December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

Navajo Code-Talkers
by tcmay＠got.net 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 2:59 PM 3/30/96, Alan Horowitz wrote: >Is there any indication that the GRU or Chinese or Iranian intelligence >(I think these are our only foes nowadays who have blue-water {to mix a >metaphor} spook services) could do better than the Japanese did in >sigint'ing against human speakers of Navajoe? Probably. Not that it matters, as Navajo code-talking was a classic example of security through obscurity. It served its purpose, but approaches such as this are effectively just _very weak codes_. I wouldn't expect this "trick" to work as well the second time around. (Actually, it's been used throughout history, in the sense of people speaking in what they think to be obscure variants of languages, or in slang. There is ample evidence that teen lingo is designed to be less intelligible to adults.) >From where I am now sitting I can see the Defense Language Institute in Monterey, where all sorts of obscure languages are taught. AT&T even located their translation service here, to take advantage of the various experts (even Yoruba speakers, Alan B. will be pleased to hear). I'd venture that NSA also has large staffs of language experts, to interpret the COMINT stuff vacuumed up. >Is the Navajo language still extent among draft-age men? Life in the >Southwest has changed considerably since 1943. According to an episode of "The X Files," which dealt with Navajo code-talkers, the answer is that young Navajo men are losing their fluency in Navajo, especially of the nuances and double entendres that code-talkers relied upon. (For those who scoff at using a television show as a source, writers for shows like this often do more interesting research than, say, the average encyclopedia article will report.) Finally, there is no draft in the U.S., of course. --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: What backs up digital money?
by tcmay＠got.net 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 10:29 PM 3/30/96, Simon Spero wrote: >[Everyone's ignoring the obvious answer: Exabyte's, silly :)] > No, "exonbytes," the archival storage medium for the post-CDA world. It automatically filters out the naughty bits. Dats what I've got. (By the way, wags may call them "Exon bites," but this usage is forbidden by the CDA. As well has having already been used, a la Valdez.) --Klaus THE X-ON CONGRESS: INDECENT COMMENT ON AN INDECENT SUBJECT, by Steve Russell, American Reporter Correspondent....You motherfuckers in Congress have dropped over the edge of the earth this time... "the sorriest bunch of cocksuckers ever to sell out the First Amendment" or suggesting that "the only reason to run for Congress these days is to suck the lobbyists' dicks and fuck the people who sent you there," ....any more than I care for the language you shitheads have forced me to use in this essay...Let's talk about this fucking indecent language bullshit.

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Re: What happened with Cypherpunks?
by frantz＠netcom.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

>Bill Frantz writes: >> When many of us at Netcom went a week without a feed, I tried to find out >> what was going on. The best explanation I could get was:\ >> >> >From: David Lesher <wb8foz(a)nrk.com> >> > >> >The problem is toad.com is broken. >> >It refuses to pass mail to an MX address, > >Huh? I get my cypherpunks mail via an MX. Besides, the thing is >running sendmail, which uses MX records. > >.pm What I posted is what I received. They were the ONLY explanation(s) I received of a cause for the problem. My understanding of RFC822 and descendants is not good enough to offer a critique, but I do know that my, and a number of my friends toad.com feed was constipated for a week until the Exlax came thru. If you have a better explanation of what happened, I would be delighted to receive it. (BTW - I have notes from a number of non-Netcom subscribers who report no problems during the effected time.) Regards - Bill ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Bill Frantz | The CDA means | Periwinkle -- Computer Consulting (408)356-8506 | lost jobs and | 16345 Englewood Ave. frantz(a)netcom.com | dead teenagers | Los Gatos, CA 95032, USA

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(Excerpted Fwd) Minnesota Online privacy bill in conference comm
by Deranged Mutant 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

------- Forwarded Message Follows ------- Date: Sat, 30 Mar 1996 11:33:26 -0600 To: privacy(a)ftc.gov, net-happenings(a)vm1.nodak.edu, pubs(a)educom.edu From: shel(a)mtn.org (Sheldon Mains) Subject: Minnesota Online privacy bill in conference committee Reply-to: privacy(a)ftc.gov Minnesota Online Privacy Bill in Conference Committee is in Conference Committee 3-27-1996 The following online privacy option bill passed the full Minnesota State House and is now in conference committee with a "study" passed today by the State Senate. The various interests, including major commercial on-line services, woke up to the bill and found Senate members to amend their version which was similar to the House's on the floor with a short bill that would instead require study. It is a pretty incredible story that the House bill (following after this intro) has gotten so far without major attention. Sheldon Mains shel(a)mtn.org You can track the legislation via the legislative WWW at: http://www.leg.state.mn.us [..] Rob. --- Send a blank message with the subject "send pgp-key" (not in quotes) to <WlkngOwl(a)unix.asb.com> for a copy of my PGP key.

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PIR_ate
by John Young 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

3-31-96. NYT: "Sold Out." By James Boyle, American University law professor We are in the middle of an information land grab and no one seems to have noticed. Congress is now considering the Administration's proposal for intellectual property on the Internet, aimed at "saving" this thriving medium. Using a far-fetched theory of what constitutes "copying," the proposal would turn browsing an Internet document into a copyright violation. It would effectively privatize much of the public domain by transforming the current law of fair use. It would make on-line service providers strictly liable for their customers' copyright violations, thus giving providers an incentive to monitor what you do in cyberspace. "Poetry can only be made out of other poems, novels out of other novels," as the critic Northrop Frye famously put it. The same goes for computer programs, which build on the contributions of earlier hackers. Every intellectual property claim is a chunk taken out of the public domain. If we give someone a software patent over basic functions, at some point the public domain will be so diminished that future creators will be prevented from creating because they won't be able to afford the raw materials they need. An intellectual property system has to insure that the fertile public domain is not converted into a fallow landscape of walled private plots. PIR_ate

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"Random Sequence"
by rollo＠artvark.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

The paper "On the Effective Definition of 'Random Sequence'", by Michael Levin, Marvin Minsky, and Roland Silver can be viewed (and downloaded, and printed) from my website <http://www.artvark.com/artvark>. At the end of the main menu you'll see a link to "Random Sequences", which click. I hand-translated the paper into HTML, making the formulas into GIFs; what a crock! Rollo Silver | e-mail: rollo(a)artvark.com | Artvark | Home page: http://www.artvark.com/artvark/ | PO Box 219 | Voice: 505-586-0197 | San Cristobal, NM 87564 USA | Compuserve 71174,1453 | =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-==-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

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Chaumian ecash without RSA
by David Wagner 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

I've always seen Chaum's anonymous ecash system described in terms of RSA. RSA has this ungainly patent which probably will be around for quite some time, yet the Diffie-Hellman patent expires pretty soon. With that motivation, here's a Chaumian anonymous ecash protocol based on Diffie-Hellman. Take a publicly known group G and generator g; breaking Diffie-Hellman and taking discrete logs in this group should be hard. For instance, G might be (Z/pZ)^*, the integers modulo a prime p. The bank picks a secret value k, and publishes g^k. To withdraw a coin, Alice picks an x, sets y = x | hash(x), [ | is concatenation ] chosen so that y is in G. Alice chooses a random secret blinding factor b, sends to the bank A->B: y g^b, and the bank returns B->A: (y g^b)^k, debiting Alice's account. Note that this is a (blinded) Diffie-Hellman key exchange with public exponentials g^k and y g^b; the bank returns the exchanged "secret". Alice unblinds this value, computing z = (y g^b)^k (g^k)^{-b} and now c = (x,z) is a coin in the digital cash system. Note z = y^k. We use the traditional online clearing protocol; to deposit the coin, a shop S sends S->B: x, z. The bank checks to make sure the coin hasn't already been spent, and then computes y = x | MD5(x), checking whether y^k = z. If equality holds, and the coin hasn't already been spent, then the bank credits S's account and adds the coin to the list of spent coins. This is just the same old Chaum anonymous ecash protocol, except that I've replaced the RSA operations by Diffie-Hellman ones. It's a lesser-known fact that you can blind a Diffie-Hellman key exchange just as you can blind a RSA signature. The security of this protocol depends on the intractibility of breaking Diffie-Hellman. In particular, given public exponentials g^k and y = g^m, for k,m unknown, it must be impossible to compute g^{km} = y^k. Furthermore, this protocol depends on the hash function being one-way and possessing no interactions with Diffie-Hellman or modular exponentiation. Comments?

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Re: SNI_ffs
by John Young 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Responding to msg by declan+(a)CMU.EDU ("Declan B. McCullagh") on Sun, 31 Mar 10:42 AM >One gave me the impression the DoJ had to develop >custom hardware and software for this "Internet >wiretap" done without Harvard's direct cooperation. DoJ is probably cutting spying-sensitive Harvard some slack, or slyly crowing about setting up the Crimson butts with a promise for deniability. Is it possible that the CFP chit-chat revved that Janus-spin, practicing for more pervasive cyber-sleuth slathering of wannabe L&O insiders? ---------- The New York Times, March 31, 1996, p. 20. First Internet Wiretap Leads to a Suspect [Excerpts of story not in the TWP] Stephen P. Heymann, a Federal prosecutor in Boston, said investigators had worked with Harvard to determine a method of tracking the suspect that would protect the privacy of legitimate users. He said that the Harvard system had 16,500 accounts and 13,000 users and that about 60,000 E-mail messages each day moved in and out of the area where investigators were looking for the intruder. Mr. Heymann said investigators had used a high-speed computer to check for 10 to 15 key words that matched the intruder's profile. If they were not sure if an electronic communication containing a key word was Mr. Ardita's, the investigators looked at 80 characters on either side of the key word to make that determination. Mr. Heymann said investigators believed that only twice had they read a complete message that was not Mr. Ardita's. [End excerpt]

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Re: [NOISE] Cable-TV-Piracy-Punks
by jim bell 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 11:59 PM 3/30/96 -0800, Mike Duvos wrote: >A few more hopefully short comments... > > Why not? If the card knows its own key, then someone else > > can probably get the key out by some nasty mechanism. > >There is no physical difference between cards. The key >information is stored in EEPROM, and the links which permit the >EEPROM to be written are burned after programming is complete. >The EEPROM data is then only accessible to intimately associated >circuitry in its vicinity. > >Presumedly the state of the EEPROM cannot be deduced by any >external examination of the card, and any attempt to >incrementally abrade the card down to the relevent circuit >elements should completely obliterate the minute charge >differences which represent the data. > >At least, that's the theory. The Europeans trust this technology >well enough to let it represent real money, so presumedly they do >not consider hacking a possibility. > >Perhaps our resident VLSI and Alpha Particle expert, Timothy C. >May, could give us a guess as to whether Perry's "Nasty >Mechanism" is more or less likely than Maxwell's "Daemon." I don't know what Tim May will tell you, but over 10 years ago a technology was developed which is something like a scanning electron microscope, however with very low beam energies and is designed to be able to scan a chip and quantitatively measure the voltage at various/all points on the chip. It can be thwarted by a thick coating on the chip, but most organic coatings can be removed with a "plasma asher," a chamber designed to remove photoresist coatings on chips. Jim Bell jimbell(a)pacifier.com

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Re: Electronic locksmiths are watching you (Belgium's ban onPGP)
by jf_avon＠citenet.net 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Dave Del Torto <ddt(a)lsd.com> wrote: >At 1:25 am 3/30/96, jim bell wrote: >>We should be particularly suspicious of any hint of a pan-European ban or >>control of encryption, because that is exactly the kind of development that >>could usher in a secretly-negotiated treaty that might be argued to be >>binding on the public. [elided] >Cypherpunks like Jim need to keep doing their homework before they make >such quasi-factual statements. Jim seems to analyse a situation in terms of broad principles, while Dave seems to focus more on specifics that would disprove Jim. I agree with the Dave's last phrase in the sense that our models of reality should indeed be rooted in reality. But considering that in most european country, you are recognized guilty unless proven innocent, it is only non-contradictory to arrive at Jim's conclusions. The basic psycho-epistemology at work there is implying that. Maybe that on the instant, ugly things are not happening, but nevertheless, the basic principles held about man, his nature and therefore, about how he should be treated leads, by their own logic, to ugly things. JFA -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.2i iQEVAwUBMV5p5siycyXFit0NAQGSjAf/abwWK0DoLESROTPjrNgEcX66t+zFJ8X8 c1oMvDqXsUye0WKibkgiO+yQ7Cjt2Zxo1bD9luH9boX0vUPhDxtUclw64HJ7SOGK WVVizbZLYmz5dSoOO8+0JpJUyFFgdI9LOMPjD1wIH84YwC8zjjSx/ZCPoEzt0lux pP2l57+G3aVwvxCXBD0lm/Uwtafn3i35ZsOyuKRq802Is8BhFH1hka+SzUyuU1i2 Tcw7/WbqSklvGSkVkBxKMJot7GbBTEQMNqVH7oLECY1oTKafEnXzAKihKJYef49w AJJpsOr5LQ9hyrKzAL9Mhzpx/DrrnIQ3BxMb7VgtbHSMjaEMJ+rS0g== =3bz4 -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- Public Key at http://w3.citenet.net/users/jf_avon Jean-Francois Avon <jf_avon(a)citenet.net> 2048 bits key ID:C58ADD0D 1996/03/01 fingerprint=52 96 45 E8 20 5A 8A 5E F8 7C C8 6F AE FE F8 91 Unsollicited commercial e-mail will be proofread at a rate of 165 $ U.S. per hours. Any sender of unsollicited commercial e-mail will be considered as to have accepted the above mentionned terms.

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