December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

Reply to anonymous ping.
by daemon＠anon.penet.fi 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Your code name is: an611909(a)anon.penet.fi.

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Re: distinctive properties of ecash, netbill, cybercash and iKP
by minow＠apple.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

> >> >> Anonymity of monetary transactions is another thing that Bank of Estonia >> has declared illegal. > >Cash is illegal, too! How does the economy in Estonia work these days? >Barter? If you think about it, anonymous cash transactions above a certain limit ($4,000?) are illegal in the United States, too. Martin Minow minow(a)apple.com

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Notes from the SF Physical Cypherpunks meeting
by minow＠apple.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Here are my notes -- without significant editing or correction -- from Saturday's (96.05.11) cypherpunks meeting in Palo Alto. Discussion of crypto user interfaces (particularly NetScape and e-mail) -- How to tell user that "installation" not secure in a decent GUI? -- Expectation of what leaves user machine. -- Vendor's "shouldn't distinguish products on security: security is the bedrock of our industry." (Quote from some industry person who was not present to defend this thesis). -- Someday, there will be a "Word virus that attacks your CyberCash wallet." -- If the message is insecure with respect to the user's expectation, there should be a user-visible window border (or similar): NetScape's little key isn't good enough. Did you know that the netscape key has 1 tooth for 40-bit, and 2 teeth for 120 bit encryption? -- Signed code is the new industry meme. Bonded agents who certify signed code. Do you know how much bonding costs, and how little it offers? -- Security dialogs need a help button that explains security. -- Error messages (of all kinds) should have a url that gives more info. Can be a file:// or http:// for local help. Eudora and Netscape will provide S/Mime. PGP is going nowhere, S/Mime becoming ubiquitous (Eudora, future Netscape) S/Mimepretty good. 2 Flaws: signature's name is not encrypted. Major flaw: encryption defaults to 40-bit. No good way to negotiate for stronger encryption. c2.org: 90% of all connections are 40-bit RC2. Need to publish negotiation info so that sender and receiver can agree on crypto strength. PGP lost in Eudora/Netscape: ongoing legal problems with Phil Zimmerman. Strong concern that companies can't use PGP without problems with RSA. Do they need Viacrypt. Web of trust: not working. Hard to map an e-mail address to a key. Hal Finney's Java implementation not sufficient for signature distribution. S/Mime will support Verisign. Verisign certificates have "trust" level: class 1 is untrusted (equivalent to PGP self-signed?) Next Netscape beta will have five additional non-verisign CA's: ---- Crypto toolkit: need certification for code fragments. Need "web of trust" for software validation. There will be a zillion Java applet's out there: how do you know one does what you claim it do? When will Java signed classes/signed applets be released. Two weeks. Hmm, Java One conference is in two weeks. Surely a coincidence. You can sign a class by signing the class file (zip), then archiving it together with the source and then sign the combined archive. I think that Stuffit (on the Macintosh) supports signed archives if PowerTalk is provided. ----- Norm Hardy talked about the E programming language from Electric communities. (Java with capabilities). [[These are notes, and occasionally incoherent, for which I humbly apologize.]] Capabilities. Should be able to import code and run it even when you don't trust the code. Java-type scheme can succeed. No short description. Here are some of the reasons you should believe it: -- History: late 50's Algol 60. Code shouldn't be able to escape it's storage. Compilers and hardware thought this was not sufficiently important to do this. Not implemented on actual compilers or hardware (hmm, Burrows 5000, Basic timesharing systems offer counter-examples). Intent was to be neat and modular, not to be secure against intruders. Garbage collectors forced better, formal, theory of storage. Gave us storage security. Multics gave cross-trust subroutine calls. KEYCOS Started in TimeShare, early 1970's. Ran customers (competitors) on the same machine. Machine code didn't get in other people's way. Customers needed to interact. NCSC (part of NSA) looked at this, recommended B3 rating. Archtecture was good for A1 (next to top, as good as it comes). Needed rewriting by cleared people, needed formal proofs. NSA judging systems to protect NSA secrets. Main idea: programs have rapid communication, with strong security properties that they themselves arrange. HYDRA earliest system (Bill Wulf). KEYCOS improved on HYDRA. Capability: designates something and conveys authority to that thing Can't pull this apart: can't access without having capability. Can't get information, can't affect its state. No specific superuser state: privileged programs have different set of capabilities, not necessarily all. COM e-mail/bbs system (Sweden) -- operator could backup e-mail, but not read it. Object oriented programming system is a capability system. Crypto (public-private key) similar to capabilities. Public key is a capability. Private key is the thing that the key designates. Access lists: people access data. However, it's really the computer program that accesses the data on the person's behalf. Access control lists (VMS, Mac filesharing) -- more prevalent than you might expect, but can be made unobtrusive. Few people notice that Mac filesharing has access control lists. Contraxt Unix and capability system. On Unix, programmer gives a filename to the shell, shell tells the compiler. Compiler opens the file. Capability: give "read" capability to shell, shell gives it to compiler. Compiler uses capability to access data. Cannot hide capability from programmer. When you build something (create something), you have to present a "space bank" (sub-pool). You can buy space bank, determine the amount of free space, zap parts of it, etc. Money object: can do in Java -- two classes: mint, pot. Pot has two private fields, mint reference, value. Pot method: produce a sibling pot with same mint object and no value. Transfer -- if two pots refer to the same mint, transfer value between them. I own program, you own data. I don't trust your data, you don't trust my program. I want to allow you to run your data on my program. Factory (mutually trusted). Give access to code to factory. Give you access to factory. You invoke factory, factory creates object that can execute code on data, but lacks capability to send data. Capability architectures (narrower sense): for A to affect B, necessary and sufficent for A to have capability for B. Can't add onto Unix since old, non-capability mechanisms are still there. Get capabilities two ways: create object, gets ownership to message. Can pass capability in a message. Give to subcontractor only narrow capabilities it needs. Build system so capabilities can be very narrow. Can grant capability "Q := zero" -- receiver executes capability, but never know name of variable. Algol call by name -- caller passes a "thunk" to the subroutine. Subroutine executes the thunk that carries out the caller's computation. Debugger subject to same capability restrictions. Keeper -- computational resources become capabilities -- meters grant ability to use cpu time. Meter has "amount of ticks" -- when hits zero, task is suspended. Attached to another program with role of meter keeper. Meter keeper can decide to replenish meter. Can allocate budget (rate-based) -- useful for real-time app's. Jewel manual (agorics web site). Market-based control Scott Clearwater. Fractional (Fractal) reserve bank. http://www.agorics.com/agorics. Can grant subsets of own capabilities. Can (by prior arrangement) revoke capabilities. Language-based vs OS based. Can run large parts of o.s. in capability model. Get some advantages, but there are pitfalls. Capability systems can protect against denial of service. Can administrate cpu/space usage. Language-based systems can message across trust boundaries quickly. O.S. based may need many machine cycles. Crypo-based capability may need millions (exponent). ---- Marianne Mueller. Reported on Java Security Workshop. [[Dumb jokes self-censored to protect the guilty.]] Java team interested in security -- nobody is specifically Mr. Security. Everybody's responsiblity. 1st Morning. Status + foodfight: Steve Bellovin: Java is a virus. Venting. We all got minimal trusted computing base (with verifying, formally) religion. Need better formal model of the language. with better specificiation, can get better testing. Need better test suites to ensure that Microsoft implements the same model as Netscape. VM spec, language spec, also working on policy spec (what the sandbox policy actually is). Funding an outside security group. 1st Afternoon. Paul Karger, Mark Schaffer. How to use capabilities with Java. "If you do capabilities, make sure it does these 15 properties. " 2nd Morning. Proposal to do code signing. Afternoon, continued to discuss code signing and key management. Discussed trust models. Butler Lamson and Ron Rivest paper on Rivest's home page (on capabilities). Lamson now working for Microsoft. IEEE symposium on security and privacy. Security theory people. Princeton stuff. Security folk all over the Princeton folk -- think they're just a bunch of hackers. Java folk impressed; find Princeton stuff useful. Working on crypto API's. Sun lobbying govenment to free crypto API's. Signing classes, applets, applications (application is classes + data). Microsoft coming out this summer. Code signing very important. Needs very soon. Hard to do real capabilities on Java. Transitive closure is very difficult. ----- Transcribed in real-time by Martin Minow minow(a)apple.com

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Re: Mandatory Voluntary Self-Ratings
by E. ALLEN SMITH 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

It is interesting to note from the CIEC trial bulletin (which they won't let me quote part of, according to their initial notice - stupid policy) and other sources that the conservatives won't let people just rate "objectionable" material in order to keep it from them. They want it off the net/world whether or not it's rated. Thus, the idea that vznuri and others (such as the various proponents of its current use) have that PICS can save the net from the conservatives et al doesn't work. Nice idea (maybe), but no cigar. -Allen

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Re: Why I Pay Too Much in Taxes
by Jean-Francois Avon 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

> Thanks to Philip Zimmermann and Lance Cottrell the balance of power > between the state and the little guy has changed completely. It's > good to see that both of them are going into mass market business. > Perhaps they can get some of the billions of dollars they deserve. Thumbs up! JFA DePompadour, Societe d'Importation Ltee Limoges porcelain, Silverware and mouth blown crystal glasses JFA Technologies, R&D consultants. Physists, technologists and engineers. PGP keys at: http://w3.citenet.net/users/jf_avon ID# C58ADD0D : 529645E8205A8A5E F87CC86FAEFEF891 Unsollicited commercial e-mail will be proofread at US165 $/h Any sender of such material will be considered as to have ac- cepted the above mentionned terms.

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No Subject
by Jeremiah Harmsen 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

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Re: Notes from the SF Physical Cypherpunks meeting
by Matts Kallioniemi 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 09:29 1996-05-12 -0700, Martin Minow wrote: >COM e-mail/bbs system (Sweden) -- operator could backup >e-mail, but not read it. Sure. The database was encrypted by using XOR with the string "KOM". That was the sorry state of encryption in the early eighties. Matts

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Cybercash snake oil merchant
by E. ALLEN SMITH 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

I've located a new snake oil merchant, by the name of cybank. Their url is http://www.cybank.net, and they're claiming things like "public key encryption has been broken." Well, yes... if you use a too-short key length. -Allen

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KWTX (fwd)
by anonymous-remailer＠shell.portal.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

---------- Forwarded message ---------- Subject: KWTX Vincent Miller / April 25, 1996 International Society for Individual Liberty (ISIL) Update Letter --------------------excerpt------------------------------------ The Onslaught Against American Liberties Escalates The US Justice Department is currently suing radio station KWTX in Texas over what they term "malicious disregard for the truth in reporting on Waco". If convicted the station will be both civilly and criminally liable for any alleged harm caused to property or government agents. This is of course ironic. In a sea of federal propaganda, and self-serving FBI-ATF press releases, the small radio and TV stations (and the Internet) were the Only source of real information about what actually happened at Waco. Even before this case has been heard the judge revealed his bias by stating that he thought the conduct of the station was "outrageous." Source: CBS Evening News with Dan Rather (Apr 19th). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ISIL, 1800 Market Street, San Francisco, CA 94102 415-864-0952, fax 415-864-7506 This organization gives permission to reprint provided that proper credit is given. --------------------------------------------------------------------

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FYB_oss
by jya＠pipeline.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

5-12-96. NYPaper: "Who's Reading Your E-Mail? Maybe the Boss. More Companies Say Messages Are Their Property." Reports on various spying policies and employee rights. Quotes PRZ demurring: "You don't check your constitutional rights at the door." Notes Apple's snooping not. And, scare-escrowing, it asks, "what happens if an employee encrypts important company documents, and then dies [or is fired or extorts]. How will the company get to vital information." FYB_oss

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