December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

Re: Usability of Cryptography (was Re: More FUD from First Virtual)
by James A. Donald 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 01:06 PM 12/11/95 -0700, Bryce wrote: > To get to the point, I want to know if this "fundamental > tradeoff" that you refer to is in fact *fundamental*. That is > to say: is the product of the "security factor" and the > "usability factor" a constant? Or are there methods which can > be practically implemented to make strong cryptography easier > for Joe Average to use without exposing Joe to unnecessary > risks? Web of trust is a mess because it attempts to link keys to physical people, which in general cannot be done. If we stick to a lesser goal -- constancy of identity -- this is not so hard. In general it is impossible to prove that Bryce is the "real" Bryce, but it is trivial to prove that Bryce is the same Bryce who has a certain Web page, and the same Bryce who posted a certain article in archives. We should blow off this attempt to do the impossible. --------------------------------------------------------------------- | We have the right to defend ourselves | http://www.jim.com/jamesd/ and our property, because of the kind | of animals that we are. True law | James A. Donald derives from this right, not from the | arbitrary power of the state. | jamesd(a)echeque.com

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Re: Usability of Cryptography (was Re: More FUD from First Virtual)
by E. ALLEN SMITH 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

From: IN%"jamesd(a)echeque.com" "James A. Donald" 13-DEC-1995 03:44:41.99 >If we stick to a lesser goal -- constancy of identity -- this is not so hard. In general it is impossible to prove that Bryce is the "real" Bryce, but it is trivial to prove that Bryce is the same Bryce who has a certain Web page, and the same Bryce who posted a certain article in archives. ----------------- I have been considering all the pieces of information that ought to be automatically linkable to a particular public key. They include: 1. Email address(es) from which mail signed with it is customarily received, to save on lookup time. 2. Web pages put up by this person. 3. Web pages/ftp files/etcetera authored by this person (i.e., the hks archives of cypherpunks). 4. Phone number if using a crypto-capable phone with a key-download capacity from a computer. 5. A declared name or alias. 6. In my files, whatever name I want to give the person. Ultimately, if I receive something signed by somebody, I would want to have hypertext links from that file to all of these- to remind me of whom I'm talking to and his/her/its/their past behavior. -Allen

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Re[2]: e-Cash: CAFE vs. Mondex
by David Klur 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

>Matthias Schunter Said [snip] >The CAFE system is a cheque based system. This means that the >customer receives an electronic chequebook, where each cheque is >(blindly) signed by the bank. >During each payment the customer has >to use one of these signed cheques. [snip] If the CAFE card contains cheques (which are not digital cash, and therefore must be tied back to a customer's checking account), how can the bank blindly sign them? The merchant will have to deposit the cheque in order to transfer the money out of the customer's account and into the merchant's account. I don't see how the bank can not know the identity of the customer. This is why digital cash can be anonymous - because once the bank (blindly) signs the cash tokens, these tokens ARE money. They are not pointers (in the case of cheques) to customers' bank accounts. However, if Alice (the customer) contacts her bank and requests a cheque be made out to Bob (the vendor) for, say, $12.50 then the bank can withdraw $12.50 from Alice's account and blindly sign a cheque for $12.50 payable only to Bob. Then the bank would not know Alice's identity. I don't think this is how CAFE works, since CAFE is designed as an off-line smart card system. Therefore, Alice cannot requests bank cheques from her bank made payable to Bob when she walks into Bob's store. Maybe your definition of a cheque is different than mine? ______________________________ Reply Separator _________________________________

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Re: Spotty c'punks service due to network outages
by Alan Olsen 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 02:35 PM 12/12/95 -0800, you wrote: >Our network service is going up and down, probably due to the storms >in San Francisco. If you see delays, that's the reason why. As far >as I know, NSA has not figured out how to control the weather, so it's >not their fault :-). This is not just in San Francisco... Portland, OR has been having some pretty bad problems with power outages. (My ISP was offline all last night.) I expect that Seattle will be having similar problems due to the storm front that just went through. As for the NSA controlling the Weather Orginization... That only counts as a successfull attack if they have the Evil Geniuses for a Better Tommorrow assisting in the attack. (And they are controlled by at least one computer group.) Sorry... Been catching up on my mail from the Illuminati mailing list. | Remember: Life is not always champagne. Sometimes it is REAL pain. | |"It's only half a keyserver. I had to split the | Disclaimer: | |other half with the government man." - R. Rococo | Ignore the man | |`finger -l alano(a)teleport.com` for PGP 2.6.2 key | behind the keyboard.| | http://www.teleport.com/~alano/ | alano(a)teleport.com |

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Re: Blinding against Kocher's timing attacks
by jim bell 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 01:27 PM 12/12/95 -0800, you wrote: >From: ljo(a)ausys.se (Johansson Lars) >> Does anyone know whether David Chaum's patent on >> blind digital signatures extends to this application? > >I don't think it would. Chaum's blinding protocol has one major >difference: the blinding factor is applied by a different person than >the one doing the signing. The purpose of the blinding is different, >too; in Chaum's case the idea is to end up with a signature which is >unknown to the signer, while with Kocher's "defensive blinding" the >signature (or decryption) is an ordinary RSA one, and the blinding is >just done internally by the signer to randomize the timing. One thing I haven't heard mentioned would be the possibility of using TWO blinding factors, by two different people, to blind the unsigned cash. As you may know, I'm interested in payee-anonymous systems as well as payer-anonymous ones, and such a feature might assist in this.

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(U)
by Francisco Encarnacao 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

SUBSCRIBRE Regards, Francisco Encarnacao - Equipment Maintenance Technician Internet E-mail address:Francis@e-mail.com

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Re: IDEA encryption
by cactus＠hks.net 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- In article <Pine.LNX.3.91.951212212447.94B-100000@localhost>, Mark M. <markm(a)omni.voicenet.com> wrote: >> Last thing -- how secure is unix "rm"? If something is rm'd, is it >> really really gone? >> > >Not very secure. I have heard that there is a Linux undelete and there might >be a similar program for other Unices. If the hard drive is examined using >special hardware, data will be recoverable. It's not even that secure. As long as the blocks haven't been written over, you can extract the information from the raw device driver with 'dd' as root. - -- Todd Masco | "life without caution/ the only worth living / love for a man/ cactus(a)hks.net | love for a woman/ love for the facts/ protectless" - A Rich Cactus' Homepage - --- [This message has been signed by an auto-signing service. A valid signature means only that it has been received at the address corresponding to the signature and forwarded.] -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.2 Comment: Gratis auto-signing service iQBFAwUBMM9juyoZzwIn1bdtAQFXZAGA4HlzYVD4ORp5LecGxw16q+ELXZFChIuA kSHufPYuGQjsVDuQ0Ev4Xkroc3kVfZTQ =1vxa -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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Re: And the standard continues to lower...
by Andrew Loewenstern 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Dr. Brian L. Crissey includes in his .sig, courtesy of cactus(a)hks.net [ much WRT YetAnotherSecureInternetCreditCardPaymentSystem(*tm) deleted ] > ***Dr. Brian L. Crissey, Chair CS Dpt, Linfield Col., McMinnville, OR 97128 > (503)-434-2426 brianc(a)linfield.edu > Professionals built the Titanic, amateurs built the Ark... However, the Ark was *designed* by GOD (if you believe the story). Can Dr. Brian L. Crissey say the same thing about his payment system? andrew

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Attacking Clipper with timing info?
by jim＠bilbo.suite.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Could this timing attack be used to obtain the various keys used by Clipper devices? Jim_Miller(a)suite.com

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Mike Godwin Re: Is there a lawyer in the house?
by John Gilmore 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

From: Mike Godwin <mnemonic(a)well.com> Subject: Re: [Black Unicorn: Re: Is there a lawyer in the house?] Date: Mon, 11 Dec 1995 13:27:34 -0800 (PST) > The question is whether the government can legally compel production > of your encryption key(s) if you give them to another person, such as > an escrow agent of your choice, your lawyer, your wife, your bank, > your web site provider, or whoever. Compelling the key from the person you gave it to is easy. (That is, the answer there is yes, assuming no independent claim of non-Fifth Amendment-derived privilege.) Whether you have given it to another person does not automatically make it easier to compel the key from you. But under certain circumstances (and in certain jurisdictions) it might -- such as if, for example, you were relying on a "last link" rule to bar your disclosure of the key. If you were arguing that the disclosure of the key would be a "last link" in a chain of inculpatory causation, and it could be shown independently that you had already disclosed the key to someone else, thereby proving that you possessed the key at one time, your having done so might undermine your "last link" argument. Feel free to forward this. --Mike

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