December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

Psion organisers
by Dave Roberts 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

I was wondering about a couple of things regarding the Psion Series 3a personal organisers. (According to the manual, you have them in the USA as well! :) Firstly, anyone know what kind of encryption is done on documents and spreadsheets held on it's internal disk? It only allows a 10 character password, and claims to encrypt the whole file. Secondly, I presume that as the encryption software is apparently embedded into the system (ie cannot be extracted), I won't get arrested when I wander through US customs next time. TIA - Dave. Dave Roberts | "Surfing the Internet" is a sad term for sad people. Unix Systems Admin | Get a board, find a beach, surf some REAL waves and SAA Consultants Ltd | get a *real* life. Plymouth, U.K. | -=[For PGP Key, send mail with subject of "get pgp"]=-

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Re: Anonymity -> Untraceability -> High Latency?
by tcmay＠got.net 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 9:19 AM 2/2/96, Nelson Minar wrote: >I've been trying out various mechanisms for anonymity: remailer >chains, HTTP proxies. There's one problem that makes them inconvenient >to use regularly: latency. "Latency" is not necessary for mix security. What is important is the number of messages mixed together in the mix. If it is desired that N = 10 and only 10 messages are entering the mix per hour, then, on average, the mix must wait an hour. E.g., "latency = one hour." If however, 100 messages are entering the mix per hour, then "latency = 6 minutes." >A good Type I remailer chain takes at least an hour to deliver email, >instead of the 15 seconds I'm used to. Mixmaster-style takes even >longer; the delay is important to the security of the system. None of these points is necessarily true. --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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RC2 technical questions
by baldwin 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

In a shameless attempt to move the discussion of RC2 into a more technical arena, here are some interesting questions to explore about RC2. --Bob Key expansion - How can you tell whether the permutation is based on some sequence of digits from PI? - What are the diffusion and avalanche properties of this permutation? - What are the linear characteristics of this permutation? - What are the properties of the compression function that maps 16 bits (bytes X and Y) to 8 bits (byte Z) via Z = P[X + Y]? - How does the length of the key influence the mixing of bits during each pass of the expansion algorithm? - Is this a non-linear feedback shift register over the field GF(256)? - If the first pass of expansion is viewed as a hash function that produces 40 or 128 bits out, what are its properties? Round Functions - What are the diffusion and avalanche properties of the two round functions? - What are the linear approximations and how good are they? - What characteristics can be preserved by the round function that performs rotations? - With what probability? - Does the amount of rotation influence the security? - What characteristics can be preserved by the round function that performs the data dependent selection of the expanded key? - With what probability? - Are there any "weak" keys? - Will the expansion algorithm produce them?

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Re: Voice On the Net Digest V2 #44
by tedwards＠access.digex.net 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

> From: "Shane D. Mattaway" <shane(a)netspeak.com> > Date: Thu, 1 Feb 1996 07:12:32 -0500 > Subject: [VON]: WebPhone Beta 6 Release > AUDIO ENCRYPTION > All audio transmissions are encrypted to provide secure conversations > without any performance overhead. Encryption is accomplished using a > proprietary algorithm. If the encryption is secure, there is no need to have "security through obscurity." I rather doubt that the makers of WebPhone have invented a proprietary encryption method that actually provides a high level of security. Most truly secure encryption methods (DES, RSA, IDEA) are presented for peer review for years before the academic and cryptographic communities deem them to be reasonably secure. It is easy to claim you have a secure encryption algorithm - but most such algorithms turn out later to have serious security holes. Only some manage to hold up to their security claims under close academic analysis. PGPfone's encryption methods are available for public inspection, and are generally accepted by the cryptographic community to be secure. -Thomas Edwards

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Re: Declan appearing on "Europe's Most Wanted"
by Duncan Frissell 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 01:26 AM 2/1/96 -0800, Timothy C. May wrote: >The situation with Declan, Sameer, Duncan, and others, is even less clear. >Things are moving much faster now that the Net is the means of >distribution. I was of course half-joking about Declan visiting Europe, but >surely France could decide to throw the book at him, and any EU country he >entered (such as Ireland, judging from his name) could hold him at their >entry point and ship him off to France to "set an example." The "modal time served" in Europe for cypherpunks activities is/will be so low as to be indistinguishable from zero. If only that was my greatest legal risk. Continental legal systems believe in prior restraint so they make a lot of noise but they are pretty weak in the punishment department. DCF

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FEBRUARY MEETING
by Sandy Sandfort 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ SANDY SANDFORT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . C'punks, The February Bay Area Cypherpunks meeting will start at noon in downtown San Francisco. The address and directions are: The meeting will be on the fourth floor of 388 Market St. The building is bounded by Market, Pine and Front (Front is the north-of-Market extension of Fremont St.) There are numerous parking garages in the area. You will have to sign in at the security desk in the lobby. You need to indicate that you are going to "Simple Access" on the 4th floor. After you get off the elevator there will be signs directing you to the conference room. 388 is above the Embarcadero BART and Muni Metro station. Other public transit links exist from the Transbay Terminal and the Caltrain Depot. If you have any questions about how to get to the meeting, let me know. If you are driving: >From the Peninsula: 1. Take 101 north to 80. 2. Take 80 east to the 4th Street exit. 3. Take Bryant east (north-east, actually) to Fremont. 4. Turn left on Fremont and drive to Market. 5. You are there, but now you need to find a place to park. 6. (You should have taken public transit!) >From the East Bay: 1. Take 80 west to the Fremont exit. Follow directions 4 thru 6, above. S a n d y P.S. About 50 people have already RSVPed my party invitation. If you have not told me if you will attending my party, please do so. I need to know how much stuff to get. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

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Re: Active processes monitoring?
by jf_avon＠citenet.net 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

on feb 2 96, sunder(a)dorsai.org replied to me: >On Thu, 1 Feb 1996, Jean-Francois Avon wrote: > >> Hi! >> >> I'm running on a first generation 486 ISA 4meg ram Win 3.11 >> I use realdeal /commercial and wipeswap.exe in an *.bat that launch Win3.11 >> How can I detect if another process is running on my system? >> I use MEM /c in a dos window. But is that sufficient? >> Can a hidden process detect MEM loading and hide itself somehow? >Mem /C doesn't do squat under 95... don't know about 3.11.... since each >DOS box runs in its own space, MEM /C cannot see what processes are >running in Windoze. AFAIK, when I do mem /c in a dos windows, under W3.11wg, it seems to report all processes that I expect that would be running in the machine. It reports win something processes, it reports realdeal, cd-rom drivers and everything (I think...) Can anybody Wizzard-type can reply on this one? Or RTFM us with the proper references... Thanks and Regards JFA

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Re: Espionage-enabled Greed
by Erik E. Fair 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

This scenario has one problem: the providers have determined that large public peering points like the CIX, NAPs, MAEs, and FIXs do not scale well, and that for the continued health and growth of the Internet, there are going to have to be more small, private interconnects between providers. Put another way: if the equipment you're working with has certain limits (let's say 100Mb/s FDDI or 45Mb/s T3/DS3 interfaces), it's better to have more interconnects with fewer peers at each interconnect point when your traffic potentially or actually will exceed those interface limits in aggregate. This is being driven by the incredible growth of the Internet, and by the fact that the customers can (and do) buy the same size pipes into the providers that the providers themselves use for their backbones - i.e. any such customer can potentially fill your backbone around the section of your backbone where he connects to you. Ooops. If you want to have fewer, large interconnects, which, incidentally, you can monitor all the traffic passing through, you've gotta have monstrous point-to-point bit pipes and/or LANs, and the Router/Switch From Hell to make the traffic move. There are people trying to build such things - it's called Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM), but it doesn't really work in practice yet at high enough speeds - best you can get at the moment is OC3 (155Mb/s), which is only a trifle faster than FDDI, and the stuff is more expensive than conventional LAN/WAN technology, so it's only being used in small areas to prove the technology (with the hope that it really does scale as promised, and gets cheaper). There are working examples of a fast LAN switch in use at the public peering points: the DEC GIGAswitch (3.2Gb/s aggregate - 16 100Mb/s FDDI ports). Of course, you also have to build a pretty fast computer to suck down all this traffic and analyze it, too. And we all have the ultimate laugh on would-be eavesdroppers: IP security (read: end-to-end encryption of the data payload of IP packets on a per peer basis), drafts for which are in implementation phase as of the Stockholm IETF meeting (July 1995). This leaves 'em with just traffic analysis to use on us. Erik Fair

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Re: Your mail
by Alan 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

>re: Virus site (http://www.xcitement.com/virus/) reports error 404 - no >such file... To make matters worse, the code on the site was poorly written so that web wacker choked when I tried to download the site. I guess the Grays captured the site.

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Re: CDA as a tool (was: Re: Helping the Crypto-Clueless)
by Bill.Humphries＠msn.fullfeed.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

banjo, lord of the c monkeys (is that a 1,000 monkeys trying for RSA code, 12 monkeys trying for a screenplay to a Terry Gilliam film?) wrote: >I agree: and in addition to that [stuff deleted above], I'd like to say >that >contrary to the beliefs of some people on this list, I don't think >the CDA is >representative of a legislative body's spiteful action against general >free speech and information; it's far to simple a motivation for >computer-illiterate, re-election minded professional politicians. The legislators may not have known or understood what they voted for, however, the fact of the matter remains is there were a host of groups (primarily the Christian Coalition) who know what the Internet can do to prevent them from dominating public discourse and dictating policy to the GOP. They used the congress and a press-release driven news media to get their way. bill.humphries(a)msn.fullfeed.com (not affiliated with the Microsoft Network) @$#! Henry Hyde, #!*% James Exon, !@$! Ralph Reed

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