December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

Re: MED_vac
by Thomas M. Swiss 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

John Young <jya(a)pipeline.com> writes: > > 11-15-95. NYPaper Page One: > > "When Patients' Records Are Commodities for Sale." > > Individual medical records, carrying more sensitive > personal information than ever before, are increasingly > being gathered and stored by the tens of thousands in > commercial databanks maintained by institutions like > hospital networks, health maintenance organizations and > drug companies. And although there is a Federal law that > protects the privacy of video rental lists, private > medical information is being bought and sold freely. A (possibly stupid) thought: could commercial key escrow help here? I very much want hospitals to have fast access to my medical data if my broken and bleeding body should come through their door, even if I am unconscious and my personal physician cannot be reached. On the other hand, I don't want anyone to be snooping through them right now. One solution is for me to carry my records around with me on a smartcard or some such device. But there are problem with that approach; for example, do I want that personal information to be in my wallet if it's stolen? Do I want to add another item to the list of physical items I have to keep secure? So, what if my records were available on the net, but encrypted with a an key known to my physician and an escrow agency? (Equivalently, they could be on that smartcard, but encrypted.) If an emergency occurs, the hospital fetches my encrypted records from my physician's server, then sends a message (signed with the hospital's key) to Keys R Us, the escrow agent, saying "This is Dr. McCoy at Frobnitz Memorial Hospital, we need the key for FooBar Medix, Inc., patient number 147258369." (My FooBar Medix, Inc., insurance card lists my physician's server, the escrow agency, and my patient number.) Keys R Us verifies the message and sends the key. Perhaps there's also an alias to notify of the release, one that reports to but is not traceable to my physician or me. Keys R Us only has a number and a key; they don't know who my physician is and therefore don't know where to find the actual records. Anyone who gets my insurance card can find the records, but has to convince Keys R Us to release they key; and if I've done my homework in picking the agency, they won't. Does this give an advantage over just having a copy of my records kept by a trusted third party? Maybe so; I think maybe less trust of the escrow agency is necessary. No snooper can slip someone at the escrow agency a couple of cyberbucks to get a copy of my records, unless they've managed to match "FooBar Medix, Inc. patient number 147258369" with "Tom Swiss" and the location of my physician's server. (What if FooBar Medix, Inc., lets this information out? I dunno. I guess I visit their office with a shotgun. Better idea: FMI doesn't know what escrow agency I use. I fill in Keys R Us on the card myself.) No minimum wage slave can just casually browse my records for fun. Thoughts? [Since TIS is in the CKE field, I should note that this is my own boneheaded idea, not affiliated with the company in any way.] -Tom Swiss / tms(a)tis.com

3 3

encryption in BeOS kernel
by cpunk＠remail.ecafe.org 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

This also corresponds to IBM's development of its "IPC" "network appliance" (also due out 1Q '96) to challenge the desktop PC for Internet use. It parallels as well IBM's reported work on a "Microkernal" which may feature encryption, authentication and security hooks. IBM's IPC will probably use an Intel chip (WSJ today). Which leads to speculation: Would chip-fabbers covertly Fortezza chips to get export ok? Motorola, HP, IBM, others long-linked to USG are ever ready to gobble international market share in the national interest. Intel, sure, world-class fab plants planting chip-secrets. Wonder if that key escrow protest to Gore is a cover for economic actions authorized by National Security D&D?

1 0

Re: NSA, ITAR, NCSA and plug-in hooks.
by jimbell＠pacifier.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

>jim bell writes: >>>I think it's 121.1, Category XIII paragraph (b) item (5): >>>"Ancillary equipment specifically designed or modified for paragraphs (b) >>>(1), (2), (3), (4) and (5) of this category;" >> >>Question: What makes computers in general NOT describable by such a >>paragraph?!? > >The referenced paragraphsdescribe cryptographic hardware, software and >technical data. Computers in general are not "specifically designed" >as cryptographic equipment. Great! Then you must merely ensure that there is at least one (non-encryption) program around that can use the same hooks.

4 3

Size of the internet economy?
by rah＠shipwright.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Lately, I heard (somewhere) that $250 million changed hands directly on the net in 1994, mostly credit cards. Is this a real number? Where did it come from? What are estimates for 1995? Cheers, Bob Hettinga -- Robert Hettinga <rah(a)shipwright.com> e$ 44 Farquhar Street Boston 02131 617-958-3971 "Reality is not Optional" -- Thomas Sowell

2 1

Re: Hardware-random-bits interface
by jimbell＠pacifier.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

>> > And if one is left with only internal noise, why not simply use a nice >> > clean source like a Zener diode? >> >> Quite solidly agreed. Internal noise beats external noise, and there >> is no point in using a radio receiver when what you want is internal >> noise. > >It may have been misleading to refer to a radio receiver chip: the >noise generated by the chip will be entirely internal. It doesn't >depend on any external signal "sneaking in"; the noise comes from >the effective resistance of the first amplifier stage. Nothing >is being "received", in some sense; it's just a big hunk 'o gain. > >A Zener diode would be fine, but the design is a bit more complex, >especially for wide bandwidths---you need to mess with biasing >voltages, speedy op-amps, interface to CMOS, and all that jazz. >You'd need external power (or a DC-DC converter). I wanted a >super-simple design that people could just plonk down on a PC >board. Two chips and some bypass capacitors. Why not do both? A Zener is supposed to be a relatively high-level source of white noise, up to some upper bandwidth, so you could just feed the Zener voltage (through a blocking cap, if necessary) to the radio receiver input. See, you and the chip manufacturer are working at crossed purposes: a radio receiver chip is SUPPOSED to be a low-noise device. For your purposes, you WANT it to be a high-noise device, to minimize the significance of external noise. Since the radio receiver chip does some things you want (gain, maybe AGC), but doesn't necessarily add an adequate amount of noise, a zener would be an excellent addition.

1 0

Re: Repeated Words/characters in Password/Phrase
by Bill Stewart 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

>Do repeated words in a PGP passphrase make the pass phrase less secure than >a passphrase without any repeated words? And on the same note, do repeated >letters in a UNIX password make that password easier to break? I can't seem >to find anything in my books on cryptography that mention this. Thanks. As always, it depends on the attacks people can make on your system. For Unix password files, the cyphertext is often available, the plaintext is known, and the key (your password) is known to be eight or fewer characters. If there's reasonable suspicion that your password contains multiples of one or more characters, and that they're mostly letters, you're toast against a good brute-force attack, because the search space is fairly small. Using, say, a pair of 4-letter words is an even worse idea... For PGP passphrases, the cyphertext is generally unavailable, but assuming you're dealing with Bad Guys resourceful enough to try to crack your passphrase, they've probably got the file. The plaintext may be partially known (PGP data files have some structure; RTFM to find out how much) and partially unknown (your secret key) but guesses can be validated (slowly). The structure of the IDEA key is that your passphrase is hashed by MD5, and the 128-bit output used as an IDEA key to encrypt the formatted secret key. Since brute-forcing IDEA with the 128-bit MD5 output is unrealistic, the alternative is to feed candidate keys through the whole process. So how much entropy does your passphrase have, and how many guesses are they willing to attempt? How much does word-repeating affect it? How much entropy depends on your taste in passphrases, your creativity, and how much you're willing/able to memorize without resorting to writing it down. The MD5 effectively limits entropy to 128 bits, but you can cram as much as you want into the passphrase and MD5 will crunch it all down, so repeated words can only cause problems if they make you decide you've got enough entropy in the passphrase before you do. If your passphrase is "FOO BAR", and you're known to be a programmer, lengthening it to "FOO FOO BAR BAR BAR Skidoo" may improve it some, though it's not as good as "Eric Woodruff Kintetsu Espada 1145 Lutheran", to pick six words drawn randomly from the Tri-Valley phone book. But if you eliminate obvious material, and word-doubling lets you pick a more complex passphrase than you might have otherwise used, go ahead - it's not going to make the MD5 any more attackable. #-- # Thanks; Bill # Bill Stewart, Freelance Information Architect, stewarts(a)ix.netcom.com # Phone +1-510-247-0663 Pager/Voicemail 1-408-787-1281

1 0

Re: NSA, ITAR, NCSA and plug-in hooks.
by Bill Stewart 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

>>Does anyone know the ostensible justification for this? Isn't the NCSA government-funded? If so, they've probably got less slack in what they can get away with than private citizens; the NSA's got more leverage over their funding, especially if "Supercomputer Applications" are often military or civilian-govt. Not only do they have to worry about ITAR as law, they have to worry about their continued cash flow. #-- # Thanks; Bill # Bill Stewart, Freelance Information Architect, stewarts(a)ix.netcom.com # Phone +1-510-247-0663 Pager/Voicemail 1-408-787-1281

1 0

Re: CSE gets flak on TV
by anonymous-remailer＠shell.portal.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

On Tue, 14 Nov 1995, Mark C. Henderson wrote: > On Nov 14, 16:47, s1113645(a)tesla.cc.uottawa.ca wrote: >> Subject: CSE gets flak on TV >> For those who care, the Communications Security Establishment has been >> getting some flak for spying on Mex. during NAFTA talks and on Korea to >> help us sell Can. nuke reactors: The CSE deserves all the flak that it can get ... especially the village idjit in "LMN Group", Barry de 'Artful. Gee is he full of it. His phone manners are atrocious, especially for someone *supposedly* in customer relations. I mean are these guys on their toes, or what?? I guess he was just trying to do a bad Lily Tomlin impression, or they're having a really bad day over there. My mistake for demonstrating a willingness to talk. It really was a waste of a quarter. I guess that I'm not supposed to taunt the poor people at the CSE via STU-III. I guess I should have used POTS. I mean Motorola's STU-III can't be spoofed, can it?? Especially when we go into SECURE MODE?? (btw, that's STRIKE THREE to my Ottawa friends ...) > Folks who are interested in the CSE should also check out the > "unofficial CSE home page" at Hmm, I think they mispelled some stuff on this page. It's STU-III ... not STY-III ... guess someone's finger slipped up on the Y and the U, or something. Then again, maybe we should be specing Alcatel over Motorola. Fewer chances for miscommunications. Or maybe Motorola has a couple of new products coming out. I'll bet whatever they are, they ain't Marrons Glaces, or Beaujolais Villages. Alice de 'nonymous ... ...just another one of those... ...hunters... P.S. This post is in the public domain. C. S. U. M. O. C. L. U. N. E.

1 0

No Subject
by cassiel＠alpha.c2.org 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Thanks for all who wrote with help re: FAQ file! I now have several other sources from which to download the file. Looks pretty interesting.... Cassiel

1 0

Re: Repeated Words/characters in Password/Phrase
by foodie＠netcom.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

>In the real world, where passphrases must be memorized, "long and random" >is an elusive goal, which has to be weighed against the risk of other ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ >attacks (such as capturing keystrokes with a sofware monitor, or from afar ^^^^^^^ >with a van Eyk antenna, etc.). > >Me, I use a nonsense phrase which has meaning to me, with a few garbage >characters added to confuse things further. I don't think my passphrase is >the weak link. > >- --Tim May This is, of course, very good advice. Passphrases need only be as strong as every other component of the security system. I'd add that there is a moderately good reason to keep the passphrase _only_ as strong as every other component of the system for psychological reasons. The passphrase is what the user tends to think of when they think of their system. Even if that user is the designer of the system, a false sense of security an be an easy thing to develop. At a past place-of-work, someone there who prided themselves on using difficult passphrases was bitten pretty severely by a faulty .forward file. DES provides similar lessons - searching 56 bits of keyspace requires just barely less effort than that required to launch other attacks on the algorithm (in theory, at least). The system is, as far as anybody knows, secure, and no part of it is significantly more secure than any other. -j -- On the internet, nobody knows you're a diety. _________________________________________________________________ Jamie Lawrence <foodie(a)netcom.com>

1 0