December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

RE: Binding cryptography - a fraud-detectible alternative to ke
by everheul＠mail.rijnhaave.nl 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Bill Stewart[SMTP:stewarts@ix.netcom.com] wrote: >I haven't seen the technical papers behind the postings you've made Our original is on: http://cwis.kub.nl/~frw/people/koops/binding.htm At the end of that (also available as http://cwis.kub.nl/~frw/people/koops/bindtech.htm) there is a technical description of one implementation of Binding Cryptography. >to the net, but the overall approach sounds very similar to "Clipper >II", the Software Key Encryption work that the TIS people (Steve >Walker?) and Dorothy Denning were touting a year or so ago. It >wasn't in your references, and it's clearly close enough to be worth >your attention. The design was interesting - it chose a set of >public and symmetric key encryption that allows the recipient to >validate the sessionkey-encrypted-to-key-copy-holder*. They are mentioned in the final paper. /* I will only go into the technique now, not the politics */ In fact our technique is inspired on that technique (that is being used by several other as well). In this technique users' encrypted messages basically consist of three components: 1. the (actual) message encrypted with any symmetric system, using a random session key; 2. the session key encrypted with the public key(s) of the addressee(s); 3. the session key encrypted with the public key of a Trusted Retrieval Party (TRP). With the TIS scheme a TRP is called Key Escrow Agency (KEA), but that is just a name. When a law-enforcement agency is conducting a lawful intercept and strikes upon an enciphered message, they take the third information component to the TRP. If shown an appropriate warrant, the TRP decrypts the information component and hands over the session key, so that the law-enforcement agency has access to the message. The TIS commerical Key Escrow (CKE) leaves it at that. So unilateral (i.e without help of the recipient) fraud is easily possible; just send another (or none) session key in the thrid component. Nobody is going to know; the three packets look OK. Only when there is a law-enforcement agency is conducting a lawful intercept then they will know fraude is committed. (BTW "fraude" means using something (voluntarily) without complying with the *AGREED* rules. Hence fraude in voluntary systems is possible. PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE let us not have that discussion again!). Not willing to jeopardize the investigation, the LEA is then probably not going to do much about it. In the "TIS software key escrow paralleling Clipper" this unilateral fraude has been made impossible: as the recipient knows the session key (from decrypting the second component), he is capabel to recalculate the third session key and compare it with it the actual sent to him. Of course this comparison is incorperated in the software of the recipient; if the comparison fails then the decryption of the first component will not take place (in France your monitor might explode (-;) Although preventing unilateral fraude, this does not prevent colluding of frauders. Indeed, by a conceptually simple manipulation in the decryption software the outcome of the comparison can be made "positive" all the time. So in this fashion, without anybody knowing (seeing) about it colluding people will use the security benefits of the system, but not it "law enforcement" disadvantages. We liked the general techinque as it is rather liberal and internationally useable (you don't have to escrow any secret keys, the choice of TRPs is very flexible), but we did not like the colluding property. The idea in our scheme is that the colluding fraude is still possible, but must be at least *detectable* by third parties that have access to all data anyway (network operators, internet service providers). Moreover, for this detection no secret information is needed (or gained), so user' privacy is not jeopardized by it. With respect to this; I was surprised to read in the papers that Bangemann (European Commision) proposed to make Internet Service Provides responsible for checking the authenticity of certain types of sent data. In resume: we believe that our scheme is the middle of key-escrow (Clipper III) and the TIS scheme and is flexible enough to form a worldwide security infrastructure, where each participating country can implement its *own* crypto policy with. In particular, if, how (random, offline?) and by who checking is done is a matter for each country to decide on his own. Also the organization of TRPs is a matter of each country of its own. > A major capability that was missing from Walker's SKE work is the > ability to split the copied* key into two or more parts, all of > which are need to recover the session key, while making it possible > to validate that the pieces do add up to the session key. Splitting the session-key in binding data can be done by the sender (sending all shares to different TRPs); this can be checked by anyone. More importantly, in our ElGamal implementation of binding cryptography the splitting of the secret keys of TRP can be done in a very elegant way, that seems to be put there for (controlled) LEA-use. We will put that in the technical paper as well. Best regards, Eric

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GET ME OUT OF HERE
by crumrig＠us-state.gov 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

UNSUBSCIBE

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JUN_tas
by John Young 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

10-19-96. WaPo: "Story of How an Unknown American Linguist Broke Soviet Wartime Spy Code Finally Emerges From Shadows" NSA's legendary cryptlinguist Meredith Knox Gardner emerged from a lifetime of anonymity to tell his story at a conference devoted to the "Venona" code break. NSA historians have been unable to come up with any evidence that President Truman was ever informed of Venona. Mystery also continues to surround the government's failure to prosecute Theodore Alvin Hall, a Harvard physicist working at Los Alamos and Bill Weisband, a Soviet emigre working with Gardner at NSA, even though Venona decrypts revealed the two as spies. Gardner believes that the intelligence chiefs withheld the information from Truman because they were afraid that he would "give away the secret. You can't imagine how the intelligence agencies guard secrecy." ----- http://jya.com/juntas.txt (20 kb) ftp://jya.com/pub/incoming/juntas.txt JUN_tas

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RE: YES OR NO?
by jbugden＠smtplink.alis.ca 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

dlv(a)bwalk.dm.com (Dr.Dimitri Vulis KOTM) wrote: >I said: YES, when I have the time. If your schedule looks anything like mine, you only have time for something if you make time for it. If your YES is to be worth anything, you are going to have to make time. Will you make the time? If not, a NO would be a more honest response. Ciao, James Never put off until tomorrow what you can put off doing altogether.

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Re: EC patent
by Hayashi_Tsuyoshi 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

On Thu, 17 Oct 1996 17:38:28 -0800, jim bell said: >At 04:53 PM 10/17/96 -0400, Robert Hettinga wrote: >>--- begin forwarded text >>Date: Thu, 17 Oct 1996 14:03:34 +0800 >>From: James Lee <jlee(a)ccl.itri.org.tw> >>Reply-To: jlee(a)ccl.itri.org.tw >>+----------------------------------------------------+ >>Addressed to: set-discuss(a)commerce.net >>+----------------------------------------------------+ >> >>I heard that CitiBank has filed for a patent in Japan with 140+ claims The document is on my desk: CitiBank's patent in Japan #: Toku-Kou-Hei 7-111723 o 104 claims o published date: 29 Nov, 1995 o 112 pages (text: 48 pages, fig.: 64 pages.) # Note: # "Toku" means "Tokkyo", "tokkyo" == "patent" # "Kou" means "Koukoku", "koukoku" == "published" # "Hei" means "Heisei", "Heisei" is the Japanese year- # name; This year == Heisei 8 == 1996. A publication of the CitiBank's patent was a big news in industrial or financial domain in Japan. I found the article on Nikkei-Sangyo shinbun. # sangyo == industrial # shinbun == paper >>covering many aspects of electronic commerce, security electronic >>transaction, etc. Probably yes. >>--- end forwarded text > >Maybe Japanese law is different, but don't I recall reading somewhere that >"methods of doing business," business practices in general, are not >patentable? It seems that "Toku-Kou-Hei 7-111723" claims specified procedure, not *general* "methods of doing business". >Not that it would surprise me if the Patent Office idiots were to change >their minds, like they did concerning software, algorithms, and mathematics >in general... I think that Japanese P.O. has changed their policy in a few years influenced with U.S.P.O. ///hayashi

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Re: YES OR NO?
by nobody＠zifi.genetics.utah.edu 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

The Vulis-bot wrote: >Sandy Sandfort <sandfort(a)crl.com> writes: > >> ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ >> SANDY SANDFORT >> . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . >> >> C'punks, >> >> On Thu, 17 Oct 1996, Dr.Dimitri Vulis KOTM wrote: >> >> > I said: YES, when I have the time. Unless the "YES" was in private email to Sandy, he lies (again) about ever having given any form of a straight answer. >> Great. So let's pick a date sufficiently in the future that you >> can make a firm commitment. For starters, our three winter >> meetings are tentatively scheduled for December 14, January 11 >> and February 8. Any of those sound good to you? > >Don't know yet. Prediction/translation: "never" Sandy, I am not even sure that this is such a good idea... rewarding the annoying with a free, wintertime trip to CA with free lodging seems to be a way of encouraging more of the annoying... The last thing we need. Respected c-punks are dropping like flies as it is. Perhaps you'll prove me wrong and shut him up, if he proves me wrong by attending, that is.

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POTP critques?
by Peter Trei 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

An acquaintence of mine works at a firm with little cryptography experience. They are thinking of including cryptography in a future product, and Elementrix's Power One Time Pad is a serious contestant. I'm looking for independent critiques of the system, something better than 'it's not really a one-time pad.' Is the cryptosystem which is actually implemented worth a damn? Does their claim to have solved the key distribution problem hold water? I seem to remember something about them wanting to generate keys for you, and ship them to the customer. Is this correct? Peter Trei trei(a)process.com Peter Trei Senior Software Engineer Purveyor Development Team Process Software Corporation http://www.process.com trei(a)process.com

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FDA Net-regulations -- "Drug Lords" from HotWired
by Declan McCullagh 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Fri, 18 Oct 1996 05:20:19 -0700 (PDT) From: Declan McCullagh <declan(a)well.com> To: fight-censorship(a)vorlon.mit.edu Subject: FDA Net-regulations -- "Drug Lords" from HotWired http://www.netizen.com/netizen/96/42/global4a.html HotWired The Netizen "Drug Lords" Global Network by Declan McCullagh (declan(a)well.com) Washington, DC, 17 October Forget the Communications Decency Act and the censor-happy Clinton administration. Instead, it now seems like we have to keep an eye on the pinstriped bureaucrats at the US Food and Drug Administration, who are hatching their own schemes to regulate the Net. I just got back from the agency's two-day conference in the Maryland suburbs, entitled "FDA and the Internet: Advertising and Promotion of Medical Products." Discussions drifted from troublesome-to-the-Feds notions of drug use in America Online chat rooms to emerging international Net-regulatory agreements, but all the talk shared a kind of benevolent paternalism. Consumers can't be trusted to make their own choices. The Federal government must protect us from reading what only doctors are allowed to see. Netizens can't even be trusted to figure out when they're leaving a Web site after they click on a link. Drug industry representatives on the panel this morning appeared less than overly concerned with regulatory threats to free speech. Jamie Marks from Body Health Resources said: "It's very important that drug companies police the sites they link to." The panel also discussed how to prevent sites that celebrate or even talk about illicit drug use from linking to sites operated by pharmaceutical companies. Even search engines like AltaVista could be hit by FDA regulations. Sara Stein from Stanford University noted, "Search engines have begun to sell links ... that's another area of disclosure that's required." Translation: the FDA is looking to have a say in how to label medical advertisements on Web sites. The FDA's also working the international angle. They brought in to the conference speakers from France, Britain, Switzerland, Brazil, and the Netherlands - all of whom were particularly interested in online drug promotion, since US advertising laws are currently so permissive. J. Idanpaan-Heikkila, the World Health Organization's director of drug management and policies, said that real-world claims promoting pharmaceuticals should be "in good taste," adding, "I think this is applicable to the Internet." Cedric Allenou, the French Embassy's health attache, predicted more controls: "In France, as in the United States, there is a lack of regulation on the Internet. But these issues will soon be discussed by the French government." When asked what his country would do if a US server distributes information banned in France, he replied: "If your Web site is not in France, you're not under French rule. This is a problem with French Internet regulation." John Rothchild, an attorney from the Federal Trade Commission - which will announce its own Net-regulation plan later this year - said: "Based on some hasty research I did last night, I can report it is feasible to control access to our Web site based on what country the accesser is in.... I don't know the technical details, but according to the technical people at the FTC, non-US domain names have a two-letter suffix." Rothchild apparently didn't realize that many companies outside the United States have domain names ending in nothing but .com. At the end of the two-day conference, meanwhile, the one question left unanswered by attendees was not whether the FDA should regulate the Net, but how long it will take them, and how far they'll go. ###

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Re: DES cracker.
by Geoffrey C. Grabow 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 13:54 10/18/96 +0200, Gary Howland wrote: >Geoffrey C. Grabow wrote: >> > >> Tell me what you need. A large part of my job is providing hardware >> security modules to banks to secure (among other things) their ATM networks >> (Automated Teller MAchines, not Async Transfer Mode). Do you need PIN >> encryption formats, transmission message protocols, or what? Just LMK. > >It would be nice to get some confirmation that PINs are generated using >a DES encryption of the account number. > Actually, there are several methods. The most common one by far is called IBM3624. That uses 12 digits of the Primary Account Number (PAN), which in most cases is the card number, and encrypts it with DES. That result is then "decimalized" to change all hex letters to numbers. The first n digits of that result are then used to perform a MOD10 subtract from the customers selected PIN. That result is called an offset and is stored on track 2 of the card, the bank's database or both. G.C.G. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ | Geoffrey C. Grabow | Great people talk about ideas. | | Oyster Bay, New York | Average people talk about things. | | gcg(a)pb.net | Small people talk about people. | |----------------------------------------------------------------------| | PGP 2.6.2 public key available at http://www.pb.net/~wizard | | and on a plethora of key servers around the world. | | Key ID = 0E818EC1 | | Fingerprint = A6 7B 67 D7 E9 96 37 7D E7 16 BD 5E F4 5A B2 E4 | |----------------------------------------------------------------------| | That which does not kill us, makes us stranger. - Trevor Goodchild | ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

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Re: More threats from FOTM (Friends of Timmy May)
by bdolan＠USIT.NET 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Something like "ne(o)cultorney," I think. bd On Tue, 15 Oct 1996, Sandy Sandfort wrote: > > Does anyone remember the Russian word for "uncultured"? It was > in one or two of Tom Clancy's books. > > > S a n d y > > ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ > > >

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