December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

Re: [FACTS] Germany, or "Oh no not again"
by Bill Stewart 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

A message claiming to be from > SANDY SANDFORT allegedly wrote: >> Isn't there something in U.S. Code about crossing state lines >> for immoral purposes? >No relevance here. Originally enacted to combat the "white >slavery" trade, it was probably used more to prosecute unmarried >lovers for sexual activity outside of marriage. I don't even >know if it's still on the books, but as I said, no relevance in >the current debate. There's a lot of US law about transporting various materials across state lines or using interstate carrier services or in ways that _might_ affect interstate commerce. Politically incorrect language or imagery (obscenity for adults; indecency for children), politically incorrect vegetable products, politically correct but economically incorrect vegetable and animal products, geographically incorrect humans, mathematically correct but politically incorrect image-manipulation bitstreams all are affected. While the German censorship is evil, immoral, and impractical, I have to agree with Dr. Vulis that many American laws are similarly wrong, and the Germans are at least trying, in their inadequate and immoral way, to fight genuine evils that are far worse than the stuff the US government is attempting to censor. BTW, today's "Recorder" (Bay Area legal newspaper) reports that the US 6th Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the Thomases' conviction. 96 C.D.O.S 609. ABTW, they didn't need those laws to fight "white slavery"; kidnapping and rape were already illegal, but any opportunity to make a law.... #-- # Thanks; Bill # Bill Stewart, stewarts(a)ix.netcom.com, Pager/Voicemail 1-408-787-1281 # http://www.idiom.com/~wcs

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[NOISY] Your own Zundelsite in five minutes or less
by Declan B. McCullagh 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Here's how to open your own Zundelsite mirror archive in five minutes or less. To open your own partial Zundelsite (without the French text or audio files), first download the 1.3 MB compressed zundelfile from one of the following URLs: ftp://ftp.cs.cmu.edu/afs/cs/user/declan/ftp/zundelsite.tar.gz http://joc.mit.edu/mirror/zundelsite.tar.gz http://web.mit.edu/afs/athena/contrib/bitbucket2/zundel/zundelsite.tar.gz Compare against this checksum, that I've also placed in: [ftp://ftp.cs.cmu.edu/afs/cs/user/declan/ftp/zundelsite.sum.txt] MD5 (zundelsite.tar.gz) = 356cdf078f2a155af73a76663e25fe1a Then decompress the zundelfile, untar it, and register your URL with the Zundelsite Registry at: declan+zundel(a)andrew.cmu.edu. I'll add your site to my list of mirrors at: http://www.cs.cmu.edu/afs/cs/user/declan/www/Not_By_Me_Not_My_Views/censors… .html As of this afternoon, there are Zundelsite mirrors operating at MIT, Stanford University, Carnegie Mellon University, the University of Texas, and the University of Pennsylvania. -Declan

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Authentication of crypto clients
by Raph Levien 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

This post contains (somewhat) technical discussion of (what I believe is) an important issue in integrating crypto with applications that do not contain their own cryptographic implementation. If that doesn't interest you, hit 'n' to resume your regularly scheduled flamefest. The issue is: how does the crypto provider authenticate the client? For example, if the crypto provider can accpet connections from any application in the user's process space, then any bogus application can easily start decrypting and signing as it likes. In this model, a precondition for security is that no bogus programs can be allowed to run. An alternative, slightly more complex model is that the client must somehow authenticate itself to the crypto provider. One simple way of doing this is to require the client request a password from the user, which is then forwarded to the crypto provider. The crypto provider will only provide service on connections which have been authenticated in this way. This model gives security even in the face of some bogus applications. Of course, as Nathaniel quietly reminded us this morning, any bogus application which can intercept keystrokes can subvert any such client authentication. Barry Jaspan (in his analysis of a security flaw in SSH 1.2.0) reminds us that access to the image of the process is also sufficient to break security. Perhaps the class of bogus programs which have enough capabilities to connect to the crypto provider, but not enough to intercept keystrokes or examine RAM is null, meaning that the two models have equivalent security. Actually, the simpler model has some security advantages, because the client never has to deal with any very sensitive material, such as the password. I'm interested in this question right now because the current version of premail implements the simpler model (in fact, it simply stores all the secrets in a file in /tmp, with permissions set to 600). I want to know whether it's worth the trouble to design and implement an approach based on per-client authentication. This issue is also relevant to the discussion of Microsoft's CAPI, which (as far as I can tell) allows only the simpler model. I'm not saying it's bad, but I do feel that the implications should be discussed. Thus, I have forwarded a copy of this post to cryptapi(a)microsoft.com in case they have any comments. If there's been a discussion of this that I missed, then apologies for brining it up again and appreciation in advance for any pointers. Raph

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Two bits, Four Bits, ETC
by Brian D Williams 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

BEGIN IBM LOTUS'S GAK'ED MESSAGE-- -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Two Bits: frantz(a)netcom.com (Bill Frantz) >One other small advantage I can see to using Lotus's crippled >encryption. It disguises the fact that a message is actually >(double) encrypted with PGP. Attackers have to break the 40 bits >before they see the PGP encrypted data. A pecular kind of >steganography. (If you leave off the PGP header and trailer, it >may be hard to determine which 40 bits are the correct >key.) Excellent point Bill! Lets not forget that IBM owns Lotus Notes, be sure to include that in your bashing. They caved in on Lucifer after all. ;) Four Bits: On First Virtuals Sniffer program: Stick a VISA,MASTERCARD,DISCOVER, or AMERICAN EXPRESS sticker on the front of a SECURE_ID card Attack>null ( Security Dynamics is SDTI on NASDAQ ;) ) Six Bits: _TAKEDOWN_ by Tsutomu Shimomura confirms that Kevin Mitnick used PGP extensively, and encrypted his drives, expect the TLA's to use that in their arguments. (Head them off at the Pass!) A Dollar: For those who seem to have missed it. "Vladimir Z. Nuri" <vznuri(a)netcom.com> = Larry Detweiler Back to our regular Flamefest...... Brian -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.2 iQCVAwUBMQ5nd3sfmVh/uI7xAQFr7AQAjvjOZUEEJKdDmcVVWYFs/L20R3BIJYLC RhAOAyCh40GGiYzzvB8kHTGnu/iSE9cIp7AP2ifUHf1C9aL2TAQWuwxTROPMCwpX hSHN+UpJ5Au3YrNGZkMDPDVsGUM5EsWaaWJ2uczG330e3mZR6tBNU/BhfdS58RZy bLULdZno3nI= =kccs -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- END IBM LOTUS'S GAK'ED MESSAGE----

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Re: Lotus Notes
by frantz＠netcom.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 8:13 PM 1/30/96 -0500, Futplex wrote: >Bill Frantz writes: >> One other small advantage I can see to using Lotus's crippled encryption. >> It disguises the fact that a message is actually (double) encrypted with >> PGP. Attackers have to break the 40 bits before they see the PGP encrypted >> data. > >I don't understand. Are you saying that there's a special benefit to doing >superencryption (GAK encryption over non-GAK encryption) when the GAK layer >is Lotus Notes ? Tim May had it exactly right in his post entitled "Silver Linings and Monkey Wrenches" (thanks Tim). The only thing I can add is that forcing them to attack a 40 bit key is better than giving them the whole key thru some LEAF scheme ala Clipper. As long as you can cut and paste, PGP (at least the Mac version) is hard to lock out and minimally usable. Bill

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RE: No FV supporters?
by Pete Loshin 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Nathaniel seems to be defending his cause sufficiently well, and graciously answering the abuse. Some of the abusers are showing a fairly comprehensive lack of knowledge of the FV system. I would venture to say that FV has no more profit motivation than, say, Netscape--or how about Open Market? They who gleefully opened a "Here are the secure servers that haven't been hacked" page some time ago. That was pretty self- serving, wasn't it? Nor would I consider the FV brouhaha much more obvious than, say, the front page announcements about "NFS and RPC considered dangerous" that hit the big papers last year. The weaknesses of those protocols for internetworking have long been known to those working with TCP/IP. Now, clearly there are lots of opinions on FV's system, but if people like Sameer and Rich Salz (e.g., who have reputations as knowledgeable and aware) are going to trash FV it would mean a lot more to many readers if they could state more specifically what it is about FV that doesn't work (or that doesn't work as well as, say, SSL or CyberCash or Open Market's approaches). As for the Weld Pond/et al graphical clicking approaches, they may work and they may defend against some attacks, but I won't use it (too much clicking around, too likely to make mistakes) and neither will anyone without a GUI. My $0.02. -Pete Loshin pete(a)loshin.com Ted Anderson wrote: >I am rather shocked that after wading through hundreds of msgs of abuse >of Nathaniel and FV I haven't seen one message of support; but perhaps I >missed it. etc.

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Re: Denning's misleading statements
by James M. Cobb 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Jeff, On 01 28 96 you say: We [cypherpunks] are becoming the "Bad Guys" in a well orchestrated Psy Ops campaign propagated naively by the 4th Estate. A few days ago I bought Markoff and Shimomura's Takedown. I've read the first three chapters. In my opinion: (1) the book is an important part of that well orchestrated Psy Ops campaign (2) the book's designed from the word go to play that part. Cordially, Jim

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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: 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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