December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

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

17 Dec '03

> >If it could be shown that Clipper chips require a fixed amount > >of time/current to encode/decode traffic, then we could conclude > >one of the following: > > > >(B1) The NSA knew about the issue and compensated for it. > > Remember those carefully-chosen S-box numbers for DES > and how, years later, how they just happened to turn out to > be optimal for defending against the newly-discovered > (in non-military circles) technique of differential > cryptanalysis... :-) > That brings up an issue I occasionally think about...At what point does NSA's secrecy become more of a liability than an asset. Should the NSA reveal flaws in crypto-systems in wide use here in the US to protect US companies and individuals from attack or should they remain quite so they can exploit them in the interests of national security? Jim_Miller(a)suite.com

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Re: e-Cash: CAFE vs. Mondex
by James A. Donald 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 11:34 AM 12/12/95 +0100, Matthias Schunter wrote: > We will soon publish our full protocol and architecture specifications. > A short 50-page summary is already available (PostScript). While I appreciate all the good work you guys are doing, it is often said that when people wish to nominally make things public without the risk of too many people paying attention, they make a postscript file, and when they really want the world to know, they make a bunch of html files. --------------------------------------------------------------------- | 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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3rd party beneficiaries and certificates
by liberty＠gate.net 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Dear cypherpunks: Professor Froomkin posted the following interesting questions to cyberia-L, and gave me permission to repost them here. Please direct any private replies to him <froomkin(a)law.miami.edu>. My apologies to those of you who hang out in both dens for having to see the same message twice. JMR [Forwarded message follows] I've been trying to work something out. (I've written these questions in the form of an exam because it's that time of year. In fact, I'm struggling with these in a paper I'm working on.) Carol runs a certificate authority (CA). She sells a certificate to Alice binding Alice's public key to her name and email address. In version (A) of the contract Carol posts the certificate on her web site. In version (B) of the contract Alice gets a floppy disk with the certificate. The certificate is in error (due to Alice's fraudulent or negligent misrepresentation to Carol). Bob relies on it to his detriment in a transaction with Alice. Assume Bob can show but for causation of his loss. Bob now wishes to sue Carol for negligent misrepresentation. He has, I think, three possible theories. 1) UCC. This turns on whether a certificate is a "good" or a "service". {Assume the answer is "service" for the rest of this hypo} 2) Contract. Bob has to show that he's an intended beneficiary under the restatement 2d test. This seems to be almost a theological question. Is the purpose of the certificate to give Alice a tool to induce Bob to transact, or to give Bob a benefit without which he will not transact? 3 )Tort of negligent misrepresentation. To make this especially exciting, let's assume all the action is in NY where the shadow of Cardozo still looms. NY retains a strong privity rule: You can only recover for a negligent misrepresentation if you are in privity of contract with the speaker. Question 1: If Bob is an intended beneficiary, is he in privity with Carol? (I think the answer is "yes"). Question 2: Are Bob's rights, or his status as an intended beneficiary, affected by whether the contract is form A or form B above? The classic cases, like Ultramares have the accountant's report spread around by the client. Suppose the accountant in Ultramares instead publishes the report on the Web -- what result? OK, now we change the facts. We're not in NY anymore, we are in a state that follows the restatement 2d rule in sec. 552. Question 3: Is Bob within the class of forseeable users entitled to recover for the tort of negligent misrepresentation as these terms are used in the restatement? Question 4: Is the certificate a good or a service? (I say it's a service, mostly, unless it makes no representations at all about its quality.) Extra credit: Look up http://www.verisign.com/netscape/legal.html and find the disclaimers in THE BIG TYPE. Do you know of any court that would enforce these? On a "good"? On a "service" provider? A. Michael Froomkin | +1 (305) 284-4285; +1 (305) 284-6506 (fax) Associate Professor of Law | U. Miami School of Law | froomkin(a)law.miami.edu P.O. Box 248087 | http://www.law.miami.edu/~froomkin Coral Gables, FL 33124 USA | It's warm here. [End forwarded message] -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.2 iQCVAwUBMM+jfW1lp8bpvW01AQFe7QP/dlWbaICoo7lgtTZVsZvd4dvKx3LawfU9 FH8e78Tpo5ICgfKwBNNj6MlBgG7sxAu2LTqMHTTHkcuHksdNTZImJlnNs64phnK0 zBF7IqcT1BOBijWiFWdni+i62NGzppj0BKnyebmFivUbwmi4QGN3gLMxkvD94eWI TU7/+tFB/iI= =8JOv -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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Re: e-mail forwarding, for-pay remailers
by Bill Stewart 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

>E. Allen Smith writes: >> There's one problem with this in regards to the "no necessary >> connection," and that 's the governmental requirement for mail >> forwarding. MBE and any legal other one will want to see at least >> two forms of ID including one photo, and have a form that they fill >> out using that and send to the local post office. Anyone have a >> way around this problem? There are two different sets of relevant rules in the US - Post Office and state. The PO's primary interest is making sure you don't mind if they don't forward your mail once you stop using the Commercial Mail Receiving Agent (CMRA) and secondarily that you aren't committing fraud by using the mailbox, sending people change-of-address notices, ripping off your creditors, and skipping town. California has a hopelessly dishonest law that just went into effect in 1995, which pretends to be designed to protect consumers from fraud by the 7 million small businesses in CA that uses mailboxes, and actually requires that _anybody_, business or not, who wants to rent a mailbox must fill out the Post Office form and also appoint the PO or CMRA as their agent for service of process and give them up-to-date True Addresses. The PO, meanwhile, "usually wants" a California Driver's License plus another ID to rent a box from them. (I didn't have such a thing when I last rented a box, and the PO hassled my mailbox company into asking for one when the new law came out.) After many attempts at calling the PO to get anybody who knows the _official_ rules for what ID is required, I found a PO lawyer who told me the rules are in the "Domestic Mail Manual", which any Postmaster has, so my next step is to look up one of those before I next get a mailbox. So maybe a random photo ID will work, such as your FooBar Consulting Employee ID, and maybe it won't, depending on what state you live in and how clueless your local Post Office bureaucrats are. At 05:29 PM 12/13/95 -0600, Andrew Loewenstern <andrew_loewenstern(a)il.us.swissbank.com> wrote: > I believe C2.org already offers non-dialup access accounts, paid for >with ECash, that do not require a valid snail-address or phone-number. >I am sure that there will be many more to come. I suspect Sameer would be happy to open an account paid in advance in small unmarked bills. AOL probably wouldn't. Fortunately, the government hasn't really caught on to the importance of email, so they aren't requiring that email providers know where you really live. I predict 1997 for that. #-- # Thanks; Bill # Bill Stewart, Freelance Information Architect, stewarts(a)ix.netcom.com # Phone +1-510-247-0663 Pager/Voicemail 1-408-787-1281

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Re: Jim Quinn interview of James Norman (edited)
by Ed Carp (ecarp＠netcom.com) 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

> To: ecarp(a)netcom.com > Cc: cypherpunks(a)toad.com > Subject: Re: Jim Quinn interview of James Norman (edited) > Reply-to: perry(a)piermont.com > Date: Tue, 12 Dec 1995 14:53:14 -0500 > From: "Perry E. Metzger" <perry(a)piermont.com> > > According to the headers, you, Mr. Carp, forwarded this to > Cypherpunks, when it was obviously available to those that wanted to > read it on a variety of other mailing lists. > > Please don't continue doing this. > > Jon Roland writes: > > The following is a Radio Interview between James Norman, > > formerly Senior Editor of Forbes Magazine and now with Media > > Bypass Magazine and Jim Quinn, DJ of WRRK 96.9 FM in Pittsburgh. > > In this interview from December 7th, they discuss issues of > > national importance and STUNNING IMPACT. Essentially they give > > out the reason for Vincent Foster's Death, and the fact that > > the "resignations" of the Congresspersons are NOT for policy > > reasons but because they have been caught with millions in > > corrupt funds in Swiss Banks. Read this to learn what the > > "mainstream media" doesn't ever tell you... Unfortunately, even I sometimes hit the wrong button on my mailer.

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PGP Interoperability?
by marina kats 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Can anyone out there vouch for the interoperability of PGP 2.6 ui with versions of PGP available in USA from MIT & Viacrypt. What about the legal issue ? Is it legal for a US citizen to encrypt or check signatures with a 2.6ui public key ? Would sending a public key out of the US be reagarded as export by ITAR? Thanks Geoff Klein.

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Denver area meeting, SUNDAY, 12/17, 2 pm
by awestrop＠nyx10.cs.du.edu 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- As usual, we'll begin at the Tivoli, near the downtown Auraria campus (send email for directions). Weather permitting, we'll have Yet Another Demonstration of the Peripatetic Cypherpunks Protocol (patent pending), visiting Lower Downtown's restaurants, saloons, libraries, the Tattered Cover Bookstore, whatever... Alan Westrope <awestrop(a)nyx10.cs.du.edu> __________/|-, <adwestro(a)ouray.cudenver.edu> (_) \|-' 2.6.2 public key: finger / servers PGP 0xB8359639: D6 89 74 03 77 C8 2D 43 7C CA 6D 57 29 25 69 23 -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.2 iQCVAwUBMNAUk1RRFMq4NZY5AQEKiAQAjihODhe8tuPqAf47XMX4kKgsSLpaQkAd 922Ve0MkZB3X1nCDu1Yqf7tavfND+3ORhaFUiu3ZV0WqEBFpYazV9DpFccM81d6S 4dKFhi60CkF8pX5snn87MAkn7vKg0wkGFBTprHe1z+z2u61Y5dFutRwXMchgZTK0 4oFnhsXyVcc= =umSa -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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Re: Netscape announces position against GAK
by amp 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-- [ From: amp * EMC.Ver #2.3 ] -- -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- TM> I for one am satisfied--and even pleased--with the Netscape TM> position on GAK. TM> It remains to be seen how steadfast Netscape, as the major player in TM> the Web browser business, remains in the face of (likely) pressure TM> from the government. i'm not entirely satisfied with netscape's response, but then, i didn't expect to be. i _expect_ weasling from corporations that have made the 'big time'. this is the way life is i suppose. what i'd like to see would be more companies that have an interest in the security of net-based transations in their best interest, (which would be any company that intends to do any business on the net) come out _forcefully_ for strong crypto. the ability of hackers to penetrate the computers of the net would be greatly curtailed by universal crypto. is there not a strong national interest in the integrity of the net in general and financial interactions in particular? looking forward, which politicians and bureaucrats are loathe to do, commerce and corporate dealings across the net will only increase. what we need to do is get large corporations to recognise that privacy is important to _them_. of course, many already know that privacy is important to them. why else would we have a body of law concerning "trade secrets"? i work for a fairly large corporation. this makes finding who to talk to about this difficult. i'm working on it though. perhaps some of you out there can consider ways to convince those in positions of authority in your company to realize that crypto technology works toward their own best interest. they _must_ speak to this because it is business that runs this world of ours. TM> It seems to me that we have have been quick to criticize TM> Netscape--which is good, the quickness part--and thus we should be TM> equally quick to praise them. To be sure, various of us might've TM> written the Netscape position statement slightly differently, but TM> this does not change the basic point: that Netscape has come out TM> against the Administration's position on GAK. TM> For this they deserve our praise. indeed. netscape deserves praise for including 128-bit encryption in their products in the first place. while i'd like to see them stand up and tell big brother to fuck off and die, i am appreciative of what they've done so far. i'd like to see a representative of netscape on nightline or the noghtly news hold up a floppy and say "this floppy contains an encryption program that the u.s. government will not let us export. it was downloaded from the internet for free by an executive of a multinational corporation based in germany who wanted to know why i couldn't sell him a program that was as cryptologically secure as it is. my answer was that the u.s. government will not let me." similar demonstrations of the lunacy of itar are left to your imagination. ============================ these views are my own. no one else in their right mind would hold them. amp <0003701548(a)mcimail.com> (since 10/31/88) <alan.pugh(a)internetmci.com> Current PGP Key = 57957C9D December 13, 1995 18:51 -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.2 iQEVAwUBMM9nH4dTfgZXlXydAQGeKgf/XV2sAD7aklD+QfmcSUWReaH5jviADbMV /wIv6JW4iSOytOa36K5VEXCuep6AUQTIiEflZ4OPU4IXAOKkF3UAxJWoSFY/zT9w Kgb16I7tjDHohbc3tFikZ3z1Do3vLScxG7ll3CQOfTIr2KIxyN2/XOYkP1fsdvHr TyBAO4S/ERq1v3BKZJQ1+LskBvPhjtivWs3xU+TBxT9Fc8Op6GmvFyRgjmwMoRfQ orloUJuLbWWolnFvJMqyAK6pT5+QXZ3eH9ZguGmaLSHS8549Ts+LCirnBxI3HqZ4 sfD9jNRb3HiIG0gowXKU4lWTD4hiV+Se63NKfQYtj+qRfZ1wK+vd5A== =6FyB -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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Re: Timing Cryptanalysis Attack
by ljo＠ausys.se 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Armadillo Remailer (remailer(a)armadillo.com) wrote: >Simon Spero <ses(a)tipper.oit.unc.edu> writes: > >>My gut & scribble-on-the-back-of-a-napkin feeling about this class of >>attack is that it could be a problem for smartcards (almost certainly) > >Is it a problem to create smartcards that do their calculations in >fixed time? I'd guess it should be easier than on multi-purpose >hardware. > >Does the attack work for existing smartcards? At first glance, smart cards would seem to be the most critical target to Kocher's timing attack since they usually operate in on-line environments. However, all RSA smart cards I'm aware of stores the result of the RSA computation (be it decryption, signing or authentication) internally and it can only be read using a Get_Response command. Of course this may not be satisfying since the terminal could get a (noisy) measure of the time by repeatingly use this command to see when the result is available. Most smart cards does nevertheless require that the user must first specify a PIN code before the RSA algorithms are operationable. This implies that even if the card gets stolen can't it be attacked with Kocher's method. /Lars Johansson ljo(a)ausys.se

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Kocher's RSA attack
by rschlafly＠attmail.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

I read Kocher's paper, but I question its applicability. One of his premises is that the time of a modular multiplication varies with the data. I've checked my code for modular multiplication, and the clock cycles to execute don't depend on the data at all. The same instructions get executed, and assuming the processor has a hardware multiply, they take the same time. When I timed the modular multiplication, I was able to detect some slight variation, but I attribute this to cache misses, as the variance with the same data was the same as the variance with different data. Apparently RSAREF has modular multiplies which vary significantly with the data, but I maintain this is not necessary. A good test case for his analysis might be to pull a secret key from a smart card. If, say, the Capstone chip modular multiplication has some timing anomalies, this might be a good way to defeat the Fortezza card. Roger Schlafly

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