December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

Re: Blinded Identities [was Re: exporting signatures only/CAPI]
by azur＠netcom.com 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 :-) Yes, it was quite a load, but very good material. > >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. Is it possible to determine the level of Verisign signature to screen out personna certificates? > >[ * 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 :-) ] Of course, if elections were very infrequent, they could cut off a finger each time you vote :-) You all have given me much to think about. Thanks.

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Re: FLY_not
by jim bell 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 09:30 AM 10/14/96 -0400, John Young wrote: > 10-13-96. CoWo: > > "Encryption confusion" > > Reminded of the secret Clipper algorithm, I sought > details from IBM. I asked a spokeswoman why the company > hadn't just put out a nice, snappy white paper > explaining its new approach to key recovery. "We spent > three months trying to do that, quite literally," the > spokeswoman said. "It's pretty confusing stuff, and > whenever we get it on paper, we aren't happy with it." That's interesting...whenever they get it on paper, _we_ aren't happy with it either! Jim Bell jimbell(a)pacifier.com

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COMMUNITY CONNEXION SUED IN FRIVOLOUS LAWSUIT
by sameer＠c2.net 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

COMMUNITY CONNEXION SUED IN FRIVOLOUS LAWSUIT For release: October 14, 1996 Contact: Sameer Parekh 510-986-8770 Oakland, CA - Community ConneXion, Inc, dba C2Net, condemns the lawsuit served by Adobe Systems, Inc., Claris Corporation, and Traveling Software, Inc. as a frivolous lawsuit. "As near as we can tell," said C2Net President Sameer Parekh, "we are being sued for being an Internet Service Provider." C2Net is an ISP, providing shell accounts and web hosting services. But the company is primarily a software vendor, selling Stronghold, one of the most popular secure web servers on the market. "We were looking into joining the Software Publisher's Association, who filed the suit on behalf of the plaintiffs," said Parekh, "but it's not very likely to happen at this point." The lawsuit appears to charge C2Net with liability based upon allegations that C2Net's customers provide links to pirated software on other machines and "cracker tools" that allow users to beat copy-protection mechanisms like software serial numbers. "It's completely outrageous that the SPA has nothing better to do than to file frivolous lawsuits against hard-working Internet Service Providers," said Parekh. "We are not aware of any such links on our pages or our customer's pages, and if our customers are breaking any laws, we want to know about it so we can terminate their accounts." (The lawsuit provides no specific examples.) The lawsuit was apparently filed after a single attempt to contact the company with a form-letter e-mail. The copy of the alleged e-mail included as an attachment to the suit shows the SPA's real motive. "They want us to sign a 'Code of Conduct'," said Parekh. "Among other things, we'd have to agree to routinely monitor our customer's web pages, which we won't do. We deal with complaints about our customers on a case by case basis, and we have a firm and clear policy against illegal activity of any sort. We've shut down accounts for less than what they're alleging in this lawsuit." "This is clearly a frivolous lawsuit," said Terry Gross, counsel for C2Net. "The plaintiffs know that an ISP can only be liable if it participates in and has knowledge of the improper activity, and it is clear that they have no such basis." Although the lawsuit does not mention the "Code of Conduct", it appears that most ISPs who received the e-mail ended up signing it, largely to avoid legal action from the much-feared SPA. Those that didn't kowtow got sued. "The terms of the 'Code of Conduct' are completely unacceptable," said Parekh. "It basically gives the SPA the right to go on an ongoing fishing expedition through our customer's files, and requires us to do the same as their agent on a regular basis. The Code would classify us as 'publishers', and we would become responsible for everything our customers do. We've built this business on a solid foundation of respect for our customer's privacy. Monitoring their activities without grounds for suspicion is completely inconsistent with maintaining their privacy." "This lawsuit is grossly unfair, and it's going to cost us a lot of time and money, but we don't have any choice but to fight it," said Parekh. "What we have here is three giant software companies and their well-funded bag of lawyers trying to bully a smaller software company into adopting costly policies that invade customers' privacy." A coalition is currently being formed to fight this case and make sure that this form of legal terrorism does not occur in the future against internet providers. The coalition will probably include the three companies that have been served in the suit and other organizations with a stake in creating a rational legal enviroment for ISPs and their customers. C2Net provides high-security encryption solutions for the Internet worldwide. More information about C2Net's products are available at https://stronghold.c2.net/. Information about the forming coalition may be found at https://www.c2.net/ispdc/.

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RE: RE: Binding cryptography - a fraud-detectible alternative to
by Hal Finney 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

From: 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 dicussions 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 have not read your paper, but let me illustrate via what may be a similar scheme how criminals can use the key management infrastructure, create messages which look good from outside, yet which still cannot be read by the GAK (government access to keys) people. In ElGamal encryption we start with a message session key M which we want to send across. We have the public key y1 = g^x1 of the recipient (^ is exponentiation). We choose a random blinding factor xm, and calculate ym = g^xm. We send ym and M * (y1^xm). y1^xm equals g^(x1*xm), and the recipient can recover this by ym^x1. Now with two recipients, if we choose the same blinding factor xm for both, we send ym = g^xm, and both M * (y1^xm) and M * (y2^xm). We use the two different recipients' public keys y1 and y2. I believe this can be checked from outside by taking the ratios of these two factors (y1/y2)^xm and using known methods to prove that this is of the proper form. This can be circumvented though simply by replacing M, the true session key, with M' = M*(y1^xm), where y1 is the intended recipient (and y2 is the GAK party). We send M'*(y1^xm) and M'*(y2^xm). Outsiders still verify that this is of the proper form. And the intended recipient can calculate the true M by dividing twice by y1^xm instead of once (in effect M' is the El Gamal encryption of M for party 1). But the GAK party, who gets M'*(y2^xm) and recovers M', finds it useless in trying to decrypt the message. This shows how keys from a standard infrastructure can be used in a slightly non-standard way to confound your scheme. Granted, the parties involved have to share knowledge about using the keys in this non- standard way, but that is only one bit of information and not at all hard to distribute. Hal

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

17 Dec '03

At 04:01 AM 10/14/96 -0400, Black Unicorn wrote: >On Sun, 13 Oct 1996, jim bell wrote: > >> At 04:28 PM 10/13/96 -0400, Michael Froomkin - U.Miami School of Law wrote: >> >It is unpublished, but he kindly allowed to me describe it in a paper I >> >wrote that discussed whether a bank would ever want to take the risk of >> >allowing bank accounts where it did not know the identity of the customer. > >> And I don't think that a bank can ever be embarrassed (assuming bank >> accounts are anonymous) by it being revealed that some particular bad guy >> kept his money there, any more than other cash-based (anonymous) businesses >> are embarrassed if it is revealed that some bad guy used their services. > >I would refer you to Union Bank of Switzerland in the late 80's >(kidnapping), BCCI (drug and intelligence money), BMI (drug >money/offshore insurance fraud), PNC Bank (accounting fraud), and a host >of others I won't bother to list. Banks do suffer from these disclosures, >in many cases quite severely. (PNC bank was nearly ruined by their fraud >harboring disclosures). Are you talking about ANONYMOUS accounts, or merely CONFIDENTIAL ones? (Anonymous accounts, as I use the term, are ones in which even the bank doesn't know the owner.) I think you're lumping these two things together; I was not. Jim Bell jimbell(a)pacifier.com

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RE: LET'S MEET DIMITRI (WHO CARES?)
by Alex Filacchione 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

<FLAME> Hmm. Maybe I am missing something. Can someone please explain to me exactly WHAT relevance this has to the list? People, I really DON'T CARE what your opinions are of Tim May, or anyone else for that matter!!! Can you please stop acting like children in a playground name-calling contest and move on to something else? Something of relevance to the list please? If you absolutely *HAVE* to continue to act like children then take it to private email. If for nothing else, then to save YOURSELVES from embarrassment. </FLAME> Thank you, AlexF(a)iss.net ---------- From: Dr.Dimitri Vulis KOTM[SMTP:dlv@bwalk.dm.com] Sent: Friday, October 11, 1996 8:55 AM To: cypherpunks(a)toad.com Subject: Re: LET'S MEET DIMITRI [snip] No deal, then. I suggest that for your next meeting you book Timmy May to perform live sex acts on stage with his two cats, as Ray and Zach do the Macarena circle-jerk. > How about you and Tim sit down and *NICELY* talk about your differences?

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(no subject)
by Jim Alexander 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

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[NEWS] Crypto/privacy related wire clippings (per Bill Stewart's request)
by dlv＠bwalk.dm.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

CITIBANK MINES DATA--MARKETING GOALS WARRANT PARALLEL PROCESSING Citibank wants to do more than track its credit-card holders' buying behavior. Soon, it hopes to know what they'll purchase next, and who's committing fraud. Data-mining techniques and data warehouses, part of a project called the Cards Analytical Model (CAM) slated to be completed by the end of 1997, are the tools Citicorp Credit Services in Long Island City, N.Y., hopes to use to predict future consumer patterns. To make CAM work, Citibank's IS team knew it needed a powerful mainframe-class system to handle the complex formulas and algorithms pounding away on close to 2 terabytes of data. But the mainframe wasn't an option. "We didn't want the data warehouse to impact our OLTP (online transaction processing) production," says Kevin Murphy, VP of IS for Citicorp Credit Services. "We didn't have the luxury to give up cycles and drives." Instead, Citicorp chose the IBM RS/6000 SP MPP (massively parallel processing), consisting of 116 nodes (or processors) and 7 terabytes of storage capacity. The database is DB2 Parallel Edition, also from IBM. More than 50 C++ and C developers, from Citicorp and Lockheed Martin, the systems integrator, are working on the CAM project. -- Information Week, 10/07/96 American Banker: Wednesday, October 9, 1996 Card Frontiers Citi Alumna's Consultancy to Focus on New Technologies By Jeffrey Kutler Catherine Allen, the former Citibank vice president and founding chairman of the Smart Card Forum, announced the formation of a consulting partnership, the Santa Fe Group. She is president and chief executive officer of the firm. Former Citibank technologist Ted Fine and entrepreneur Howard Sherman, who helped develop the Midas and SuperCuts franchise operations, are executive vice presidents. The aim is to help businesses understand and assimilate innovations in management and technology. The firm's base, New Mexico's capital city, is a hotbed of the study of complex adaptive systems, a scientific discipline that is crossing over into business management. Ms. Allen said she hopes to "break new ground by applying complexity theory to practical business challenges." She has scheduled a forum, "Complexity and Technology: Organizing for Innovation," in early November. Mr. Fine, who managed Citibank's global consumer systems, said the firm could help "master the challenge" of emerging technologies like the Internet and smart cards. Ms. Allen had been developing the business since she left Citibank early this year. Santa Fe Group has been working on several consulting assignments, but didn't begin widely advertising its services until mid-September. --- Dr.Dimitri Vulis KOTM Brighton Beach Boardwalk BBS, Forest Hills, N.Y.: +1-718-261-2013, 14.4Kbps

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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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Service pays users (sort of) to read commercial e-mail
by Greg Broiles 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

>From time to time we've discussed the economics of paying per-message costs for E-mail, and/or systems where advertisers pay users to read their messages. Someone seems to have set up a system like that. It's at <http://www.aristotle.org>. They seem to be using voter registration as an is-a-real-person credential. (Their idea seems to be that they'll charge commercial (paper) mailers less than it costs to print & mail junk mail, deliver it (and some of the $) to users, and keep the remainder of the $ themselves. They seem to be sensitive about "reading things you're not really interested in", which strikes me as amusing, given all of the crap that people seem to mail me without special regard for whether or not it's interesting. Advertisers seem happy enough to spend $.40 to mail me their stuff, so what's the harm in spending $.30 where I get $.10 of it, regardless of whether or not I ignore it as quickly as I do paper junk mail? They're saving $.10, and I'm making $.10, and we're not wasting paper. Who's being harmed? As I read their terms & conditions, they don't start paying you until Dec 1997, and you need to accumulate $100 worth of credit to get paid. Also, it only seems to be interested in people from California at the moment. (perhaps that's the only state they've got voter info on so far.) -- 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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