December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

RE: Political Cleanup program
by Kurt Buff (Volt Comp) 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Ya won't have complete equity amongst lobbyists, until ya remove the power of bureaucrats to control people's lives. When laws can be used to deprive people of their livelihood, via either taxation or regulation, you will create situations where people can make money from it, and therefore unscrupulous people will take advantage. The only defensible argument for government at all is to protect people from depredation, either from fellow citizens or from external threats. When you prevent people from engaging in peaceful commerce, you open the floodgates to tyranny. Thus, the solution is less government, not to try to legislate human nature. Kurt [speaking for myself, of course] ---------- From: Richard Huddleston[SMTP:reh@wam.umd.edu] Sent: Monday, December 18, 1995 6:12 To: jimbell(a)pacifier.com; vznuri(a)netcom.com Cc: cypherpunks(a)toad.com Subject: Re: Political Cleanup program Detweiler wrote: * >JB: * >>Politics is traditionally corrupt, it appears, because donors to politicians * >>and political campaigns expect a quid pro quo for their donations. Various * >>unsatisfactory solutions include campaign spending limits, etc. * > * >I have an unusual view that I've never seen elsewhere: the problem with * >our government is not that money or PACs are involved, but that the system * >does not handle or resolve the conflicts between them very well. in other * >words, in contrary to the current view that all PACs are evil, I think the * >problem is not that we have PACs, but that our current system does not * >balance their demands in some sensible manner. the system is * >susceptible to corruption. it is conceivable however that there would be * >a system that involves money and politics but still avoids corruption. Not to sound like a dupe or anything, but every time I get discouraged at the rampant mealyism of our political system I go read the first couple of paragraphs of a text from GOVT 101. There, I get reminded that the way most political debate is handled elsewhere is with bullets. Personally, I welcome a complete equity between all lobbyists seeking to obtain a politico's ear. Take the money out of the equation, and let the merits of their causes, if any, stand on their own. Happy holidays, Richard

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Applescripts for monitoring Netscape Activity
by Bill.Humphries＠msn.fullfeed.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

The recent Netscape beta bug mentioned here raised a technical question? Anyone here have a pointer to an applescript, frontier or macperl script for monitoring what programs do to your system folder and desktop? Otherwise, I'd better write one. It'd be a good way to learn more about the behavior of apps. Thanks and happy holidays, Bill Humphries Call your Representative and Senators and demand an end to attempts to censor the Internet. More info at http://www.vtw.org/ *** The answer to porn speech is free speech -- via Molly Ivins ***

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wish list for Crypto++?
by Wei Dai 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

I am looking for suggestions for features to include in the next version of Crypto++ (current version is 1.1, you can find it at http://www.eskimo.com/~weidai/cryptlib.html) Major additions already planned/implemented include speed improvements, Safer (all the variations), and elliptic curve cryptosystems (over prime fields as well as fields of characteristic 2). There is also a good chance that RSA will be added back, but I'm still waiting for the final word from the RSADSI lawyer. What else do people want to see? Wei Dai

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RE: Political Cleanup program [NOISE]
by Kurt Buff (Volt Comp) 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Let's try this again, shall we? My mailer didn't act the way I wanted it to... ___________________________________ >I happen to believe in freedom of speech, especially political speech, >and if you're not allowed to spend money broadcasting your speech or >printing your messages, you don't have much freedom of press or speech. It is very strange the way that "Libertarians" are so able to turn all rights into property rights. Thus freedom of speech become freedom to have influence on the politicial process in direct proportion to wealth. _____________________________________ Not so strange really. All rights, correctly understood, *are* property rights. What most don't understand is that rights are protections from the initiation of force by others. What this means is that you (anyone) don't have the right to the property of others. You have the right to offer mutually satisfactory exchanges, or even solicit outright gifts, but what is yours is yours, and it shouldn't be subject to extortion or theft by others. This includes your time, cash, and any other tangible assets you may own. _______________________________________________ I began work on the web in '92 because I saw its potential as a political tool which did not have the bias of wealth. It has the potential to create a new kind of political dialogue. When the Web becomes as ubiquitous as the telephone we will still see inequalities of power, the homeless and the poor will still be underrepresented. But that situation must be judged against our own where the political process can be bought and traded as if it were any other form of comodity. ________________________________________ The problem with the political process now is that the government and its beneficiaries (which includes both the large corporation and the welfare class) have over time arrogated to themselves the power to steal (via taxes and regulation) our lives and our livelihood from us. The poor and the rich will always be with us, but they shouldn't be special clients of the state at the expense of everyone else. _____________________________________ It is not simply an issue of money, it is an issue of national security. If a foreigner were to control the majority of the media there would be a significant threat to the national interest. This threat has been realised in the UK with the comming to power of Rupert Murdoch. Fortunately his influence on the US political scene has thus far been minor. In his own country he has brought down the government more than once. _____________________________________________ The only reason foreign money might be a threat to us is again that the government arrogated to itself the power to regulate our lives. The reason and interest for lobbying the government, whether through the press or through other, more direct, efforts is that the government *can do something* about whatever happens to be at issue. Take away the ability of the government to act, and there won't be any money spent lobbying it. I submit we'd all be better off. ________________________________________________ >And as far as "prevent the political process from being owned by the rich" >goes, there have been brief exceptions over the last 5000 years in which >the less-rich have overthrown the rich, but campaign finance laws have almost >never kept the rich or the politicians from helping each other out. In UK politicis the influence of an individual's money is limited to influencing one party. Even that is done behind closed doors. The other major parties both limit the size of individual contributions to a constituency party to a relatively nominal sum. $5000 is a huge sum in UK politics. >I also don't believe freedom of speech should be limited by national >boundaries. Nor do I. But I only vote in one country. If we take the question outside the US it would not on the whole be a good thing if the Prime Minister of Tobago (say) were provided with a campaign contribution of $1M by a foreign company with an interest in strip mining the entire island. similarly it would be a bad thing if Columbian drug lords were to make massive contributions to politicians committed to continuing the prohibition on drugs. _______________________________________ See my above comments. Only if the PM of Tobago could steal the land from its owners could he permit the island to be strip-mined. And only if the government has the power to prohibit drug possession would the Cali cartel be interested in making campaign contributions. No power to do something, no money offered to do it. ____________________ Phill Kurt [Speaking only for myself, of course]

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King Kong Does e$
by rah＠shipwright.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- King Kong Does e$ A while back, when the Microsoft Network hype was at its height, I forwarded a bunch of articles to www-buyinfo entitled "Oh, No, there goes Tokyo", about how Godzilla, in the form of Microsoft's Microsoft Network, was going to stomp all over Tokyo, in the form of the net. This was before I found out that Netscape's codeword for their Navigator HTML Browser was "Mozilla". So, along comes the following on the DCSB list, courtesy of the esteemed Mr. Lethin: Wednesday, December 13, 1995 Refreshments 4:15 PM 4:30 - 6:00 PM Bartos Theater, E15-070 MIT Media Lab Ames Street, Cambridge, MA, USA Electronic Money Made Easy Dan Simon (dansimon(a)microsoft.com) Mac in hand, I went to a presentation at the Media Lab's basement auditorium, and proceed to transcribe his copious overheads, sans graphics, as fast as my fingers could fly... Which I present here in it's raw form, with a few corrections, his cryptic (ahem...) source citations, viz: (cf., MN 93), and the ocassional note I could cram in when he stopped flipping charts... Oh, no, there goes Zurich... - -------------------- Dan Simon Microsoft, now, Quantum Computing/crypto in Canada before... Characteristics of cash Portable Anonymous Confidential Easily and instantly transferrable Owned by those posessing it Hard to counterfiet Has multiple interchangeable forms. What isn't cash: e-credit Non-anonymous Severely limited confidentiality Complicated payment protocols two parties and both their respective banks involved Ownership determined by record-keeping credit/debit authority What isn't e-cash: offline e-cash One desirable feature of cash: transfer without an intermediary Problem: doublespending: restore prespending state, respend the same cash Tracing re-spent cash useless if it was stolen (cf. (cfnII 0091, Yac94, etc) Tamperproof hardware isn't (cf EGY83) Can broadcast small amounts over the net at a huge payoff. Result cash as secure cellphone codes (better not be worth much...) Offline Electronic "bills" don't work. Too big for offline Offline Electronic coins do work. Easy to counterfiet, not much profit. (He is interested in electronic banknotes, on-line bearer securities, in other words) What can we assume: Customers, merchants, banks may wish to transact via many different possible media: telephone, Internet, cable network, smartcard/terminal, etc. etc. If a customer wants a transaction to be anonymous, then an anonymous medium must be used (no callerid on the telephone, anonymous remailer, etc) A Modest Proposal On-line cash issued by banks owned by a possessor, Cryptographically hard to counterfiet Cash ownership transferred with bank's help aAnonymity of payer, payee based on anonymity of communication medium No individual account or prior trust relationship necessary to use a bank's cash (cf., MN 93) Formal Security E-cash schemes generally described as a set of individual protocols (payer-payee, payer-bank, etc.( with intuitively described goals) But formal proof of security really requires a model of a full network, to consider general attacks, and explicit, formal security goals Previous examples: (BEA91/MR/91) for computation (RS93) for anonymity, (BR93) for authentication What does it look like A bank issued banknote has a serial number,amount, and treasuer's signature It also has an associated "secret" which can be checked against the serial number, but can't be gotten from the serial number Its owner is whoever has the secret... ...but when the issuing bank gets the secret, the banknote is no longer valid. Publish the bank notes as broken, banknotes no longer valid. (spiffy graphic elided) Customer chooses secret s, serial number n, n=h(s) and amount. Customer pays bank (by any method) the amount of the desired banknote bank signs serial number and amount Transaction may be anonymous (physical cash purchase at bank) pick serial number, bank uses private signature to sign the serial number. (May's train-locker applies) How is change made: Customer generates secrets, serial numbers and amounts for smaller banknotes Customer gives bank the secret for the large banknote, and serial numbers and amounts for smaller ones Bank signs serial numbers and amounts, stores the secret for large now-invalid banknote Transaction can be completely anonymous. How is it used for payment Payer simply gives bank note to payee by handing over the secret payee immediately exchanges the banknote for new ones anonymously, if desired Old banknote is now invalid, since bank has its secret; hence payer can't respend it If the bank note is already invalid, bank rejcts exchange and informs payee. "In effect, these are disposable banknotes" "the simple way to get around exploding banknote numbers, issue it with an expiry date." Estimated outstanding certificates numbers would then be within the storage capacity of a bank. (per a crony in the Bank of Japan) Public key from the bank is needed to keep the bank honest. "miracle of one-way function" (shuts down clueless question...) Model Synchronous network of parties, some dishonest, one of them is the bank Parties can exchange messages anonymously Responder can always broadcast Parties and bank keep track of balances each round, a party receives instruction to deposit/withwdraw/ a unit value coin to/from the bank or pay a coin to another party (missed one point..) Security goals Correctness: if all parties are honest, then instructions result in correct new balances Integrity: parties cannot be ripped off Honest bank never accepts more coins than have been withdrawn Party can detect dishonest bank Anonymity: information available to any coalition should be indistinquishable for any sequence of instructions consistent with the starting and ending points of distinguised coins entering/leaving coalition Weak anonymity, contends that that's what we have with serial numbered physical notes anyway Can make stronger with subsequent anonymous change operations at a bank... (can also buy with cash at a desk, also on the net with another form of digital cash ;-) Efficiency: cost of security should grow slowly (polylog at worst) with size of network. Convenience Features Only payer, payee, issuing bank involved in transaction Each validation and transfer immediate Portable Easy to handle Expiry dates can be added. If anonymous withdrawl, then can get lost money back on expiry date, if coins weren't cashed. Security Digital signature makes cash unforgeable Online validation prevents double spending Secrecy of secret preserved even if serial number publically available Bank's *only* secret is its private signature key Digital signature publicly commits bank to redeeming its e-cash; hence customers need not have special trust relationship with bank. Audience Q: Borenstein's scenario. A: bad problem. someone can split bank private keys, for instance (No problem, strawman, what happens when someone breaks Ft. Knox?... --RAH ;-) Extra features Payee can have the e-cash non-anonymously deposited in bank account for easier handling and better security (bank as back up) Payer can include transaction details with payment package or hide them in the secret (to create transaction record to be archived by, for example, by the bank) helpful in dispute. "Secure payments" and E-cash "Don't send cash in the mail" even if it gets there, receiver need not admit it One solution: secure payment protocols (Microsoft/Visa STT) Non-anonymous: transaction details attached to payment mediated by payer's credit card issuer Payee can delay response and batch process transactions "Secure Payments" Protocol's basic idea: payer sends encrypted package to payee giving credit card number and transaction details, "payment instructions". Only acquirer can read it Valid credit card number plus payer's digital signature assure acquirer that payment is legitimate (missed one point) Secure ecash payments Payer substitutes ecash secrets for credit card number in payment instruction package payment desiring ecash settlement. Includes ecash serial numbers amounts when sending package to acquirer E-cash issuing bank bank checks validity of ecash payment and exchanges it for merchant as apprpriate by signing serial numbers, amounts Instant payment, no bad debt Questions Where is the communications cost/ security tradeoff? Solutions to dine and dash problem with dishonest bank (anonymity must broken to nark on the bank) (cf Cle85)? Efficient offline anonymous micropayments solutions? Implimentation pitfalls? - ------------------- So, there are my notes, such as they are... I walked away from this thinking that on-line cash covers a multitude of sins: You can stick any "secret" into digital cash as long as it's unique and you trust the bank to keep it. If bank signs the secret they've shared with you and reveal it before some expiry date, they can be put out of business, because they've blown their reputation. If they claim that you've not shared a secret, you expose the secret and their signature, same happens. If you put an expiry date on Simon's digital cash, you don't have to keep track of it all. If you have an expiry date on Simon's cash, if you loose it, you can tell the bank, and if it's not cashed by the expiry date they can give you your money back. There's a distinction between on-line "banknotes", which are valuable enough to forge, and off-line "coins", which are not. Simon has a system which has just enough anonymity to be economically useful, but not perfect enough to keep the truly paranoid happy. Must be something in the water in Redmond. Essentially, the bank becomes a quasi-anonymous "line" in what's normally a peer-to-peer transaction. Takes getting used to. He's got a web page with all of this in gory detail, I bet, and his e-mail address is at the top of this post. Speaking of micropayments, Mark Manasse, Ron Rivest, Adi Shamir, and Silvio Micali did another talk on Friday which touched on several cool micropayment schemes, and a much more cost-effective way to do key revocation. Though I got there exactly 6 minutes late, I missed one presentation, and didn't take any notes for the rest. Hope someone else here did. I saw lots of DCSB/Cypherpunks there... Any takers? Cheers, Bob Hettinga -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.2 iQCVAwUBMNdbfvgyLN8bw6ZVAQH7qwP9GKSx7BegCr5lAOmG6lBo4OYgCPUO9j8N bqf89b46rTkYrTkSB2DDX7BG/wu4nv/pnf7rA7UBHJjydZuiAVG9KplzevUWFoaI xVeW8AoVPgKvkZsELK4VrrOayAXNxX9FBX7vGwsedl1SjQgyA3Qo62799GOIDrpQ xuXYtTtaTfw= =LQk+ -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- ----------------- Robert Hettinga (rah(a)shipwright.com) e$, 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA (617) 958-3971 "Reality is not optional." --Thomas Sowell The NEW(!) e$ Home Page: http://thumper.vmeng.com/pub/rah/ >>>>Phree Phil: Email: zldf(a)clark.net http://www.netresponse.com/zldf <<<<<

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No Subject
by anon-remailer＠utopia.hacktic.nl 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

>I would think that ISPs (and even commercial online services) would >prefer that their customers use strong crypto because it's less for >them to worry about ("Are they really sending pornography or death >threats though our network?"). While most ISP's may not want to be responsible for monitoring transmissions, check out a portion of an agreement from mine. (I haven't and won't sign such an agreement, may therefore be terminated at month's end.) "4.1 PCIX may elect to electronically monitor any and all traffic which passes over our Wide Area Network. This monitoring may include public as well as private communications and data transfers from our Members and to our Members as well as any and all communications and data transfers to and from any other internet sites. .... The monitoring and disclosure activities of PCIX may negate the privacy protections which the Member would otherwise enjoy under federal and state law, including the Electronic Privacy Communications Act. Member specifically agrees that PCIX may do so and Member understands that he or she is giving up privacy rights which he or she would otherwise be entitled to under the law." Hope this isn't the start of a trend! groundfog(a)nym.gondolin.org

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RE: Political Cleanup program
by jim bell 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 03:09 PM 12/17/95 -0500, you wrote: >A much simpler solution might be to just force all politicians to give up >their campaign funds when they retire, or even better, immediately >following the elections. Today, whatever is left in their campaign funds >are given over to them when they retire or are forced out of office, on top >of their lucrative pensions. > For Congress, I think this changed a few years ago. Before a certain date, retiring Congressmen could convert unused campaign funds to their own money. At some point they changed the rules, and that is no longer the case.

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Re: Java and timing info - second attempt
by frantz＠netcom.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 22:31 12/18/95 -0800, Jeff Weinstein wrote: > In Netscape Navigator 2.0 Java and JavaScript do not have access >to crypto routines. At some point in the future this will probably >change, but only after we understand the implications much better >than we do today. More importantly for covert channel analysis, do they have access to good clocks? Access to a good clock could make a Java applet a good candidate for the receiver in a generalized covert channel attack. Access to both process time and real-world time can give a good indication of load on the processor, and might be needed for animation. A transmitter could send by using or not using the CPU. (Installing the transmitter is left as an excersize for the student. ;-) ) Who said that life was safe? ----------------------------------------------------------------- Bill Frantz Periwinkle -- Computer Consulting (408)356-8506 16345 Englewood Ave. frantz(a)netcom.com Los Gatos, CA 95032, USA

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Re: King Kong Does e$
by Rich Salz 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

>Speaking of micropayments, Mark Manasse, Ron Rivest, Adi Shamir, and >Silvio Micali did another talk on Friday which touched on several cool >micropayment schemes, and a much more cost-effective way to do key >revocation. Though I got there exactly 6 minutes late, I missed one >presentation, and didn't take any notes for the rest. Hope someone else >here did. I saw lots of DCSB/Cypherpunks there... Any takers? A reference for Mark's paper on Millicent is <a href="http://www.w3.org/pub/Conferences/WWW4/Papers/246/">The Millicent Protocol for Inexpensive Electronic Commerce</a> Of all the various payment protocols I've seen, this was one of the few that studied the available protocol bandwidth before designing a protocol. Folks with an engineering slant should appreciate the work here. I would be VERY interested in URL's and summaries of Micali's talk. (I really wanted to go but after spending most of the week at the WWW4 conference I had to commit serious time to being anchored to the office.) /r$

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Re: E-cash coin questions (Mark Twain / Digicash)
by Hal 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

From: "David Klur" <dklur(a)dttus.com> > > 1. How many different coins (serial numbers) can the current Mark > Twain/Digicash protocol support? I don't know this offhand, but I assume it is at least 2^64. > 2. Does Mark Twain bank maintain 2 lists: 1 of all the ecash serial > numbers for all coins ever produced, and 1 of all the ecash serial > numbers for all coins that have been spent before? Or just 1 list of > the spent coins (assuming that any coin that is signed w/MT's private > key and does not appear on the "spent" list is still valid and is not > counterfeit)? It is not possible for the bank to have a list of the serial numbers on coins produced, since it doesn't know this information. Each coin is created by a user's client software, which chooses the serial number at random. When it is sent to the bank to be signed, the serial number is blinded by being multiplied by a random number, which is divided off after the client gets it back from the bank. So the bank never sees a coin's serial number until it is deposited. > 3. The Digicash scheme allows each coin to be used only once and then > destroyed. How many coins will it take before all possible coins are > minted, used and destroyed thereby requiring banks to issue new coins > with "recycled" serial numbers? Remember, each time a "transaction" > takes place, an existing coin is destroyed and a new coin is minted. > and a transaction can simply be Alice giving her friend Bob a dollar > (not necessarily using the ecash for a purchase) It is easy to make this number so large that it will take longer than the age of the universe for this to happen. It just takes a dozen or so bytes per coin. > 4. What is the probability of guessing a valid serial number, > assuming there are 1 million, 1 billion or 1 trillion coins in > circulation? Assuming the serial numbers are of the sizes I suggest above, this chance is so close to zero that your chances of being named King of the Earth next year (along with the assumption that we switch to a World Government and it is a monarchy) are much greater. > 5. Suppose you have a very large number of ecash coins signed by the > same bank (say, Mark Twain) and you know the record layout of each > coin (easy enough since you can decrypt it with the bank's public > key), and for each coin the "bank name" field is the same (because > it's the same bank!) -- then, would it be possible to hack the RSA > encryption and recreate the bank's private key? I don't fully understand what you are getting at, but there are several false assumptions here. The "coin" has several parts, one of which is an RSA signed portion with a number in it, for which I am accepting your terminology of it being a "serial number". This terminology is not quite right, as the coins are not numbered serially (that is, sequentially, 1, 2, 3, etc.), rather the numbers are random. But it does capture the essential idea that each coin's number is unique. You do know the record layout of each coin, but that is because it is documented and because your client creates coins, not because you could decrypt it with the bank's public key. The coin does not have the bank name field within the RSA signed part. There is other information which goes along with the coin, including an identifier for the bank, outside the RSA signed portion. For the general question of whether inspection of a lot of RSA-signed coins would allow you to deduce the private key, the answer is no, as far as is known. Actually the attack you can mount is stronger than this; you can get the bank to RSA sign any number. You could ask it to sign "1", for example, and you will get "1" back (so that's not very useful). I have tried to think of a way of getting some useful information from getting it to sign "2", since that is such a simple number. But it is raised to a very large power, and as far as I can see what you will get back is just a random looking number, with all hints about the exponent gone. Again, as far as anyone knows, there is no way to break RSA using these kinds of attacks, at least not any more cheaply than factoring the modulus. Hal

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