December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

Re: Crypto CD UpDate
by JR＠ns.cnb.uam.es 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

>If pieces of the source/executable are digitally signed, you have a basis >for some degree of trust. (My pgp came with a detached signature. A bit >self-referental, but at least a start.) > >Regards - Bill Agreed, but it imposes further restrictions: it's OK if you can put PGP digitally signed by prz, but not all packages will be available signed from their authours, especially compiled for various platforms. OTOH, most unknowledgeable people will trust almost anything (they are already doing so when downloading java applets). And it would do a great work to spread knowledge about cryptography. Which is a Good Thing. All in all, I think it is a good idea, but addressing the general public will require quite some work, and the 'connoisseurs' might either do as Tim (only use the net) or just make their own mass-store, removable, thingies. Stil I'd bet many people will be eager to get a mirror of the major sites on CD. jr

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So where's the Burns bill?
by jim bell 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

>(1) SENATOR BURNS ANNOUNCES BILL TO LIFT CRYPTO EXPORT CONTROLS >The battle to roll back the Clinton Administration's encryption policy >escalated on Thursday when Senator Conrad Burns (R-MT) announced that he >will introduce a new proposal to repeal restrictions on encryption exports >and to encourage the growth of electronic commerce. Senator Burns announced >the bill via a teleconference during a special session at the Computers, >Freedom, and Privacy Conference in Boston, MA. >The bill, titled the "Promoting Commerce On-Line in the Digital Age Act" >(PROCODE), joins two recent bills introduced earlier this month (S. 1587 >and HR 3011) designed to encourage the development of strong, easy-to-use >privacy and security products for the Internet. Maybe I'm just naturally suspicious of the government about such things, but I'm wondering where the text of this new Burns bill has gotten off to. It's been days since it was first described, and yet a recent trip to the CDT page still claims it's coming. Well, is there a bill or isn't there? As usual, my solution will cause some people to smile, while others will frown: We should educate these politicians that whenever they claim they have a bill to introduce, at the very least they should be required to release a secure hash of their CURRENT draft version of the bill, as it sits in the word processor. Later, when the finalized bill is complete, they will be required to release the intermediate edit (whose hash can be checked against that originally announced) to prove that they did, indeed, have a specific bill in mind. It would also allow all citizens to see how that bill changed (if at all) between the time they CLAIMED the bill existed, and the time it is actually released in finalized text version. (If we REALLY don't trust the politicians, we could insist that the text of that proposed bill be released into the hands of one of these supposedly-trustworthy escrow agents they seem to want US to use, which instructions to release it in, say, 2 weeks maximum come hell or high water. All these instructions, plus the hash, will be immediately released.) This requirement would drastically cut down on the kind of game-playing that may be going on regularly when a bill is claimed to be ready to introduce, but actually isn't. It would prevent the politicians from "running it up the flagpole and seeing if anyone salutes" without that being later revealed. They could still change their bills, but all of their changes will become documented, and thus potentially politically incriminating. Jim Bell jimbell(a)pacifier.com

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Re: [NOISE] Cable-TV-Piracy-Punks (fwd)
by Jim Choate 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Forwarded message: > > Presumedly the state of the EEPROM cannot be deduced by any > > external examination of the card, and any attempt to > > incrementally abrade the card down to the relevent circuit > > elements should completely obliterate the minute charge > > differences which represent the data. > > They aren't immune to the laws of physics. If it can be put together, > it can be taken apart. I can even surmise HOW it can be taken apart. You wouldn't even have to take it apart. Just subject it to analysis using SQUID's. Using this technology you would not even have to physicaly touch the card, let alone remove any parts of it.

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Re: Navajo Code-Talkers
by tcmay＠got.net 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 6:10 PM 3/31/96, Alan Horowitz wrote: >Young men are still being registered for the draft. In fact, in the past >several years, there's been a crackdown.... no draft registration, no >federal student loan. But what I said was there is no draft. There hasn't been one for around 20 years or so, since the "All Volunteer Army," roughly coinciding with the end of American involvement in Vietnam. --Tim May Boycott "Big Brother Inside" 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: [NOISE] Cable-TV-Piracy-Punks
by tcmay＠got.net 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 4:34 PM 3/31/96, jim bell wrote: >At 11:59 PM 3/30/96 -0800, Mike Duvos wrote: >>Perhaps our resident VLSI and Alpha Particle expert, Timothy C. >>May, could give us a guess as to whether Perry's "Nasty >>Mechanism" is more or less likely than Maxwell's "Daemon." I wrote a reply to this, about decoder cloning and fingerprinting, but my Mac froze up for some reason...must be a message. Maybe I'll rewrite it... Then I saw this comment, and my sense of irony was triggered: >I don't know what Tim May will tell you, but over 10 years ago a technology >was developed which is something like a scanning electron microscope, >however with very low beam energies and is designed to be able to scan a >chip and quantitatively measure the voltage at various/all points on the >chip. It can be thwarted by a thick coating on the chip, but most organic >coatings can be removed with a "plasma asher," a chamber designed to remove >photoresist coatings on chips. I wrote a paper on this, "Dynamic Fault Imaging," using voltage contrast combined with image processing and chip data bases to locate the origins of glitches and faults in microprocessors. However, voltage contrast is a lot older than 10 years, and was in use in the early 70s--my group just developed a kind of "time machine" for watching the propagation of defective states inside complex logic devices. Using such methods to look at the internal state of logic or memory devices is incredibly difficult, though a sufficiently determined analyst might discover some interesting things. (Check the archives for several articles I've written on tamper-resistant and tamper-responding hardware.) Hardware fingerprinting is an economic win over reverse-engineering analysis to the extent that it costs a huge amount more to get a particular key than the value of what's in the key. --Tim May Boycott "Big Brother Inside" 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: SNI_ffs
by jim bell 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 10:57 AM 3/31/96 -0500, John Young wrote: >---------- > The New York Times, March 31, 1996, p. 20. > > > First Internet Wiretap Leads to a Suspect > > [Excerpts of story not in the TWP] > > Stephen P. Heymann, a Federal prosecutor in Boston, said > investigators had worked with Harvard to determine a method > of tracking the suspect that would protect the privacy of > legitimate users. > > He said that the Harvard system had 16,500 accounts and > 13,000 users and that about 60,000 E-mail messages each day > moved in and out of the area where investigators were > looking for the intruder. > > Mr. Heymann said investigators had used a high-speed > computer Hey! They finally got those 386DX-40's working!

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Re: Netscape Navigator 3.0 beta
by Joseph M. Reagle Jr. 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Found an interesting article on Ecash in Industrial (Internatioal) Design. / What is Money / Karrie Jacobs ID March/April 96 _______________________ Regards, Those who would have nothing to do with thorns must never attempt to gather flowers. Joseph Reagle http://farnsworth.mit.edu/~reagle/home.html reagle(a)mit.edu 0C 69 D4 E8 F2 70 24 33 B4 5E 5E EC 35 E6 FB 88

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SQUID's
by Jim Choate 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Forwarded message: > > > You wouldn't even have to take it apart. Just subject it to > > analysis using SQUID's. Using this technology you would not > > even have to physicaly touch the card, let alone remove any > > parts of it. > > Excuse me, but April Fool's Day isn't until tomorrow. Besides, all > you have to do is run the card through a transporter, and then > dump the pattern buffer to a floppy. :) > > -- > Mike Duvos $ PGP 2.6 Public Key available $ > mpd(a)netcom.com $ via Finger. $ > Hi Mike, Apparently you are grossly unfamiliar with the characteristics and capabilities of SQUID's. To help you catch up... Conductus 969 West Maude Av. Sunnyvale, CA 94086 408-737-6700 408-737-6699 Fax If you happen to be in Austin, TX, Data Managemenet Associates 3636 Executive Center Dr., #216 Austin, TX 78731 512-338-4701 The product under suggestion is called 'Mr. SQUID' and is a device intended for educational and introductory appllications. Its specifications are: SQUID Amplifier: Voltage Gain x 10,000 Frequency Responce 0 - 2.8 kHz Voltage Noise Floor < 5.0 nV/ sqrt. Hz @ 10 Hz SQUID Specifications: Critical Current (minimum) 5 uAmps @ 77K Magnetic Field Modulation (minimum) 1 uVolt @ 77K Int. & ext. Coil Mutual Inductance ~75 pHenries Int. & ext. Coil Resistance ~20 Ohms @ 77K Mr. SQUID User's Guide Contents: Typical experiments: Resistance v Temperature of the YBCO SQUID Flux-locked Loop Using a Flux-locked Loop as a sensitive non-contact voltmeter Microwave induced (Shapiro) steps @ 77K & h/e Inductive measurement of the Tc of an HTS film SQUID properties in pumped liquid nitrogen The following is taken without permission and verbatim from their pamphlet What's inside the probe? The heart of Mr. SQUId is a small integrated circuit containing a dc SQUID and 2 modulation coils. The SQUID itself is a superconducting ring made of Yttrium Barium Copper oxides (Y1Ba2Cu3O7, sometimes called YBCO or 123) with two active devices called Josephson Junctions - the basic building block of all superconducting electronics - made by a process invented at Conductus. The coils are made of thin film silver deposited on top of an insulating layer. The chip in Mr. SQUID represents a remarkable level of sophistication in a materials technology scarecly 5 years old. And, unlike any other SQUID system currently on the market, Mr. SQUID is designed to operate in a liquid Nitrogen bath at 77K (-169C). What does Mr. SQUID do? Mr. Squid is a sensitive superconducting magnetometer and can therefore be used to detect small magnetic signals if they are properly introduced to the SQUID. The limiting performance of Mr. SQUID is set by its economical electronics package and by its non-superconducting modulation coils. As a result, Mr. SQUID does not have the sensitivity of high-performance laboratory SQUIDs and thus cannot be used to detect truly minute signals such as those generated in the human brain. Enjoy!

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Laws of physics
by Jim Choate 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Forwarded message: > From: mpd(a)netcom.com (Mike Duvos) > Subject: Re: [NOISE] Cable-TV-Piracy-Punks > Date: Sun, 31 Mar 1996 11:36:51 -0800 (PST) > > We aren't talking about IC masks here. We are talking about > electrostatic charges which would instantly leak away if the > insulation around them were in the least bit compromised. Actualy the data in a PROM is not electrostic, it is quite dynamic and the chip itself would undergo no permanent damage if removed from the original case and examined in the right environment (namely a good vacuum). > If you put something fragile inside a container which cannot be > breached without exposing the fragile thing to a destructive > environment, then the fragile thing is very unlikely to be > retrieved intact. Only if you are sloppy and/or don't understand the technology. > The specific parameters here will of course > vary with what technology is available, but I think live EEPROM > cells deep inside a multi-layer VLSI device are probably safe > from scrutiny for the lifetime of your average smart card. Live > registers too, for that matter. Not. Not only woud SQUID technology be applicable but STM and MNR technologies would also be applicable to this type of hardware analysis. The chip is simply to big to prevent this type of analysis. Get it down to atomic scale (nanotech) and SQUIDs are about your only resource.

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No Subject
by Black Unicorn 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

> On Sat, 30 Mar 1996, Dr. Dimitri Vulis wrote: > > > Black Unicorn <unicorn(a)schloss.li> writes: > > > > > On Fri, 29 Mar 1996, jim bell wrote: > > > > > > > > >Anyone who knows me knows I spend all my days end arounding the > > > > >U.S. government. > > > > > > > > Explains a lot! You _are_ paid for this. In an earlier era, you > > > > would have gladly run the ovens at Auschwitz if you'd gotten paid > > > > for it. would have gladly run the ovens at Auschwitz if you'd > > > > gotten paid for it. > > > > > > You're way out of line here. > > > I expect an apology. > > > > Consider the above in context. Would you be willing to run the ovens/gas > > chambers if you were exterminating U.S. government employees/contractors? > > No, I would not. That's the difference between me and you- er... Mr. Bell. . Finally, Lance blew his nym. I'd love to hear the rationale behind this. . So, do you think that I'm Jim Bell's tentacle or that he's my tentacle? Does it make a difference? > > "The final solution to the IRS/BATF problem." :-) . And what if you were "processing" U.S. Congressmen? I find this entire line of conversation revolting. I also don't find it very surprising given the sources/source. . --- . Dr. Dimitri Vulis . Brighton Beach Boardwalk BBS, Forest Hills, N.Y.: +1-718-261-2013, 14.4Kbps --- My preferred and soon to be permanent e-mail address:unicorn@schloss.li "In fact, had Bancroft not existed, potestas scientiae in usu est Franklin might have had to invent him." in nihilum nil posse reverti 00B9289C28DC0E55 E16D5378B81E1C96 - Finger for Current Key Information

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