December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

More FUD from the Luddites at FV [pt. 2]
by cman＠communities.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

People have been dealing with viruses and malicious programs since the dawn of PCs. (Before that even, really.) This is not news. A virus or trojan horse can do something much worse than the (possible) inconvenience of a "bad guy" getting your credit card number. Whether you're a business or an individual, having, say, your hard drive wiped clean by a virus would be several orders of magnitude worse than the relatively minor inconvenience of having to get unauthorized items deleted from your credit card bill. This is just as possible as the credit card scenario FV is painting, and PC owners have been dealing with this kind of threat for over a decade. Rather than focus on something as tame as credit card numbers, let's look at what else a malicious program could do if it had unlimited power over your PC: o Ransack your tax preparation files o Compress and transmit your financial information to your competitors or to Blacknet. o Capture the passwords and logins that you use while telecommuting o Use your dial-up bank-by-computer software to make unauthorized transfers. o Reformat your hard drive. The fact is, malicious programs are a threat that has been in the background for over a decade, and PC users with any experience to speak of are familiar with at least the rudiments of dealing with this class of problem. If anything, they're more familiar with this kind of threat than more network-specific threats. (Look at the huge sales of popular anti-virus products.) Sure, there are clueless people out there, but the solution is to help make them less clueless, not to stampede them in a panic, which is apparently FV's goal here. --doug Ernest Hua writes: >I'm quite amazed at the level of ... well ... how can I characterize it >without insulting too many people? ... arrogance? ... > >Many of you would be amazed at what motivates the average person to buy >or to use a computer. Most people, when asked about security, do not >even have a concept, let alone how it applies in a computer environment. > >There is far more misinformation and miseducation among the average user >than you might think. Not everyone understands why they need a modem in >order to get onto the Internet. Not everyone understands why you need >to sign up for an account with an ISV in order to get onto the Internet. >(You would be amazed at how many people think that just buying a modem >is good enough to get onto the Internet.) > >The response is typically, "I don't understand all that technobabble!" >"Just give me something that works!" "This is too complicated!" > >If you think that the dumb user should be left to fight for his/her own >survival on the information highway, you are easily condemning 75% to >90% of the current users. > >I am not entirely convinced that Borenstein is totally selfless in his >(or FV's) announcement. However, the basis of his argument, while it >may not apply to the cypherpunk community, has much merit in the real >world. > >Try helping 100 random people with computers. Bet you 90 of them have >trouble getting onto the Internet, period, let alone figuring how to >run Netscape. There is a reason why AOL/CompuServe do very well >caterring to those who are technically-challenged. > >Ern ------ ------ Douglas Barnes "The tighter you close your fist, Governor Tarkin, cman(a)communities.com the more systems will slip through your fingers." cman(a)best.com --Princess Leia

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The FV Problem = A Press Problem
by tcmay＠got.net 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

This morning I read with bemusement (and amusement) the announcement of FV's discovery of keystroke capture programs. Bemusement because we discussed these in a Cypherpunks physical meeting a couple of years ago (and on the list, too). Many of us even have them installed deliberately, for error recovery. Amusement because it looked like much ado about nothing. Then I went out for the day--contrary to popular belief, I do occasionally leave my Internet connection and venture outside--and happened to read the local newspaper. There, in a major new story by Simson Garfinkel, was the FV story plastered all over the newspaper. FUD, indeed. But, it occurred to me, this is just part of the larger syndrom. Simson's article was practically written from the FV press release. While he interviewed some "security experts," clearly the timing of his article (this morning) and the announcement by Nathaniel of his discovery (this morning) suggests the cozy relationship involved. The larger syndrome is that software deals, alliances, mergers, and problems are all based on hype. Nathaniel Borenstein issues press releases, Sameer Parekh issues press releases, and maybe even I would issue press releases if only I knew how to. Every day the business news is dominated by stories of alliances and partnerships between Microsoft, MCI, Intel, Apple, Sun, Verifone, DirectTV, Newscorp, Sprint, AT&T, BT&T, CT&T, and all the rest. And a lot of it is hype, posturing. Much of the supposed future will never emerge (anyone remember Satellite Business Systems?) Journalists seem to love this, because the press releases write the stories. Companies like it, too, because they can get free newspaper space. Everyone is scratching each other's back. And those wacky Cypherpunks, with their t-shirts and their strange ideas, are always good for a quick quote, too. --Tim May Boycott espionage-enabled software! We got computers, we're tapping phone lines, we know that that ain't allowed. ---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---- Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, tcmay(a)got.net 408-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA | knowledge, reputations, information markets, Higher Power: 2^756839 - 1 | black markets, collapse of governments. "National borders aren't even speed bumps on the information superhighway."

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Re: [NOISY] Your own Zundelsite in five minutes or less
by shamrock＠netcom.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 23:07 1/30/96, Rich Graves wrote: [...] >> We won't have won until they restore the routes to Webcom. > >Here I have trouble with the word "we," and what we're trying to >accomplish. > >Censorship has clearly lost. Germany is simply not going to block >stanford.edu, cmu.edu, mit.edu, upenn.edu, aol.com, and so on, not to >mention AFS. But they succeeded in blocking Webcom. Until the block is removed, we haven't won. Do 'we' agree that the block should be removed? >I do not believe that the battle to get people to read and care about >Zundel himself is ours. Amen. I just wished that the people who's names mark some of the milestones in the fights for our rights (i.e, Miranda, as in Miranda Rights) were people whose causes I can support. Having seen concentration camps, I can not possibly sympathize with Mr. Zündel's views. But he still has a right to free speech. If he loses it, we lose it. It all comes down to this: First they came for the Communists, and I didn't speak up, because I wasn't a Communist. Then they came for the Jews, and I didn't speak up, because I wasn't a Jew. Then they came for the Catholics, and I didn't speak up, because I was a Protestant. Then they came for me, and by that time there was no one left to speak up for me. by Rev. Martin Niemoller, 1945. [...] >I do not want to allow the Nazis to associate themselves with "us." >Please see article <DM0Fsn.5GC(a)freenet.carleton.ca> for a little on what >they're trying to claim credit for. Note they are calling for mirror >sites nearly three days after they popped up, with no involvement on >their part whatsoever. I can imagine what they wrote. "The world is supporting our cause...." No, I do not support their cause. I despise their cause. And I still support their rights. -- Lucky Green <mailto:shamrock@netcom.com> PGP encrypted mail preferred.

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Re: FV's Borenstein discovers keystroke capture programs! (pictures at 11!)
by Rich Salz 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

>The key is large-scale automated attacks, not one-time interceptions. Without proving you can deploy it's bullshit.

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Re: [NOISE] Re: The Big Lie
by Robert A. Rosenberg 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 15:54 1/28/96, John F. Fricker wrote: >Besides in this day and age where Isreal is a nuclear arsenal run by nutty >rightwing warlords who in their right mind would dare belittle their >tragedies. When the world community has a double standard when it comes to treating Isreal's actions differently from any other country, those "warlords" might be justified in their actions. Can you name any other country that was a non-participant in a war, was attacked by one side, and was told by the other side that they could neither join that side nor retaliate for the attacks (I'm talking about Operation Desert Storm and the Scuds aimed at Isreal). Any other country would have been allowed to participate or allowed to declare war on the attacker (and send a few missiles over as an incentive to stop attacking a neutral party to the war). The US (and the others Participants) were scared shitless of allowing Isreal into the fight since, if let it, the war would have been over real fast and Sadam H. would have been pushing up daisies (The Isrealis have a habit of being able to take care of themselves with minimal "collateral damage" when their hands are not tied by the actions of other Governments telling them that they are not allowed to do what any other Government is allowed to do as a matter of normal policy when faced with aggression).

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Re: FV Demonstrates Fatal Flaw in Software Encryption of Credit Cards
by jrochkin＠cs.oberlin.edu 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 9:29 PM 01/29/96, zinc wrote: [...] >the point is not that this can be done, the point is that users need >tools that would check for programs like this running on their >system. is fv making a 'fix' available? i would imagine a 'fix' >would be a program that would look for tsr type programs (or inits on >a mac) that do this sort of thing. At first I was going to say there was no way to do this--a program can't be written to look at an arbitrary program as intput and determine if it does a certain semantic action (steals your key strokes). And I think this is true. However, on the MacOS at least, I believe that a key-capturing program would have probably have to patch a particular point (or one of a set of particular points) in the OS, and a program could probbably look at the OS in RAM (or wherever patches happen; in RAM I think) and make sure it hasn't been patched--it's the way MacOS 7.5.X looks straight out of the shrinkwrap, nothings been done to it. Or report that, indeed, that portion of the OS has been patched, and some program might be logging your keys. [Of course, some legitimate programs might patch these portions of the OS too--so you'd have to be careful not to have a hacked version of those legitimate programs that also captured your keys. zinc's next point is relevant here, of course.] Can anyone tell me for sure if this would indeed be feasible? >this is the sort of thing that crypto can help with. there should be >a site that PGP signs the programs available from their site. these >signed programs will have been testing on the appropriate system and >verified to be free of small malicious programs such as the one you >describe. alternatively, the author themselves could PGP sign the app >(this is already done) and this would be what users should d/l. True. But, remember, you've still got to trust the _author_ of the program. Commercial programs generally dont' have source available, so I'm basically trusting Steve Dorner not to have Eudora send a copy of all my messages to the NSA. Even if the sources were available, most people aren't going to want to (or be capable of) going through the source, so they're trusting other third parties who have said "yep, I looked at the source, and it's okay." And, while there are plenty of third party types to look at a program like PGP (although, actually, I can't identify any reliable third party crypto type, not on the PGP developement team, who I know has looked at the PGP source and pronounced it okay. Doesn't mean it hasn't happened, but it means realistically, users _don't_ rely on third party guarantees of security in the source. Or at least I don't, but how many of you out there know a reliable third party source that has given a seal of approval to PGP, and specifically rely on that knowledge to give you confidence in using PGP?)... umm, while there are plenty of third party types to look at PGP, there are surely millions of lines of commercial software produced every year, and I'm not sure where all these reliable third party types to look at the code are going to come from. In theory, having source available is good. In practice, you still end up trusting the designer not to do anything bad to you.

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Re: Security First Network Bank, FSB. The World's 1st Internet
by David Neal 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

> Date: Thu, 25 Jan 1996 17:50:16 -0500 > To: cypherpunks(a)toad.com > From: "Joseph M. Reagle Jr." <reagle(a)rpcp.mit.edu> > Subject: Security First Network Bank, FSB. The World's 1st Internet Bank > Just got something in the post today asking for me to set up an account with > them... > > - Daily reconciled bank statement and checkbook register; All transactions are > logged for you. - No min balance - 20 free electronic bill payments per > month... - ATM at Honor and Cirus.. - 200 free paper checks... - plenty of > pre-stamped deposit envolopes - FDIC insured accounts (in case anyone ever > steals my password..) - Wired Funds.. > Mis-features - Uses Public key crypto but web pages do not mention PGP, says keys may come in mail on floppy; how to fingerprint key? - Online only based system Drawbacks include system downtime means being unable to access your 'checkbook' No extraction features for those of us who use true double entry accounting systems, much less Quicken or even spreadsheets. - Bill paying system Four day lead on bills to be paid (can you say float?) Laser-printed statement sent to payee for 'verfication' will be subject to payees security restrictions which may consist of tossing it unshredded into the trash. - No chaum-like digital money provisions. Although it is a step in the right direction, I won't be happy until the bank accepts e-mail directives for generating chaumian cash or instant EFT payments via messages encrypted against PGP keys. Lets face it FINCEN already knows all about your income sources if they are at all bank based (i.e. excluding barter and cash), but at least I can have my check EFT'd, encrypt a PGP transaction to send all my money to Seychelles, and pay bills from that Offshore bank that really does respect my privacy. This would at least make discerning that my foley's bill is $120 a month more difficult since FINCEN would now have to have cooperation from the payee.

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Credit cards: No keystrokes, no capture.
by sasha1＠netcom.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

What if I offer my customers a little GUI interface where they would click numeric buttons instead of typing the numbers? If the card number input screen changes window dimensions as well as size and positioning of the buttons, capturing mouse movements won't give you much either. Or randomly generate a set of digit buttons and let the user drag them into a 16-digit bar. Am I missing something here? ----------------------------------------------------------- | Alexander Chislenko | sasha1(a)netcom.com | Cambridge, MA | | Home page: http://www.lucifer.com/~sasha/home.html | -----------------------------------------------------------

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Re: Your "urgent" alert
by John Schofield 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

John Schofield said: >> I will never use First Virtual. You should be ashamed of yourself. Nathaniel Borenstein said: >Why? For pointing out a devastating potential attack that the bankers >bearing the risk were unaware of? It would have been grossly >irresponsible to keep it secret. You are fear-mongering. You point out the details of an attack that was *NEVER* secret. It is transparently an attempt to build First Virtual's market share. This "new" technique will undoubtedly steal SOME credit-card numbers, but it can be dealt with the same way people *NOW* deal with trojan horses and viruses. It involves no new ideas, no new technologies, and no new problems. Again, you're trying to undermine your competetors and build market share for yourself by misleading novices. The same people who you claim are too clueless to understand "cut and paste." You should be ashamed of yourself. Go steal candy from babies. John ______________________________________________________________________________ John Schofield -- If all else fails, try contacting me at ac086(a)lafn.org. PGP Public Key available by e-mailing PGPKEY(a)sprawl.ktb.net.

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Re: Lotus Notes
by Charlie_Kaufman/Iris.IRIS＠iris.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

My previous posting seems to have been truncated (at least by the time it got back to me - please forgive me if it's a duplicate). The following is the attachment that should have been there... --Charlie Kaufman (charlie_kaufman(a)iris.com) PGP fingerprint: 29 6F 4B E2 56 FF 36 2F AB 49 DF DF B9 4C BE E1 p.s. re: the fact that it's 64 bits rather than 128. That was the limit on key size of the crypto software we licensed from a third party. That crypto software also limited us to 760 bit RSA keys. We intend to push those numbers up in the future in the domestic version, but have some real world issues around backwards compatibility with our installed base. I don't know whether we will be allowed to go over 64 bits in the exportable version; since we couldn't do it anyway, there was no point in pushing this round. Lotus Backgrounder Differential Workfactor Cryptography Abstract: This document describes the technical approach behind the exportable strong cryptography included in Lotus Notes Release 4 (International Edition). Current U.S. export regulations generally prohibit the export of cryptographic software that uses keys larger than 40 bits, but advances in processor technology make 40 bit keys breakable by exhaustive search practical for a growing collection of potential attackers. In a novel scheme we sometimes refer to as 64/40, we provide the cryptographic strength of 64 bit keys against most attackers while to comply with export regulations we make the workfactor for breaking the system equivalent to only 40 bits for the U.S. government. We do that by encrypting 24 of the 64 bits under a public RSA key provided by the U.S. government and binding the encrypted partial key to the encrypted data. Background: As we,re all painfully aware, the U.S. government continues to maintain that cryptography should be classified and controlled as a munition of war. There is a long historical basis for this - some of cryptography,s finest hours have been during the wars of the past. And while some would argue that export controls are a sham because many foreign governments impose no such restrictions and we participate in an international marketplace, by one very important measure export controls have been a success: no mass-deployed worldwide cryptography has emerged and most general communications is still in cleartext. But while the government has been successfully defending its ability to spy, trouble has been brewing. Criminals don,t recognise borders -- there,s only one wild and wooly network. Crackers are able to attack targets halfway around the world with no fear of prosecution. Smart people in Eastern Europe crack financial systems in New York. Everywhere you look, bright clever people are breaking into communication systems, industrial control systems, transportation systems, health care systems, anything and everything that,s controlled by networked computers. This is not a theoretical problem, or just a problem with clever people stealing money from banks; it,s a clear and present danger that,s a direct result of the fact that we,ve moved into the information age without adequately securing our global information systems. Lotus Notes has been a pioneer in providing transparent strong RSA-based cryptography in its product offering. It went to great lengths to provide the strongest protection legally permissable. There is an International Edition that complies with export regulations and a domestic edition that does not (called the North American Edition because it is legally available in the U.S. and Canada). In the International Edition, users use two RSA key pairs -- one used to protect data integrity and authentication and another (shorter) one to protect data confidentiality because only data confidentiality key sizes are regulated by export controls. Full interoperability between the North American and International Editions is achieved by having the two ends negotiate down to the largest key size that both ends support. This design came at no small cost, but it was the only way we could deliver the best security possible to each of our customers given the existing regulatory climate. Differential Workfactor Cryptography is another innovation in the direction of giving our customers the best security possible. At the same time, we continue to oppose the regulations that make the complexity necessary. How it works: The idea behind Differential Workfactor Cryptography is simple; whenever a bulk data key is created, a 64 bit random number is chosen. If the use of that key is one involving data confidentiality and the International Edition of Notes, 24 of the bits are encrypted under a public RSA key that was provided to us by the U.S. government and the result - called a Workfactor Reduction Field - is bound into the encrypted data. There is no Workfactor Reduction Field in data used only by the North American Edition of Notes, and there is none for keys that are not used for data confidentiality (e.g. those used for authentication). If an attacker wanted to break into a Notes system based on information obtained by eavesdropping, he would have to exhaustively search a 64 bit key space. Even the U.S. government would face this workfactor because there is no Workfactor Reduction Field in keys used for authentication. An attacker who wanted to read an encrypted document that was either read from a server or eavesdropped from the wire would face a 64 bit workfactor. But if the U.S. government needed to decrypt such a document, it could obtain 24 of the bits using its private key and the Workfactor Reduction Field and then exhaustively search a 40 bit key space. Tamper resistance: You might wonder what,s to prevent someone from deleting the Workfactor Reduction Field from a document or the setup protocol of a network connection. This is similar to the problem faced in the Clipper design to assure that the LEAF field was not removed from a conversation. In a software-only implementation, it is not possible to prevent tampering entirely. The best a software implementation can do in terms of tamper resistance is to make it impossible to remove the Workfactor Reduction Field without modifying both the source of the data and the destination. This can be done by having the destination check for the presence of the Workfactor Reduction Field and refuse to decrypt the data if it is not there or not correct. The destination can,t decrypt the Workfactor Reduction Field to check it, but knowing the bulk data key and the government public key, it can regenerate the WRF and compare the result with the supplied value. RSA has the convenient property that the same value encrypted twice produces the same result. It would be somewhat more complex (but still possible) to duplicate this functionality with other public key algorithms. [Note: for this to work, the random pad that was used in creating the WRF must be delivered to the recipient of the message. For it to be secure, it must be delivered encrypted since a clever attacker who knew the pad could do 2^24 trial encryptions to get 24 bits of the key and then do 2^40 trial decryptions to recover the rest.]

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