December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

Re:
by tcmay＠got.net 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 12:46 AM 6/4/96, qut(a)netcom.com wrote: >ncr terminals are the most 31173 D0Dz Kenneth, what is the frequency? Kenneth, what is the frequency? --John Hinckley, First Disciple of AP

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Java
by Perry E. Metzger 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

I've been rather hard on Java here lately. I'd like to state, for the record, that I have nothing against the folks at Sun. They are good, smart people, and I'm sure they mean well and aren't in on some evil plot. However, that doesn't make Java a good idea. For at least twenty or more years, people have known that for the ultimate in multimedia email or what have you all you would need to do is make the recipient execute a program that you sent them. This obviates all the questions of having to figure out what sort of things you would want to send -- if you can execute a program, you can do anything. Unfortunately, this is also so phenomenally obvious a security problem that no one ever proposed it as anything more than a joke -- until now. Sun is, unfortunately, suffering from a substantial hubris problem. As I have noted, the original Java applet security model and all the followups have had exactly the same problem -- they depend on perfect implementation of every element of the security model for the security to work, instead of having the realistic and conservative assumption that portions of the model will be misimplemented, and designing for defense in depth. Beyond that, however, they have created the ultimate hype monster. Java is a neat idea looking for a good application. I use the web all day long and I have yet to see a good use for Java. We have, essentially, mortgaged our system security for almost nothing better than the occassional gee whiz animation that could have been implemented with a safe graphics description format instead of a turing equivalent language. Again, I don't hate the Sun people or hold any animosity towards them. However, I will point out the lesson that any good student of Greek Tragedies could tell you -- the gods punish hubris, and severely. Perry

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Audit & Security reviews
by alc 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

UNIX and DEC VMS Security Reviews I would like to take this opportunity to tell you about two of our audit software tools, PCUA and PCDA. PCUA and PCDA are PC based software tools designed to review the security of Unix or DEC computers using only the stand-alone PC in your office. There is no need for connections to the system, user-IDs or even a knowledge of computer security. Simply obtain a copy (usually on a floppy disk) of key files from the system under review, load these onto your PC and let our tools do all the work. These packages are ideal for use by auditors, security officers and computer system managers - anyone who takes computer security seriously. The programs produce a wide variety of reports which show the findings, explain the implications of the problems and then make recommendations about how to improve security. Reports range from a full, detailed report which is user-definable to a brief list of the problems found. Both packages are evolving products and we continue to add new tests to them, as well as keeping up to date with the latest releases of the operating systems. If you would like further tests added, we would be pleased to include these in our next release. To obtain more information or demonstration disks then please contact us. Thank you for taking the time to look through this email. Alastair Coxall Technical Director TRILLION SOFTWARE Ltd The Firs, Broadwalk, Cranleigh, Surrey GU6 7LS, England Tel: +44 1483 274001 Fax: +44 1483 274017 Email: alc(a)trillion.demon.co.uk

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Re: Java Crypto API questions
by br＠doppio.Eng.Sun.COM 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

|> This is hard. It's probably not going to make it in the first |> release. The simple first pass is to say "code signed by x, |> y, and z" can do whatever it wants. | |Good thing Sun is spending millions pushing a brand-new language down our |throats so we can do nothing we couldn't already do. After all the hype |about security, security models, and sandboxes we get signed applets that can |do anything. What a let-down. Just to clarify a couple of things. We're not pushing anything down your throat. You are still perfectly free to use Visual C++ if that is what you prefer. A statement to the effect of "is probably not going to make it in the first release" means the following things: - If we can, we will make it happen (in some form) in the first release. We're just trying to set expectations realistically. - We think that the ability to let applets have free reign is useful,and since that is easier, we are certain to put it in the first release. - No matter what we do, we must address some very thorny issues of key management and user trust model, so doing this will be useful. |Currently, the only safe way to run untrusted Java code is to not run it. |This probably isn't going to change (see cpunks archives for reasons). If |Sun cannot prevent untrusted code from doing nasty things, how can they |prevent code empowered with certain capabilities from doing things they are |not certified to do? It now seems that all the effort, time, and money to |move towards Java over another OO language was a waste in a way since it no |longer appears to have any security advantages. Ignoring security, Java is |not a bad language at all, but it still has distinct disadvantages over some |of the possible alternatives (mainly immaturity, no dynamic message |invocation, interpreters still not ready for prime-time). The important thing to remember is that we're not going to come out with an implementation and claim to have solved the capabilities model problem. We're taking a first step at using signatures with Java for security purposes, but this is only a first step. We remain fully committed to finer and more powerful security models. Note that an application written to the Java platform will be able to implement security policies based on digital signatures which are not fully permissive. Cheers, -- Benjamin

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CWD: "Jacking in from the "One that Got Away" Port
by declan＠well.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

(By Brock Meeks / brock(a)well.com / Archived at http://www.cyberwerks.com/) CyberWire Dispatch // Copyright (c) 1996 // Jacking in from the "One that Got Away" Port: Washington, DC -- President Clinton call your spooks, get FBI Director Louis Freeh on the phone. Tell them to order in pizza. Bill, it's going to be a long night. All your plans to hold the U.S. crypto market hostage have just been fucked... and you didn't even get kissed. A virtual tactical nuke was hurled into the arcane subculture of encryption technology Monday when RSA President Jim Bizdos revealed that his company's Japanese subsidiary had developed a monster chipset capable of scrambling voice and data real time with a so-called "key length" of up to 1024 bits. That key length stuff is just so much gibberish to those playing without a scorecard, so let me drill down on it for you. Basically, the longer the key length, the harder it is for a message to be broken by "brute force" automated attacks. Current U.S. laws prohibit the export of any encryption device with a key length longer than 40-bits, or roughly the equivalent of Captain Crunch decoder ring. For hardcore math types, I'm told that a 1024-bit key length is 10 to the 296th power more difficult to break than 40 bits. Bizdos, speaking during lunchtime at the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) 6th Cryptography and Privacy conference, told how his Japanese based company, Nihon-RSA, developed a set of two chips capable of scrambling messages at a level that will make the spooks in the Puzzle Palace (the National Security Administration) cough up hair balls that would make the First Cat Socks envious. Bizdos seems to have found crypto's magic bullet; a legit way to essentially give the finger to U.S. export laws for crypto product. For years now the White House has been locked into a kind of crypto war. The Administration insists that strong encryption products must not be exported for fear that "terrorists, child pornographers and drug barons" and a rabble of assorted "bad guys" would snag the technology and proceed to plot the destruction of the "World As We Know It"... or at least Western Democracy, if the inbred Iranians got in line first. The White House crypto-fascist team, led by the NSA, FBI and assorted military hawks, have offered braindead compromise plans, including three versions of the "Clipper Chip." This is a plan whereby you can buy strong locks for your data with the simple caveat that when you buy and use the products, you have to put the decoding key "in escrow." This way if a law enforcement agency ever has the need to unscramble any of your messages -- without you knowing it -- they can simply ask for these escrowed keys and have them handed over. Yes, even your local sheriff's department can ask for the keys. Now, the government promises it will use this power only for good and never for evil. Honest, that's what they say. Of course, the Justice Department, in writing the rules for getting the keys, totally absolves any law enforcement agency of all harm if this power is abused in any way. Oh.. and if that power is abused, the sheriff or the FBI or fucking Park Police for that matter, can still use any "evidence" they gin up on you. Honest, I'm not making any of this stuff up. So the battle has raged. The industry has been loathe to develop such products only for the American market because the cost of producing essentially duplicate products for domestic and foreign markets just wouldn't be cost effective. So, you and I are stuck having to use some pretty tedious encryption technologies, such as PGP (Pretty Good Privacy), which is great, but tough to use. Or we can use the Captain Crunch Decoder ring equivalents available off the shelf. In the meantime, other countries are happily making and distributing robust encryption technologies, at a possible loss of up to $60 billion for U.S. companies. In fact, it's a crime even to put a program like PGP on your laptop and go overseas. The State Department calls that "exporting." The government recently dropped a case against Phil Zimmermann, the inventor of PGP, after putting him through several hellish years in which they threatened to toss his ass in jail. There Phil would no longer be a threat to society at-large, but instead become a "girlfriend" for a 265 pound felon named Spike. Phil's "crime"?? That somehow his PGP app had been uploaded on to the Internet and whisked around the world. Phil didn't do it, but the U.S. government cried "export violation," anyway, eventually telling him, "Oh, never mind." So Bizdos, tired of fighting the wars here, enlisted the help of the Japanese. After setting up his Japanese unit, he hired a crack team of Japanese crypto experts who essentially "reverse engineered" the company's own U.S. crypto product, according to Kurt Stammberger, RSA director of technology marketing. It was a brilliant move. Bizdos can't be slammed by the State Department for violating crypto export laws because, well, he didn't export a damn thing, except some U.S. greenbacks, which of course, could have gone to U.S. cryptographers, but let's not quibble about jobs. Anyone want to kick around the subject of global competitiveness? What's happened here is the Japanese have now trumped the entire world on the crypto market. What's more, Clinton's brain-dead allegiance to the FBI, et al., has now allowed the Japanese government, which still owns a large share of NTT, which owns a minority share of RSA's Japanese subsidiary, to have a lock on the world's strongest encryption technology. Can you say "Remember the VCR" or "Remember the Semiconductor" or how about "Thanks, Bill. We're fucked." The boys in the Pentagon made a stink a few years ago when a Japanese company made a play for Fairchild, a top defense contractor. It was feared that the Japanese, by swallowing up the U.S. company, would also gain access to technologies vital to the U.S. military. The deal was squashed. Natch... now it looks like the G.I.'s with the stars on their shoulders have just put their spit-shined combat boots up their own ass by supporting Clinton and his continued ban on crypto exports. "We truly have ceded this market Japanese companies," Bizdos said. "It's almost too late to turn it around." Some 15 COUNTRIES have already placed orders for these chips, Bizdos said, adding that the Japanese will not build the chips with a key escrow function. EPIC Director Marc Rotenberg said he was told by a Japanese representative that the country's constitution wouldn't allow key escrow because it doesn't allow wire-tapping. Umm... maybe the Japanese just don't have *really* bad guys like the FBI assumes we have here. What's more, Bizdos says the deal with NTT is "no coup." He says the Germans and French "aren't far behind" in developing similar technologies. The RSA bombshell "fuels the argument that this stuff can't be contained in our own borders," said PGP's Zimmermann. Just how the relationship between NTT and RSA works out isn't set, Bizdos acknowledged. "They'll pay us a royalty for the chips they sell," he said. "We're working it all out." Meanwhile, from my office window here in DC I've already counted 17 Domino's Pizza delivery bikes go screaming by on their way to the White House. Through my telescope I can see the White House balcony; it looks like Bill is sick, like he's just heard some "really bad news." And behind him, just inside the double-doors, on a persian rug placed there by Warren G. Harding, I think Socks the Cat has just coughed up a hairball... or maybe it was Louis Freeh. From this angle, I just can't be sure. Meeks out... ------------ Additional reporting by Declan McCullagh (declan(a)well.com)

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Re: Fate of Ecash if RSA is cracked?
by norm＠netcom.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 8:01 AM 6/3/96, Perry E. Metzger wrote: >Dr. Dimitri Vulis writes: .... >> This'll happen, probably sooner than later. > >Why do you assume that? There are plenty of problems that are >provably not solvable in non-exponential time even if P=NP. What makes >you think this one is going to be solved? > >.pm The "Idea Futures" forum has established odds on this. The current odds are currently 60% that a 1024 bit number will be factored by 2010 and 30% that a 512 bit number will be factored by 1997. See <http://if.arc.ab.ca/IF.shtml> for Idea Futures and <http://if.arc.ab.ca/bin/summary> for odds for various questions.

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Fate of Ecash if RSA is cracked?
by ichudov＠algebra.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Hello, After reading Comm. of ACM and Schneier's book about ecash, a question arose: what if the underlying public key cryptographic scheme gets broken somehow? Suppose, for example, that someone discovers an ultra-fast factoring algorithm or something like that. What would happen with all ecash that's been issued? Of course criminals would be able to forge large amounts of authentic-looking ecash, so banks should not be honoring requests to convert e-cash into real cash. I apologize in advance is this question is silly, and will appreciate your corrections. - Igor.

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Re: Why PGP isn't so ubiquitous (was NRC Session Hiss)
by tcmay＠got.net 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 9:59 PM 6/3/96, Deranged Mutant wrote: >On 3 Jun 96 at 11:27, Bruce Baugh wrote: > >> Date: Mon, 03 Jun 1996 11:27:33 -0700 >> At 04:33 AM 6/3/96 +0000, Deranged Mutant wrote: >> does, it will happen only after the passage of more draconian anti-privacy >> laws, and the guys working on it will be forced to include sundry backdoor >> stuff or drop it altogether. > >More likely drop it altogether, or be openly admit they were forced >to include GAK (people will want the source, anyway). I can't imagine _any_ set of circumstances which would cause Zimmermann, Atkins (?), Plumb (?), and anyone else who might still be on the PGP development team to include GAK. After all, those heartwarming stories about Burmese rebels using PGP to communicate using laptops in the jungles would then be replaced by: "16 April 1998, A.P., Rangoon, Burma. Internal Security Minister Bopalong Myanmoon announced today that rebel communications were intercepted and decrypted two weeks ago with the cooperation of the International Key Authority. As a result of this raid, 63 rebels were captured, tried, and executed. Visiting Rangoon at the time, U.S. Attorney General Louis Freeh was said to be satisfied that international key escrow was having such positive effects." --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, Licensed Ontologist | black markets, collapse of governments. "National borders aren't even speed bumps on the information superhighway."

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[NOISE] rec.music.white-power failed 592:33033 FYI
by Rich Graves 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

The official result, including the votetaker's explanation for the extraordinary delay (which makes interesting reading), is in news.announce.newgroups, Message-ID <833851386.24895(a)uunet.uu.net>. Or for people who only use Netscape: http://ww2.altavista.digital.com/cgi-bin/news?plain@msg@31323@news%2egroups news:833851386.24895@uunet.uu.net While I think I was one of the people presenting legitimate reasons for voting no (as opposed to all the "VOTE NO ON NAZIS!" -- see news.groups archives), I'm actually disappointed that there were only 592 yes votes. I'd have expected more than the estimated 400 anti-censorship and spam-annoyance reactions. I would urge people NOT to download the 3MB list of votes, as I haven't, because the vast majority of voters had no clue what they were voting on. The majority probably thought it was a secret ballot. The poor votetaker definitely deserves a medal, but PLEASE don't send him appreciative mail; he's getting far too much already. Sent separately to fight-censorship and cypherpunks. Followup discussion, if any, belongs in news.groups ONLY. -rich

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Re: Saw this on CNN: Anonymous Stock tips over IRC as bad??
by Deranged Mutant 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

On 3 Jun 96 at 15:18, Jeff Barber wrote: > I trust it won't stun you to find that many, many large and even small > corporations -- including my current employer [*NOT* SecureWare, BTW, > despite the email address] -- actually encourage their employees to buy > stock by offering stock purchase plans as a benefit of employment. They > even make it convenient by deducting purchases from one's paycheck. [..] There's a difference between a) buying stock in your employer's company generally [above example] and b) buying stock in your employer's company because your department is working on something that will raise the stock value etc. etc. --- No-frills sig. Befriend my mail filter by sending a message with the subject "send help" Key-ID: 5D3F2E99 1996/04/22 wlkngowl(a)unix.asb.com (root@magneto) AB1F4831 1993/05/10 Deranged Mutant <wlkngowl(a)unix.asb.com> Send a message with the subject "send pgp-key" for a copy of my key.

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