December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

Re: Playing Cards
by Hal Finney 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

From: ph(a)netcom.com (Peter Hendrickson) > A well shuffled deck of 54 cards has about 237 bits of entropy. This > is easy to use: the program asks the order of the cards, converts this > to a string, and runs it through a one-way hash. (Entering the cards > is a bit of a nuisance. Is there an easy way to have them read > automatically?) I heard that Bruce Schneier has devised a cryptosystem based on a card deck for a future book by Neal Stephenson. It is supposed to be simple enough for a person to use manually, but complicated enough that it can't be broken by computer. Your idea of using cards as a one time pad is somewhat similar, maybe, although I think Bruce's was designed to be useful for long messages, providing computational rather than unconditional security. > How the Lisp Code Works > ----------------------- > > Let's use as an example a deck of five cards numbered from 0 to 4. > There are 5! = 120 combinations of these cards. We can think > of each card as a "digit" in a slightly odd numbering system. This is very interesting; I've never seen this algorithm before. It is a nice way to turn a number into a permutation, and vice versa. > For an exercise, what is the value of (4 2 1 3 0)? (Answer at end.) This would be 4*4! + 2*3! + 1*2! + 1(was 3)*1! + 0*0!, or as you say: > ;; (Exercise Answer: (4 2 1 3 0) = 111) Hal

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IDEA patent
by nobody＠cypherpunks.ca 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

IDEA is a good algorithm much faster than 3DES and probably stronger but its not very popular outside of PGP because it is patented. I remember someone posting here or in another crypto list about a modified keyschedual to allow keys of weird size. My question is could this modification or something more proven like PRNG-generated subkeys be used to avoid the IDEA patent? Everyone says it only takes a small change to avoid a patent. The problem is a small change can break an algorithm. Some algorithms like Blowfish generate subkeys from a PRNG so it might be a safe change for IDEA. I'm posting this anonymously because I dont know what peoples feelings are on patent avoidance.

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Re: New Cryptography Regulations
by Alan Olsen 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 06:05 PM 11/15/96 -0500, hallam(a)vesuvius.ai.mit.edu wrote: >The main change is that from now on the decisions are to be made >by the department of commerce and not by the department of state. > >This is probably good news since the commerce department has the >interests of industry as its primary mission. I am expecting them to use the Interstate commerce clause in the Constitution to enable them to enact whatever rules they want without that pesky "freedom of speech" thing getting in the way. I am sure that any commerce secretary that dare to loosen the export restrictions would quickly find him/herself out of a job. Clinton and Gore have both shown that they get arroused at the thought of being able to read everyone else's e-mail and listen to their phone calls. I don't expect them to do anything that would thwart that fetish. (Power is the ultamite turn-on. When you can pry into the details of every part of a person's life, you have a great deal of power. Clinton/Gore/etc have shown no resistance to that seduction.) I expect that this will add more bodies to the LaBrea ITAR pits, not take any away. >There is a third document I believe but its not yet been issued. Waiting for the third shoe to drop? --- | "Remember: You can't have BSDM without BSD." - alan(a)ctrl-alt-del.com | |"The moral PGP Diffie taught Zimmermann unites all| Disclaimer: | | mankind free in one-key-steganography-privacy!" | Ignore the man | |`finger -l alano(a)teleport.com` for PGP 2.6.2 key | behind the keyboard.| | http://www.teleport.com/~alano/ | alano(a)teleport.com |

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Re: ideal secure personal computer system
by azur＠netcom.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

>A friend of mine just got back from a kerberos conferance at MIT, at >dinner one night they were talking about fun-n-easy ways to extract >data from a machine. One of them mentioned that after a while, a "on" >Of course, no computer is "secure" without a thermite charge above the >hard drive, and a tamper-resistant case. >"Well, Billy, the Sevret Service is here, they want to take away your > computer (and telephone, and cassette tapes ,and etc.)" >"Okay, mom. It's right over here, Mr. Scarry Secret Service dude." ><lift> "Ffffffts" >"Hey, Billy, what's that smoke coming out of your computer?" > I discussed this seriously with an engineering acquaintence who has done drive design for a number of major companies. He thought this could be easily achieved technically but might present some significant hurdles for getting UL approval :-) Seriously though, there might be a market for an Mission Impossible drive retrofit kits which could be triggered by SW or HW. --Steve PGP Fingerprint: FE 90 1A 95 9D EA 8D 61 81 2E CC A9 A4 4A FB A9 --------------------------------------------------------------------- Steve Schear | Internet: azur(a)netcom.com Lamarr Labs | Voice: 1-702-658-2654 7075 West Gowan Road | Fax: 1-702-658-2673 Suite 2148 | Las Vegas, NV 89129 | --------------------------------------------------------------------- Internet and Wireless Development Defeat the Demopublican Unity Party. Vote no on Clinton/Dole in November. Vote Harry Browne, Libertarian, for President. http://www.harrybrowne96.org

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Re: Playing Cards
by ph＠netcom.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 7:04 PM 11/15/1996, Hal Finney wrote: >From: ph(a)netcom.com (Peter Hendrickson) >> A well shuffled deck of 54 cards has about 237 bits of entropy. This >> is easy to use: the program asks the order of the cards, converts this >> to a string, and runs it through a one-way hash. (Entering the cards >> is a bit of a nuisance. Is there an easy way to have them read >> automatically?) > I heard that Bruce Schneier has devised a cryptosystem based on a card > deck for a future book by Neal Stephenson. It is supposed to be simple > enough for a person to use manually, but complicated enough that it can't > be broken by computer. Your idea of using cards as a one time pad is > somewhat similar, maybe, although I think Bruce's was designed to be > useful for long messages, providing computational rather than unconditional > security. I, for one, am dying of curiousity. When I asked him about it, he said he would disclose it "soon". Peter

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Re: [POLITICS] Re: Members of Parliament Problem
by ph＠netcom.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 11:31 PM 11/15/1996, Adam Shostack wrote: > So, if 'anonymous Senator' came out for legalization, it would > be declared that it was Kennedy, source of all Liberal Evil. Good > policy comes from leaders standing up and leading. Since they don't, > I'm a crypto-anarchist. To try and help the Congress become more > effective is not in anyones interest, except that class of person who > makes their living off the workings of government. > There are lots of variations on the argument that politics is > from the greek poly, meaning many, and ticks, a small bloodsucking > animal. My interest in creating new, consensual realities is that I > don't want to be forced to care about the congress. I may have misunderstood you, but when you suggested "disallowing" Congressmen to use anonymity, it did not sound consensual. Even blood sucking parasites should be allowed to benefit from cryptoanarchy. I for one, would be most interested in what Congressmen would have to say if they knew their words could in no way be traced back to them. I suspect that there are a lot of basketcases in Congress and that this would become clear from the horrible things they would have to say when they were sure nobody was looking. Peter

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Re: [REBUTTAL] Censorship on cypherpunks?, from The Netly News
by George A. Stathis 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 01:19 ìì 15/11/1996 -0600, snow wrote: >> Hey man, do they sell "FREEDOM KITS" in American Supermarkets? :-) >> ROTFL! > > Nope, you have to make your own. The Kit is mostly Education, which >is available to all. Pity; I thought them kits came with a Free Modem Trial Offer! ROTFL! :-) Seriously, of course... You have a point there, but... who will educate our educators? -(if part of this "education" hinders and discourages our Liberty)? >> >> Just as suddenly, the classic anti-free-speech arguments of "if you >> >> don't like it, start yer own" begin to surface. (Anyone ever notice >> >> how this resembles the "love it or leave it" mentality of certain >> >> American patriotic organizations?) >> > It still isn't censorship. Censorship, at least in my dictionary,=20 >> >refers to censor, which uses the word "Official" several times. >> You mean that if... Dr. Dimitri Vulis hires a Mafia-man to kill ya,=20 >> (to silence you) this wouldn't be censorship, since it would not be >> "Official" ? :-) > > It would not be censorship, it would be Conspiracy to murder (I >believe, the Legal types could give you the proper charge) on Vulis's part, >and attempted murder on the Hit Man's part. Even Worse! Some dictatorships, as you know, use this type of murder continually... Even democracies in fact, if we remember JF KEnnedy et.al. In a _philosophical_ sense, such acts of violence are indeed censorship, (in the wider sense) of the most brutal kind. Of course, I agree that in a _dictionary_ sense, you are mostly right... HOWEVER: It is part our DUTY as Free Men to OVERCOME a serious FALLACY of most EDUCATION: equating Wider Truths with Narrow Dictionary Definitions. - I would call these Truths "broader" but I wouldn't like the joke about Open Minds liking... Wide Broads! (Ever heard it?) ROTFL!!! :-) >> e.g. Just as aga tolerates me and vice versa, so should Gilmore >> tolerate Dimitri Vulis.=20 > > It wan't his opnions, it was his actions. That is the difference. There is no difference. Aga is a great guy who in a moment of nationalistic misunderstanding, called me a number of bad names. And so did I. These are what you call "actions". They are completely harmless. I am more concerned about the... flies sitting on the surface of my monitor, hindering my eyes. So-called "unacceptable" (speech-)acts are less dangerous than FLIES! :-) Best Regards and Surrealistic Greek Greetings George

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Re: ideal secure personal computer system
by Ted Cabeen 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 06:11 PM 11/15/96 -0800, you wrote: >Since others have mentioned Macs in this thread, and since I have a Mac, I >should point out that booting from a locked startup disk is possible, even >common. Namely, a CD-ROM. Next time you try booting off of a locked startup disk, try opening the chooser. It won't open because to use the chooser requires the startup disk to be unlocked. (Last time I checked) >What an OS would _like_ to write is not the same thing as what it _must_ write. Yeah, but on mac, some basic functions must write to the boot drive. -- ______________________________________________________________________________ Ted Cabeen http://shadowland.rh.uchicago.edu cabeen(a)netcom.com Check Website or finger for PGP Public Key secabeen(a)midway.uchicago.edu "I have taken all knowledge to be my province." -F. Bacon cococabeen(a)aol.com "Human kind cannot bear very much reality."-T.S.Eliot 73126.626(a)compuserve.com

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Time Digital: Crime Online
by azur＠netcom.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

The winter edition of this bi-monthly has an amusing article, pg 54-58, about how orgnaized crime is getting more organized with modern technology. Cases in point: * A Queens, NY bookie operation doing $65 million per year busted by taping the their faxes and decoding their hard drives at least one of which had a menchman's mother's name as the password. * Cali cartels using up-to-date data management, encryption and SIGINT methods. A CIA quote, "...the level of sophistication of the Cali cartel was about at the level of the KGB when the Soviet Union fell apart." * According to the article the cost of 'scrubbing' money costs about $0.20 on the dollar in volume. * The European Union Bank is mentioned as a possible safe haven for laundering. Among the criminal's tools of the trade, cell phones, scanners and PGP. -- Steve

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NT insecurity
by Adamsc＠io-online.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Given the recent comments about insecure machines, I thought it was interesting to note that you can clear *every* password on an NT box by using a diskeditor to corrupt the password file (Boot off of a floppy and use NTFSDOS if you have to). It'll reboot several times and then you'll be allowed to login. # Chris Adams <adamsc(a)io-online.com> | http://www.io-online.com/adamsc/adamsc.htp # <cadams(a)acucobol.com> | send mail with subject "send PGPKEY" "That's our advantage at Microsoft; we set the standards and we can change them." --- Karen Hargrove, Microsoft (quoted in the Feb 1993 Unix Review editorial)

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