December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

Re: rc2 export limits..
by Kent Briggs 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- stewarts(a)ix.netcom.com wrote: > However, the usual guidelines for systems like RC2 and RC4 is > 40-bit keys, and RSA keys up to 512 bits for encrypting > session keys and 1024 bits for signatures Can you list a source for the 1024-bit signature restriction? I know about the 40-bit RC2/RC4 and 512-bit public encryption keys because they are specifically addressed in the State Dept's "Procedure for Submitting a Commodity Jurisdiction Request for a Mass Market Software Product that Contains Encryption". However, digital signatures are not mentioned in this procedure. I can't image what justificication could be used to restrict the strength of digital signatures. Kent - ------------------------------------------------------------ Puffer & CryptaPix available from http://execpc.com/~kbriggs - ------------------------------------------------------------ - --- [This message has been signed by an auto-signing service. A valid signature means only that it has been received at the address corresponding to the signature and forwarded.] -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.2 Comment: Gratis auto-signing service iQBFAwUBMi2o9SoZzwIn1bdtAQEBoAF+PjxvtAuPUnlMr9UGoIYhjgjPQ0Bs0GeE 5077GFz/pASkMfFvsh5uO6I9BBtpGMpI =P92s -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

1 0

Re: Mail OnNet
by Alan Olsen 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 05:10 PM 8/31/96 -0700, Joel McNamara wrote: >In my never-ending search for the perfect PGP e-mail client, I just stumbled >on to a beta of a product put out by FTP Software called Mail OnNet. Unlike >the Pronto Secure and Pegasus, this client actually has PGP code (licensed >from PGP Inc.) built directly in. No shelling out to DOS! It is very nice. It is a bit on the hard side to get. (Took me three tries. It seems to time out the transfer if it is not completed within a certain time frame. I guess that is what I get for trying to download all three parts at the same time.) It does have the beta nature however. I have found a couple of problems with the program that make it so that i will not use it beyond testing. The people at FTP have been very responsive to e-mail, so I expect the problems to be fixed soon. They also seem to have no idea as to what it will retail for. With proper marketing, Eudora could be in real trouble. >Very nice interface and almost complete idiot-proof >encrypting/decrypting/signing. Extremely powerful rules based processing too. The interface design is very clean. (It is nice seeing well designed dialog boxes in a product. I have been using too much shareware lately I guess...) The rules processing looks to be very powerful. (Puts Eudora 3.0 to shame.) >Check out: > >http://www.ftp.com/mkt_info/onnet32/try.htm > >IMHO, this is getting very close to transparent secure e-mail for the masses. Now all they need is a remailer interface. >Two notes. (1) It only runs under Win95 and NT. (2) It's ITAR restricted. (3) It is bigger than a battleship. The distribution is just shy of 10 megs. Installed it is supposed to be about 45 megs. (In perspective, a full install of Visual Basic 4.0 "Professional" is about 50 megs.) --- Alan Olsen -- alano(a)teleport.com -- Contract Web Design & Instruction `finger -l alano(a)teleport.com` for PGP 2.6.2 key http://www.teleport.com/~alano/ "We had to destroy the Internet in order to save it." - Sen. Exon "Microsoft -- Nothing but NT promises."

1 0

Re: Letter to the Observer [re: Internet paedophile]
by Jean-Francois Avon 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

On 4 Sep 96 at 5:41, Martin Minow wrote: > Forwarded to me by a friend: > The following letters were delivered to the Editor of the Observer > last week as a request to publish a retraction of their article > relating to the Internet that appeared on Sunday 25th. August. One way to limit or retaliate against diffamation would be to refuse internet access to anybody known to be part of any such medias, being tv or paper. ISPs would probably easily agree since the revenues coming from journalists vs from the general population is probably minuscule. Of course, the conventionnal media would set up their own ISP but they could be identified. Does that makes sense or am I out to lunch? jfa Jean-Francois Avon 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

4 3

[troll] Re: Workers of the Web, UNITE!
by Jean-Francois Avon 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

On 4 Sep 96 at 6:38, Martin Minow wrote: > >Tired: Libertarian cypherpunks > >Wired: Crypto-socialists > > > The Wobblies are a prime example of Tom Leherer's comment: > "They won all of the battles, but we had all the good songs." > Up the Revolution. > Martin (crypto social democrat) Minow? What is a missing "n" on the net? Everybody makes typos nowadays... Minow? Sound like a little living thing used as a lure on a troll, isn't it? jfa

1 0

Race Bit: C
by tcmay＠got.net 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 3:02 AM 9/4/96, James A. Donald wrote: >At 10:33 PM 9/3/96 -0800, jim bell wrote: >>>The Leahy crypto bill introduced early this year made (paraphrasing) "the >>>use of encryption to thwart a law-enforcement investigation illegal." I >>>immediately pointed out that while this wouldn't make _encrypted_ remailers >>>illegal, per se, effectively it would because the moment an investigation >>>(even a phony or trumped-up one) is started and is "thwarted" by the >>>encryption used, the remailer operator became guilty of a crime. ... >I believe that judges have a policy of interpreting deliberately >ambiguous statutes in whatever way makes the most sense. The only >sensible interpretation of Leahy's bill is that it criminalizes >strong remailers, that it is intended to punish ANYONE, not just >the criminals themselves, who obstructs investigations. As the recent discussion of knives, switchblades, and throwing stars showed, such ambiguous laws are often used to keep the coloreds down. But how will cops and local prosecutors know which users of remailers are colored? Answer: the race bit must be set on all posts. --Klaus (P.S. More than one of you has expressed anger to me that I am using the term "colored." As in "what the coloreds are doing." I use this term deliberately, because the perfectly fine term "black" is now being replaced by the ultra-awkward and stupid-sounding "person of color." We have even seen this in posts to this list. Here in Santa Cruz, the terms in use are: people of color, students of color, lesbians of color, etc. Only about 17.32% of the entire population is _not_ "persons of color." I say, "Fuck it...they want to be called "colored," then, fine, they're "colored."") We got computers, we're tapping phone lines, I 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."

1 0

Re: What is the EFF doing exactly?
by jim bell 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 08:02 PM 9/3/96 -0700, James A. Donald wrote: >At 10:33 PM 9/3/96 -0800, jim bell wrote: >>>The Leahy crypto bill introduced early this year made (paraphrasing) "the >>>use of encryption to thwart a law-enforcement investigation illegal." I >>>immediately pointed out that while this wouldn't make _encrypted_ remailers >>>illegal, per se, effectively it would because the moment an investigation >>>(even a phony or trumped-up one) is started and is "thwarted" by the >>>encryption used, the remailer operator became guilty of a crime. > >At 07:10 AM 9/4/96 -0500, Jon Lebkowsky wrote: >> Is that true? Or is it that the individual user would be guilty of a crime? > >Since the individual user would already be guilty of a crime, if he is >using the remailer to conceal his crimes, the paragraph in question would >be fairly useless and irrelevant unless it had the meaning that Jim Bell >attributes to it. > >I believe that judges have a policy of interpreting deliberately >ambiguous statutes in whatever way makes the most sense. The only >sensible interpretation of Leahy's bill is that it criminalizes >strong remailers, that it is intended to punish ANYONE, not just >the criminals themselves, who obstructs investigations. Moreover, this "spreading the responsibility" philosophy ties in with the recent practices (both in the civil and criminal areas) of passing blame around. In civil areas, it's called "deep pockets." In the criminal area, you occasionally see news items about laws making parents criminally liable for the actions of their children. Why WOULDN'T the police want to shut down anonymous remailers? The Leahy bill clearly didn't distinguish between remailer operators and users, so it is no leap to conclude that they would be treated similarly. Jim Bell jimbell(a)pacifier.com

2 1

2^1,257,787-1
by jfricker＠vertexgroup.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Ok so maybe here in Organ we are a little behind the times but I just heard about this 378,632 digit prime. Grab your HP11C's and crank out 2^1,257,787-1 courtesy of David Slowinski at Cray.

1 0

No Subject
by Stephen Charchuk 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

1 0

(Fwd) Re: Secure anonymouse server protocol: comments please
by paul＠fatmans.demon.co.uk 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

------- Forwarded Message Follows ------- From: Adamsc(a)io-online.com (Adamsc) To: "paul(a)fatmans.demon.co.uk" <paul(a)fatmans.demon.co.uk> On Mon, 2 Sep 1996 19:24:23 +0000, paul(a)fatmans.demon.co.uk wrote: >This system has 1 huge fault, we can encrypt a uses ID with the >servers public key to see what his ID in the encrypted database is >and therefore identify him, maybe we need two seperate server public >keys, and when IDs come in encrypted with key1 (the one it releases) >it decrypts with secretkey1 then encrypts with publickey2 (the one it >keeps secret) >or maybe we can just hash and sign the IDs in the database? >as I said it`s very sketchy, I made most of this up as I wrote it so >if you must tear it to pieces please do so constructively, it could >be the route to a secure system.... How about this: do the exchange *every* time. Never reuse a key. That way at most 1 message could be easily snagged (by seeing where it goes). It'd be processor intensive, but it avoids the whole reuse problem - where you store an ID to be used to retrieve all messages. Also, software could be written to do the key computation solely on the client - after all, the server doesn't care if they pass themselves a dud key, right? Let them crunch it. Put all those Pentiums to work! ... Better idea, I hadn`t thought of that, anyone else care to comment on a way to solve this? - how did the nymservers do it???? Datacomms Technologies web authoring and data security Paul Bradley, Paul(a)fatmans.demon.co.uk Http://www.fatmans.demon.co.uk/crypt/ "Don`t forget to mount a scratch monkey" -----BEGIN PGP PUBLIC KEY BLOCK----- Version: 2.6 mQCNAjH9j+cAAAEEAMBvREiQR0ot9dFCO0TiSCSunAYLv2g1Bc6I3bz8FzKXNH53 6mieJf/W4rD+CxJpT0q9RQaaoRtkHJLwbjfK2il3D7mEahMAyqvF/xRJNqkXfhM3 sRJM0Jh43l+W0M5vwokbEbk25/bxWWGspTsLD3YHbzKnG6pOcL5OPIRbv66xAAUR tCdQYXVsIEJyYWRsZXkgPHBhdWxAZmF0bWFucy5kZW1vbi5jby51az4= =riHc -----END PGP PUBLIC KEY BLOCK-----

1 0

Re: What is the EFF doing exactly?
by tcmay＠got.net 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 11:52 AM 9/4/96, Jon Lebkowsky wrote: >At 07:44 AM 9/3/96 -0700, James A. Donald wrote: >>At 03:17 PM 9/3/96 -0700, Jon Lebkowsky wrote: >>> Not necessarily. The character of the anonymous speech is decisive. If you >>> use anonymity to cloak harassment, for instance, the anonymity (which >>> removes accountability) is a problem. The accountability issue is real and >>> should be addressed, not evaded. >> >>No: The harassment is the problem, not the anonymity that makes it >>possible. > >The harassment is one problem, the lack of accountability another. Which is >not to say that 'lack of accountability' should be 'fixed' by some sort of >blanket restriction...but it should be acknowledged as a problem. It has been. In many hundreds of articles addressing aspects of the issue. The fact that Esther Dyson and others think advocates of the right to be anonymous claim that these issues are not being considered just shows that Esther and others are not aware of these many articles. Nor can every brief post--such as the one James Donald made above--include a fully-nuanced, fully-balanced discussion of all issues. Saying that an advocate for a position has not considered the alternate positions is usually incorrect. --Tim May We got computers, we're tapping phone lines, I 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."

1 0