December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

Re: Black Unicorn exposed?
by ph＠netcom.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 8:30 PM 11/9/1996, Robert Hettinga wrote: >At 12:45 pm -0500 11/9/96, Peter Hendrickson wrote: >> We are hardly operating in a hostile environment. Yet, somebody >> who has apparently gone to some effort to have an anonymous >> identity has been exposed. The implications of this are worth >> considering. > Nope. Sorry, Pete. Hope you didn't throw out your sholder, swinging for the > fences like that. ;-). Phew! While this news leaves me looking foolish, I am relieved. Now for my real question: Does the One True Cypherpunk really have a black unicorn on his coat of arms? Peter Hendrickson ph(a)netcom.com

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Re: Pseudo-law on the list and libel (fwd)
by ph＠netcom.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 11:21 AM 11/9/1996, Jim Choate wrote: > The real issue here is that folks on the net want the protection of the 1st > Amendment but they don't want the responsibility that goes along with it. > This list qualifies as a press. As a result it has a responsibility relating > to what it distributes. I don't find the word "responsibility" in the First Amendment. You and the courts may decide John has a responsibility to let other people use his computer, but the source of this idea is not the First Amendment. Peter Hendrickson ph(a)netcom.com

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allow me to state the obvious....
by SUCRUM22_at_INDY-ADP＠smtp-gw.cv62.navy.mil 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

i am your average joe who uses the computer for work and e-mail and the occasional jaunt into the internet. going along reading this whole crypto-anarchy thing makes me want to cry. the whole point of cryptography is getting info from my eyes to yours. period. you can say that "illegal" information passes along the internet, but hello people - illegalities have been going on since long before the invention of the computer (or even the notion of cryptography - if i may stop to point out the obvious). the only reason _i_ use encrypted stuff is because i don't want my nosy sysadmin reading my mail. its that simple. think about it. how many times is your e-mail handed off? when sent it naturally follows the most convenient path to its destination, and even anonymous re-mailers (can) keep a hard copy of the messages that cross their connections with the original address included. you can go off into spoofing address and so on, but your average joe may (or may not) have the time or knowledge (much less the motivation) to do that. keep that in mind before you go saying that crypto is a good/bad thing. ---------------------- SUCRUM22(a)cv62.navy.mil ----------------------- a calculated risk based on the possible consequence of an action is better than a haphazard one based on poor judgment or ignorance --------------------------------------------------------------------- Don't confuse my views with those of the DoD or the United States Navy

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Re: Why is cryptoanarchy irreversible?
by ph＠netcom.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 3:30 AM 11/9/1996, Adam Back wrote: >Peter Hendrickson <ph(a)netcom.com> writes: >> Where will you keep your secret key? Remember, when they go through >> your house they bring 20 young graduates from MIT who are just dying >> to show how clever they are and save the world at the same time. > Keep your secret key in your head. I think this is hard to do in practice. I have tried. >>> This is the essence of steganography and the nature of signal and >>> noise are fundemental principles of information theory. >> >> The concept of noise is not all that well defined, however. There >> is no way to look at a signal and say "this is all noise." >> Sometimes physical theories may lead you to believe that it is all >> noise. That is fine for many applications, but when becomes less >> convinced of things if the consequences are severe. > Your plausible deniability has to get quite low before it will stand > up as "proof" in court. (This goes under 3.1 or 3.2 of my outline, which you may not have received yet.) My idea is that the lack of noise is used as evidence to get a search warrant. The search warrant is used to get the evidence to put you away forever. (This goes under 3.3 of the outline.) The severe penalties and significant chance of capture will keep the number of cryptoanarchists low. > Your real challenge is keeping your stego programs safe. Boot > strapping a stegoed encrypted file system while leaving no stego code > lying around isn't that easy. Excellent point, especially since you don't have an encrypted virtual disk. Can anybody resolve this? >>>> If you are not doing it by hand, you own terrorist software and will pay >>>> the price. >>> Ah yes, terrorist programs like cat and perl and operating systems like >>> Linux which contain a loopback filesystem that I can hook a perl >>> interpreter into at compile-time (which is enough for me to rewrite the >>> program from scratch each time if necessary, unless things like math >>> libraries are also outlawed on computers :) I think that the crypto >>> concentration camps are going to be very crowded places. >> Can you elaborate on this? I am curious to know exactly what you are going >> to keep in your head and what goes on the disk. Please post the Perl >> code that you would type in from scratch every time. > My specialty :-) > rc4 in C: > #define S,t=s[i],s[i]=s[j],s[j]=t /* rc4 key <file */ > unsigned char s[256],i,j,t;main(c,v)char**v;{++v;while > (s[++i]=i);while(j+=s[i]+(*v)[i%strlen(*v)]S,++i);for( > j=0;c=~getchar();putchar(~c^s[t+=s[i]]))j+=s[++i]S;} > rc4 in perl: > #!/usr/local/bin/perl -0777-- -export-a-crypto-system-sig -RC4-3-lines-PERL > @k=unpack('C*',pack('H*',shift));for(@t=@s=0..255){$y=($k[$_%@k]+$s[$x=$_ > ]+$y)%256;&S}$x=$y=0;for(unpack('C*',<>)){$x++;$y=($s[$x%=256]+$y)%256; > &S;print pack(C,$_^=$s[($s[$x]+$s[$y])%256])}sub S{@s[$x,$y]=@s[$y,$x]} (Under 3.3) I would have a hard time memorizing these programs. This pretty much guarantees that the number of cryptoanarchists will be small. (I am deeply envious of your legal right to post this code, however. Now, why was it that we broke away from the Mother Country?) I would like to see a longer exposition of your approach. Given a hostile environment, how would I operate a small anonymous perl coding service using your techniques? Don't forget to tell me how I get paid and when I get to spend my "ill-gotten" gains and how nobody will notice that I am doing it. Peter Hendrickson ph(a)netcom.com

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Real Time Pads (chat modes)?
by kb4vwa＠juno.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Anyone know if there is a software that encrypts DES, or triple DES in real time for ie, Chat modes? I think this be a very interesting idea if not already being used. I'm sure the government uses some form of real time pad. Comments? Ed

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Re: Information [for new PGP user]
by Dale Thorn 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Adamsc wrote: > On Thu, 07 Nov 1996 07:08:52 -0800, Dale Thorn wrote: > >> >> > I'm a new Cyberpunk! > >> Probably wearing a set of Ono-Sendai eyeballs.... > >> >> > Last, I would like to know once and for all, is PGP compromised, is > >> >> > there a back door, and have we been fooled by NSA to believe it's secure? > >> You can read and compile the source code yourself. > >Really? All 60,000 or so lines, including all 'includes' or attachments? > >I'll bet you can't find 10 out of 1,000 users who have read the total source, > >let alone comprehended and validated it. > That's not necessary - it's the fact that it's possible that matters; most > of us are content to trust the various people who actually have. However, > I'd probably be inclined to look into it seriously if I was going to use it > on anything incriminating or potentially linked to my checkbook... My main point, which is really difficult to make, since software issues are so complex today, is that I've been involved with projects on a similar scale as PGP, where several programmers contributed code to a particular executable program, and when this is the case (especially where the source is not obvious as would be data entry code and the like), it's just not practical for one person working alone, unpaid, to break the source down into manageable chunks and study it and make enough notes so that every portion of it is clearly understood and validated. People in the past have discussed 50 million line Fortran programs to set up jet training simulators and so forth, and by comparison a 60,000 line source in 'C' might look doable, as far as complete annotation is concerned. To illustrate the point, then, I recently had a chance to estimate the cost of converting a non-'C' program to 'C', which would result in a 'C' program of about 6,000 lines, or about 1/10 the size of PGP. My best guess was about 500 to 1,000 hours, and to analogize that to PGP, where I wouldn't be writing or converting code ostensibly, just annotating it, I would still guess 2,500 to 5,000 hours, if the job were done correctly and thoroughly. If the job is not practical/feasible, then IMO I can say it's not doable. OTOH, if some one or a handful of people wanted to make the source code of PGP really accessible to the masses (of programmers at least), they should start with a plan to make sure it's broken down into a heirarchy of functions so that: 1. No one function is too large (say, no more than 50 lines or so). 2. All functions use reasonably short variable names (ex: 'iTrapon'). 3. Variable names are consistent in capitalization. 4. Function names follow the heirarchy and are logically intuitive. 5. Constant and #define names follow a heirarchy as well. 6. Where a choice is possible between setting out a construct that (visually speaking) looks very complex and is difficult to follow, and making it simpler, take the simpler path.

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Re: His and Her Anarchies
by drose＠AZStarNet.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Dale Thorn <dthorn(a)gte.net> wrote: [...] >While many, many >women have harrassed me on the road for my driving, they (unlike men, w/o exception) >have *never* tried to threaten me directly, as have hundreds of men. Might all these hundreds of threatening men and many, many harassing women be trying to tell you something? [...] >I would suggest to any man that if he lived >in a society where a whole class of humans (i.e., female) were more aggressive and >confrontational, more domineering, etc. than he and nearly every other man he knew, >he would probably learn how best to get along with that other class of persons without >constantly butting heads with them. Dale Thorn, meet Oprah, RuPaul, Hillary Rotten, Roseanne, Andrea Dworkin, Winnie Mandella, etc. Now back to S. Logan, Vulis, AP, whatever.

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Re: Universal Service for the Net: Why it's a bad idea
by Frank Willoughby 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 07:53 AM 11/8/96 -0800, Declan McCullagh <declan(a)well.com> wrote: 8< [snip] >* Why should a Beverly Hills high school get a discount of 20 percent? > Can't they afford to pay for ISDN? Depends on how their telco's tariffs are set up. Here in Indiana, we have a monopoly called "Ameritech" who, out of the kindness of their hearts, charges ***per-minute*** ISDN rates. Expect costs of over $600/month for a permament connection (one line) to the Internet. Beverly Hills High School *might* be able to afford it. Most other places can't. <sigh> Best Regards, Frank Any sufficiently advanced bug is indistinguishable from a feature. -- Rich Kulawiec <standard disclaimer> The opinions expressed above are of the author and may not necessarily be representative of Fortified Networks Inc. Fortified Networks Inc. - Vendor-Neutral Information Security Consulting http://www.fortified.com Phone: (317) 573-0800 FAX: (317) 573-0817 Home of the Free Internet Firewall Evaluation Checklist

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Black Unicorn exposed?
by ph＠netcom.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 11:00 AM 11/9/1996, Robert Hettinga wrote: > S. L. vonBernhardt, <mailto:unicorn@schloss.li>,... Black Unicorn recently stated that had taken measures to shield his identity so that people would be unable to cause harm to his professional activities by making unsubstantiated claims that could scare off prospective clients. It appears now that this protection has evaporated. It will not be very hard in the future to put this information together with other statements people may make about Mr. Unicorn. We are hardly operating in a hostile environment. Yet, somebody who has apparently gone to some effort to have an anonymous identity has been exposed. The implications of this are worth considering. Peter Hendrickson ph(a)netcom.com

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Re: a retort + a comment + a question = [RANT]
by SUCRUM22_at_INDY-ADP＠smtp-gw.cv62.navy.mil 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

---------------------------------------------------------------------- dave kinchlea wrote: >As said in "Hair" (the movie), "Don't do it for me man, 'cause >if the shoe was on the other foot, I wouldn't do it for you!" >It's a lie anyway, you do it for yourself. That's an _easy_ judgment to make (and i definitely have to stop adding anecdotes from my life in these things!), but you missed the point - the freedoms the Cpunks diligently try to preserve (or seem to want to create...) are protected _by_ the military. who was it that said: "law, without force, is impotent" -? keep in mind that even "bad" laws have to be enforced. you can scream all you want about "good, strong" cryptostuffs, but if the phone lines are slashed, the satellite links are down, the elcerticity is off and you've got a foreign soldier waving a .45 around - just how are you going to boot up that pretty little computer and make it encode information for you, much less get it anywhere? anarchy implies ruthlessness - you going to practice cryptostuffs from a prison cell? was i assuming that you've read the book and/or seen the broadway play, "Hair"? OHHHHH - i'm sorry - you saw the _movie!_ shame on me. ---------------------- SUCRUM22(a)cv62.navy.mil ----------------------- a calculated risk based on the possible consequence of an action is better than a haphazard one based on poor judgment or ignorance --------------------------------------------------------------------- Don't confuse my views with those of the DoD or the United States Navy

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