December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

Re: -No Subject-
by Ryan Russell/SYBASE 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Why not just make flute or netscape your shell instead of program manager? (Shell= line in system.ini) Ryan ---------- Previous Message ---------- To: cypherpunks cc: From: kpieckie @ Harding.edu (Compton) @ smtp Date: 10/11/96 11:12:03 PM Subject: -No Subject- Due to the high volume of mail from this list, I rarely get to read every message that comes through here. Thus, I ask a reply be sent to kpieckie(a)harding.edu directly rather than through the list. Please forgive the interruption if this message is slightly off-topic. The library here at Harding University is attempting to set up some internet computers that run Netscape only and do not allow access to anything else on the computers. We use a scripting program called Flute that hides the Program Manager (WFW 3.11) and reloads Netscape when it is nuked with Alt-F4. Another program removes the ability to use any of the netscape pulldown menus less help. The problem is the keyboard. If a user hit's Alt-F4 after Progman has loaded but before the Flute script executes, Flute is terminated and the user has access to the computer. Are there any programs that will disable Alt-F4 and Control-Esc in Windows? Where can they be attained? Freeware is preferable, shareware is fine, trial period is required for commercial products. Thanks. Kevin kpieckie(a)harding.edu

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Re: BAY AREA CYPHERPUNKS SATURDAY 10/12 TRESSIDER HALL STANFORD
by Tom Lojewski 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

How do I get off this list? >X-Sender: erchiu(a)diablo.cisco.com >Date: Fri, 11 Oct 1996 11:54:43 -0700 >To: Bill Stewart <stewarts(a)ix.netcom.com> >From: Eric Chiu <erchiu(a)cisco.com> >Subject: Re: BAY AREA CYPHERPUNKS SATURDAY 10/12 TRESSIDER HALL STANFORD >Cc: cypherpunks(a)toad.com >Sender: owner-cypherpunks(a)toad.com > >At 01:06 AM 10/11/96 -0700, you wrote: >>There will be a San Francisco Bay Area Cypherpunks meeting on Saturday 10/12 >>at Stanford University. The meeting location will be the tables outside >>Tressider Hall, where we've met for several previous meetings. >>The canonical time is noon for lunch and milling around, and 1pm >>for organized program. > >Bill - > >What time is the meeting? >Eric Chiu >IS-Finance and Adminstration >Tel: 408-527-1665 >Pager: 415-424-7282 > > > --------------------------------------------------------- Tom Lojewski - ProNet Consulting - lojewski(a)earthlink.net

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Clinternet?
by Tom Lojewski 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

How do I get off this list? >X-Sender: rah(a)tiac.net >Date: Fri, 11 Oct 1996 12:02:04 -0400 >To: cypherpunks(a)toad.com >From: Robert Hettinga <rah(a)shipwright.com> >Subject: Clinternet? >Sender: owner-cypherpunks(a)toad.com > >Hoo boy. > >I had the most amazing whiff of paranoia from the morning news. > >Clinton wants to buy the internet back for $500 million so he can watch us >better? > >Nawwww, 'course not... > >Cheers, >Bob Hettinga > >----------------- >Robert Hettinga (rah(a)shipwright.com) >e$, 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA >"The cost of anything is the foregone alternative" -- Walter Johnson >The e$ Home Page: http://www.vmeng.com/rah/ > > > > --------------------------------------------------------- Tom Lojewski - ProNet Consulting - lojewski(a)earthlink.net

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Re: COMMUNITY CONNEXION SUED IN FRIVOLOUS LAWSUIT
by nobody＠replay.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

The SPA allegedly send sameer(a)c2.net a letter, demanding, among other things, that he "agree to implement monitoring procedures to prevent similar acts of copyright infringement and report those procedures to SPA." Under federal law (Electronic Communications Privacy Act) it is illegal to monitor users' actions unless there is a specific contract between the service provider to allow such monitoring, or a court of law has issued a valid search warrant. If the SPA did in fact send such a letter, what they are doing is illegal. They have alleged that a copyright violation has occured. If that were true and they had evidence to support that claim, then under federal law, they could have asked a judge to issue a search warrant to seize the infringing material and stop its distrubution, and/or they could have subpoenaed information about the alleged infringers from C2NET. But, because they did not have any evidence of a copyright violation, they could not get a search warrant. Consequently, they have attempted an illegal search, in violation of the ECPA. They threatened the CEO of C2NET with legal action if he did not assist them with their unlawful scheme. He rightfully refused, and now they are carrying out their threatened harassment against him. The lawsuit filed by SPA mentions no specific cases of copyright infringement, because, in all likelihood, there never were any. The SPA is merely going on a fishing expedition. The SPA should not be suing Sameer - Sameer and his users should be suing the SPA.

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Re: Blinded Identities [was Re: exporting signatures only/CAPI]
by Hal Finney 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

The "blinded identities" problem is one of the oldest that we have discussed here (although not much recently, of course!). It is basically similar to what cryptographers call "blinded credentials" and is closely related to electronic cash, as Michael Froomkin's example from Stefan Brands points out. I posted an idea a few years ago for how to use the technique to solve the related problem of remailer abuse. A simple way to approximate what you want is to use a standard blinded signature exactly as is done with David Chaum's DigiCash. The customer comes to you and presents some proof of identity. This may be in person via standard paper documents, or on-line via some cryptographic credential as you suggested. You make a list of all of your customers, and make sure that this customer is new, someone you haven't seen before. Now you simply give him a blinded cryptographic signature, of exactly the same form as the blinded coins given out by DigiCash. He unblinds it, and he is left with a signed credential from you, but one which is unlinkable to his identity. When he interacts with you, he displays this credential as proof that he is a customer in good standing. If he violates the terms of your contract, you disable the credential (add it to a list of bad credentials). He can't use this one any more, and he can't get a new one because he is on the list of people who already got their credential. This simple solution suffers from several problems, some of which are endemic to this class of solutions and others which can be addressed with fancier crypto. Among the fundamental problems we have first that verifying identity reliably is difficult to impossible. If people are motivated badly enough, they can forge whatever documents they need. Then they keep signing up with new identities like the kids who use AOL throwaway accounts. Second, if the customer ever loses his credential, he is screwed. He comes to you with some sob story about how his disk crashed and his dog ate his backups, but you have no way of knowing if he actually lost his credential, or if he is an abuser who got his credential cancelled. Another problem is that groups of users can share credentials, so that some hacker club can get a bunch, one for each of them, and then they can all abuse your ISP, getting credentials cancelled, but able to keep going as long as one is left. Problems which can be fixed include that credentials could be stolen, like phone card numbers, so an innocent person gets his credential cancelled and then we are back to the second problem above. You can mostly solve this by having him create a key when he first registers with his credential and require all his interactions to be protected by this key. There are also more elaborate solutions where he wouldn't actually send his credential over, but use zero knowledge techniques to prove that he had one. Unfortunately David Chaum has a pretty good set of patents covering blind signatures, so for a commercial venture you'd probably have to look into the legal situation. I can send you a list of Chaum's patents in the area if you want it. (I had it on my web page but my ISP quit so I need to get a new page going.) Some of the other practical issues are also mentioned in Michael Froomkin's article, like waiting a while after you get your credential before you use it. Hal

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RE: RE: Binding cryptography - a fraud-detectible alternative to
by James A. Donald 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 11:48 AM 10/13/96 +0000, everheul(a)mail.rijnhaave.nl wrote: >To explain the backround of "binding cryptography" once more; with >respect to (interoperable, worldwide) security in the information >society socities/governments have to achieve two tasks: 1. >stimulating the establishment of a security structure that protects >their citizens, but which does not aid criminals. 2. Coping with the >use of encryption by criminals outside of this framework. Clearly curtains aid criminals. One way of allowing private citizens to have privacy from their neighbors while still enabling legitimate government supervision of citizen units would be to have microphones and observation cameras in every home and shop that can be activated by the government without the citizen units knowledge, thus allowing citizens full curtain enabled privacy without interfering with legitmate government security interests. This will also help the government protect the citizen unit from exposure to dangerous and harmful thoughts and ideas. Present efforts to inclulcate children with a correct outlook on life are often frustrated by subversive, racist, or anti social teachings at home. This measure could help citizen units to ensure that their speech is sensitive to the concerns of minorities and oppressed groups and to current government views. Since many shopkeepers already have such devices in their shop, there is ample precedent for this system. A good start on such a system would be have the existing shop devices run to the police instead of the shopkeeper. --------------------------------------------------------------------- | We have the right to defend ourselves | http://www.jim.com/jamesd/ and our property, because of the kind | of animals that we are. True law | James A. Donald derives from this right, not from the | arbitrary power of the state. | jamesd(a)echeque.com

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Re: Blinded Identities [was Re: exporting signatures only/CAPI]
by Bill Stewart 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

>> >Steve Shear <azur(a)netcom.com> writes: >> I've been charged with developing an Internet service which needs to assure >> its clients of anonymity. However, we fear some clients may abuse the >> service and we wish to prevent the abusers from re-enrollment if >> terminated for misbehavior. At 04:28 PM 10/13/96 -0400, "Michael Froomkin - U.Miami School of Law" <froomkin(a)law.miami.edu> wrote: >Stefan Brands has a protocol that probably does what you want. .... >http://www.law.miami.edu/~froomkin/articles/oceanno.htm#ENDNOTE286 Looks like a really nice paper on anonymity issues; at 485K, it'll take a little while to read :-) The fundamental difficulty in this problem is that you need some demonstrable proof of uniqueness for human users; if you don't have that, you can't transform it into a unique-but-anonymous identity.* The issues are similar to privacy-protecting voter registration problems. Brands's protocol starts with the user going to the bank with proof of ID, and getting a numerical ID which can be blinded and signed. It's a nice approach; you can do cruder approaches by hashing your universal-citizen-unit-ID-number or whatever, but that can be dictionary-searched by feeding all the possible ID numbers through the hash. For some applications, mapping back to a unique human isn't necessary; if you do something like map back to a bank account which has a high minimum balance for setup, this discourages the type of users who don't want to spend $100 just to send spam. Blinding a Verisign signature isn't enough, though - they support personna certificates without proof of identity. Froomkin also points out a class of attacks that can allow abusers to get around Brands's protocol - a group of users get together and abuse one ID till it gets busted, then abuse the next, etc., until they're all burned. Or you hire a bum off the street to get an account for you. Or whatever. [ * There are non-universal-identifier methods for preventing double-use. Voter registration in many places just depends on identification and affidavit, and is often abused (e.g. Chicago graveyard voters and Nevada absentee ballots), but usually not massively abused. Some third-world countries don't even require registration or literacy - they dip your thumb in ink after you vote, using a kind of ink that won't come off for a couple of days. Attacks against this protocol include better solvents :-) ] # Thanks; Bill # Bill Stewart, +1-415-442-2215 stewarts(a)ix.netcom.com # You can get PGP outside the US at ftp.ox.ac.uk Imagine if three million people voted for somebody they _knew_, and the politicians had to count them all.

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Re: Clinternet?
by James A. Donald 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 06:29 PM 10/13/96 -0700, Tom Lojewski wrote: > > How do I get off this list? send the message "help" to the robot at majordomo(a)toad.com --------------------------------------------------------------------- | We have the right to defend ourselves | http://www.jim.com/jamesd/ and our property, because of the kind | of animals that we are. True law | James A. Donald derives from this right, not from the | arbitrary power of the state. | jamesd(a)echeque.com

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SURVEY: Encryption in Commercial Enterprises
by 'Mark' M.J. Saarelainen 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Dear Receiver, I am completing a brief survey of encryption technologies and the uses of this technology in commercial enterprises. I have included three questions below. After reviewing these short questions, I would appreciate greatly, if you could provide your input (your responses) to me. My email address is mjsus(a)ix.netcom.com - thanks in advance. Best regards, Mark --------- 1. In your opinion, what are the 5-10 most significant applications of encryption technologies currently in commercial enterprises? 2. In your opinion, what are 5-10 main barriers currently that may prevent the successful implementation and utilization of encryption technologies in commercial enterprises? 3. What are activities and projects that can be initiated and taken to lower and reduce above barriers (see the question 2.)?

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Re: Binding Cryptography - a fraud-det...
by peter.allan＠aeat.co.uk 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

1) What's in it for the user ? A voluntary scheme that offers nothing for the user won't be used. A compulsory scheme gains nothing for anyone (to be shown later). Even standardisation for its own sake (making it popular for being popular, regardless of merit) won't do much. DOS and driving on the right are not universal. 2) What happens when the Feds recover meaningless data ? You could ban unrecognised data, with sampling by a TRP. You mean I'm called to the Police Station to explain my .qfx file ? 3) Are you going to ban all messages that might contain stego-data ? Ban here means flag as "session keys may differ". 4) How will you detect and punish gangs who share a private key ? > Eric Verheul [everheul(a)mail.rijnhaave.nl] Hal Finney[SMTP:hal@rain.org] wrote: >Another flaw with schemes of this time (in terms of failing to meet >their goals) is that they cannot detect superencryption and other >forms of non-standard encryption of the message body proper. All >they can really do is verify from the outside that the same session >key is encrypted for the two recipients (the intended recipient and >the Government Access to Keys Party - let's not abuse the term by >calling him a Trusted Third Party). But they can't be sure that the >session key is sufficient information to decrypt the message. > We offered a solution for the *first* task not for the *second*; the > point is that criminals(!) do not gain any real advantage from using > the system in that way as they - among other things - still face the > key-management problem. The above discussions are only relevant in > countries where the use of crypto outside the structure would be > prohibited. BTW, it is by such discussions that I believe such a ban > is ineffective and in fact counterproductive. I'm still puzzled as to what the point of the scheme is if other encryption is legal or other encryption is undetectable. It makes as much sense as a law against successful unaided suicide. Here are 2 suggested solutions to the criminals' key management problem allowing them to exploit Binding Cryptography. Plan 1) Ronald wishes to send a secret message to Margaret via a BC scheme. He first chooses a session key and encrypts his message with it. He hides the message in a stego file and signs it. The session key he chose he now encrypts (ElGamal) with Margaret's pubkey. He decrypts this with his own privkey to get a different session key. Call this S. (Cheats who trust each other could share a keypair so the message will not appear to go to himself.) He encrypts the signed stegofile with key S and sends it to himself and Margaret and a few TRPs. All observers agree the session key S was used all round. The message even looks innocent if sampled by the TRP. The stegocontent is only readable by Margaret's privkey (reading the key-to-Ronald field). This can be beaten by enforcing a random session key as opposed to a derived one. Make S be the output of a hash for which Ronald proves in ZK that he knows the input. (It is not clear from your description that you do this.) Plan 2) Use signed stego. Base key exchange on Diffie-Hellman with the first cyphertext variable in the ElGamal scheme. G=g**k Or base key exchange on something internal to the stego, as desired. Get half-baked politicians to see GAK isn't a vote winner and only wastes money. Unicorn says convincing government is impossible, but if they care about nothing else, they listen for where the votes are. Anyone wanting to find GAK-neutral work to think about could follow a few of the IETF's working groups. Why make something obnoxious ? Peter Allan peter.allan(a)aeat.co.uk

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