December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

Re: "Trustworthy" PGP Timestamping Service ??
by tcmay＠got.net 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 6:51 PM 1/21/96, Matthew Richardson wrote: >-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- > >I have recently setup a free PGP timestamping service which operates >by email. > >The objective of the service is to be able to produce "trustworthy" >timestamps which cannot be backdated without detection. It achieves >this by:- > >(a) giving every signature a unique sequential serial number; > >(b) every day making a ZIP file of that day's detached signatures >and feeding the ZIP file back for signing (and hence the assignment >of another serial number); ... It sounds like a variant of the Haber and Stornetta work on digital timestamping, about which much has been written on our list (check the archives, and/or sections of my Cyphernomicon). They have a company, Surety, which is doing this (or was, last time I heard). www.surety.com will get you there. My hunch is that your scheme implements a version of a hash (the idea of hashing the doc and then publishing the hash as a "widely witnessed event," in Haber and Stornetta terms) that could infringe on their patents (assuming they applied, as I recall hearing they did). Before you go much further on this, it would behoove you to check on what they are doing and on what patents, if any, you might need to license. --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: NSA vacuuming down Internet traffic
by Rick Smith 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

alanh(a)infi.net (Alan Horowitz) asks: >Is there any open source - or otherwise - knowledge or speculation about >which words/phrases the Terra-cycle cpu's are text-searching *for*? If it >were your responsibility to eavesdrop on Iranian terrorists ... >... would you know for sure which words/phrases to key on? It >doesn't sound like a tractable problem to me. There are two parts to this question. First, how do you choose targets? It's been a few years since I read Bamford's book (when *is* the next edition coming out, anyway?) but I seem to remember that there is some sort of "committee" that agrees on what to aim at. It probably contains the usual collection of bureaucrats from military and civilian agencies. Despite the lofty budgets, even the NSA's vacuum cleaner has a hose of limited size. The committee allocates the available resources to prioritized objectives. You can probably predict targets by estimating political priorities and clout of the various agencies, and, of course, by watching CNN. Second, how do you ensure that you capture relevant traffic? I'm sure you start with the obvious -- look at traffic that's definitely relevant and set up filters to find more of it. While it's attractive to want to treat this as a state detection problem (message is/isn't relevant) you really want more of a signal analysis solution (measure likelihood of relevance). Also, a high priority target would probably have its hit behavior evaluated by real humans to ensure that the expected amount of relevant traffic is continuously sucked up. My first job, twenty years ago, involved a prototype speech recognition system under contract for Rome Air Development Center (a traditional cover for TLA research). The machine was supposed to go beep whenever a specified word or phrase was heard over the input voice stream. We joked about testing for the term "Russian Spy" but settled on looking for "Kissinger" instead. That let us run tests by listening to news broadcasts of the time. We built custom boards with Schottky TTL and a blazing fast 120ns cycle time. Times change, eh? Rick. smith(a)sctc.com secure computing corporation

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Espionage-enabled Lotus notes.
by Trei Family 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

I've come up with a new term to describe the type of 'improved' security in the new International edition of Lotus Notes: 'espionage-enabled' It's specifically built for export, and has a backdoor to enable USG agents to read the messages more easily. From the viewpoint of a foreign purchaser, 'espionage-enabled' seems an appropriate term. If we spread this term sufficiently, we may be able to discourage the widespread adoption of this half-measure, and increase the pressure for good, unencumbered crypto. speaking only for myself, Peter Trei ptrei(a)acm.org

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Re: NYT New Web Site
by take＠imasy.or.jp 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Dear Mr. John Young, This is Tsuyoshi Hayashi. At 11:18 AM 96.1.22 -0500, John Young wrote: >NYT reported today that it has set up a new web site: >http://www.nytimes.com Now I visiting there. It's very worth for me. Very very thanks for your info. (^^) >For the Times-addicted, today's WSJ has a page one article on Does WSJ have there own web site, too? - Tsuyoshi Hayashi <take(a)imasy.or.jp> --- hayashi(a)scs.sony.co.jp is no longer valid. --- Please update to take(a)imasy.or.jp

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An IDEA whose time has come (Notes from the RSA Conference)
by Jonathan Zamick 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Well the RSA Security Conference is over, and I finally had time to sleep. Thus, I'll give you all a bit of my impressions. First, there were a heck of a lot more merchants this year. Last year, there were about 400 people. This year it was 1100, with a couple hundred waiting. Thus the conferences were a bit more mixed in level of topic. (As one person put it, the more interesting the title, the more likely it is a blatant plug for a product.) On the other hand there were a number of great conferences too. Sadly, I was busy at the Consensus booth and didn't have time for many of them. Last year Clipper was the big issue, but export controls were predicted to be the big issue this year. This year export controls were the big issue, but certificates were predicted to be the big issue next year. Lotus got low marks in everyone's book for setting the precedent of giving the government 24 bits of their key. (As if France is going to be satisfied with that solution.) I didn't meet many Cypherpunks at this conference. Partially it may have been because I was dirt tired after planning the booth in only two weeks, and running it. They had a lot of nice giveaways. I have a metal backed dayrunner which is cute, an etch-a-sketch keychain which is causing rabid jealousy in the office, and a nifty t-shirt with the logo 'A good marketing organization listens to its customers'... then the picture of a woman on the phone w/ two spooks listening in.. finally 'We Hear You... Your NSA'. Needless to say, I like it. Anyway here is the point of the subject from this message. A while back I asked for all your wish lists. One of the big issues was making IDEA available w/ RSAREF. Well, I did even better, you can now license IDEA from Consensus whether you use RSAREF or not. This was the biggest hit at our booth. A number of groups saw a very strong, fast, Swiss block cypher as a nifty thing. Imagine, you can use 128 bits in Europe. Right now I'm trying to convince Ascom to develop a crippled version of IDEA to simply give away if anyone wants it for export. (Like most of the folk here, I don't see a 40 bit key as very valuable, but it is useful for companies which don't have contacts in Europe.) As a little promo, Ascom, the company which developed IDEA, and will be licensing it in Europe, announced a challenge. If you can break one ciphered message in the next year, they'll send you on a vacation to the Matterhorn, give you a nice dinner w/ the creators of IDEA, and be really impressed. :) Anyway, I'll be putting more information up on our web pages about IDEA. If anyone wants info on my Etch-A-Sketch keychain, feel free to send me some mail. If you want info on anything else, you can send email for that too. Take care all. 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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No Subject
by owner-cypherpunks＠toad.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

January 15th Fortune (don't normally read it, but I picked up a free copy) has a lengthy and evidently well-researched article bylined Richard Behar on the efforts of BFI, a large regional trash hauler and recycler, to break into the (by most accounts) Mafia-controlled garbage collection industry in New York City. Cypherpunk relevance: BFI is cooperating closely with the DA in helping to prosecute its allegedly mob-affiliated competitors, which raises a lot of very interesting questions, for which I have yet to formulate any answers. Also a sidenote about how NYC's disclosure laws actually aid organized crime by helping the various bosses track who owns what territory. Electronic surveillance. Money laundering. Steganography (sending messages by way of the disembodied head of a dog). Open access to information and free-market capitalism versus violent bozos, with and without uniforms. Pen trumps sword. Rich says check it out. -- Rich Graves Fucking Statist

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The Collapse of Ideas in a Pop Culture
by tcmay＠got.net 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Someone sent me a note asking about my recent comment that I no longer read "Wired." I replied to him by citing the trendy, busy, information-overloaded, and personality-oriented nature of "Wired"...and its dozen or so direct competitors, mostly GenX rags, plus the several dozen or so tangentially similar magazines that fill shelf after shelf in the Barnes and Noble and Supercrown sorts of superstores. Here's what I said to him: --- And "Wired" is frustratingly repetitive, trendy, over-busy with graphics, sidebars, etc. And the mine of good topics is being mined by several dozen other mags, such as Access, RayGun, Mondo, Details, etc. etc. Many of these are aimed at GenXers, with an explicit focus on personalities rather than ideas. (How many of these mags have had Traci Lords on the cover, for example?) I grew up with "Scientific American" as my standard: long, detailed articles. (And even their articles are getting shorter and more pop-oriented.) --- The Cypherpunks relevance, I think, is that many of the ideas we espouse just cannot easily be covered in a "personality" piece, or in a "freak of the week" (to paraphrase Dave Mandl) photo shoot. Journalists who want "some quick shots" of "Cypherpunks talking about privacy" do a disservice to the deeper ideas. To be fair to journalism, I think several journalists--whose names I have mentioned before, but won't here--do a fine job of in-depth reporting. They are the Jules Bergmanns of our modern age. (If you don't know who Jules Bergmann was, you're a GenXer and can't be held responsible for your ignorance :-}.) There is some hope. When people ask questions about what terms mean, about where to find more information, we don't refer them to articles in "Access" about how former porn queen is really big on PGP, or squibs in "Interview" about how Seattle's java houses are going apeshit over Java....we refer them to "Applied Cryptography," to "The Puzzle Palace," and even to articles on digital cash in "Scientific American." I wander through the cavernous bookstores that are so common these days, with miles of aisles, and wonder how I ever got educated in an era when a "big" bookstore was a Brentano's that would now fit in just the _magazine_ section of a Borders or Bookstar or Barnes and Noble. (Hmmmmh, attack of the killer Bs?). The answer is that in-depth study of ideas hasn't changed much. The Tofflerian idea of "overchoice" is solvable by simply ignoring the ephemeral cruft that threatens to engulf us. --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: Hassles taking App. Crypt. to Taiwan?
by p.ruhnau＠jinxed.dinoco.de 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

On 21 Jan 96, TCMAY(a)GOT.NET wrote: > On the Taiwan side, though, they may wonder why you brought an > expensive > U.S.-printed copy when you get the special rice-paper edition of "Applied > Cryptography, 2nd Ed." for the equivalent of $2.25 in Taipei's book stalls. Can anybody tell me the addresses of taiwanese mail-order bookstores, please? MfG, Peter -- #define putc(c,fp) (--(fp)->_pc<0 ? (*(fp)->_pt)(c,fp) : (*(fp)->_cp++=c))

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DigiCash Ecash - 2 security topics
by Bryce 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- An entity calling itself "Marcel van der Peijl" <bigmac(a)digicash.com> is alleged to have written: > > (I wrote:) > > E.g. has there been a DigiCash response to Ian Goldberg's > > publication of a denial-of-service attack which operates by > > spending a coin with the same serial number as your victim's > > coin? > After discussing things with Ian we came up with several solutions. > One is encrypting more messages (which we will do in a next revision > of the protocol), the other is enabling ecash to work over ssl > servers. You may not see the answer directly in the list, but you > will see it in the next protocol revision. What kind of performance hit does this new encryption entail? (No additional performance hit if SSL does it, I know.) Are you considering having different protocols for SSL-protected transactions versus unprotected ones? Let me repeat something I said a couple of weeks ago: I suspect that the weakest point in DigiCash security is on the end-user's own harddrive. A malicious cracker could write a Trojan horse or even a virus which would steal the user's coins and send them to himself. Hm. Now that I think about it, if the user has a back-up copy of those coins then he can reveal their blinding factors to the bank after the theft, thus catching the thief! So the thief program would have to deposit those coins with the bank, make a new withdrawal (ouch!) and then steal the new coins. I'm not sure that anything can be done by DigiCash or by Ecash- issuing banks to prevent this, but I thought I'd mention it. (Hm. The program also has to steal the user's password in order to make the withdrawal.. This is getting to be a pretty smart program!) Regards, Bryce "Toys, Tools and Technologies" the Niche New Signal Consulting -- C++, Java, HTML, Ecash Bryce PGP sig follows -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.2 Comment: Auto-signed under Unix with 'BAP' Easy-PGP v1.01 iQCVAwUBMQPWs/WZSllhfG25AQHv2gQAuJsZqQh+IF0vk8C2OY9zsvMlbqN0+GxN LinbZhWRDlqcRJ69dtzYDhbuvDphHuQYdNUJka5r3Bzplj5tim3sJ+wvEF2eiXTO vUSXrJ8DvnZPji+qEuv1Zs5D8gXdFs2ALsUbsDxQxVrVlcTbDKnz2EQel0apzqld VTV8CFvHaRY= =i3hX -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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Netscape + Verifone
by Perry E. Metzger 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

My pager delivers me selected miniaturized Reuters news stories. I just got one that reads: REDWOOD CITY, CA - Netscape Communications Corp. and Verifone Inc. will devise a system to make electronic payments on the internet more secure. Anyone know anything about this? I'm away from my normal sources of such things (like Bloomberg terminals)... .pm

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