December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

Re: Freeh slimes again: Digital Telephony costs $2 billion now ...
by Bill Stewart 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

>>> Louis Freeh is now asking the Congress for $2 billion to fund >>> Digital Telephony. Yes, that is FOUR TIMES what he said it >How many crimes, approximately, are going to be solved or prevented by the >expenditure of this $2 billion dollars? One hundred? A thousand? I haven't been able to find the reference, but a month or two ago there was an article on the net or in a newspaper about the targets of wiretapping - how many wiretaps were for drugs, gambling, tax evasion, and of course terrorism. The number of wiretaps for bombs and guns was something low like 80 in the last 5-10 years - about 1/10%. (Did anybody else see this article??) On the other hand, the recent articles in the press about increasing bomb-related crimes in the US; it's up to about 3000/year from 2000 in 5 yrs. So maybe 1/10% of the bombing investigations have even used wiretapping. So why is Louis Freeh ranting up and down about the need to ban encryption because he needs wiretapping to catch terrorists? At least he could be honest and rant about the need to stop the hordes of drug dealers and escalate the War On Gambling. # Thanks; Bill # Bill Stewart, +1-415-442-2215 stewarts(a)ix.netcom.com # <A HREF="http://idiom.com/~wcs"> Defuse Authority!

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Re: Corporate e-mail policy
by Bill Stewart 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

> "Electronic mail may be monitored if there is sufficient reason to > believe that it is being improperly used which includes, but is not > limited to: mail to competitors, more than 20 recipients (spam), and > incoming mail from questionable sources. If such monitored mail is > encrypted the employee must provide a clear text version of the mail > which is to be unencrypted under supervision to avoid substitutions. > Any employee refusing to make available such mail will be ...." Official mail to competitors, the press, or customers is probably something you'd want an official copy of anyway, and the employee should be able to decide intelligently what to keep (unless your lawyers say to always keep everything, in which case the legal department should be responsible for maintaining the archives....) Incoming encrypted mail you can (presumably) get an employee to decrypt. Outgoing encrypted mail may not support that - PGP, for instance, supports an encrypt-to-self option, but if you don't use it, and didn't record the outgoing message, you _can't_ decrypt it. Writing something into a policy that will get an employee fired for refusing to do something that can't be done with the available tools is not a good idea. I'm not highly impressed with the idea of snooping on employees' mail, even if it _is_ your company. If you don't trust them, don't hire them. If you do trust them, don't eavesdrop. And if they're ripping you off and don't have the sense to sneak their sotlen data outside the building by sneakernet or other untappable mechanism, you probably should have fired them for incompetence long ago anyway. # Thanks; Bill # Bill Stewart, +1-415-442-2215 stewarts(a)ix.netcom.com # <A HREF="http://idiom.com/~wcs"> Defuse Authority!

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Re: e$: Watching the MacRubble Bounce
by E. ALLEN SMITH 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

If you're wanting someone to talk on NuPrometheus, you might try Barlow.... he's already been investigated for it and doesn't seem likely to be harrassed again. Of course, _getting_ him could be a problem. -Allen

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Re: Fixes to loop.c et al. for DES,IDEA,stego now done
by Julian Assange 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

> > -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- > > > > This directory contains patches to the Linux kernel to enable encryption and > > steganography of filesystems. Encryption allows you to have a scrambled > > partition or file that, with the proper pass phrase, you can mount, just > > like a normal filesystem. Steganography allows you to hide a filesystem in > > the low bits of, say, an audio file. You can even combine these two to hide > > a scrambled filesystem in the low bits of an audio file (see the example, > > below). > > > > With the addition of stego, this arrangment seems to be rather similar to > CFS. So the question on my mind, is can the loop device(s) be Since when has CFS had any steganography features? -- "Of all tyrannies a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies, The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their own conscience." - C.S. Lewis, _God in the Dock_ +---------------------+--------------------+----------------------------------+ |Julian Assange RSO | PO Box 2031 BARKER | Secret Analytic Guy Union | |proff(a)suburbia.net | VIC 3122 AUSTRALIA | finger for PGP key hash ID = | |proff(a)gnu.ai.mit.edu | FAX +61-3-98199066 | 0619737CCC143F6DEA73E27378933690 | +---------------------+--------------------+----------------------------------+

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re:THE WORLD IS SCREWD UP
by anonymous-remailer＠shell.portal.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 05:02 PM 8/6/96 -0500, you wrote: >THIS WORLD IS SREWED UP i hate my life so mue hobbeys makeing time pipe >bommbs so what is this all about huh what the fuck "anti terrisiom bill" >damn sad ok so what does this mean FREE COUNTRY hahahaha i laugh when i >hear that term there is no free country and we never have a wright to >privesy u know man this sux so much....... oh and to the government u can >kiss my ass TAKE it to a shrink... not Cypherpunks! Ps. learn to spell!

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Re: Censorship through proxy
by shamrock＠netcom.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 18:12 8/6/96, Timothy C. May wrote: >I wonder what would happen if "Computers, Freedom, and Privacy '98" was >held in Sing Sing? We'd all get caned? -- Lucky Green <mailto:shamrock@netcom.com> PGP encrypted mail preferred. Defeat the Demopublican Unity Party. Vote no on Clinton/Dole in November. Vote Harry Browne for President.

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"Eternity service" paper request
by Allen Robinson 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- To: cypherpunks(a)toad.com Date: Tue Aug 06 20:53:31 1996 A couple of weeks ago Hal mentioned Ross Anderson's Eternity Service paper (URL: http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk:80/users/rja14/#Lib) As Hal described it at the time: >The goal of the Eternity service is to make published information >permanently and ineradicably available, despite efforts on the part of >powerful attackers to destroy it. The attack model explicitly >includes governments. This has obvious relevance to current >controversies involving copyright, trade secrets, etc. [. . . .] >Anderson's basic concept is of a network of storage servers in widely >scattered jurisdictions. He uses cryptography so that although the >servers store data, no single computer knows exactly what is stored in >the encrypted files it holds. Keys to the data are spread across the >network using secret sharing techniques, with mutual cooperation among >the servers being necessary to decrypt files. (I believe the files >themselves are redundantly stored on individual servers, but they are >encrypted with keys which are split.) Anonymous communications are >used among the network of computers to reply to requests, so that >attackers can't tell which computer produced a requested document. At the time I thought this sounds quite interesting and filed the information away for a time when I would have an opportunity to get the paper and read it. I finally created that opportunity recently only to find the paper at the above URL in a format I have a *lot* of difficulty reading. I'm a little embarrassed to ask such a thing, but does anyone know a location where this paper resides in plain-vanilla ASCII? Many thanks. AR #%#%#%#%#%#%#%#%#%#%#%#%#%#%#%#%#%#%#%# "The road to tyranny, we must never forget, begins with the destruction of the truth." -- Bill Clinton, Oct. 15, 1995 at the University of Connecticut. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? Allen Robinson.........................sebago(a)earthlink.net PGP public key FE4A0A75 available from major keyservers fingerprint 170FBC1F7609B76F 967F1CC8FCA7A41F -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.2 iQCVAwUBMgf3H3sdZ07+Sgp1AQHEYQP/cthh/U8MwguYjuDJkrMNScwCaLrBm+rv 7SJS5Oogln7ItVfMDCUGISVNABCg4gr4taqW8OnStmegZxqsYJevLu5qYVTPvdWG wPDbBu2rHfHc6aHS1am727Vv9EJTb452tlDkXQuQApH4TUh9mYUe6oIxVenKSxNC jbPGgzxgvvo= =qhoi -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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Fixes to loop.c et al. for DES,IDEA,stego now done
by Ian Goldberg 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- As I mentioned before, the hooks to DES (and IDEA; with Nicholas Leon's patches) in loop.c and {mount,losetup}(8) are horribly broken. For example, the DES key you type in is totally ignored, and only the first byte of the IDEA key you enter is relevant. As well, the DES code was using PCBC mode, and IDEA was using ECB mode. I've fixed the key management (the key is based on a SHA1 hash of the pass phrase you enter), and changed both DES and IDEA to use CBC mode. Adding other encryption methods (Blowfish, for example) should be straightforward. In fact, I'm planning to add a facility for dynamically adding and removing general data transformation modules (maybe for 2.1...). In addition, I've implemented steganography (hiding a filesystem in the low bits of, say, an audio file), and fixed some assorted bugs in loop.c (incorrect variables were being used in some places, and a deadlock was fixed having to do with making a loop device on top of another loop device). The patches are available from: ftp://ftp.csua.berkeley.edu/pub/cypherpunks/filesystems/linux/index.html Since that site seems to be down a lot, there's an alternate site: ftp://csclub.uwaterloo.ca/pub/linux-stego/index.html Note that there's one file that contains crypto that users outside of the US and Canada must not download. See below for further details and instructions. Attached is the text version of index.html. Share and enjoy. - Ian - -----------------8<--------------------8<---------------- Encryption and Steganography for Linux This directory contains patches to the Linux kernel to enable encryption and steganography of filesystems. Encryption allows you to have a scrambled partition or file that, with the proper pass phrase, you can mount, just like a normal filesystem. Steganography allows you to hide a filesystem in the low bits of, say, an audio file. You can even combine these two to hide a scrambled filesystem in the low bits of an audio file (see the example, below). Installation instructions 1. Get a fresh copy of linux-2.0.11.tar.gz from your favourite site. 2. Patch it with the loopfix-2.0.11.patch file found in this directory. This fixes some bugs in the loop block device driver, and adds steganography support to it. Hopefully this will go into the standard kernel soon. 3. Now you want to add cryptography support. Due to a strange US regulation, this has to be split up into two pieces. The first piece, export-2.0.11.patch, doesn't actually contain any cryptograhy; it just contains the changes to the Makefiles and documentation, etc. to reflect the eventual presence of cryptography. You should get this file and patch it into the result of step 2. 4. If the site you are downloading these files from is in the US or Canada, you may only download the second piece, crypto-2.0.11.patch, if you are also in the US or Canada. If you are not, here's what's in the file, and where to get it: o The file contains the files drivers/block/idea.c, kernel/des.c, include/linux/idea.h and include/linux/des.h. o To get these files, go visit http://www.binary9.net/nicholas/linuxkernel/patches/ and get the patches des-1.0.patch and idea-1.0.patch. o Edit these patches and remove everything in them that isn't related to one of the four files listed above. o What you have left should be functionally equivalent to crypto-2.0.11.patch. 5. Take either crypto-2.0.11.patch or what you got from outside the US, and patch it into the result of step 3. 6. You now have a complete kernel. Compile as usual. You will also need an updated version of the mount and losetup commands in order to use this. To get these, download mount-2.5k from ftp://ftp.win.tue.nl/pub/linux/util/mount-2.5k.tar.gz. Then get the patch mount-2.5k.patch from this directory, and patch it into the sources. Compile and install. It would be really good if these patches to the kernel and to mount for steganography and encryption were made standard, and enabled by default. The reason for this is that it would be more suspicious for someone to have a "special" kernel with stego capabilities than to just have a regular kernel, configured in the default way. Sample encrypted and stego'd filesystem In this directory are two audio files. Alice-Bob.orig.au is a file I downloaded from http://www.iro.umontreal.ca/labs/theorique/Alice-Bob.html. The other file, Alice-Bob.au, is the same, except that it has an encrypted filesystem hidden in the low bit of each byte. You can listen to each of them, and see how much difference there is (it's just in the noise). To see the filesystem, get a new kernel and mount/losetup as descibed above. Also make sure you have loop devices in /dev/loop*, as described below. Then: # losetup -e stego /dev/loop0 Alice-Bob.au Use the low bits of each (b)yte, (s)hort, or (l)ong? (Use lowercase letters for little-endian; uppercase for big-endian.) b/s/l/B/S/L: [b] # mount /dev/loop0 /mnt -oloop,encryption=idea Pass phrase: What are we going to do tomorrow night, Brain? # ls -al /mnt total 220 drwxr-xr-x 3 root root 1024 Aug 4 10:47 ./ drwxr-xr-x 23 root root 1024 Aug 4 01:50 ../ drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 12288 Aug 4 10:46 lost+found/ - -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 71 Aug 4 10:47 passwords - -rw------- 1 root root 208247 Aug 4 10:47 world_domination_plans # umount /mnt # losetup -d /dev/loop0 Usage instructions First, make sure you have devices called /dev/loop0, /dev/loop1, ..., /dev/loop7. If not, make them as follows: # cd /dev # for i in 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7; do mknod loop$i b 7 $i; done # chgrp disk /dev/loop[0-7] # chmod 660 /dev/loop[0-7] A note on choosing pass phrases: Pass phrases can be up to 128 characters long. It's in your best interests to choose a good one. Make it long, and hard to guess. There are FAQs out there on how to choose a good pass phrase, I think. Finally, here is a copy of the file Documentation/filesystems/loop_crypt.txt: Encryption and Steganography for Linux - -------------------------------------- The "loop" block device driver allows you to "hide" a filesystem in a disk partition or in a regular file, either using encryption (scrambling the data) or steganography (hiding the data in the low bits of, say, a sound file). To use this, you will need updated versions of the "mount" and "losetup" commands. They are both in the mount-2.5k, which you can get from ftp://ftp.win.tue.nl/pub/linux/util/mount-2.5k.tar.gz but you will need to patch it with the changes from ftp://ftp.csua.berkley.edu/pub/cypherpunks/filesystems/linux/mount-2.5k.pat… Also, if you want to use DES or IDEA encryption and not just XOR (which, encryptionwise, is really terrible), you'll need to get the crypto patches to the kernel. If you're in the US or Canada, you can get them from ftp://ftp.csua.berkley.edu/pub/cypherpunks/filesystems/linux/crypto.patch Otherwise, check ftp://ftp.csua.berkley.edu/pub/cypherpunks/filesystems/linux/index.html to see how to get them. How to use it - ------------- Here are a number of examples: To create an encrypted floppy (using IDEA): Put a floppy in drive 0. # dd if=/dev/urandom of=/dev/fd0 bs=1k seek=8 # losetup -e idea /dev/loop0 /dev/fd0 Pass phrase: (type a pass phrase here, up to 128 characters) # mke2fs /dev/loop0 # losetup -d /dev/loop0 To use it again: # mount /dev/fd0 /mnt -text2 -oloop,encryption=idea Pass phrase: (type the same pass phrase) # cd /mnt (use the disk) # cd / # umount /mnt To make a DES-encrypted filesystem in a regular file: Decide on a filename and how big you want your encrypted filesystem to be. Suppose you choose /root/private/rndseed as your filename, and you want it to be 10MB (10240K). Create it as follows: # dd if=/dev/urandom of=/root/private/rndseed bs=1k count=10240 # losetup -e des /dev/loop0 /root/private/rndseed Pass phrase: (type a pass phrase here, up to 128 characters) # mke2fs /dev/loop0 # losetup -d /dev/loop0 To use it: # mount /root/private/rndseed /mnt -text2 -oloop,encryption=des Pass phrase: (type the same pass phrase) # cd /mnt (use the disk) # cd / # umount /mnt There is an additional "feature" (well, _I_ think it's a feature) by which you could mount the above filesystem on /root/private, even though a file in that directory is being used to store the filesystem itself. (Note of course that the encrypted file won't be visible when the filesystem is mounted, and that only loop files don't count as "usage"; if you're _in_ that directory, or some process has any file in that directory open, the mount won't work.) To hide an IDEA-encrypted filesystem in the low bits of an audio file: Let "penguin.au" be your sound file. # losetup -e stego /dev/loop0 penguin.au Use the low bits of each (b)yte, (s)hort, or (l)ong? (Use lowercase letters for little-endian; uppercase for big-endian.) b/s/l/B/S/L: [b] (.au files store 1-byte samples, so say "b" here) # dd if=/dev/urandom of=/dev/loop0 bs=1k seek=8 # losetup -e idea /dev/loop1 /dev/loop0 Pass phrase: (type a pass phrase here, up to 128 characters) # mke2fs /dev/loop1 # losetup -d /dev/loop1 # losetup -d /dev/loop0 And to use it: # losetup -e stego /dev/loop0 penguin.au Use the low bits of each (b)yte, (s)hort, or (l)ong? (Use lowercase letters for little-endian; uppercase for big-endian.) b/s/l/B/S/L: [b] (.au files store 1-byte samples, so say "b" here) # mount /dev/loop0 /mnt -text2 -oloop,encryption=idea Pass phrase: (type a pass phrase here, up to 128 characters) # cd /mnt (read secret info from files here) # cd / # umount /mnt # losetup -d /dev/loop0 Note: if you don't have /dev/urandom, do this: # cd /dev # mknod random c 1 8 # mknod urandom c 1 9 # chown root.root random urandom # chmod 666 random urandom Last update: 19960806 by Ian Goldberg <ian(a)cypherpunks.ca> This work derives from work by a number of people, including: Werner Almesberger <almesber(a)bernina.ethz.ch> Andries Brouwer <Andries.Brouwer(a)cwi.nl> Ian Goldberg <ian(a)cypherpunks.ca> Nicholas J. Leon <nicholas(a)binary9.net> Theodore Ts'o <tytso(a)athena.mit.edu> Eric Young <eay(a)psych.psy.uq.oz.au> - -----------------8<--------------------8<---------------- -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.2 iQCVAwUBMgfZsEZRiTErSPb1AQGf9wP8Cu0h79vowZVME3dJGhCQM8AbelCOHEck O51uZ6o5Fwv3mPsZ0E15IyYns1mLYT4slWQ2VY2vEoTsT6pM4og+45/ZP3aRJh5i mBgNulbRvxf/eqlmDBT6433JFrdAVAWHwGcMFTUXewHQJZ3x4WyIzvk1hHv++OGo jn96Pbr71Qs= =13QI -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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Apple people on the list
by jya＠pipeline.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

I'd like to hear Tim, too, in this Big Apple. RealAudio, perhaps. Tim's views are far more substantial and worthwhile than those play-it-safe Pro-Code dronings. And his pith should go out far and wide, around the world, not only out there on its edge. Vinnie, Robert, All Appledom, do your global duty, don't miss this chance to leapfrog the small-beans promoters of the crypto industry. What would you offer to set off Tim's simmering crypto-anarcho-volcano, make it heard round the planet?

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Re: e$: Watching the MacRubble Bounce
by Christopher Hull 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

> >I, for one, would appreciate the chance to hear Tim May present >"crypto-anarchy" and "crypto-privacy" -- in a much more coherent fashion > >Vinnie is putting the "Mac Crypto" conference together in his spare >time using "borrowed" facilities in a way that stays below Apple's >"radar horizon". Ah, so I'm not the only one who makes nefarious use of R&D4 (Burning Man, Mike Jittlov, and other pseudo-events) ;-) Looking forward to it. > >As for the "Mac is dead," I'll leave that to another time and place. The press is a little difficult to believe when they come out with nonsense like "Apple is finally upgrading an aging product line". Excuse me? Yes, the last new Mac one could buy was the IIfx? San Jose Mercury News, A Division of Microsoft Press. (I wonder if I should extend the Shakespeare award beyond the net). -Chris .. But there *are* a million monkees on the net, .. and I still aint seen no Shakespeare! <me> ... ... smtp: nozefngr(a)apple.com .. page: 1.800.680.7351 .. http: http://virtual.net/Personal/nozefngr/ .. icbm: lat37*21'.lon121*5' .. .. the kabuki project: http://remarque.berkeley.edu/kabuki/

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