December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

Re: Intel, Microsoft doing Internet Phone Software
by Duncan Frissell 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 10:47 AM 7/23/96 -0400, W Lee Nussbaum wrote: > >...see IDT's Net2Phone product, at http://www.net2phone.com/; it does >what you describe. Two notes: (1) I haven't used it yet; (2: disclosure) >I'm now employed by IDT, though in a different area. > > - Lee Subject of an Economist article: http://www.economist.com/issue/20-07-96/wb2.html DCF

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Re: Digital Watermarks for copy protection in recent Billbo
by jim bell 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 08:08 PM 7/23/96 -0400, Alan Horowitz wrote: >> However, what is somewhat less >> well-known is the fact that in order to keep higher frequencies from being >> "aliased" (reflected to lower frequencies by heterodyne processes) it is >> necessary to remove (by filtering) any frequency content above that maximum, >> before sampling is done. > > Well, fudge sticks. That sounds like this thing called an "image" in >heterodyne analog RF receivers. I know how those work. Sampling produces essentially the same effect. >What is the physical basis for "aliasing" as you describe, in the >sampling theater of operations? Sampling a signal of frequency f1 at a rate of f2 produces two mixes, f1+f2 and f1-f2. The sum is sufficiently high that it isn't a concern, the difference could be. If you have an input containing frequencies up to 25 Khz, and you sample it at a rate of 40 kilosamples per second, the input frequency of 25 kilohertz gets mirrored down to 15 kilohertz, which is far lower than its original frequency. This is a problem! Some of the early voice-scramblers used this effect, heterodyning the audio band with a higher-frequency signal and reversing it, changing higher frequencies to lower and vice versa. Not particularly "secure" by today's standards, but it probably kept a few people from understanding what's going on. I've heard, however, that with practice you could learn to understand such frequency-inverted speech, as odd as it sounds. Jim Bell jimbell(a)pacifier.com

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Re: Brute Force DES
by frantz＠netcom.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 12:41 AM 7/23/96 -0800, jim bell wrote: >Not that I think that such a dedicated chip necessarily exists; chances are >good that there isn't all that much demand for a 12-megabyte/second >encryptor. If you are running a 600 megabit/sec ATM/SONET link and want to encrypt it, you are in the market for a 75 megabyte/sec encryptor. As for dedicated crackers, according to my notes from the SAFE forum at Stanford, Eric Thompson said his company made FPGAs for cracking DES. A seven day crack for $1 million. ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Bill Frantz | Cave ab homine unius lebri | Periwinkle -- Consulting (408)356-8506 | [Beware the man of one | 16345 Englewood Ave. frantz(a)netcom.com | book] - Anonymous Latin | Los Gatos, CA 95032, USA

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Re: Digital Watermarks for copy protection in recent Billbo
by tcmay＠got.net 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 2:42 PM 7/23/96, Alex F wrote: >> > People buying CDs at a garage sale & getting arrested for >> >piracy. Wonderful. >> >> Arrests like this are uncommon. Even buying "cheap bikes" and other "cheap" >> (= probably stolen and fenced) merchandise almost never subjects the >> purchaser to criminal sanctions. > >Yes, but concievably if (whoever would be incharge, FBI?) *could*, >under law do this, even if they are wrong. It is a lot harder to >prove that they intentionally harrassed *you* than it is for them to >say that they were following leads and show evidence. Yes, this may To go to trial, an indictment would be needed. How likely is this? Not very. Discussion of "in theory they could arrest you" points often neglects the realities of the legal system. A large fraction of pawnshop items have questionable provenance, the items having been stolen at some time in the past. Could J. Random Buyer who walks in, sees an item he likes, buys it, and walks out with it be handcuffed and taken down the lockup for the crime of buying stolen property? Doubtful, in the real world. And defense would be ridicuously easy. >Cds are often sampled at 48 these days. Mine was, and we had to >reduce it to 44.1 for mass producing (much to our surprise, since >many CD manufacturers love getting stuff at 48 over 44.1) A trivial increase in frequency, and still not allowing the hypothesized 30 KHz signal to be added. DATs often sample at 44 and 48 KHz, switchably. The CD standard is of course still what it is. >Not familiar with the Nyquist limit w/ regards to sampling rate vs >frequency :( Check any textbook, or even a good dictionary. Basically, it says that one must sample at more than twice the frequency of the highest frequency to be reconstructed. Thus, a 20 KHz top frequency needs at least 40 K samples per second. The exact number is, I think, about 2.2x the freqency, which is why CDs were standardized at 44 K samples per second per channel. --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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Re: Digital Watermarks (slightly off-topic?)
by Alex F 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

> In list.cypherpunks you write: > > Tough to do. A CD samples at 44,100 Hz. Nyquist says you can only > resolve the original frequencies up to 1/2 the sampling rate. So a CD > cuts off, of necessity, at 22,050 Hz. Many people can hear beyond 22 > KHz, and can notice the CD cutoff effect. (analog recordings taper off > as the analog response diminishes) Not a lot of room inband. Actually (speaking from personal experience) many many recordings are now done at a sampling rate of 48 instead of 44.1 (actually it may be around 50/50 or so, from my experience). Many CD replicators these days are thrilled to get recordings done at 48 instead of 44.1, which gives even more room. Another possibility, if you want to get even more into detail is to encode the ID in digital format on the CD. This will give an audible sound (ever put a CD-Rom in a regular CD player by mistake?), but a mirror of that sound played at the same time will effectively set that sound to nothing (cancelling it out). You can't hear it, but a machine can still decode the digital info. This way you can set it at a higher frequency where if it happens to cancell out a brief second of music, the listener won't notice (unless you are "Jamie Summers" :) ). Alex F =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Alex F alexf(a)iss.net Marketing Specialist Internet Security Systems =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

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Public briefing on the NRC cryptography policy report in...
by CRYPTO 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Subject: Public briefing on the NRC cryptography policy report in Boston, August 7 Cryptography's Role in Securing the Information Society A Public Briefing in Boston, Massachusetts Wednesday, August 7, 1996, 10:00 am to noon There will be a public briefing Boston, Massachusetts by the National Research Council on the report. The briefing will be held at the Gardener Auditorium in the State House in Boston on Wednesday, August 7, from 10:00 AM to 12:00 noon. Check http://www.tiac.net/biz/bcslegal for current information. Authoring committee member Elliot M. Stone will be among the presenters at the Boston briefing. Dr. Herbert Lin, study director and senior staff officer of CSTB, will be present. The Boston Computer Society Legal Group, the Boston Bar Association and the Information Technology Division of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts are co-hosts for this event. Questions from the audience will be entertained, and a limited number of pre-publication copies of the report will be available at that time. For further information, please contact Dan Greenwood at (617) 973-0071 or DGreenwood @ state.ma.us. The event is open to the press and the public. If you have suggestions about other places that the committee should offer a public briefing, please send e-mail to crypto(a)nas.edu.

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Re: Brute Force DES
by Ryan Russell/SYBASE 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

How about harder logistical problem? I had considered the possibility of cracking DES once and for all (I was specifically thinking of crypt(3), but it applies just as well for DES in general..) and instead of trying up a bunch of computers for however many months it took to crack a single key... Let's tie up everyone's extra storage and store the results as each key is generated.. Yes, I realize that it's a rather large amount of storage... Then key lookups could be done at will, reverse DNS style.. Ryan ---------- Previous Message ---------- To: frissell, cypherpunks, trei cc: From: trei @ process.com ("Peter Trei") @ smtp Date: 07/22/96 04:55:17 PM Subject: Re: Brute Force DES > Peter wrote: > >Any one up for a distributed brute force attack on single DES? My > >back-of-the-envelope calculations and guesstimates put this on the > >hairy edge of doability (the critical factor is how many machines can > >be recruited - a non-trivial cash prize would help). Duncan wrote: > I volunteer my 120 MHZ Pentium. A lot more Pentiums are out there now than > a year ago. That makes it more feasible. A lot more people with full net > connections. Like most Americans, I have a flat rate net connection and a > flat rate local phone connection so could run a cracking session permanently > (as long as no one tells my ISP). We need a full test of the Winsock > cracking client in any case. It wasn't working very well last time. > > DCF <back-of-envelope> In my terminology, 'hairy edge of doability" means we have a shot at success, but I wouldn't bet the farm on it. I thought that I might bet a couple hundred bucks, though. Sadly, after further calculation, I'm not so sure if it's doable just yet. What I'm looking at is a known plaintext attack on single ECB DES, using a brute-force test to cycle through the key space. People would get chunks of keyspace to test from a central server or servers, and would be motivated to take part by a cash prize for the lucky person who finds the key. Lets do the numbers: Single DES has the security of 56 bits of key - there are 64 bits in the keys, but 8 of them are parity bits which add nothing to security. 2^56 = 7.205e16 keys (which is a whopping big number) Let's guess that we can recruit the equivalent of full-time on 1000 machines. 7.205e13 keys/machine. Let's guess that we have about a month before people start to lose interest - so we want to be more than 1/2 done by then. Lets say we want to sweep the whole space in 40 days. 1.8e12 keys/machine/day ~21,000,000 keys/machine/second The fastest general purpose, freely available des implementation I'm aware of is libdes. by Eric Young. With this, I can do a set_key in 15.8 us, and an ecb_encrypt in 95 us/block. That adds up to about 9,000 keytests/sec (this is on a 90 MHz P5, running NT). I'm looking at ideas to speed up DES - if I'm willing to use honking great lookup tables, the permutation steps can be done more quickly than libdes. I'm also looking at implementing the algolrithm in hand-optimized P5 assembler. (It's been years since I've done a major assembler project - the P5 has some truely weird features to be considered, but also has (some) internal 64 bit registers to play with). Let's guess that I can speed up a key-test up by a factor of 10. (This is not a slur on Eric's code - it's extremely clever, but not optimized for any particular processor, or for key-testing. Note that the keytest described above takes about 10,000 cycles/test.) That gets my workstation up to about 90,000 keys a second, which is still almost a factor of 250 too slow. I'm going ahead with my work on a faster DES keytester, but unless optimizing gives an astounding win, I now think a distributed bruting effort is a bit pre-mature. What will make this brute doable, if not now, then in the near future? 1. Faster Processors - Moore's Law is still holding. A year ago, my 90 MHz Pentium was one of the faster machines taking part in the 40-bit RC4 crack. Now, it's passe. 2. More processors. The number of people on the internet continues to grow rapidly. 3. More interest - Crypto awareness has greatly increased in the last year, and a real cash prize (say, over $500) will generate both publicity and interest. These factors all multiply together. The number of cycles that could probably be recruited is increasing at a fast rate. A major part of the work will be a keyspace distribution mechanism which can handle the load (this was a major stumbling block last year). </back-of-envelope> Peter Trei trei(a)process.com Disclaimer: This has nothing to do with my employer.

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Lawsuit over publishing how-to-murder book
by Deranged Mutant 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

>From LI Newsday today, p. 18: Suit Follows Muder by the Book Publisher of how-to 'Hit Man' manual is blamed in 3 killings The Associated Press (Greebvelt, Md.) - James E. Perry committed muder by the book. Now the book's publisher is accused of aiding and abetting his crimes. In a case that legal scholars say could set a precedent in First Amendment law if allowed to proceed, a federal judge yesterday said he would rule in 30 days on a motion against the publisher of "Hit Man: A Technical Manual for Independent Contractors". [..] The $10, 130-page book has sold 13,000 copies since it was published in 1983 by Paladin Press of Boulder, Colo., a small company that sells mostly through mail orders from its catalog. [..] No mention of the Internet or four-horseman in the article.

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Re: [Noise] was Re: Giving 6 year old kids Uzi's
by Duncan Frissell 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

>At 5:14 PM -0700 7/22/96, Ernest Hua wrote: >>Or the way many blacks were lynched (physically and socially) in the South. >>Or the way many asians were segregated. Or the way many ethnic groups >>fought each other in inner cities. >> >>These are cultural relics of the good ol' days I simply can do without. Few armed blacks were lynched. Like--none. In any case, posession of machined metal is in no way comparable to lynching. Massed armed attacks on people simply because they are alleged to have possessed machined pieces of metal the size and shape of fifty-cent pieces (the reason for the BATF attack on the religious community outside of Waco) *is* comparable to lynching. DCF

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Re: NSA Lawyers Believe ITARs Would be Overturned if Tested in Court (fwd)
by Vincent Cate 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

My arms trafficker page has been up since April 26th. We have 838 arms traffickers and a public file with a list of 360 "known arms traffickers". It was mentioned on CNN. So far, nobody from the NSA or anywhere else has complained. I am sure if this went to court they would loose. They have to claim that clicking a mouse button on a web form so that 3 lines of text go back to where they just came from, makes someone a criminal. "May it please the court, the charge against these 838 criminal clickers is international arms-trafficking." In a country where a double murderer can walk? I am sure they realize this, which is why I feel it is safe for me to do this (also I believe that EFF etc would so love to have my case as a test case that they would pay my legal bills). -- Vince Cate http://online.offshore.com.ai/arms-trafficker/ http://online.offshore.com.ai/publicity/cnn.html

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