December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

Re: My messages not appearing on either of the lists?
by Sean Roach 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 08:36 AM 2/7/97 -0800, Mike Duvos wrote: ... >Now that a few weeks have passed, I have decided that moderation delays >are the most annoying feature of the new experiment. I am subscribed to >the unedited list under another account, and its almost instantaneous >traffic is in great contrast to the time required for posts to trickle >through the Sandfort-Bot. ... >Messages apparently do not get moderated in the order in which they >are received. Some messages take a very long time, as other later >messages pass them by and are posted to the list. Again, I have no >explanation for this unusual behavior. Actually, I noticed that often times the posts were out of order when they got to me over about two months ago. This was probably due to my location on the mailing list heirachy, (another reason for a distributed list). I also remember there being a rather lengthy delay between my posting something to the list and it getting sent to me by toad. (I stayed at the computer reading other messages, erasing them and checking if any more had been sent. This was, is, my primary way of keeping my eudora disk from getting clogged to the point where it won't compress.) The problems that you describe aren't new to the list, mostly they are the product of a long list of subscribers. Although, manual moderation certainly adds time between posting and turnaround.

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Re: Black English
by nobody＠huge.cajones.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

In a jerk-off competition Dr.Dopehead Vitriolic K[arcass]OfTheMonth finishes second, third and fifth. D\___/\ (0_o) Dr.Dopehead Vitriolic K[arcass]OfTheMonth (V) ---oOo--U--oOo---

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Ann: Encrypted disks for Windows NT (fwd)
by Rich Burroughs 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Anyone seen this here? I wasn't sure if it had been posted, so I thought I'd pass it on. I have not looked at the software yet... Rich ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Mon, 10 Feb 1997 03:18:03 +0200 (IST) From: softwinter(a)post1.com To: richieb(a)teleport.com Subject: Ann: Encrypted disks for Windows NT Soft Winter Corporation, February 10, 1997 released: Shade - strong encryption software for Windows NT. Shade allows you to create encrypted disk device inside a file. Such a device can then be formatted using any file system (like NTFS or FAT) and used as a regular disk. The only difference is that Shade will encrypt the data on every write operation and decrypt it on every read operation. To download go to: http://softwinter.bitbucket.co.il Soft Winter Corporation, softwinter(a)post1.com

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LInteger Version 0.2: A C++ MPILIB
by janke＠unixg.ubc.ca 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- LInteger is a set of C++ libraries supporting multiple precision integers. Also included are libraries supporting chain hash functions and pseudo-random number generators. The core multiple precision methods are coded in i386+ assembly language for high speed. The libraries will only compile under GNU's g++ compiler, and have only been tested under the Linux and Windows NT operating systems. It is anticipated that there should not be any problems compiling under Windows '95, however, and that compiling for OS/2 will only require minor hacking, if any. Included as a sample chain hash function is an i386+ assembly implementation of the Secure Hash Algorithm (FIPS 180-1). Included as a sample pseudo-random number generator is an implementation of a pseudo-random number generator described in Section 3.1 of FIPS 186 (the Digital Signature Standard). Complete HTML documentation is provided for all public and protected methods. The package is free for both commercial and non-commercial use. Some of the improvements of this release over version 0.1 include: - Pseudo-random number generation. - Probable prime generation. - Easier constructors. - MontyRep and ResidueClass classes. - ASCII I/O in bases 1 to 36. - Overloading of fstreams operators for storage on persistent media. - Easier exponentiation. - Pentium optimizations for multiplication and squaring. - A square root function (by special request). - 8+3 filenames (by special request). - Various bug fixes and speed improvements (and some slowdowns! :) ) The package is available for download at http://www.interchg.ubc.ca/janke/linteger.html The hashes for version 0.2 are MD5: 61f027957065b88a690def3557956d34 RIPE-MD128: a0e85d5f3429f074b4a4dd4303f829e0 SHA0: b8e65d49ae0ae3ab26741030c8ca03137e16b493 SHA1: c46317ad7e3a9ff38092269b21513dbf68c0e3ef RIPE-MD160: 2ef0f020d1312033af6e6f4aa72466878ef3abe1 -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.3ia Charset: noconv iQCVAwUBMv65lDjQF257xHLhAQG+TwQAhLaBP6z3nLKbBKcmSomPPE9G+r1z/tpD 5rA1p9ImwjJZnLAARiywdzH0bXS2n4Yf6jfPOUBZ0FMonNXLfkRJcXIgf0c16+mQ GeX2YYYxRQ+BWcUpzgZBe9y1Y7BJ/I4f0Qbu7jWHn6sOdv+qejxS6+Wos/6vVDoF 3LOfYCyG8Xs= =jnym -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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Re: Who's ahead: NSA or the private sector?
by Bill Stewart 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

That's not really a meaningful question. We can write codes they can't crack. They can write codes we can't crack. The cats are out of the bag, and David Aaron can't herd them back in. In some sense, the NSA is ahead of academia, because academia publishes, so they can read everything the Good Guys have done (less six months waiting to get published in journals :-), while the NSA seldom publishes. (There are also corporations doing non-published crypto work, but not much - they also see the value of open system review. And the KGB may have been good as well, but they're not in our face, and we can write codes the Russians and French can't crack either.) The NSA has almost certainly done more work on analyzing obscure Russian cryptosystems, but who knows how much of that is just brute force. But the real problems these days are engineering, not science*, so it's probably worth spotting them a few bits of keyspace just in case. The NSA is better able to come up with a few million dollars to build custom key-cracking hardware than industry is, so we have to presume they can do at least as well as a Wiener machine for cracking DES; they're certainly better at eavesdropping on calls than we are. I don't know if we can coordinate more workstations for a distributed crack, but they _could_ issue the FedCast Secure Screen Saver for all federal PCs; the only question is how much time would it spend cracking keys and how much grepping for suspicious files :-) There may still be radical changes in factoring technology, especially as computers get faster, but I doubt they'll do more in practice than force us to use longer keys, unless someone proves P=NP in the far mythical future or proves that factoring is in or near P. The interesting questions are at the boundaries of strong crypto and weak crypto - 40 bits is a nasty joke, DES is still interesting for things that don't have too much money riding on them, Skipjack is probably strong enough for a few years unless there's a second back door next to the one with the big "Cops Only" neon sign. How strong can we make something and still get export permission? Do we care? What are the threat models for different "Key Recovery" scams, and are we willing to write deliberatlely weak code to collaborate? Are the non-RSA public key systems good enough until the patent expires? There are some boundary problems that are interesting for non-political reasons - now that every toaster and digital wristwatch has an IP address and a few KB of RAM, what kind of useful crypto will fit in them? Key distribution is still interesting - how do you make a system that's convenient enough to use and secure enough to work? And distributed cracking systems are interesting, though the main uses for them are for cracking known-weak cryptosystems. Then there's the field of secure databases, which I think has both practical potential and scientific merit - how do you mix data together without leaking the secure stuff to unauthorized users, either directly or through combining lots of non-privileged data. [*Borrowing from Matt Blaze gratefully acknowledged.]

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RE: remailer-operators DEA agents?
by Butler, Scott 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

> >Again, I am only on the Flames list. So why was this message sent to the >Flames list? Because someone responded to a Vulis post? Is a response to a >Banned Message now grounds for rejection? > After whinghing about Dimitri and about people sending flames to the list, you only subscribe to the flames-list.... you just don't make sense Timmy. Scott

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RE: MODERATION
by Butler, Scott 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Sandy writes: > >C'punks, > >I'm ending my participation in the moderation of the list. Well that was short and ..... errr bitter! > It would have been an interesting experiment if list members had >been open minded enough to give it a good faith effort. ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ There's a difference between being open minded and gullible Sandy. Nothing like ducking and running away when your little game didn't turn out the way that you wanted it to! This is not a flame, it is my opinion but none the less I'm sure that it will end up in the flames list or be conveniently lost in the masses of mail that John's majordomo receives every day. Scott. >

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What's next?
by Thomas Koenig 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Now that we appear to be at a sustainable 300 MK/sec (which I could hardly believe at first :-), is there any chance we could be attacking the 56-bit DES key next? DES is rumoured to be faster than RC5; also, there are likely to be optimized assembler versions out there already. We could also make better use of 64-bit architectures, since DES uses 64-bit blocks. However (and this is a very big however), that's still a keyspace of 7.2*10^16 keys to search. Assuming 10^9 keys/second (three times our current speed, which may be attainable with a good DES implementation) that's still a bit over two years; too long by a factor of 10 or so. Soo.... How fast are current DES implementations? People could try des.c from the ssh distribution as a starting point. How much more computing power could we bring online? Do people have optimized DES for Alpha, UltraSparc, HP 8000 and all the other nifty 64-bit architectures? Does it make sense to use MMX or equivalent for DES? -- Thomas Koenig, Thomas.Koenig(a)ciw.uni-karlsruhe.de, ig25(a)dkauni2.bitnet. The joy of engineering is to find a straight line on a double logarithmic diagram.

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HIC_rim
by John Young 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

2-10-97 NYT has Page One lead on high resolution commercial "spy satellites," and the welter of political, social, economic and national security consequences as foreign governments, corporations and individuals hire them to invade privacy, secret sites and labs. A nearby story reports on organized crime's shift to new industries, especially those reliant on high technology: calling cards, stock offerings and health care. ----- HIC_rim

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[CRYPTO] Elliptic curves
by nobody＠REPLAY.COM 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Timothy May's father, an idiot, stumbled across Timothy May's mother, an imbecile, when she had no clothes on. Nine months later she had a little moron. /\/\ \ / Timothy May \/

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