December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

Re: should we use same nym on multiple servers?
by Bruce Baugh 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 01:05 AM 2/20/96 -0800, tcmay(a)got.net (Timothy C. May) wrote: >You know, shalmaneser(a)alpha.c2.org sent me a message demanding that he be >given the name shalmaser(a)black.net on my system, for exactly this reason. >I told him to fuck off. >Now he's threatening to sue me. Do you folks think this is right? No fooling? Wow. That's astonishingly clueless on his part, I'd say. When I sign up with an Internet provider, I don't necessarily get the user name I want. When I joined Teleport, "bruce", "baugh", and "bbaugh" were all already taken. I presume by, in turn, someone with the first name of Bruce, someone with the last name of Baugh, and someone with a first initial of B and a last name of Baugh. (There are, oh, third or fourth cousins of mine in the area. These things happen.) When I transferred to Aracnet, "bruce" was free, so I grabbed it. If Bruce Boxleitner were to try to get an account there, that'd be his tough luck. Even more so with nyms, and even more more so with nyms that aren't real names. "Shalmaneser" is a name with antecedents, after all. If someone else beat the c2 guy to it at black.net, that's his tough luck. No provider, I think, is compelled to offer anyone the user name they might like to have, nor to hold one indefinitely on the off chance. Welcome to the real world, where more than one person can have the same idea. And, as you say... >about "claims" on nyms, it's pointless. Even if _some_ nyms are apparently >persistent across nymservers, all it takes is the possibility of this not >to be so for the fiction to collapse. The best way to prove that >"shalmaneser(a)alpha.c2.org" is really the same True Name (or in alliance >with) as "foobar(a)black.net" is to show that either can read the messages >encrypted to the other.) Right. It at least shows some level of cooperation, if not identity. And realistically, that's about as close as anyone is going to get. -- Bruce Baugh bruce(a)aracnet.com http://www.aracnet.com/~bruce

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breakable session keys in Kerberos v4
by Nelson Minar 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

I'm a bit suprised this hasn't turned up yet on Cypherpunks. A couple of forwarded messages: first, an announcement made Fri Feb 16 by Gene Spafford at COAST about an exploitable flaw they've found in Kerberos, and then a comment on the www-security list that it is due to a bad random number generator. Same old story! The message (lifted from the COAST web site) -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Personnel at the COAST Laboratory (Computer Operations, Audit, and Security Technology) at Purdue University have discovered a vulnerability in current versions of the Kerberos security system. Graduate students Steve Lodin and Bryn Dole, working with Professor Eugene Spafford, have discovered a method whereby someone without privileged access to most implementations of a Kerberos 4 server can nonetheless break secret session keys issued to users. This means that it is possible to gain unauthorized access to distributed services available to a user without knowing that user's password. This method has been demonstrated to work in under 1 minute, on average, using a typical workstation, and sometimes as quickly as 1/5 second. The Kerberos system was developed at MIT in the mid-1980s, and has been widely adopted for security in distributed systems worldwide. Kerberos is most often used on UNIX platforms by various vendors, and is often enhanced, sold and supported by 3rd-party vendors for use in academic, government, and commercial environments. The same researchers at COAST have also found a small, theoretical weakness in Kerberos version 5 that would allow similar access, given some additional information and considerable preliminary computation. Kerberos version 5 does not exhibit the same weakness as described above for Kerberos version 4. The researchers at COAST had intended to release the specific details of the problem to affected vendors and incident response teams during the week of February 19, prior to making a public announcement of their findings. However, as rumors have begun to circulate and several representatives of the news media have apparently received indication of the problem, we are releasing this preliminary announcement at this time. Government and industry sponsors of the COAST Laboratory were made aware of the preliminary details of these findings in January (full sponsors receive early notification of significant discoveries as a result of COAST research). Other affiliates of COAST as well as the world-wide network of FIRST computer incident response teams were made aware of the general nature of the findings during the week of February 5. The original plan at COAST was to release specific details only to FIRST (Forum of Incident Response and Security Teams) teams and to MIT prior to announcement by affected vendors of a fix for these weaknesses. The flaw in Kerberos version 4 is significant enough that disclosure of its details prior to a fix would allow someone with moderate programming skills to exploit it; there is currently no reason to believe that others know the details of the flaw and are exploiting it, so there is no immediate danger to the public that would warrant release of the details at this time. COAST personnel have been informed that MIT has already developed a fix for the flaw in version 4 Kerberos and is preparing it for release. Additionally, COAST researchers are cooperating with MIT personnel to identify what (if any) fixes are necessary for version 5 Kerberos. Users of either version of Kerberos should contact their vendors for details of any fixes that may be made available; vendors of products incorporating Kerberos should contact MIT directly for details of the problems and fixes. COAST is a research group of faculty and students dedicated to research into information security and computer crime investigation, and education in computer and network security. It is the largest such university-based group in the United States. Information on COAST may be found on the WWW at http://www.cs.purdue.edu/coast Information on FIRST teams may be found on the WWW at http://www.first.org Information on MIT's Kerberos may be found on the WWW at ftp://athena-dist.mit.edu/pub/kerberos/doc/KERBEROS.FAQ -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.2 Comment: Key @ ftp://ftp.cs.purdue.edu/pub/spaf/pers/pgpkey.asc iQCVAwUBMSZ42cpvK4P8DALVAQHg8QP/TRmqwP7vG32aaBjvbMof2iuVQ2bcWrg9 p55KN5wBfrBzxq5/NE+6lodkqq2w1ib8q/47uYT1S8iR+z2tnbvL64dxrtDEh4iY iEWjfpTMtQxLmZ1gA3Sxxn4A+6KwlXq5z4Lp2BROUXyeSR7HPAEeEQucRNWkzz8o IOMHuBAcBKo= =yWxe -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- (a comment I found in reply) ------- Start of forwarded message ------- From: jis(a)mit.edu (Jeffrey I. Schiller) Subject: Re: Kerberos Vulnerability Newsgroups: hks.lists.www-security Date: 19 Feb 1996 21:42:08 -0500 Organization: HKS, Inc. Path: hks.net!news-mail-gateway!owner-www-security Lines: 8 Sender: root(a)hks.net Message-ID: <ad4e9fc40602100421be(a)[18.162.1.1]> NNTP-Posting-Host: bb.hks.net There will be a fix distributed by MIT later this week. The problem is that the random number generator in V4 is worse then we thought! The fix is to retrofit the V5 generator (which is decent) into the V4 KDC. Note: Only the KDC needs to be updated, clients and servers are unaffected. -Jeff ------- End of forwarded message -------

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Returned mail: Host unknown (Name server: ncr-sd.sdca.attgis.com.: host not found)
by Mail Delivery Subsystem 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

The original message was received at Tue, 20 Feb 1996 03:58:01 -0500 (EST) from ncrgw1@localhost ----- The following addresses have delivery notifications ----- sandiegoca.ncr.com!chris.claborne (unrecoverable error) ----- Transcript of session follows ----- 550 sandiegoca.ncr.com!chris.claborne... Host unknown (Name server: ncr-sd.sdca.attgis.com.: host not found) ----- Message header follows ----- Return-Path: cypherpunks(a)toad.com Received: from ncrgw1.UUCP (ncrgw1@localhost) by ncrhub5.attgis.com (8.7.3/8.7.3) with UUCP id DAA01682 for sandiegoca.ncr.com!chris.claborne; Tue, 20 Feb 1996 03:58:01 -0500 (EST) Received: by ncrgw1.ATTGIS.COM; 20 Feb 96 03:57:37 EST Received: from toad.com by relay3.UU.NET with SMTP id QQadsc06898; Tue, 20 Feb 1996 03:36:36 -0500 (EST) Received: by toad.com id AA24807; Tue, 20 Feb 96 00:12:26 PST Received: from cs.umass.edu (freya.cs.umass.edu) by toad.com id AA24801; Tue, 20 Feb 96 00:12:23 PST Received: from thor.cs.umass.edu by cs.umass.edu (5.65/Ultrix3.0-C) id AA21656; Tue, 20 Feb 1996 03:12:18 -0500 Received: (from lmccarth@localhost) by thor.cs.umass.edu (8.6.12/8.6.9) id DAA05762; Tue, 20 Feb 1996 03:12:18 -0500 From: lmccarth(a)cs.umass.edu Message-Id: <199602200812.DAA05762(a)thor.cs.umass.edu> Subject: Re: Internet Privacy Guaranteed ad (POTP Jr.) To: cypherpunks(a)toad.com (Cypherpunks Mailing List) Date: Tue, 20 Feb 1996 03:12:17 -0500 (EST) Cc: ipgsales(a)cyberstation.net (IPG Sales) Reply-To: cypherpunks(a)toad.com (Cypherpunks Mailing List) In-Reply-To: <Pine.BSD/.3.91.960219132531.301A-100000(a)citrine.cyberstation.net> from "IPG Sales" at Feb 19, 96 02:51:58 pm X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL25] Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: owner-cypherpunks(a)toad.com Precedence: bulk ----- Message body suppressed -----

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Returned mail: User unknown
by Mailer-Daemon＠wipinfo.soft.net 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

----- Transcript of session follows ----- 550 rajr... User unknown ----- Unsent message follows ----- Return-Path: <cypherpunks(a)toad.com> Received: by s.wipinfo.soft.net (4.1/SMI-4.1) id AA07898; Tue, 20 Feb 96 15:03:05 IST Received: from toad.com by relay3.UU.NET with SMTP id QQadse09618; Tue, 20 Feb 1996 04:11:46 -0500 (EST) Received: by toad.com id AA25259; Tue, 20 Feb 96 00:51:53 PST Received: from cs.umass.edu (freya.cs.umass.edu) by toad.com id AA25253; Tue, 20 Feb 96 00:51:48 PST Received: from thor.cs.umass.edu by cs.umass.edu (5.65/Ultrix3.0-C) id AA22177; Tue, 20 Feb 1996 03:51:45 -0500 Received: (from lmccarth@localhost) by thor.cs.umass.edu (8.6.12/8.6.9) id DAA02057; Tue, 20 Feb 1996 03:51:44 -0500 From: lmccarth(a)cs.umass.edu Message-Id: <199602200851.DAA02057(a)thor.cs.umass.edu> Subject: Re: Internet Privacy Guaranteed ad (POTP Jr.) To: cypherpunks(a)toad.com (Cypherpunks Mailing List) Date: Tue, 20 Feb 1996 03:51:44 -0500 (EST) Cc: ipgsales(a)cyberstation.net (IPG Sales) Reply-To: cypherpunks(a)toad.com (Cypherpunks Mailing List) In-Reply-To: <Pine.BSD/.3.91.960219132531.301A-100000(a)citrine.cyberstation.net> from "IPG Sales" at Feb 19, 96 02:51:58 pm X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL25] Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Length: 3356 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: owner-cypherpunks(a)toad.com Precedence: bulk I wrote: # Gee, why are we all so worried about key management ? It's just a load and # go installation at each of the user sites ! ;) ("That was sarcasm, son") IPG Sales writes: > That is precisely why PCX Nvelopes is such an extraordinary system. > That is the beauty of PCX Nvelopes, it lifts that burden from the > user, eliminates it entirely. You may have worried about key > management, but with our system, you will not have to do so in the > future. The system itself, manages all the OTPs, you do not have to do > anything but use the system. Key management is the problem with all existing > systems, but it is no problem at all with the PCX Nvelopes system, What protects each user's one time pads ("PCX Nvelopes", or whatever) ? Are they protected by an eight-character Unix account password ? (This would be harder for implementations on traditionally single-user platforms like the Macintosh and most of the Microsoft OSes, presumably.) Are they protected by a policy that says all users must lock away their IPG disks or CDs when not in use ? Also, how are they protected from the people who generate the one-time pads at IPG (and their friends and families) ? > as you > would see if you looked at the system, instead, of talking about something > when you have no idea at all of what it is about. As I said earlier, I read all your material and still had almost no idea at all about what it is. If you don't tell people about the system, it's extremely hard for them to do more than speculate. > The first set of keys > must be sent by a secure source, US mail, FED EX, or whatever, but > thereafter, all updates can be accomodated over Internet. Keys ? Wait a minute, #2 of the "Dozen Reasons why PCX Nvelopes is absolutely the finest Communication Security and Privacy system available", according to http://www.netprivacy.com/ipg/dozbest.html, is: "2. No Messy, Intrusive Passwords/Encryption Keys to get in your way and worry about, forget about those troublemakers" [...] > all hardware generation of OTP's are irregular, otherwise they are not > random. I'm not sure what you mean by "irregular" in this context. > Thus at times, a hardware source, such as ADC LOB system, can generate > nonrandom data, unless this is checked, it can destroyed the integrity of > your system. This doesn't quite jibe with my understanding of the typical use of a hardware RNG. From what I have read, one starts with an unpredictable bit source with some known bias, so that each original bit has somewhat less than one bit of real entropy. The bias is "corrected" by combining the original bits to get fewer bits with enough real entropy, and then repeating the process enough to get enough final bits of real entropy. Could you explain what the acronyms "ADC" and "LOB" mean here ? I just tried a web search for the two together, and all I got was a page of UFO acronyms, and some astronomical acronyms (LOB = Lick Observatory Bulletin). Schneier discusses hardware RNG at length in Applied Cryptography, but he doesn't mention either acronym. I might guess that LOB = Low Order Bits. -Lewis "You're always disappointed, nothing seems to keep you high -- drive your bargains, push your papers, win your medals, fuck your strangers; don't it leave you on the empty side ?" (Joni Mitchell, 1972)

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Returned mail: User unknown
by Mailer-Daemon＠wipinfo.soft.net 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

----- Transcript of session follows ----- 550 rajr... User unknown ----- Unsent message follows ----- Return-Path: <cypherpunks(a)toad.com> Received: by s.wipinfo.soft.net (4.1/SMI-4.1) id AA09632; Tue, 20 Feb 96 15:42:56 IST Received: from toad.com by relay3.UU.NET with SMTP id QQadsh11578; Tue, 20 Feb 1996 04:51:09 -0500 (EST) Received: by toad.com id AA25879; Tue, 20 Feb 96 01:43:53 PST Received: from cs.umass.edu (freya.cs.umass.edu) by toad.com id AA25873; Tue, 20 Feb 96 01:43:48 PST Received: from thor.cs.umass.edu by cs.umass.edu (5.65/Ultrix3.0-C) id AA22591; Tue, 20 Feb 1996 04:43:46 -0500 Received: (from lmccarth@localhost) by thor.cs.umass.edu (8.6.12/8.6.9) id EAA06099 for cypherpunks(a)toad.com; Tue, 20 Feb 1996 04:43:46 -0500 From: lmccarth(a)cs.umass.edu Message-Id: <199602200943.EAA06099(a)thor.cs.umass.edu> Subject: Re: Remailers not heard from; info? To: cypherpunks(a)toad.com (Cypherpunks Mailing List) Date: Tue, 20 Feb 1996 04:43:45 -0500 (EST) Reply-To: cypherpunks(a)toad.com (Cypherpunks Mailing List) In-Reply-To: <2.2.32.19960219191757.006d763c(a)mail.aracnet.com> from "Bruce Baugh" at Feb 19, 96 11:17:57 am X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL25] Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Length: 814 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: owner-cypherpunks(a)toad.com Precedence: bulk Bruce Baugh writes: > And as long as I'm asking questions :-), I see that some remailers > (hfinney(a)shell.portal.com, hal(a)alumni.caltech.edu, homer(a)rahul.net) preserve > subject lines while others do not. Is this a readily settable option? If so, > I'd like to commend it to other remailer operators. If not, I'd be > interested in getting some sense of how difficult a hack it is. (Raph has authoritatively covered the space of deployed options already.) Writing code to keep or drop particular headers is trivial. Getting everyone who runs a remailer to deploy that code tends to be much harder. -Lewis "You're always disappointed, nothing seems to keep you high -- drive your bargains, push your papers, win your medals, fuck your strangers; don't it leave you on the empty side ?" (Joni Mitchell, 1972)

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Re: True random numbers
by daw＠dawn9.CS.Berkeley.EDU 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- In article <9602191812.AA07312(a)toad.com>, <eli+(a)GS160.SP.CS.CMU.EDU> wrote: > Persi Diaconis gave a talk here last week on pseudorandom generation, > during which he was asked by people didn't use hardware RNGs. He said > that he wasn't aware of any that passed the standard battery of > statistical tests. Well, he's just being silly then. Throw the true random numbers into a hash function, and voila! they pass all the standard battery of tests. The hard part, IMHO, is figuring out how much true entropy you've got. (Estimate, but be very conservative! Mistakes are costly.) - --- [This message has been signed by an auto-signing service. A valid signature means only that it has been received at the address corresponding to the signature and forwarded.] -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.2 Comment: Gratis auto-signing service iQBFAwUBMSmfoioZzwIn1bdtAQHn3wF9E/jnTYZAgUM/Xkd9XCn2kfI1kJw6I1j8 PUkrLrMoy8hL5HVLHOxemVgQAyQQqnSD =OheY -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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Re: CDA outside US (Including Indian Reservations)
by Bill Stewart 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 06:21 PM 2/18/96 -0700, Sean Morgan wrote: >This is not an idle threat. When Pierre Trudeau was elected prime minister >of Canada (1969?) there was some scrambling in the US to get him off the >_persona non grata_ list. Seems that in his student days he had been busted >for trying to kayak from Florida to Cuba. Canadian author Farley Mowatt >(sp?) was turned back at the border for imagined pinko associations (best >guess was that it was because he had traveled to the USSR to research _Sibir_). Farley Mowat (author of such pinko-Canadian books as "Never Cry Wolf") had also "violently attacked" the US Air Force. He was annoyed at them for flying nuclear bombers and such on training runs over Canada, and shot at them with a small rifle (I think it was a .22 or something equally dangerous to airplanes at 35000 feet...) They didn't like it. #-- # Thanks; Bill # Bill Stewart, stewarts(a)ix.netcom.com / billstewart(a)attmail.com +1-415-442-2215 # http://www.idiom.com/~wcs Pager +1-408-787-1281 ! Frank Zappa for President !

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Re: ITAR Amended to Allow Personal Use Exemptions
by Bill Stewart 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 07:28 PM 2/16/96 -0500, Adam Shostack <adam(a)homeport.org> wrote: >Since we don't need a license, what records are we supposed to keep? >| The product must >| not be intended for copying, demonstration, marketing, sale, re-export, >| or transfer of ownership or control. It must remain in the possession >| of the exporting person, which includes being locked in a hotel room or safe. So does wearing the RSA T-shirt count as "demonstration"? Or would you have to show people how the perl code works? Or are you still not allowed to let foreigners see it, even though you're allowed to wear it? I suppose wearing the T-shirt _to_ a demonstration would be illegal? :-) #-- # Thanks; Bill # Bill Stewart, stewarts(a)ix.netcom.com / billstewart(a)attmail.com +1-415-442-2215 # http://www.idiom.com/~wcs Pager +1-408-787-1281 ! Frank Zappa for President !

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Re: PGP
by Bill Stewart 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 10:30 PM 2/15/96 EST, Derek Atkins <warlord(a)ATHENA.MIT.EDU> wrote: >> Could you settle a dispute? Is it, or Is it not, legal to take >> PGP source code and the like out of the country if it is written on >> paper? > >This is a leading question. If you just print it out, it might not be >legal to export. If it is printed in a book (e.g., the PGP Sourcecode >Book, MIT Press, 1995) then it should be legal to take it out of the >country. IANAL, YMMV. A more precise answer is "If you print it out, and ask them for permission, they may or may not grant it. If you print it out, don't ask for permission, and let them know you're exporting it, they may or may not decide to prosecute you, and you may or may not have the resources to win if they do." Dan Bernstein's reading of the law is that you can't even teach cryptomathics to foreigners in the US, and his court case on the matter is beginning. Other people read the law to say that public domain material is not "technical documentation" on defense items, and thus exempt. Putting a copy of the MIT book in some public libraries would be nice... #-- # Thanks; Bill # Bill Stewart, stewarts(a)ix.netcom.com / billstewart(a)attmail.com +1-415-442-2215 # http://www.idiom.com/~wcs Pager +1-408-787-1281 ! Frank Zappa for President !

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Re: Internet Privacy Guaranteed ad (POTP Jr.)
by geeman＠best.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 06:10 PM 2/20/96 -0600, you wrote: >> ** fairly remarkable coincidences. Or is it that great minds >> think alike? > >heh, actually the Elementrix POTP sounds like plaintext-driven autokey >cipher and probably wouldn't be offensive if they weren't touting it as a >'OTP'... > Yes, that's true, but they also allude to "a large number of randomly spinning dice" [rotors?] of which some are selected by contents [perhaps] the autokey stream. This from a discussion held with the POTP people. The allusion to the numerous 'dice' is what suggested to me a similarity with the new [unknown but perfect, of course] system. The autokey of POTP was supposedly only part of the scheme....

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