December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

Reminder -- DCCP Meeting on Saturday, November 16
by Declan McCullagh 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

---------- Forwarded message ---------- WHAT: DC Cypherpunks Meeting WHEN: Saturday, November 16, 1996 @ 3 pm WHERE: 1050 Connecticut Ave NW, Suite 850, Washington, DC (Between K and L streets) WHO: From phone on eighth floor, call to be let in WHY: A description of the crypto protocols used in the SET (Secure Electronic Transaction) standard A PGP key signing HOW: Take the orange/blue line to Farragut West, walk two blocks north (past the park), 1050 Conn. Ave will be on left Take the red line to Farragut North, exit on L street at base of 1050 Conn. Ave From Baltimore, take BaltWashExpy south. It turns into New York Avenue, which turns into Massachusetts Avenue. Take Mass. Ave westbound to Dupont Circle. Then take Connecticut Avenue southbound. 1050 Conn. Ave will be about four blocks away on your right. MORE INFO: http://www.isse.gmu.edu/~pfarrell/dccp/

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Re: [REBUTTAL] Censorship on cypherpunks?, from The Netly News
by Terry Wright 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

>It just "looks" that way on the net. I do live-fucking, newsgroup >flooding, mailbombing, vote-tampering and defamation all legally, >and OPENLY on the InterNet. > >The more you PGP, the worse you look. Nobody reads your e-mail, >so stop being so paranoid. > >-aga > > Who is this idiot?

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Key Escrow
by Rick Osborne 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

For my Professional Ethics class I was charged to do an essay on something topical and analyze it using the three main systems of ethics (Utilitarianism, Kantian Rights, and Justice as fairness.) I have pretty much wrapped up the essay and was hoping I could get some feedback from you guys (and gals, to be PC) about it. It is supposed to stay under 5 pages, and is intended for Joe non-crypto-user, so I wasn't allowed to ramble on about crypto, but I would still like some feedback. Anyone who is interested can obtain the document at: http://www.spacey.net/oringer/rickoz/Ethics.htm and the original Word 7.0 version at: http://www.spacey.net/oringer/rickoz/Ethics.doc Thanks, Rick Rick Osborne / C++ VB Pascal HTML VRML Java / osborne(a)gateway.grumman.com ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ "Women like a guy who looks trim, neat. You got to be sharp. I look like I'm wearing a circus tent. Any minute now a little tiny car, with sixteen clowns in it is gonna come flying out my butt."

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Executive order on crypto
by Peter D. Junger 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Ok, stop squabbling. Here is something important. The President has issued a couple of Executive Orders today that transfer crypto to Commerce (eventually) and that make things worse, not better, as far as I can tell at a quick reading. An important portion of the Executive Orders is a rehash of arguments that the government has made unsuccessfully in the Bernstein case and has also made in my case. I found out about the order from a posting by Michael Froomkin on Cyberia-L. The URL of the Executive Order, for today at least, is: http://library.whitehouse.gov/PressReleases.cgi?date=0&briefing=4 Michael Froomkin has also put up a mirror at: http://www.law.miami.edu/~froomkin/nov96-regs.htm I will have a copy up on my web server (http://samsara.law.cwru.edu) before the evening is over. It seems (again just at a quick reading) that the government is now limiting, or pretending to limit, its regulations on the ``export'' of cryptographic software to communications over the internet or on bulletin boards. As I read the Executive Orders they require that the final regulations shall contain the same sort of restrictions on crypto information that the Computer Decency Act applies to indecency--if the CDA cases are upheld by the Supreme Court, I think that these provisions will be struck down on the authority of that decision. The Executive Orders are not yet in effect. That awaits the proclamation of final regulations, which may be hard to draft--or may be issued on Monday for all I know. And argument in Junger v. Christopher is scheduled for Wednesday. Law is fun! Peter -- Peter D. Junger--Case Western Reserve University Law School--Cleveland, OH Internet: junger(a)pdj2-ra.f-remote.cwru.edu junger(a)samsara.law.cwru.edu URL: http://samsara.law.cwru.edu

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opinions on www.accutrade.com security?
by CaShaky＠aol.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Hi, Do any of you security knowledgeable people have any information on the security of accutrade? I opened an account with them prior to subscribing <sp? lol> to this list. I am now considering closing said account because of what i have learned from this list. How easy or hard would it be for a hacker to diddle with the accounts? To access the accounts all you need is a 9 digit account number and a 4 digit pin number. But from what I have gleaned from here is that the real leak in security is in attacking the OS directly. If this post is inappropriate to this list I apoligize in advance, but i have come to the conclusion that there are very bright and knowledgeable people on this list (once you filter out the noise) and would appreciate your opinions. Thank you CaShaky

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Re: A Disservice to Mr. Bell
by jim bell 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 01:43 AM 11/15/96 -0500, hallam(a)vesuvius.ai.mit.edu wrote: > >Jim appears to be arguing that the "common law" courts heis refering >to had judges appointed by the King. If so the right to appoint >judges to those posts passed to the US government under the treaty >of Paris. WRONG! One of the main principles of the US Constitution is that the government has no "rights," per se: It merely has specific authority granted to it by the people and the states of America. A treaty with a defeated monarch did not and could not grant authority to the Federal governemnt that it did not already have. Also, you've screwed up on the timeline: The Treaty of Paris was signed in 1783, and the US Constitution was finalized in 1787, four years later. Quite simply, the Federal government of the US didn't exist when the Treaty was made. No "rights" could be transferred to a non-existent branch of government. I suppose you'll now claim that the "rights" were transferred to the states, right? Well, the states did not have their own Constitutions, either. And unless those Constitutions mentioned commonlaw courts, it's pretty obvious that the public did not anticipate including those powers in those state governments. It is obvious that King George relinquished that power; what you'll be unable to show is that this power flowed to any entity other than the people of America, every one of them. >The Common Law in the UK was the kings law since the Norman conquest. >It is as any schoolboy knows judge made law. The doctrine of precedent >has become more and more prominent since the renaisance though, effectively >preventing judicial lawmaking except in areas where no law is believed >to exist. > >As a system of government I don't think very much of the idea of a >bunch of klansmen getting together to decide who they dislike. Sounds >much more like a lynch mob than a system of government to me. For every "bunch of klansmen" getting together, you'll have a few hundred bunches of far more reasonable people. Jim Bell jimbell(a)pacifier.com

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-=/HaCk, InC.\=-
by L0rD gEcK0 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

join #hackinc or #hackteach on efnet and join the group, run by: L0rD gEcK0 HaRdC0Re ^TWiSTeR^ Painter Catgrrl larsk One Day... The world will be overcome by gEcK0's, and if you havent been kind to me, you WILL be sorry!!! ;) ***£Ø®ÐgË©KØ***

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Re: National Emergency
by silly＠ugcs.caltech.edu 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

"Timothy C. May" <tcmay(a)got.net> writes: >Use the source, young Hal! While the White House Web site may not have it >online, Alta Vista turns up 113 hits (though not all valid) to it. >Basically, this was one of the alphabet soup of Emergency Orders, National >Security Decision Directives, and Executive Decisions passed or enacted >(sometimes in secrecy) during the last 30 years of the Continuing Emergency. I've spent a great deal of time looking for an archive of these sorts of actions, especially executive orders, but in general *all* the crap that spews from the White House. Is there one? Most of my searches led to dead links. I know that the WhiteHouse.gov site has Clinton's EO's (searchable, or, with a little finagling, a list of them), but I want *all* of them. I'd love to see a site which has all these things. (me)

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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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