December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

Re: No matter where you go, there they are.
by jim bell 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 10:14 PM 4/11/96 -0500, Adam Shostack wrote: >Jim McCoy wrote: > What is >| Dennings fascination with building Big Brother? > > She read Snow Crash, and it scared her. > Snow Crash is a book about a future in which governments are >ineffective. Companies run things, and have complete local control. >The world has gone to hell, and as a result, life is nasty, poor, >brutish and short. Many people do not look forward to this world. >Thats an understandable reaction; when I first heard about anonymous >assasination markets, I thought it was pretty bizzare as a world to >look forward to. However, looked at from the standpoint of somebody who is not already steeped in it, OUR society is a "pretty bizarre world." Ostensibly we live in a society that loves freedom, yet it's controlled by a rather tiny number of people who wield an extraordinarily large amount of power. We can be beaten or killed by agents of the government, and the only time a ruckus seems to be raised is when there happens to be a camcorder nearby, one that the police do not notice in time. I haven't heard much speculation about why we never (actually, almost never) see such cases without recordings. > Then I heard Neal Stephenson speak. And he brought up a very >good point, which was Hitler killed more people than Charles Manson >because Hitler had a big country, and its large army. I look >forward to smaller, weaker government that can't put the Japs in >holding camps, surround and harras the Branch Davidians, etc. > > The debate, really, boils down to Hobbes v. Locke, or Plato v. >Aristotle. Its not going to be resolved anytime soon by a >philosopher. I think it will be resolved by a computer programmer. I am reminded of the scene in the TV show "Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy," when the two philosophers complained to the computer, "Deep Thought" (Assigned the task of answering the question of "Life, the Universe, and Everything"), something like "What's the point of debating the existence of God, when you're going to tell us his address?" There is precedent for this kind of frustration. I seem to recall that more than 10 years ago, or more, that the solution/proof for the 4-color mapping problem (The theory that all maps could be colored with at most 4 colors) was done by computer. It was accomplished, as I recall, by exhaustively testing "all" the various possibilities (having been narrowed down appropriately), and determing that they needed no more than 4 colors. Mathematicians, who were used to multi-page proofs that a human could actually comprehend and follow on a step-by-step basis, were unhappy that it all came down to a computer. Many of us have read Mill, Hayek, Freidman, Nozick, and >decided that we prefer that world view. That Dr. Denning has decided >that she likes Philosopher-Kings is not particularly unusual, except >in the computer business. Go read Leviathan. Think about what we're >talking about here. > > Its a scary new world that I expect will be created, by the >UNSTOPPABLE advance of technology. There is no weapon created that is >not used by someone who judges the cause to be worthwhile. Nukes, >chemicals, and biologicals have all been used against civilian >populations. I judge that stopping the advance of cryptoanarchist >technology will fail (in the long run), and not be worth the price. I >suspect Dorothy disagrees, and there lies her fascination with >building in Big Brother. I think the thing to remember is that the "worth the price" issue appears to depend substantially on who you are. If you're a powerful government official, who fears losing his cushy job and maybe even his life, it may appear to be worth an effort. From the standpoint of the ordinary citizen, however, if he understands what's at stake he'll recognize that it isn't. Jim Bell jimbell(a)pacifier.com

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"Batman" Read!--How to Unsubscribe
by tcmay＠got.net 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 9:11 PM 4/11/96, Batman wrote: >Please PUT me OUT of YOUR cypherpunks AND other MAIL-LISTS > >Thankx I sent you instructions by private e-mail, and in a separate posting on the list. If you had read either of these messages and followed the "unsubscribe" instructions, you could remove yourself from the list. If, however, you are not reading messages that arrive in your mailbox, including messages on this list and personal mail, then you are likely not reading _this_ message either, and it is hopeless for you. You will be condemned to getting list traffic until you get a clue. On the off chance you read this message by either of the routes, instructions are included _again_ at the end of this message. (And I have retitled your thread name...the message name "Re:" is not terribly helpful, and indicates you took no time to compose a meaningful title.) How to subscribe to the Cypherpunks mailing list: send a message to "majordomo(a)toad.com" with the body message "subscribe cypherpunks". To unsubscribe, send the message "unsubscribe cypherpunks" to the same address. For help, send "help cypherpunks". Don't send these requests to the Cypherpunks list itself. And be aware that the list generates between 40 and 100 messages a day.

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CDA Court Challenge: Update #6
by rodger＠interramp.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

On 4/11/96 Declan McCullagh wrote: >+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+ > WHO CARES ABOUT KIDS: WHO ARE THE ADULTS? >+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+ > >The third way to answer the now-tiresome who-are-the-kiddies question >is to turn it on its head and ask: "Who are the adults?" > >Hardware to answer that question already exists. The March 25 issue of >Interactive Week reports that Livingston Enterprises, Inc. has >colluded with Senator Exon's staff to design an "Exon box" -- a router >that lets ISPs cut off unrated or "indecent" or unrated sites. To get >around the block, an "adult" enters a secret password that tells the >router to open a session and let the packets flow. > Whoa. Thanks for mentioning my article, Declan, but I think "colluded" is too strong here - as far as I know, Livingston never contacted Exon, even though Livingston's ChoiceNet can undoubtedly play into his hands. >Exon's staff is heralding this as an example of how easy it is to comply >with the CDA. Almost - Bruce Taylor is, actually, but he's not part of Exon's satff. The only problem is that, like many such >hamfisted censorship "solutions," it sucks, and it ain't going to >work. One of the original architects of the Internet, David P. Reed, >wrote: > > I do work to protect my children from inappropriate material, but > pressure from Senators to mandate technically flawed solutions, and > opportunistic, poorly thought-through technologies from companies > like Livingston are not helpful. > It should be noted that Livingston is promoting this as a voluntary solution a la PICS. PICS' own Web pages, after all, suggest software on routers could do the job as well as client products like NetNanny, CyberPatrol, etc. There are some distinct advantages to doing it that way, in fact. Livingston insists this is an alternative to mandatory censorship, but they're not being shy about admitting it can be used in other ways, too. All that said, you cypherpunks can speculate who's up to what in all this. Will Rodger Washington Bureau Chief Interactive Week

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Re: A MODEST PROPOSAL (fwd)
by E. ALLEN SMITH 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

From: IN%"stewarts(a)ix.netcom.com" "Bill Stewart" 2-APR-1996 06:31:08.52 >This happens any time anybody signs up with an an######(a)anon.penet.fi address. >Ideally, someone could, in their copious spare time, hack majordomo >to automatically translate all subscription requests of that form to >na######(a)anon.penet.fi ; as an alternative, if majordomo has some sort >of subscription blocking list an*(a)anon.penet.fi belongs on it. In other words, majordomo is broken. I should have suspected as much, given the weird way headers turn up compared to all other mailing list programs. Can that be reconfigured by the list owner? I may be starting up a list (on c2.org) sometime (after I finish 3 papers, an oral presentation, and some finals), and what I've got available is majordomo. Curing this problem would be good. -Allen

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Re: Entropy Estimator
by tcmay＠got.net 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 9:06 PM 4/12/96, rick hoselton wrote: >At 12:19 AM 4/12/96 -0400, JonWienke(a)aol.com wrote: > >>I just added a feature to my entropy graphing program that >>estimates the number of bits of entropy in the file, > >Hey, that's just what I need. I have these two 8-million byte >files. One is a recording made by a geiger counter, every bit >is uncorrelated with anything else in the universe and each bit >is equally likely to be a one or a zero. The second file is an >IDEA encryption of all the four-byte numbers >from one to two-million. > >Here's my problem. I can't remember which file is which, and I've >forgotten sixty-four bits of the key I used to produce the encrypted file. > >That's where your technique come in. The first file has sixty-four >million bits of entropy. The second file has only sixty-four bits >of entropy, total (the missing key bits). Surely, your technique can >tell me which file is which. No, this is not the case. Suppose your file of 64 million bits of entropy is stored as "Rick's Geiger Counter File," perhaps on your Web site. (Great for use by various people as a "virtual one time pad" (patent pending).) A year or so from now someone asks a program to measure the entropy of this file. Nearly all programs will report that the file has lots of bits of entropy... However, is this the "true" entropy? A clever program, or a person, might well remember that this file is Rick's Geiger Counter File, making the bits _very_ predictable (or, equivalently, little "surprise," low entropy, great compressibility, etc.). Once again, one can never know for sure that a file, sequence, string is maximally compressed. The application to your stated problem is that the two files might very well have similar statistics (a good cryptographic hash function is likely to produce a regular output, for example) and that a program cannot tell which one is the "really random" file and which is the "seemingly random" file is not a failing of the program, necessarily, but is implicit in some inevitable limitations of all programs. --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: PICS required by laws
by E. ALLEN SMITH 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

From: IN%"frantz(a)netcom.com" 6-APR-1996 16:21:56.32 >I am less worried about this possibility than most. PICS scrubbers will be >as easy to produce as any other web intermediary. (e.g. The one which >replaces "bad" words with "censored".) Quite... as will ones that flip-flop the various packet bits that people are discussing. >I do not make these comments publicly, because I don't want to poke holes >in network self censorship while the courts are grinding on the CDA. (Note >that true self censorship, where the viewer wants the filtering would not >be impacted. Those viewers would just not use that kind of intermediary.) I don't plan on mentioning it on CuDigest, either... just that any imposition of this standard will leave countries where it isn't imposed. > I applaud the ACLU's position in not rating their web page. I will also >note that it is possible for a PICS filter to refuse to pass unrated pages. Yes... and it would be possible for a PICS unrating filter to simply set all of them to child-OK. With the current discussion of packet-based censorship, it would appear possible for the bit in question to be reset by _any_ of the systems it passes over at least as easily as those systems could use this bit for filtration. I would suggest a "Trojan Horse" program to do this, in order to A. get governmental systems and B. give SYSOPs an excuse to run the flipping program. This flipping could produce either child-visible or child-invisible material, depending on what result the system in question wished to produce. Child-visible would help the children; child-invisible would make the Net unusable for children whose parents weren't sensible enough to not use such software. The latter, applied to technical material, would also drive China, Singapore, et al nuts. > If much of the technical information on the net is unrated, China, >Singapore etc. will be between a rock and a hard place with the >anti-censorship intermediaries. -Allen

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Re: the cost of untracability?
by E. ALLEN SMITH 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

From: IN%"weidai(a)eskimo.com" "Wei Dai" 7-APR-1996 10:52:52.30 >I think you're right. There is no need for the issuer to pay explicit >interest. The easiest way to eliminate signorage would be to steadily >increase the value of each denomination of ecash. It would be kind of >like a mutual fund that doesn't pay dividends. In fact, if the ecash is >backed by a portfolio of investment securities and its value floats with >the value of the portfolio, then it would be almost exactly like a mutual >fund. Another method would be for ecash to have a label on it as to when the issuer would redeem it. Until then, if you want cash from it, find someone else to trade to. This has the interest advantage for the purchaser, and the advantage to the issuer that they won't have to worry about when someone will redeem it. They'll know that they'll need to have a particular amount on a particular date, and their earnings/losses up until that point can vary all over the place without being worried about whether they can make their payments. Ideal for a startup business. -Allen

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Lotus Notes 24-bit sellout
by Jerry Whiting 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

When Ray Ozzie announced the work reduction sellout at the RSA conference, both he and Ms Denning (whom I spoke with about it later) mentioned that there was something else in Lotus Notes 4 besides the 40+24 bit compromise. My thought is that the NSA gave them something else in exchange for the mandatory escrow scheme they're all talking about publicly. Perhaps some other crypto code the NSA had lying around unused. So looking for a common 24-bit subkey may reduce Notes' key to a 40-bit brute force exercise but the 40+24 is probably not ALL that's in Notes 4. Definitely a deal with the Devil. Given that we're talking about IBM, not Lotus none of this surprises me given IBM's Lucifer/DES history with spook input years ago. Then again to be fair, I don't know if the 40+24 deal was cooked up before or after the IBM/Lotus merger. Jerry Whiting Azalea Software, Inc. P.S. Yes, I'm the one doing carrick "Encryption software so good, the Feds won't let us export it." In fact, we schedule for a visit from the NSA next month regarding our desire to export carrick to Australia. The mere mention of a Blowfish-based crypto product left my assigned spook momentarly speechless. Something tells me they ain't gonna let carrick out of the country with a key length worth using. AND I DEFINITELY AIN'T INTERSTED IN MAKING A DEAL WITH THE DEVIL.

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Re: [NOISE] Why there are so many cluless people
by tcmay＠got.net 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 10:11 PM 4/12/96, Andrew Loewenstern wrote: >I heard that Internet Privacy Guaranteed is coming out with their own set of >cassette tapes... ;-) > >"Become a cryptanalyst in 21 days, while you sleep, or your money back!" This is old news. "Subliminal channels" have been around in crypto for a long time. --Klaus! von Future Prime

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Known Plaintext attacks on symmertric algorithms
by Jack Mott 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Now maybe I have this all wrong, but it is my understanding that a known plaintext attack is when the cracker knows part of the plaintext of an encrypted file. Then he/she uses that and runs the inverse of the algorithm to calculate the key. Whether or not I am right about what known plaintext means, isn't the entirely possible on all of the symmetric algorithms out there? If I grab a file that I know is, say, a standard credit card transaction form, and I know what the first 256 bytes are because they are always the same, shouldn I always be able to find the entire key that corresponds with those 256 bytes? (assuming the key is 2048 bits or less) And then with that key decrypt the whole file? Maybe I am missing something but it seems that all the symmetric algorithms are vulnerable to this, and I thought of a fix, but it involves having two keys (or one thats twice as big) -- thecrow(a)iconn.net "It can't rain all the time" RSA ENCRYPTION IN 3 LINES OF PERL --------------------------------------------------------- #!/bin/perl -sp0777i<X+d*lMLa^*lN%0]dsXx++lMlN/dsM0<j]dsj $/=unpack('H*',$_);$_=`echo 16dio\U$k"SK$/SM$n\EsN0p[lN*1 lK[d2%Sa2/d0$^Ixp"|dc`;s/\W//g;$_=pack('H*',/((..)*)$/)

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