December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

Re: Symantec's Your Eyes Only
by Clay Olbon II 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

jim bell <jimbell(a)pacifier.com> wrote: >At 11:57 AM 7/16/96 -0400, Clay Olbon II wrote: > >>Now my $.02. I am concerned about the lack of a distinction between >>transient communications and stored data. This is apparent in the GAK >>proposals, but is also increasingly apparent in mainstream corporate >>products such as this one and ViaCrypt BE. It is apparent (to me anyway) >>that corporate access to stored data (data owned by the company, on >>machines owned by the company) is probably necessary. I do not see this >>same need for access to transient communications. Am I way off base on >>this one? > > >This has been mentioned a number of times by various people. It should be >obvious that it is pointless to escrow the key of a data stream that you are >not recording, such as a telephone conversation. Also, if you have no >permanent need for that data (also, the telephone conversation) it is >unnecessary. As might be expected, however, the proponents of GAK don't >distinguish between keys for storage and keys for communication. > >Such an oversight is predictable. It's likely that governments will be >more >interested in keys for communication, because the data is far more easily >(and secretly) accessible. Were they to admit that nobody has a need for >his own communication data key, they'd lose a substantial fraction of their >target data. > My point was not that govts want to escrow communication keys, it was that this is appearing more and more in commercial products marketed to businesses. I run the computer system for a small office and I would rather not see employee email - maybe I am just naive. However, there obviously is a demand for this type of product. It must come from either a lack of understanding of crypto, or a freeh-style authoritarianism on the part of corporate executives. I wouldn't rule either one out. If it is the latter, I'm not sure there is anything we can do. Clay *************************************************************************** Clay Olbon II * Clay.Olbon(a)dynetics.com Systems Engineer * PGP262 public key on web page Dynetics, Inc. * http://www.msen.com/~olbon/olbon.html ***************************************************************** TANSTAAFL

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ABC News on internet telephony
by Clay Olbon II 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

There was a pretty long piece on the evening news on using the internet for long distance and how much money can be saved. Even had several demos of intercontinental phone calls. The disappointing aspect was they didn't mention PGPfone (although if they had, I'm sure child pornographers and terrorists would have been mentioned as well :-) Clay *************************************************************************** Clay Olbon II * Clay.Olbon(a)dynetics.com Systems Engineer * PGP262 public key on web page Dynetics, Inc. * http://www.msen.com/~olbon/olbon.html ***************************************************************** TANSTAAFL

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Re:Seek And Destroy
by rednax 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Hmm, this page however, does something if you are using netscape www.angelfire.com/pages0/cbp3/index.html -- r 3 |) |\| @ >< rednax(a)asiapac.net "violent! you mean it's alive??"

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Re: SecureDrive(IDEA), Realdeal and plaintext attack
by Jean-Francois Avon 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Cc: cypherpunks(a)toad.com galactus(a)stack.urc.tue.nl Iolo Davidson<iolo(a)mist.demon.co.uk> On 18 Jul 96 at 4:19, Edgar Swank wrote: > JFA wrote: > > Question: > > > > Since realdeal overwrite everything with 0s, and that theses > > zeroed sectors are encrypted later with IDEA, will that give an > > attacker an edge? The attacker will likely know that there are > > large disk areas that contains 0s. > > > > Any comments? > Yes. Each sector encrypted by SecureDrive also incorporates a "salt" > value derived from the sector address and (usually random) volume > serial. So encrypted zeroed sectors will be different from each other > and (without the IDEA key) cannot be distinguished from sectors > containing data. IDEA is reputed to be resistant against known plaintext attacks. But I did not read about wether or not it is resistant to several-plaintexts (?choosen plaintext) attack. If the sectors were not salted, each zeroed sectors would translate in an identical way on the encrypted disk. So, there would be only one cyphertext-plaintext pair repeated over many empty sectors. If you salt the encryptor, there are many different cyphertexts corresponding to one single plaintext. Can the salt be figured out by an attacker? If yes, would the many-cyphertext to single-ultimate-plaintext could give an edge to an attacker? In that case, it would be effectively better to not wipe a drive with zeroes. The problem is, realdeal cannot be turned selectively for only one drive while not wiping the other one. Thanks for your reply. JFA DePompadour, Societe d'Importation Ltee; Limoges porcelain, silverware and crystal JFA Technologies, R&D consultants: physicists, technologists and engineers. PGP keys at: http://w3.citenet.net/users/jf_avon ID# C58ADD0D : 529645E8205A8A5E F87CC86FAEFEF891

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Adapting PGP to other languages
by Deranged Mutant 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

On 17 Jul 96 at 18:10, anonymous-remailer(a)shell.port wrote: > Does anyone know how to tanslate PGP into Burmese? The PGP sources have a language tool in the 'contrib' directory for translating the language files. Being fluent in 'Burmese' or whatever language you want to translate it to is helpful. Rob --- 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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Re: Making encoding out of an authentication cipher
by Deranged Mutant 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

On 17 Jul 96 at 19:36, EVERHART(a)Arisia.GCE.Com wrote: > Had an interesting thought, maybe worth passing on for commentary. > > (...since "authentication" ciphers are considered "harmless" by > those interested in spying on your info...) > > Suppose you have a secure hash function H(msg) that delivers a random [..] There's a section in Schneier's Applied Cryptography about using hash algorithms for ciphers. There are several ways of doing this, although some are stronger than others. One you adapt the hash algorithm to a cipher, it's a cipher, not a hash algorithm, and is regulated. Rob --- 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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Re:
by Arun Mehta 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 18:10 17/07/96 -0700, someone via anonymous-remailer(a)shell.portal.com wrote: >Does anyone know how to tanslate PGP into Burmese? I've been talking to human rights people here -- we certainly plan to translate into one or more Indian languages, and perhaps soon there will be action at an Asian level as well. Is this an urgent requirement? If so, I can try to arrange. Arun Mehta Phone +91-11-6841172, 6849103 amehta(a)cpsr.org http://www.cerfnet.com/~amehta/

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Re: Crypto 96
by Deranged Mutant 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

On 17 Jul 96 at 16:45, Hal wrote: > Crypto 96 is coming up in about a month. This looks like a more > interesting program than last year, IMO. According to the preliminary [..] > Key-Schedule Cryptanalysis of IDEA, G-DES, GOST, SAFER, and Triple-DES > John Kelsey, Counterpane Systems, USA > Bruce Schneier, Counterpane Systems, USA > David Wagner, Univ. California at Berkeley, USA > > There are actually several cryptanalysis type papers for which > I can't tell from the title whether they will be big new > results or not. Anybody know what "key schedule" cryptanalysis > is? The way a key is transformed into a larger key or S-box. I assume cryptanalysis of these means that there may be weaknesses which can be exploited. Rob --- 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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Encrypted files in terror case
by Joe Thomas 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Excerpts from a N.Y. Times News Service piece available at http://www.nando.net/newsroom/ntn/info/071896/info12_18308.html : NEW YORK (Jul 18, 1996 02:00 a.m. EDT) -- In the seven weeks since the trial of Ramzi Ahmed Yousef began, the case, charging a plot to blow American jumbo jets out of the sky, has come to hinge on one off-white laptop computer. [Most of the story, dealing with the defense contention that Philipine police altered files on the laptop, deleted.] Several witnesses reported that some computer files were in code, part of which the police could not decipher. Last week, after the jury adjourned for lunch, Duffy [the judge in the case] prodded the defense to point out that encoding files was not unusual and that some software programs offer such an option. "I don't want the jury to think that encryption is something that only bad guys do," Duffy said.

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RE: Cypherpunks and Toad.com
by nobody＠zifi.genetics.utah.edu 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

root@HellSpawn wrote: >I'd like to put the words > >Cypherpunks(a)toad.com > >On a tee-shirt. Is cypherpunks, toad.com, or the combination thereof >copyrighted or trademarked or otherwise limited for use? Not that I know of, and you are of course free to do anything you want, but I urge you to leave off the "@toad.com" to prevent clueless subscription requests/noise. There are a number of cpunk tshirts already, one of which contains TCM's sigfile, so the word is likely not copyrighted???

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