December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

CIA Lie
by John Young 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

The Washington Post, February 20, 1997, p. A22: Domestic CIA Snooping The CIA's assertion on its Web page that the agency does not keep files on Americans is not in fact true ["In the Loop," Federal Page, Feb. 12]. The agency opened a file on my client, Daniel Tsang, a political activist and librarian at the University of California at Irvine, in the 1980s and recorded his constitutionally protected activities. When we sued the agency, we discovered that no agency directives prohibit the maintenance of such files and the CIA lawyers made the extraordinary claim that it is legal for the agency to keep files on Americans, including on citizens' First Amendment activities. The CIA claimed that it is exempt from Privacy Act restrictions on such practices. While the CIA eventually agreed to expunge Mr. Tsang's file and promised to refrain from opening such files on him in the future, it refused to acknowledge any limitation on its authority to keep files on other Americans. It should do so now. Kate Martin Washington The writer is director of the Center for National Security Studies, a project of the Fund for Peace. -----

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Re: Dark Times Ahead
by jim bell 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 11:38 PM 2/22/97 -0800, Mike Duvos wrote: >Timothy C. May writes: > >> Oh? And will the First Amendment then be repealed? > >> "Congress shall make no law respecting the establishment of speech or >> prohibiting the free exercise thereof" seems rather clear: Congress cannot >> insist that a particular form of speech be used to the exclusion of others. > >> A ban on coding messages, speaking in languages unintelligible to >> wiretappers, etc., would quite clearly be thrown out on First Amendment >> grounds, from everything I know of the Supreme Court and its reasoning. > >The Supremes can bypass the First Ammendment anytime they choose by simply >mumbling something about "society's overwhelming interest in protecting >itself." I'd sure like to know how they figure out what "society" really wants to do! In April of 1993, which the original Clipper chip/system was proposed, not all that many people had even heard of the Internet, and far fewer were aware of the details of encryption. Surely they didn't mean to suggest that "society" was in favor of Clipper? Blissfully ignorant, perhaps, but not in favor! (B^) Obviously, with their "If you only knew what we know" they'll claim that the public would have favored Clipper if it knew the real problems, but the way I see it, if they REALLY believed that there was a serious threat to anything other than merely their jobs, they would have done a better job convincing the public. Jim Bell jimbell(a)pacifier.com

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Re: An Overweening Faith in the Supreme Court
by dlv＠bwalk.dm.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

"Pan D.Modium" <pandemodium(a)nym.alias.net> writes: > In short, America has been sliding down the path to fascism at an > amazing pitch since the early 80's. Not once in history has a country > gone this far down the path to tyranny and turned back. America will > not be the first. Dunno about turning back but the U.S. does resemble in many ways Argentina in the '40's and '50's. (It resembles the U.S.S.R in the '70's in yet other ways. :-) So, can you think of a good country to move to, besides Israel? :-) --- Dr.Dimitri Vulis KOTM Brighton Beach Boardwalk BBS, Forest Hills, N.Y.: +1-718-261-2013, 14.4Kbps

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Re: Dark Times Ahead - sort of off-topic
by dlv＠bwalk.dm.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Toto <toto(a)sk.sympatico.ca> writes: > Martin Minow wrote: > > Some state prisons (Utah? Minnesota?) are smoke-free. Cigarettes are > > a choice smuggling item. > > > I vaguely recall a price of $200 per > > cigarette (but note that, in a prison economy, the "dollar" is > > only loosely connected to reality. > > If it's been a while since you were released, then the prices > have probably changed. Ask Randall Schwartz (spit). --- Dr.Dimitri Vulis KOTM Brighton Beach Boardwalk BBS, Forest Hills, N.Y.: +1-718-261-2013, 14.4Kbps

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Re: CIA Lie
by jim bell 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 03:18 PM 2/23/97 -0800, Greg Broiles wrote: >I received a reply to my FOIA request re cpunks to the CIA; it indicates >that they "doubt" that they have any records responsive to my request, and >think I'd be better served by writing to the FCC. (?!) It's at ><http://www.io.com/~gbroiles/cp-foia/cia-1.html>. I'm going to write back >and ask them to actually comply with FOIA, e.g., look through their files, >instead of just guessing that there probably isn't anything in there. You could have said to them, "If you can't find anything, maybe you could make something up, okay?" Jim Bell jimbell(a)pacifier.com

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It is time to break Authenticode
by lucifer＠dhp.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Microsoft's recent arrogant and irresponsible reply to the Chaos Computer Club hack on ActiveX requires response. An effective response would be to steal the key of a major code signer and produce a signed, malicious ActiveX control. Such an attack would demonstrate the serious problems of Microsoft's security philosophy. Hackers have known since ActiveX was announced that its security model is ridiculous. Signatures are not enough to protect users from malicious code. Exploder and the CCC hack have done a great job of demonstrating practical examples of why ActiveX is dangerous. The CCC hack in particular has made the ActiveX security issue visible enough that Microsoft has been forced to respond publically. Unfortunately, their published response on http://www.microsoft.com/security/ does not begin to admit the fundamental flaws in ActiveX. Instead, they continue to hide behind code signatures and mislead the public that their system is no less secure than Java. The obvious response to Microsoft's attempt at damage control is to demonstrate an attack with a control signed by a reputable party. There are three ways to do this: subvert an existing signed control, subvert the signature protocols, or steal a signing key. Subverting existing signed controls is an interesting avenue. Currently used ActiveX controls have implementation bugs that could be exploited in an attack. Finding one would be a fair amount of work, however, and a successful attack would only show that code has bugs, not demonstrate the fundamental flaw in relying on code signatures. The signature protocols of Authenticode are presumably secure - getting signatures right is well understood. Still, does anyone have information on exactly how the signatures work? The best avenue of attack is stealing the secret key of a respected code signer. The target should be one of the major players, if not Microsoft itself. Someone is sloppy to store their secret key on a machine hooked to the Internet. Stealing it would be a very nice challenge. It should be doable. Stealing the key itself will almost certainly be an illegal act. Morally, the demonstration signed control should itself not do damage. Something like the Exploder control (which warns the user before shutting down the machine) should be good enough to show the flaws of ActiveX without causing trouble. A public discussion about how to best go about this attack should be interesting. For obvious reason, the attack itself would have to be done in secrecy.

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Distributed cracks, law, and cryptoanarchy
by gbroiles-nospam＠netbox.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Some thoughts about the distributed crack/reward distribution thing: The "you must report results only to the crack organizers" rule can be enforced if it's made into a contract. Even without a formal contract, I think it's plausible to argue that pretending to participate in the distributed crack, *and representing that to the organizers and thereby gaining access to their private database of already-searched keyspace*, and using that information for one's own private gain, could reasonably be construed as fraud. (depending on your jurisdiction, blah blah blah. But the general pattern - knowing misrepresentation, foreseeable & intended reliance, loss to one party is gain for another - is right at the heart of common-law fraud. The "widely distributed computing" approach depends for economic viability (as opposed to being just an amusing hobby) on preserving the confidentiality of input and output datasets. This protection can be (and will be) provided by both law and technology. The technological side will likely depend on programs distributed as executables only. This implies a client-side "sandbox" environment such as Java so that the software can't get to any of the local hardware (except the processor & display). If distributed crack organizers can be confident that they'll be able to reap the benefits of their organizing, they can offer payments to unsuccessful participants. This approach (tiny payments for idle cycles) scales better to real-world distributed computing problems than the all-or-nothing $10K approach. Because of the need for confidentiality, real-world distributed computing problems are unlikely to give participants a chance at a "big win" if they cheat somehow. (For example, assume Eve intercepts some ciphertext, and she knows enough about the structure of it that she can predict some of its contents (like message headers, or TCP/IP headers) - she will ask for keys which decrypt [a tiny piece of] the headers, and save the juicy data for herself. A cheating participant in the distributed crack gains very little by keeping the winning result to him/herself, unless she knows more about the context of Eve's interception.) I'm suspicious of the idea that a lot of people are going to meaningfully participate in the crack because they've got a "chance" to win $10K; assuming a wide distribution of client software, the chances that any particular client will hit the key is unlikely to be better than 1 in 10,000 or so (and my hunch is it's more like 1 in 100,000) .. which means that the "chance" is worth somewhere between $1 and $.10. Personally, I'd be more motivated by the idea that the crack might help kill stupid export control laws. Then again, I'm one of those people who won't buy lottery tickets. -- Greg Broiles | US crypto export control policy in a nutshell: gbroiles(a)netbox.com | http://www.io.com/~gbroiles | Export jobs, not crypto. |

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Re: Speculations on Espionage-Enabled Encryption
by Martin Minow 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Jim Bell writes: > >Has it been established that Microsoft (is only/can only) sign crypto >add-ons which are approved for export? Since there are no restrictions >domestically, presumably Microsoft can sign anything it wants. If those >versions ever manage to "sneak out" of the country, well that's too bad! > Here are some speculations based, in part, on my interpretation (repeat, MY INTERPRETATION) of discussion on code signing at last year's Java One conference: -- Only the vendor, physically located in the USA, will sign crypto add-ons. -- Since the add-ons are physically signed in the USA, the signed add-on must comply with all export regulations. I.e., no restriction on domestic use, various export control restrictions as appropriate to the crypto add-on. I would presume that the add-on would be distributed public-key encrypted, and could only be created by the holder of the corresponding private key (i.e. the operating-system vendor) and, furthermore, could only be run by an operating system that could decrypt the add-on package. A vendor could presumably export operating system variants that could not execute some subset of crypto add-ons because the variant lacks the ability to decrypt the package. In the long-term (3-5 years), I wouldn't be suprised to find the decryption capability moved onto the processor chip, making the problem of distribution strong crypto more difficult. Martin Minow minow(a)apple.com

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Re: CIA Lie
by John Young 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

After eying the disingenuous CIA letter to Greg, it may be worth eying disingenuous USG laws on electronic surveillance, most of which ostensibly apply to foreign targets but may catch US citizens in the global sweep, say, as on Cypherpunks -- keep at it, Greg. We've put some of them on our site today, as listed at: http://jya.com/crypto.htm fis.htm Foreign Intelligence Surveillance (108K) 50usc402a.txt Coordination of Counterintelligence 50usc438.txt Access to Classified Information 18usc794.txt Espionage and Censorship 18usc2511.txt Electronic Communications Intercepts 18usc2709.txt Electronic Records Access 15usc1681u.txt Disclosures to FBI for Counterintelligence 12usc3414.txt Right to Financial Privacy For details not fully revelatory of the CIA's operations, see 50USC413 et seq., by searching the United States Code at: http://www.access.gpo.gov/su_docs/aces/aaces002.html

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Re: Clipper article in Cu Digest, #9.10, Wed 20 Feb 97
by Sean Roach 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 09:16 AM 2/21/97 -0800, Bill Stewart forewarded: >CUD is available at URL: http://www.soci.niu.edu/~cudigest/ >Here are some excerpts: ... >> The Defense Department plans to remove the government key escrow >> software from its Fortezza cards used on the Defense Message System, a >> move that signals the death of the Clinton administration's >> controversial Clipper initiative and one that should encourage >> civilian use of the cryptographic cards. >> >> A DOD spokeswoman confirmed the decision to remove the key escrow but >> would not provide further details. >> >> The DOD decision, which will be formalized in a policy expected out >> shortly, is in response to the administration's decision last October >> to support key recovery technology instead of the controversial >> Clipper initiative. Each agency must decide how it will implement the >> government's policy internally. A technical advisory committee will >> develop standards for a federal key management infrastructure. >... >> DOD has for years pressured civilian agencies to use government escrow >> technology, but the agencies were wary of the law enforcement access. >> Stephen Walker, president and chief executive officer of Trusted >> Information Systems Inc. (TIS), said the policy will remove the last >> remnants of the Clipper and serve as an official endorsement of key >> recovery technology. ... So instead of all of the keys being stored in some guarded vault, the parent key which each chip uses to encrypt part of the users key when transmitting is kept in some guarded vault. That way they get the key in some 10 messages unless you rotate often. Or the keys are assigned according to some unusual system. Assuming that only 10,000,000 people were interested in the cards, then only 2^24 keys, or 16777216 keys need to be assigned. An additional 100+ bits of "key" can be thrown in, so long as the government has those, or can reconstruct them from the others. If you can only affect part of the key, can't a brute force attack get you, knowing that certain random digits were always the same? Of course this would become too obvious really soon, unless some elaborate system were used to rotate the garbage. such as having bits 2, 5, 9, 11, 12, 14, and 19 tell which of 128 different garbage sets to throw in. Please correct me if this is unfounded. Please inform me if I'm on the right track. Please tell me that I'm just irrationally paranoid so I can get some help.

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