December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

Re: White House crypto proposal -- too little, too late
by azur＠netcom.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

>> Are there any current import restrictions for products on can legally >> manufacture, sell, and use in the United States? > >Sure. Firearms. The Gun Control Act of 1968 bans the importation of ... [snip] > >What does all that have to do with crypto? It is the *same* issue. In the >government's view, crypto is a danger to their future plans, just as >firearms are. Do you think it is a coincidence that crypto is listed as a >munition? Think about it for just a moment. Crypto is a weapon in the >hands of the people. And that's what Cypherpunks is all about. > >Starting from import restrictions, you will see restrictions on size of >keys (=maximum rounds in the magazine, now set at 10, proposed to be >lowered to six), who may own it (no felons, people convicted of certain >misdemeanors), who may sell it and how it can be purchased (must provide >identification, sales will be logged). I guess you can figure out the rest. > >--Lucky Yes, but crypto is one of the first intangible 'munitions'. It is much easier to constrain physical items than data. That is why anonimity, especially financial transaction anonymity, is so aboherant to LE. PGP Fingerprint: FE 90 1A 95 9D EA 8D 61 81 2E CC A9 A4 4A FB A9 --------------------------------------------------------------------- Snoop Daty Data | Internet: azur(a)netcom.com Grinder | Sacred Cow Meat Co. | --------------------------------------------------------------------- Hacker Opportunities (Let's Make Lots Of Money) I've got the brains, you've got the tricks Let's make lots of money You've got the code, I've got the hooks Let's make lots of ... I've had enough of scheming and messing `round with jerks My crypto code's compiled, I'm afraid it doesn't work I'm looking for a partner, someone who gets things fixed Ask yourself this question: do you want to be rich? I've got the hacks, you've got the keys Let's make lots of money You've got the code, I've got the hooks Let's make lots of money You can tell I'm educated, I studied at CalTech Doctored in mathematics, I could've been set I can program a computer, choose the perfect time If you've got the inclination, I have got the crime Ooooh, there's a lot of opportunities If you know when to take them, you know There's a lot of opportunities If there aren't, you can make them (Make or break them) I've got the brains, you've got the tricks Let's make lots of money Let's make lots of ... You can see I'm single-minded, I know what I could be How do you feel about it? Come, take a walk with me I'm looking for a partner regardless of expense Think about it seriously, you know it makes sense Let's (Got the brains) Make (Got the tricks) Let's make lots of money (Money) Let's (You've got the code) Make (I've got the hacks) Let's make lots of money (Money) I've got the brains (Got the hooks) You've got the code (Got the keys) Let's make lots of money (Money) Money!

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Re: White House crypto proposal -- too little, too late
by azur＠netcom.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

>Are there any current import restrictions for products on can legally >manufacture, sell, and use in the United States? > >Thanks. Yes, all products which may create RF radiation (e.g., personal computers) are required to pass FCC certifications (e.g., Part 15). Also, telephone equipment (e.g., modems) must pass other Part 15 provisions before they may be sold in the U.S. to interconnect with our public switched network. PGP Fingerprint: FE 90 1A 95 9D EA 8D 61 81 2E CC A9 A4 4A FB A9 --------------------------------------------------------------------- Steve Schear | Internet: azur(a)netcom.com Lamarr Labs | Voice: 1-702-658-2654 7075 West Gowan Road | Fax: 1-702-658-2673 Suite 2148 | Las Vegas, NV 89129 | --------------------------------------------------------------------- Internet and Wireless Development Vote Liberatrian!

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Re: WWII & Japan (fwd)
by Jim Choate 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Forwarded message: > > Again they knew something was up, just not where. > > You may well be right, but there are seemingly serious > historians who claim otherwise. Since you have studied > the subject for 30 years I would be interested in your > comments on the book 'Infamy' by John Toland (1982). I like Toland a lot. I do not accept what he says without reservation. > I remember being very taken by his arguments when I > read it. He has extensively studied the protocols from > the post war hearings and military court proceedings > dealing with the subject (and they were plentiful) > interviewed many of the involved persons years after. The war trials for the Japanese were compromised by a variety of political intrigues. Ranging from political issues regarding the best way to govern the war torn country (ie can't kill too many of them or the Japanese will simply pick up weapons again with an estimated 1,000,000 US dead as a result) to the biological weapons that were developed which were quite useful for the Allies sans the Soviets. > According to Toland: > > The US president, selected members of his cabinette and a > few admirals and generals knew - from Magic and the 'winds' > execute, radio traffic analysis, diplomatic sources, double > agents - exactly when and where the Japaneese were going to > attack, but didn't warn Hawaii, fearing that too efficient > counter-measures by the Oahu military might make the attack > abort and so not convince the isolationists. The unexpected > tactical capabilities of the Japaneese armada then made a > cover-up all the more important. Hawaii appears in *NO* MAGIC transmissions of that time period. If you, Toland, or anyone else can give specifig MAGIC intercepts I would be greatly appreciative. The MAGIC intercepts did mention Borneo, The Ka Peninsula, and the Phillipines (where the B-17's were headed that were destroyed at Pearl). The radio traffic analysis, ship movement analysis, etc. did not point to a specific target (how could they considering the breath of the Japanese opening attacks all over the Pacific) only that the Japanese were serious. The isolationists were never convinced (eg Lindbergh) that war was the right thing to do. There was nothing unexpected about the tactics. There were two previous test of shallow water torpedo attacks, both successful. The first was by the British and the second was by the US at Pearl (how is that for irony?) which was attended by Japanese observers. The heads of state and military did not seriously believe Hawaii was a realistic target and therefore looked elsewhere. Sun Tzu says the first target in war is your opponents mind, the Japanese took it to heart. Jim Choate

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Re: New Bihman-Shamir Fault Analysis Paper
by Timothy C. May 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 4:18 PM -0800 11/1/96, Martin Minow wrote: >There is an inherent conflict between two claims that are >central to the fault-analysis paper(s): > "the secret key [is] stored in a tamperproof cryptographic device" >and > "the cryptographic key is stored in an asymmetric type of > memory, in which induced faults ..." > >If the device is truly tamperproof, the attacker should not >be able to induce faults. Even given susceptable "consumer- OK, so the authors might have better used the phrase "putatively tamperproof." Or the more accepted modern phrase, "tamper-resistant." As with safes, castles, and "bulletproof vests," all claims of absolute security are dubious. What the Bellcore and Biham-Shamir (and other, reportedly) attacks have done is to show another vector by which "tamperproof" is not. >quality" devices, it would be trivial to store the cryptographic keys >in a redundant memory configuration, such as ECC "error-correcting >code" memory that can self-correct a range of failures and detect >a much wider range. It would also seem reasonable to protect the >cryptographic core (algorithms and data) with a digital signature >that would "crash" the device, rather than proceed with incorrect >key information. Faults can be induced as well in logic devices. I agree that redundancy can be added to logic devices (I worked on this for Intel a while back), but this would require an almost complete re-doing of smartcard processors. (For starters, imagine implementing triple redundancy in smartcards....not cheap.) Again, what these recent attacks show is a theoretical avenue by which nominally tamper-resistant cards may have their defenses breached. Whether this is an important threat depends on a bunch of factors. Whether cardmakers change their chips also depends on a bunch of factors. --Tim May P.S. A while back there were a bunch of posts with the title "Professor Shamir Arrested." Was it ever established whether or not the arrested Shamir was in fact _our_ Adi Shamir? And what the charges were? "The government announcement is disastrous," said Jim Bidzos,.."We warned IBM that the National Security Agency would try to twist their technology." [NYT, 1996-10-02] 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, Higher Power: 2^1,257,787-1 | black markets, collapse of governments. "National borders aren't even speed bumps on the information superhighway."

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Iridium satellite xceivers idea?
by Rich Graves 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Several months ago, someone was raving about getting Linux PCs and cheap satellite comms into Hong Kong in preparation for the mainland takeover so that the ensuing human rights violations could be documented. If there's anyone left on cypherpunks who knows or cares about that kind of thing, let me know. - -rich group 19 - --- [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 iQBFAwUBMnr5qyoZzwIn1bdtAQHtWgF+J46Kz4kUiAdbZ8JWbiRPp5VSAfi4qAqk ZfMXNPh4ma/eUMBnxrDmfgKJuhdUGXcq =hUZX -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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Re: 'what cypherpunks is about'
by Troy M. Barnhart 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 12:59 PM 11/01/96 +0000, Hard Media wrote: >Go and read a few books, >try "Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee" - J Dee >and then try "Blackfoot Physics" by F David Peat. my $.02 worth... Have live in the Western Dakota's all my life... I, currently, live about an hour away from Wounded Knee... Don't let the "Hollywood" effect on the American Indian overwhelm you.... They had some fascinating cultural facts, etc.... Are they Oppressed? Maybe more than 50 years ago... Now... most have done it to themselves... think on it... barney "Was mich nicht umbringt, macht mich starker." - (Nietzche) "Wit is educated insolence." - (Aristotle) E-mail: barney(a)rapidnet.com "Troy M. Barnhart" Web: http://www.rapidnet.com/~barney/

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ITAR financial crypto exception?
by Greg Broiles 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 04:42 PM 10/30/96 -0800, Martin Minow wrote: >At the Bernstein case oral arguments last September, I distinctly >remember the government lawyer stating that the United States does >not restrict "financial cryptography." Perhaps he should have >qualified his argument somewhat. > >This statement bothered me, as I cannot understand how an encryption >algorithm can "know" that it is encrypting a financial transaction, >rather than some non-financial document that would be export-restricted. According to the "United States Munitions List", 22 CFR 121.1, Category XIII, "Auxiliary Military Equipment": "Information Security Systems and equipment, cryptographic devices, software, and components specifically designed or modified therefor" are included in the munitions list; but not if they are "[s]pecially designed, developed or modified for use in machines for banking or money transactions, and restricted to use only in such transactions. Machines for banking or money transactions include automatic teller machines, self-service statement printers, point of sale terminals or equipment for the encryption of interbanking transactions." (22 CFR 121.1, Category XIII (b)(1)(ii)), or if they are "[l]imited to access control, such as automatic teller machines, self-service statement printers or point of sale terminals, which protects password or personal identification numbers (PIN) or similar data to prevent unauthorized access to facilities but does not allow for encryption of files or text, except as directly related to the password of PIN protection." (22 CFR 121.1, Category XIII (b)(1)(v)). As I read this, people exporting ATM's and other commercial financial equipment don't need to fuss over the ITARs; and probably not people selling Bank-O-Matic software; the question is not whether or not the software involved could be used for financial applications, or if it can tell that it is (and turn on or off strong crypto), but whether or not the system in question was "specially designed, developed, or modified" for financial applications (or access control), and limited (by some means) to only those uses; and this is a question that humans can (and must) answer at the time of export. (Also, I don't think that *documents* are ever export controlled; just the applications/systems that read and write them. Nobody tell the State Dept about John von Neumann and the interchangeability of code and data, ok? :) I understood Mr. Coppolino's remarks to be referring to the above; but if his statement was as broad as you remember, he perhaps went a bit too far. (Or maybe he was thinking of something else.) I don't remember the context of his comments. Does anyone know if a transcript of the hearing is available? It's my understanding that many court reporters are now making transcriptions available on disk, facilitating easy transition to the Web. As always, my comments are provided not as legal advice (or even as an authoritative understanding/interpretation of the ITARs/AECA) but as a contribution towards a general discussion. I still don't have an especially current source for the text of the ITARs at home; the above is from the EFF's copy of the 1993 changes. Someday I'll remember to pop across the bay and pick up a copy at the US Gov bookstore, but it hasn't happened yet. (Looks like the paperback 22 CFR volume is around $30, from info I found on the Web, if anyone else is interested. It'd make a good thing to set hot things on when they come off of the stove. :) -- Greg Broiles | "We pretend to be their friends, gbroiles(a)netbox.com | but they fuck with our heads." http://www.io.com/~gbroiles | |

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Re: Sliderules, Logs, and Prodigies
by stewarts＠ix.netcom.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 10:30 AM 11/1/96 -0800, you wrote: >Seriously, only a very few of us had and used sliderules...mine was a big >synthetic K & E (Keuffel and Esser, as I recall). The raging "DOS vs. Mac" >or "RISC vs. CISC" debate of that age was "aluminum" (the yellow Dietzgens) >vs. the old standby, "bamboo." Plus some oddball circular sliderules. I used plastic ones, myself; they were good enough for any work I was doing, even after the occasional rebuild when the [whatever you call the clear slider with the line on it] fell off. Started with the basic model, and later a wider log-log-trig model. I also had a few circular ones, including a big car-rally model that let you get an extra digit or so of precision (remember when precision was measured in digits rather than bits? :-) There were also a variety of nomographs and other weird slide-rules and graphical tools that were simple analog computers. We used some of them in electrical engineering classes for complex calculations that didn't need to be highly precise, which most of them didn't in a world where the extra-fancy resistors had 5% tolerances and you achieved accuracy by adding various tweakers instead. ObCrypto: Secret Decoder Rings are more or less circular slide rules, but there really isn't much crypto you can do in analog. :-) # 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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http relay script
by Niels Provos 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Hi! I am sure this was discussed already. Is there meanwhile a http relay cgi script out there which could be packaged with the common http daemons (like cern, apache or ncsa) ? The use of that is obvious: every new web server could be used as anonymizer and thus proxies would have a hard time to filter all those sites in censorship countries. Greetings Niels Provos =8) - PHYSnet Rechnerverbund PGP V2.6 Public key via finger or key server Niels Provos Universitaet Hamburg WWW: http://www.physnet.uni-hamburg.de/provos/ Jungiusstrasse 9 E-Mail: provos(a)wserver.physnet.uni-hamburg.de Germany 20355 Hamburg Tel.: +49 40 4123-2504 Fax: -6571

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Unix User Password File Encryption
by Erp 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Ok, I realize that you cannot reverse the encryption process for a Unix password.. But -- Explain to me why the following wouldn't work. And if it could work, I am willing to do the algorithms and math for this... I'm no good at coding and such.. But I can do algorithms and a lot of math easily enough *shrug*.... And if anybody uses this idea --- Please give me credit for the idea.. If it has already been tried -- Can someone please refer me to where it was tried, adn if there are any texts on it.. I would like to read them.. Thanks ok here it is: Normal Programs for Cracking a Unix password file, such as CrackerJack take a word, use the salt in the password file for that password, encrypt the word using that salt, and then compare what it comes out as. If it isn't the same, it moves on to the next word. My idea is similar to this, but is a bit different. Basically it would take a beginning word and encrypt it with the same salt as used on the password in the passwd file. So let us say that for an example our salt is aa, our outcome encrypted password is X8mfjs53D ... Ok now let us say that we take this salt of aa and run through the following into it and getting these patterns from it (these aren't the true patterns etc, I'm just making htese things up, but would it be possible?) salt aa -- inputed password 0001 -- outcome encryption Zkdrj234S salt aa -- inputed password 0002 -- outcome encryption Rksjr342s salt aa -- inputed password 0003 -- outcome encryption 25Svj43zY (For the following process we'd obviously use mor ethan three, we would probalby use a thousand at least, nad have them be all sizes of passwords and combiantions.. like aaaab or abababababab and so on...) Compare the outcomed encryptions -- And find a pattern in them.. Now in the above I'm just going to say like it comes out as 8x + 4/y - SQ(2z) + 4a = encrypted password.. Where xyza are each of the characters respectively such as 0000 xyza based on a 255 or however many ascii char system.. I know this is completely wrong for what I've done here, but I'm not doing the math or anything right now, I'm just making it up as I go for an example... Now say that since we have found the pattern... We take the outcome -- Do the algebra to figure out what the xyza would be.. And ther eya go woopity doo there is the password.. Not as simple as I've said here of course.. It would be a lot more complex.. But that is the basic idea... What is wrong with this idea? -- If it is something I have thought of, and havent' mentioned -- I'll inform you when you point it out.. But please do point it out.. Or I'll grasp at straws and say a lot of buts *laugh*... Anyways, What is wrong with this idea? How could it work? Would someone mind explaining for me, is much appreciated... Erp --------------------------- E'gads, ideas can be hell at time..

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