December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

Using the V-chip to Filter Commercial Advertisements
by tcmay＠got.net 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 11:05 PM 1/25/96, Sten Drescher wrote: >their own. But do you really think that MTV will use a V-Code? (It >could be amusing if they did - 10 minutes of blank screen, then 2 >minutes of commercials when someone cranks all of their settings to >Full Filter.) One way to kill the V-chip dead is to announce hacks to the V-chip box that will do the _reverse_ of this: block commercials (advertisements, for any non-American readers) but pass programs. (Before anyone points out that such boxes have been built, based on volume levels, spectral content, etc., sure. What I'm speculating about is a subversive campaign to get the meme out there that the V-chip can be used as a filter of commercials.) Even if it is not done, fear of the possibility of this will kill the proposal. --Tim 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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Etch-a-sketch
by Jonathan Zamick 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Ok.. I'm still getting mail regarding the etch-a-sketch keychain. Thus I'm going to look at how to get em for everyone. :) Just letting you all know. Don't bury me in 'I want one mail.' As soon as I have the info I'll get it out to the hungry crowd. Heh. At that point you can bury me happily. Jonathan ------------------------------------------------------------------------ ..Jonathan Zamick Consensus Development Corporation.. ..<JonathanZ(a)consensus.com> 1563 Solano Ave, #355.. .. Berkeley, CA 94707-2116.. .. o510/559-1500 f510/559-1505.. ..Mosaic/WWW Home Page: .. .. Consensus Home Page ..

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CAs and Digital Timestamping
by JMKELSEY＠delphi.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- [ To: sci.crypt, sci.crypt.research, cypherpunks ## Date: 01/25/96 10:08 am ## Subject: CAs and Digital Timestamping ] At the RSA conference last week, it occurred to me that there's a really neat application for digital timestamps (as done by Surety). Whenever a CA (Certification Authority) issues a public key certificate, it should also digitally timestamp it. This provides a relatively clean way to recover from top-level CA key compromises. First of all, let's talk about hash trees. A hash tree (I think the idea was originated by Merkle, but I could be wrong) is a binary tree. Each node in the tree eventually winds up with a hash value associated with it. The bottom nodes on the tree are hashes of individual messages. The other nodes are made up of the hash of all their children. This looks like this: (pardon the ASCII art) : H_0 = hash(H_1,H_2) : / \ : H_1 = hash(H_3, H_4) H_2 = hash(H_5,0) : / \ / \ : H_3 = hash(M_0) H_4 = hash(M_1) H_5= hash(M_2) 0 : : The neat thing about this is that, if I know H_0, then when someone wants to verify that M_0 appears in the hash, they only have to tell me H_4 and H_2, and the position of M_0 in the tree. I can then find H_3 = hash(M_0), H_1 = hash(H_3,H_4), and verify that the final H_0 = hash(H_1, H_2) gives the right output value. (Compare this with a hashing chain, and you can see that, for large trees, there's a big advantage here. The number of values needed to authenticate a given message in this tree is log_2(number of messages in the tree), while the number of values to verify a chain is is the whole number of messages in the chain. In the digital timestamping service offered by Surety, they use hash trees of this kind, because this allows efficient verification of a digital timestamp. The idea behind this is that a message is hashed into the hash tree, and that the final value of the hash tree each day or week is widely published, including in the New York Times. So long as it's not feasible to go back and change that value, and it's not possible to find collisions for the hash function, any hash value that appears in that tree must have been presented to the timestamping people at some point before that tree's final hash was calculated. Here's how we use this in having a CA sign certificates. CA Signs a Key: 1. At the beginning of the day, the CA generates a random value, R_0, and has it digitally timestamped. The resulting timestamp is used as one of the entries in today's hash tree. (If the CA is their own digital timestamp service, then they'll have to use the previous day's ending value, which is reasonable enough. They'll also have to work a lot harder to publish this value each day or week.) 2. For each certificate to be generated: a. The CA verifies the information in Certificate_u, then signs it with SK_{CA}. Certificate_u contains some indication of the time and date. b. The CA hashes Certificate_u into its daily hash tree. c. The CA sends Certificate_u to user u. 3. At the end of the day, the CA publishes its own final hash tree value, and gets this value digitally timestamped. (This amounts to having the CA act as its own "node." for the timestamping service.) Now, imagine that the CA's key has been compromised. (We have to assume that the CA's daily operations were OK--if not, there doesn't seem to be a clean way to recover cleanly.) The person who has the CA's key can issue false certificates. After a while, one of these false certificates are noticed. How do we recover? We use the hash trees and the digital timestamps which we've made in the past to verify each certificate presented for recertification. The digital timestamps allow us to immediately verify that this certificate was issued by this CA at this time. And we can be certain that this hash tree is correct because it's been digitally timestamped. What this does, essentially, is to allow us to quickly recover from key compromises. We still have problems if someone can take over the operations of our CA for a few days or weeks, though in that case, we probably know the likely dates. No compromise at the CA can put a different date's timestamp on a certificate. Now, I should note that I think Merkle talks about using hash trees to do public key certificates, in his thesis, and the idea may be patented. (It's been a couple of years since I looked at his thesis, so this is a little hazy.) However, we're not using them here to provide certificates--we're using them to authenticate the certificates in the event of a catastrophic key compromise. I don't think Merkle talked about this, but I could be mistaken. (At any rate, I've never seen any mention of it since then, though it's an obviously useful idea.) If the tree structure is patented, then we could still do this by using chains or some other structure. Does anyone know if this basic idea has been proposed before? I am pretty sure I haven't seen it, but it seems pretty obvious now that I think about it. We could even recover using this method from a break of the hash function supported (so long as the timestamps are done with multiple hash functions, and at least one isn't broken), or the public key algorithm used. --John Kelsey, jmkelsey(a)delphi.com / kelsey(a)counterpane.com PGP 2.6 fingerprint = 4FE2 F421 100F BB0A 03D1 FE06 A435 7E36 -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.2 iQCVAwUBMQfn70Hx57Ag8goBAQETUQQA3S7k8rrYDud5N3uVdUqSVHC3VH+Tpmuu wcRisf8PrYX/I9Q4vBTN7SS0H30Xl1bRTQyS1mQP+CuyBlESi1qn0OMKbgAYPndd 1qYOvrX/29fMbhrO7VQjAcSAHpCZOvoVfsq0fWwv4zzUIhJBZNFnMxdSm4eNrmEv U3/oo5CiM2o= =7TIl -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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Re: "This post is G-Rated"
by williams＠va.arca.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Tim May writes: > So deal with the hypothetical I gave: someone like me sets out to "nuke" > the labelling system by deliberately mislabelling his posts! If you have > labels but no means of stopping my actions, see what results. What if there was a flag on each message which the author could leave "UNSPECIFIED" or indicate "NOT INTENDED FOR KIDS." You could attack by marking a bunch of bland stuff "NIFK" or you could leave some porn "UNSPECIFIED". Either way, I think the situation is better for kids. I hope that the majority of Internet users are not actively trying to get porn to kids. > A meaningful "parental filter" cannot be done on-the-fly with self-ratings. > Some minor steps can be taken, but not all worth the expense and hassle of > a mandatory system. I see labels as helpful rather than restrictive. A label provides additional information to help people find the information that they want. That information can also be used to help you cut out the information you don't want. If parents want to use this flag because they think it might help their kids, great. Maybe nobody would use the flag, but I don't see how it could hurt. If I had kids, I would appreciate having the option of sorting out all the stuff that is "NIFK" by the author. --Jeff

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Are Cypherpunks Influential?
by Duncan Frissell 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 08:23 PM 1/24/96 +0700, Patiwat Panurach (akira rising) wrote: >Would you call cypherpunks (as a group and as a philosophy) to be >influential? Do you think governments listen to us much? Are they forced >to listen to us? Any stuff to support this? Please give me your comments. Much more influential than deserved. We've gotten a lot of press. I would say that we are an example of cultural entrepreneurship. An entrepreneur makes money by noticing that there is an unexploited difference between the price of a final product and the sum of the prices of the factors of its production (discounted to present value). We noticed that there is a difference between the social and technical capabilities of modern math and modern computing on the one hand and the public perception of those capabilities on the other. By simply pointing out those mistakes in public perception and doing some (as little as possible) coding to prove it, we've gained some publicity. An example of the gap between perception and reality that we can easily exploit, I would point to the regulation of broadcasting. There's a lot of talk with the telecoms bill about whether and how much broadcasting should be deregulated but it is obvious to us that it already has been. I was thinking of that while doing my mail and listening to the Leader of the Free World last night via RealAudio 2.0 and KLIF radio in Dallas via Audionet. Radio has been deregulated by technological change since RealAudio appeared last Summer. TV dereg will follow with the higher bandwidth. All cypherpunks have done is to point out simple facts like this. Pretty easy work if you can get it. DCF "My fellow Americans, we must free our nation from the tyranny of "Others Government" and turn instead to "Self Government". We must accomplish this great task not for ourselves, but for the *Children*." -- 10-second SOTU Address

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Re: "Gentlemen do not read each other's mail"
by frantz＠netcom.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 4:08 PM 1/25/96 -0500, hallam(a)w3.org wrote: >>Why is he our patron saint? He was a government official coming out >>against invasion of privacy. Isn't that what we are all after, in the >>end? > >There is a considerable difference between running a government and being an >individual. It is not merely ethical for one government to read another's >mail, >it is a duty. I am not sure that I believe this line of reasoning my self, but here goes: The US government is "owned" by its citizens. Therefore US citizens should have a high degree of protection from their government. However, non-US citizens do not enjoy this same high standard (not being "owners"). They perhaps should enjoy a similar standard in relation to their own governments. Another way of putting it is that while gentlemen do not read each other's mail, gentlemen read non-gentlemen's mail. Bill

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Re: TOP_tap
by Rich Salz 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

The NSA is a branch of the DOD. Up until recently (18-30 months ago) NSA employees were only allowed to identify themselves as employees of DoD. It was common knowledge, that unspecific references to Fort Meade meant NSA; and if you saw a P.O. from Procurement Office, Fort Meade, it meant the NSA was buying it. /r$

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RE: RANT: cypherpunks do NSA's job for them!!
by blanc 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

From: Vladimir Z. Nuri maybe TCM, who in this case imho is part of the PROBLEM and not part of the SOLUTION, and an example of how our own behavior is sabotaging our key goals, will think twice when he writes another *sskissing, tedious "what the NSA thinks about [x]" post. ....................................................................................... Maybe he should write something like this?: it seems to me the problem is when a government begins to insist that the only authorized encryption you can use must be based on the secret key they give you is where all the problems arise. so, what we could advocate as a compromise (given that the post office is absolutely not going to *not* get in this business, from what I can tell). we encourage the idea of KEY FREEDOM this would be a heading for the idea that we are in support of the (our) government creating cryptographic infrastructures and key authentication services, as long as we always have the total freedom to encrypt according to however we please in private communications. [Date: Thu, 30 Nov 95 15:39:09 -0800 From: "Vladimir Z. Nuri" <vznuri(a)netcom.com> Subject: key escrow compromise] .. Blanc

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Re: "Gentlemen do not read each other's mail"
by jim bell 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 04:08 PM 1/25/96 -0500, hallam(a)w3.org wrote: > >>Why is he our patron saint? He was a government official coming out >>against invasion of privacy. Isn't that what we are all after, in the >>end? > >There is a considerable difference between running a government and being an >individual. It is not merely ethical for one government to read another's mail, >it is a duty. > >By not taking adequate steps to inform itself of the Japaneese intentions the US >suffered the loss of a substantial part of the US fleet at Pearl Harbour. Had >sufficient resources been avaliable the naval codes could have been cracked in >time. The closure of the Black chamber was a key reason why US espionage >efforts were inadequate at the start of WWII. While this may be based on the "classic" view of the start of the direct involvement in WWII, I agree with the opinion of an old college professor that the US KNEW that the Japanese were going to attack, SOMEWHERE and SOMEWHEN (but not exactly), and in fact WANTED the attack to occur to justify getting into a war that we "should" have entered. And in hindsight, I do not necessarily disagree with such a goal, within the limited context of the circumstances at the time. An extention of this interpretation is that much of the fleet was kept at Pearl to "lure" the Japanese into doing an attack that could be used to rally the public. (they needed to have enough "bait" to justify an attack.) Obviously, if that was the intention, then the big surprise was how EFFECTIVE the attack was going to be: Far from just "rallying the public" it smashed our defenses. The reason I mention this interpretation is that it entirely turns around your argument: Our criticism should not be how little we knew of Japanese intentions, but how we incompetently delayed entering a war that "needed to be fought." Naturally, however, considering the results of the attack, it would have been totally unthinkable to reveal to the public that the bigshots had actually DESIRED the attack; a far less incriminating version of the story is that some other people were merely negligent. Now, I was born in 1958 and thus can't claim personal knowledge of the time, but it's truly amazing how UNPERCEPTIVE the public must have been in the late 40's and early '50s about "intelligence" realities. Let me give you a specific example: The classic movie, "The Man who Never Was," relates the (true) story of a counter-intelligence mission done by the British to (I think) mislead the Germans into believing that the attack on Sicily would be substantially LATER than it actually was. The British took a man who had died of some natural disease (with the permission of his family, of course), dressed him up as if he were a courier and dumped his body (carried by submarine) off the coast of (then Fascist) Spain. With the body were (sealed) phony documents that described the FALSE date. (The idea was, the Germans would think that he was on an airplane that had crashed into the ocean...) ( He was given a false name, false address, and basically a false identity to complete the ruse.) By design, he was dumped at a point where ocean currents washed him ashore, where he was identified by papers. Naturally, the British were notified by Spain, and the British played along and INSISTED that none of the documents with the body be unsealed and given to the Germans. Naturally, however, the Spanish cooperated with the Germans, and allowed them to (secretly) unseal the documents undetectably. However, the documents (still apparently sealed and unopened) were returned to the British so that (to the Germans) the British wouldn't be aware that their secrets had been compromised. Follow me so far? Well, in the movie (whose accuracy I don't know) the Germans didn't totally believe that the courier was "real", so they sent an operative (probably by parachute airdrop, or whatever) to check out the particulars of the story they "learned" from the fake background. (Naturally, the British knew about this) At that point, the British had to plant operatives, and support the phony story on the spot, "verifying" the information. At that point, the German agent was able to transmit news that "the information is real!" to the Germans. Now, here was was (to me!) the "funny" part of the movie: The British let the German agent leave Britain. This sounds logical, right? Because if they were to PICK HIM UP as a spy, that would have alerted the Germans that his identity and mission were already known, which would only have been true if the story given the Germans initially had been a FAKE! Yet, in the movie, it was necessary to "explain" to the (early 1950's) audience why they "let that German agent leave Britain"!! I was laughing, practically falling off the edge of my seat, as I was watching that scene! Clearly, ordinary people of that era weren't very perceptive about such things. Had they (Americans) been told that, "We had to get into WWII to save the free world, so we let the Japanese sink half our Pacific fleet!" the public WOULD NOT have understood. This is why I tend to believe that professor's interpretation: While the exact time and location of the attack was not known, IT REALLY DIDN'T MATTER because they WANTED it to happen. The "we couldn't decrypt their traffic in time" (even if it was really true) was merely a convenient cover story for the truth.

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RE: RANT: cypherpunks do NSA's job for them!!
by blanc 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

From: Vladimir Z. Nuri your friends, family, associates, etc. constantly *reminding* you of that law is the major, critical, unseen mechanism in propagation of laws. ............................................................................ Actually, Vlad is has a remote point. When signs on the road advise everyone to buckle up - because "it's the law", it has the intent of providing the be-all and end-all reason for why we should do the things we do. When certain activities are described as being "illegal" it lends to the laws surrounding them an air of legitimacy, even though most anyone on this list who refers to them in that way understands that they are phrasing their words in terms of how these actions are perceived/categorized by the lawmakers, not by the cpunks. Yet you must understand, Vlad: you aren't going to figure out how to deal with a looming threat like ITAR simply by being nonchalant & devil-may-care. The fact that some people (lawyers) know what corporations & individuals are facing if they try to import or export "illegal" substances like abstract code, and the fact that some people (programmers) discuss the issues openly, does not mean that they are headed in the direction of submission to the given obstacles. It just means that they're thinking through the problem, to clarify just what the situation is, to give conscious consideration to what anyone might have to deal with as a consequence of their decisions (to do what they will regardless of the NSA's perceptions). I think this is a valuable & legitimate pass-time. .. Blanc

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