check out the code to be sure. You may have special applications such as amp's stream cypher for which it's more convenient to XOR the makerandom instead of using PGP, but watch out for attacks like known-plaintext, which can really bite you in secure-voice systems where there's a lot of near-silence. Careless protocol work can spoil really decent random numbers.... #--- # Thanks; Bill # Bill Stewart, Freelance Information Architect, stewarts(a)ix.netcom.com # Phone +1-510-247-0664 Pager/Voicemail 1-408-787-1281 #---

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PGP Comment feature weakens remailer security PGP Comment feature weakens remailer security
by anonymous-remailer＠shell.portal.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Suppose you want to mail or post something sensitive enough to chain through several remailers with PGP encryption at every stage to protect the privacy of communications. PGP can bite you. The PGP comment feature lets you stick one (or more?) lines of comment into your encrypted messages, after the Version: line but before the encrypted message body. If you use the PGP comment feature to say something more or less unique (mine says that you can get PGP outside the country from ftp.ox.ac.uk), anybody eavesdropping the last remailer in your chain can notice this in the remailer's input and recognize that it's from you, even though you've chained through six different places to get there. It's still encrypted, and protected to the extent that the remailer protects you, but if the remailer is corrupt or your message can be identified by size among the other remailer inputs, you're hosed. So, for safety, either turn off PGP comments before using it with remailers, or wipe out the comments by hand before each layer of encryption (easy to do with GUI-based systems like Private Idaho; I don't know if premail lets you do this or not.) Bill Stewart -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.7.1 Comment: PGP available outside U.S.A. at ftp.ox.ac.uk iQBVAwUBMKAgw/thU5e7emAFAQFStwH/QnIiiaeSmUp1YynDBLVo3HAWsVkS0nx8 Fc95Mr0YJ/YIoRDz+xuNgLHbjJZSTUbhOnigMRb7JLNqhmCGvS5RBQ== =ZWhB -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- #--- # Thanks; Bill # Bill Stewart, Freelance Information Architect, stewarts(a)ix.netcom.com # Phone +1-510-247-0664 Pager/Voicemail 1-408-787-1281 #---

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EARLY WARNING: Decemeber SF Bay Area Cyperpunks
by Katy Kislitzin 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Hi-- Eric Messick and I will be holding the Decemeber C'punks meeting at our geodesic dome in the Santa Cruz Mountains. It will be a combination meeting and holiday get-together. It will be happening on the usual c'punks saturday, Dec 9, but will start at 4:00 pm instead of the usual noon. A more spirited announcement will follow closer to the date. --kt

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