December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

[ANNOUNCEMENT] Secure envelopes
by mixmaster＠remail.obscura.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Here, Timmy Mayflower descends into total inanity. He should have a cold shower and/or a Turkish coffee. |\ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ __ | \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ | O~-_ Timmy Mayflower | >----|-|-|-|-|-|-|--| __/ | / / / / / / / / |__\ |/ / / / / / / /

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FIPS key recovery meeting (long)
by John Young 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Forward from: cyberia-l(a)LISTSERV.AOL.COM Date: Mon, 9 Dec 1996 15:03:27 -0800 From: "John A. Thomas" <jathomas(a)NETCOM.COM> Subject: FIPS key recovery meeting (long) John Taber and I attended the first meeting of the technical advisory committee to develop a Federal Information Processing Standard (FIP) for the federal "key management infrastructure." The meeting was held December 5 and 6, 1996 near the Dallas/Fort Worth Airport. Although the official documents referred only to "key recovery" instead of "key escrow", representatives used both terms interchangeably. The committee is an advisory body to the Dept. of Commerce. Its recommendations pass through the National Institute of Technical Standards (NIST). The charter states membership will be no more than 24, so the ten "federal liaisons" present are apparently not considered members of the committee. The chairman is Stephen Kent, chief scientist for information security at BBN Systems. The other members of the committee were employees of various computer and computer-security firms, including Sun Microsystems, Microsoft, Intel, Lucent Technologies, Cisco Systems, Digital Equipment, IBM and Motorola. Some security related firms were Trusted Systems, GlobalKey, and CygnaCom. Officials from Chase Manhattan Bank and Visa were also present. The only academic member was Dorothy Denning of Georgetown University. The government liaisons included Michael Gilmore of the FBI, Jan Manning of NSA, and representatives of NIST, the Federal Reserve Bank, and the Defense Information Systems Agency. Some representatives were from agencies having no apparent need for cryptography, and therefore key recovery, such as the Small Business Administration and the Social Security Administration. Kent later questioned why the SBA would need key recovery when it had no need to store encrypted data. SSA needs encryption only when it receives confidential information over insecure systems. Mary Good of the Commerce Department opened the meeting with a speech charging the committee to develop a federal key-recovery standard that can be extended to "public policy". Good urged the committee to confine itself to technical issues only, and arrive at a standard that could be implemented and would not be merely theoretical. Good also asked for "transparency" in key recovery, and a couple of the government liaisons mentioned this as well. Kent's opening remarks included the comment that the FIPS would only deal with crypto key recovery, not recovery of digital signatures, or with public key certification. Most of the rest of the first day was taken up with introductions and comments by the members and liaisons. The general tenor of comments from corporate representatives was that key recovery had not been important to their customers, and while they did not oppose a key recovery standard for the government, they did oppose any effort to make it mandatory or make it a requirement for export. Some differed on whether an export requirement would be a problem. Some typical comments follow. GlobalKey (which runs a private encrypted mail system) said using key escrow would be against is policy, and its customers would not accept it. Oracle stated it had had no requirement for key escrow from customers and saw no need for key escrow from its customers. It supported software-only solutions, and emphasized they must have no classified content. Motorola stated it was important not to impact the performance of wireless systems. Motorola advocated an open system supporting multiple algorithms and opposed the trusted third-party concept. Microsoft said it was pragmatic, willing to provide key recovery if customers want it, but it definitely does not want it mandated, nor tied in with export licensing. The Digicom member assumed the committee was not concerned with individual privacy rights vis-a-vis the corporate employer's power to recover an employee's encrypted message. Jan Manning of NSA and Patricia Edfors of Treasury said the government had a corporate interest in key recovery like any other business, as well as for national security or law enforcement purposes. Manning agreed there was no place in the FIPS for concern over individual privacy rights and urged the committee to avoid privacy issues. Kent said another issue the committee would face was the timeliness of any response required to a key-recovery request. Gilmore of FBI says the FBI's need for timeliness would vary, depending on the investigation. Denning said that data other than law-enforcement related messages could need timely recovery, citing encrypted medical data, or encrypted data from some kind of sensor. Another parameter for timeliness would be the number of requests made in a given time. Although the issue was not explicitly debated, the commercial members seemed to feel that key recovery should be directed to stored data, while the government representatives were clearly using the term to cover both stored data and communications. Someone asked how session keys in a communication system were archived, and Denning remarked she didn't know of any system which archived session keys. The following morning, Kent said the issues included key recovery for storage, key recovery for communications, and key recovery for staged delivery (email). This seemed to remove the doubts some members had about the scope of the proposal. We were left wondering how key archiving could possibly work in communications networks. Consider a system where encrypted packets arrive in any order, with different keys and different key expirations. After a commenter asked for clarification of who the users of the new standard were assumed to be, Kent stated: "The government wants the FIPS so that industry will produce products that government can use, and others will use as well." When another commenter pointed out that a user could defeat a key-recovery system with superencryption or other means, Kent said "...we have to be willing to let [that case] slip through the cracks." Some participants attempted to distinguish between key backup and key recovery, the latter being the case where the parties to the communication are themselves unwilling to give up keys. Denning responded that "key recovery _is_ backup." The distinction seems to be about who is a party to the communication--the corporation whose employee has lost his keys, or the employee himself. Confusion on this point may exist because the members didn't distinguish the case where an entity using key recovery doesn't care about it in particular cases, but another entity, government, very well might. Kent asked if the new standard should require a data recovery field in encrypted messages or files, and if so, should there be check for integrity of this field. Requiring a recipient to check this would encourage senders to use the standard. Someone asked how a recipient could check if a sender were, in fact, escrowing data, even if the field were present. Others said requiring a data-recovery field would make compatibility difficult for older systems, or "...those choosing not to use key recovery." Some expressed concern for the impact on system performance of sending extra bits. Miles Smid of NIST once referred to the data-recovery field as a "LEAF," invoking some laughter from those recalling Clipper's "law-enforcement access field." Following a question on interoperability with systems not using the standard, Manning of NSA said the new export law required products to interoperate only with products using key recovery. This brought some irritated responses from the commercial members. One asked if the government had some bottom line the committee would have to accept if there were to be a FIPS. Manning said NSA had some requirements, and he assumed the FBI did as will. Kent suggested the government side put together a position paper. A member then asked who the customers of FIPS were supposed to be; given the government's special requirements, why was industry input even needed? Smid of NIST said industry input was needed, or no one would build systems for the government to use; also, the government may be involved in key recovery in commercial systems where "...public safety is involved." (It seemed plain that "public safety" in this committee is a code word for "law enforcement"). Kent suggested that if private parties want to operate key-recovery services (apparently meaning escrow services), they would have some negligence defense if they used a federal standard. On the following day, December 6, Dorothy Denning presented a high-level schematic of key recovery associated with key fields and encrypted data. The schematic was thrown together the night before. She promised to make it available on her web page (www.georgetown.edu/~denning/) Patricia Edfors of Treasury spoke about federal public key infrastructure pilot projects. She also described an "Emergency Access Demonstration Project," which was to "demonstrate the viability of key recovery, as a security service, for federal business applications." The project is to last 9-15 months, beginning August 1996. There will apparently be participation between certain government agencies and some private firm. Edfors said no attempt would be made to recover digital signature keys, create a key management infrastructure, or mandate which cryptography is used. However, "export requirements" will apply to all plans. Kent wondered why the government would need key recovery for itself. He seemed to feel that key recovery for an individual's worksation is a data protection issue (backups) rather than true key recovery. Members mentioned a few cases where an employee was unable to decrypt his files, but no one knew of a case where an organization was unable to obtain shared data (e.g., a database), because it was encrypted. Other members seemed reluctant to accept his distinction. They seem to view key recovery as a way to audit proper use of organization assets by employees, or to protect the organization from malicious acts of employees, or to recover data if a custodian is run over by a bus. Discussions continued to frame the issues for the project and assign functional tasks for sub-committees. Gilmore of the FBI said most key-recover issues would arise (for law enforcement) in the context of search warrants, not wiretaps, although the latter could be very important. In a question as to how long escrowed or archived keys should be kept, Gilmore said as long as the data existed, which might be indefinitely. When pressed, Gilmore said this was because some crimes have no statute of limitation. We thought some members might be mentally calculating storage requirements for session keys in a large communications system, if key storage and indexing was to be indefinite. Manning of NSA said the National Archives, for example, would have to have access to recovery keys forever. No one asked why the National Archives might be archiving encrypted data. Boland of GlobalKey also asked about keys to encrypted voice or video. No one seemed to have thought of this before. Kent wrapped things up with a list of issues for discussion at the next meeting. These included: --the threat model --interoperability --key recovery agents --performance issues, computation and bandwidth --algorithm independence --enforcement measures The next meeting will be held in the San Francisco area on February 19 and 20, 1996. Before then the members will confer by email and attempt to set up working groups to present papers on particular topics. The meeting ended with an opportunity for public comment. None was offered. Our opinion was that the only reason for the existence of this project was the insistence of the government, primarily the law enforcement and state security agencies. Private industry seems to feel there is little demand for a key-recovery standard, since those needing it can implement it themselves. Industry representatives were obviously worried about export restrictions requiring key escrow, and possible attempts to make it mandatory in some way. As corporations use encryption more and more, there will obviously be a need to develop key recovery systems inside the firm. The justification for a federal standard, however, seems weak. We felt that this project would probably end in failure, through inability of the industry and government parties to compromise, or if a standard did issue, few private firms would use it. It's even doubtful a standard could be completed and adopted before private systems are firmly in place. Is the whole thing just more of the government's increasingly delusional effort to control private cryptography, or does someone besides the security agencies really want a standard? The committee will post information at www.crsc.nist.gov. We can fax a copy of the materials handed out. We'll try to answer any questions by email (or phone, if you're really in a hurry). --------------------------------------------------------------------- John A. Thomas | (972) 263-4351 | jathomas(a)netcom.com Bowles & Thomas, L.L.P. | Voice | CompuServe 75236,3536 410 N.W Eleventh St. | (972) 262-6520 | Grand Prairie, Tx 75050 | Fax | PGP public key available --------------------------------------------------------------------- =======> After January 1, 1997: --------------------------------------------------------------------- John A. Thomas | (972) 387-8880 | jathomas(a)netcom.com Dolce & Thomas, L.L.P. | Voice | CompuServe 75236,3536 5720 LBJ Fwy., Suite 470| (972) 387-8881 | Dallas, Texas 75240 | Fax | PGP public key available ---------------------------------------------------------------------

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nyc internet world party schedule and survival tips
by Andrew K. Bressen 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Folks, an internet world nyc party schedule is at http://www.webcinema.org/party/ There's a mondo party at the Tunnel Club on thursday night, 220 12th Ave (West Side Highway and 27th Street), 18:30-20:30 one of the groups I'm affiliated with (WWWeb Artists Consortium) is one of the hosts. I believe that thursday night is also the PGP Inc party. This makes wednesday the logical night for a get-together, unless folks tell me otherwise. People who are around and interested in dinner after the show and before the vendor parties, send me mail. I live about 15 blocks from Javits, so if folks have problems (stolen luggage, need crash space, etc.) or just want to swing by to say hi, gimme a ring. home number: 212-489-6913. I don't have a pager just now. I'll probably be at the exhibit hall wandering during the afternoons. At least one person asked for directions: the front door of the javits convention center is at about 36th street and 11th avenue. http://www.metrobeat.com/nyc/loc/Javits-Center.html has pictures and directions. For good food, hike (1/2 - 1 mile; do not try to take a taxi this way during rush hours) over to 9th avenue from 42nd to 55th streets. There is very little food anywhere near javits; one diner across the street, the concessions inside, and the street vendors are about it. Thus, eat before or after, but don't expect to pop out for 10 minutes and find something you'd want. See recommendations at bottom. Saturday I plan to drive to ~Boston, so folks wanting a lift can also drop me a line. Some recommendations (North-South): Mee Noodle Shop 795 Ninth Avenue, at 53rd Street. 212-765-2929 very cheap, pretty fast, and yummy chinese. Afghan Kebab House 764 Ninth Avenue, between 51st and 52nd Streets. authentic and yummy kebobs and rice there are one or two other afghan places within spitting distance, all are closet sized (DON'T try to bring in more than 4 people at once) The Lemon Tree middle eastern; falafal, humous, kebabs served at glacial speeds. cheap, and they have lamayjan (middle eastern spicy cold meat pizza) El Azteca ninth ave new york mexican, with the nicest restaurant owner I know Uncle Nick's ninth ave greek food that many of my greek friends rave about J West ninth ave ok chinese. lobster tank, and you can draw on the placemats. sometimes not spicy enough. Pongsri Thai 244 W. 48th Street, between Broadway and Eighth Avenue. a long hike from javits, and too close to the theaters, but there just isn't much good thai around here these days. Avanti 700 Ninth Avenue, at 48th Street. 212-586-7410 expense account italian; fireplace and you might want reservations Pietrasanta Ninth ave, ~47th street _very_ good italian, though portions aren't humungous. upscale enough that you might want reservations. Meskerem 47 st near 10th avenue home-style (teff-based injera) ethiopian Asia Caribe ninth ave chino-latino (chinese with a latin american influence). Zen Palate 663 Ninth Avenue, at 46th Street. 212-582-1669 height of elegant, sophisticated vegetarian dining Bali Nusa Indah 651 Ninth Avenue, between 45th and 46th Streets Indonesian. Features Rijstaafl (a little bit of everything). Turkish Cuisine 631 Ninth Avenue, between 44th and 45th Streets perfectly reasonable turkish food all the sushi joints lining ninth ave along this stretch are ok, but not exemplery. avoid the thai places on the east side of ninth avenue; they just aren't too good anymore. there's also a german place and a few fern bars; these are mostly ok. the block of 46th street labeled "restaurant row" is a tourist trap. --cheers --andy

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Re: Secure Erase for PCs?
by Mark Rosen 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

> I know this has been discussed multiple times, but > archive searching has turned up nothing. > > What freely available tools are there for securely > erasing a disk under DOS and Windows? > > Ideally I'd like a tool for each, but pointers > to either are much appreciated. > > Thanks, > Though, technically, no disk can be securely erased, my program, Very Good Privacy, can securely delete files after they have been encrypted. I don't know if this is what you're looking for, but if it is, check out the VGP home page at: http://www.geocities.com/SiliconValley/Pines/2690

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Re: Secure Erase for PCs?
by foodie＠netcom.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

> Though, technically, no disk can be securely erased, my program, Very Good > Privacy, can securely delete files after they have been encrypted. I don't > know if this is what you're looking for, but if it is, check out the VGP > home page at: http://www.geocities.com/SiliconValley/Pines/2690 > > Ideally, I'm looking for a free space wiper, along the lines of what Burn 2.4 on the Mac can do. As in, create a file the size of available free space, and then write garbage repeatedly to that file. I've found "Real Deal", a TSR that intercepts the DEL command, but that's a poor substitute, at least for my needs. Anyway, thanks. -j

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No Subject
by Bovine Remailer 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Dr.Dimitri Vulis KOTM blathered: >More fan mail from John Gilmore and his friends: ... Kook, must you post all the private mail you dislike to the list, while at the same time whining and bitching about the crypto-relevance of anyone and everyone else. Many folks you critique do post off topic shit from time to time, but nowhere near the percentage (much less the volume) that you do. I can't killfile your ass from this machine, but I've decided to provide a cypherpunks public service to those who can. It will be low-volume. I am going to anonymously repost everything you post that is actually crypto-relevant. It will be REALLY low volume. Now, quit posting shit about "Timmy" anonymously, with your stupid ascii drawings, and start taking your medications so you'll behave nice at the get together, where I'll see you and try not to vomit.

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FIPS Meeting Material
by John Young 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

John Thomas has provided copies of printed material handed out at the Dallas meeting on FIPS for the Federal Key Management Infrastructure (KMI) on December 5-6. It consists of lists of particpants, charts, diagrams and outlines of the government's prayerful intentions for KMI which Mr. Thomas admirably assessed in his post earlier today. We've digitized and put it with his post on the meeting at: http://jya.com/fipsmeet.htm Thanks to Mr. Thomas and Bowles & Thomas, L.L.P.

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Security problems in recent list spam
by Lou Poppler 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

I was irritated enough by a recent Commercial spam to the list, (a message from Sue) that I researched the web pages it points us to. I note 2 very interesting features in the order form page (www.steppingstones.com/ordercab.htm) This form collects various info, and returns a POST request invoking ACTION="/cgi-bin/mailto.exe" It appears that these folks leave themselves open to some abuse, from anyone creative enough to modify the form slightly! Also, in the ObSnakeOil department, the form contains this claim: > You are ordering via a secure server which scrambles your credit card > information to prevent it from being intercepted. If, however, you are > still not comfortable sending your credit card number on line, please > fill out the above order form without any payment information and either > call us toll free at 1-800-585-1118 (outside the US, call (203) 730-2220) ... Now, it appears that this form returns a non-encrypted POST request to their server, and furthermore the action taken by the server is to email all the data to the ultimate business recipient. Thus the credit card info would be sent through the net TWICE as plaintext.

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Re: The Science Generations
by Dale Thorn 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Ryan Russell/SYBASE wrote: > If I may offer another opinion... > I ran a BBS for about three years straight off > of floppies on an Apple ][+, without any > hardware failures or disk problems. [snip] I can't argue against someone else's personal experience, but, if you are asking me to believe that the rather cheaply made Apple II would perform nearly as long and reliably as an HP-86/87 (for example), when making hundreds of thousands (millions?) of accesses to floppies over a period of weeks or months, without a disk drive tuneup or alignment, then I must be living in the wrong reality, i.e., everything performs the same, regardless of its construction design. SHOCK TIME: I'm going to shock you now, by telling you that of all the HP computer gear I have bought, the failure rate of new computers and major peripherals was approximately 40%, within the initial one-year warranty period. Actually, the failure rate within 90 days was well over 30%. When I wrote out the detailed list and sent it to corp. HQ, they must have peed their pants, judging by the reaction I got. Surprised? So how do I justify this? All I really know for sure, besides what I've told you, is when the initial fixes are made, I can run heavy- duty operations for many times longer without interruption than I possibly could with most other brands. Wanna know who the worst offenders are in consumer electronics, not only when it comes to warranty-period failures, but failures soon after, due to shoddy failure-proofing? Sony and Toshiba. I haven't had a lot of Toshiba equipment, but the experiences I've had, and the attitude of the company for not fixing them, are convincing for me (just my opinion). I have had a *lot* of Sony stuff, mostly small (but fairly expensive) items, and their product quality is abysmal, excepting large items such as TVs, or a couple of small "professional" items such as the Walkman D6C cassette recorder (Stereophile's favorite) and their pilot's radios S??-70 and -80.

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RE: Secure Erase for PCs?
by John Fricker 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

>Mark Rosen (mrosen(a)peganet.com) said something about Re: Secure Erase for PCs? on or about 12/9/96 6:19 PM >> I know this has been discussed multiple times, but >> archive searching has turned up nothing. >> >> What freely available tools are there for securely >> erasing a disk under DOS and Windows? >> >> Ideally I'd like a tool for each, but pointers >> to either are much appreciated. >> >> Thanks, >> > Though, technically, no disk can be securely erased, my program, Sure it can. Ten overwrites will rendered remnant data obscure. So says the electron microscope waving data recovery experts anyway. > Very Good Privacy, can securely delete files after they have been encrypted. Thought you said "no disk...". So how does VGP do it? --j ----------------------------------- | John Fricker (jfricker(a)vertexgroup.com) | -random notes- | My PGP public key is available by sending me mail with subject "send pgp key". | www.Program.com is a good programmer web site. -----------------------------------

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