December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

proposal: commercial data recovery
by Adam Back 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

If we take the design goal of designing a commercial data recovery system which is not GAK compliant, we can most succinctly state this design goal as the task of ensuring that: - at no point will any data transferred over communications links be accessible to anyone other than the sender and recipient with out also obtaining data on the recipient and/or senders disks I think we can distill the design principles required to meet the design goal of a non-GAK compliant Corporate Data Recovery (CDR) down to ensuring that: 1. no keys used to secure communications in any part of the system are a-priori escrowed with third parties 2. second crypto recipients on encrypted communications are not used to allow access to third parties who are not messaging recipients manually selected by the sender 3. communications should be encrypted to the minimum number of recipients (typically one), and those keys should have as short a life time as is practically possible Included in 2) is the principle of not re-transmitting over communication channels keys or data re-encrypted to third parties after receipt -- that is just structuring -- and violates design principle 2. With these three principles you still have lots of flexibility because you can escrow storage keys, do secret splitting of storage keys, and store keys encrypted to second storage accessors on the local disk for stored data recovery purposes. As an additional bonus, principle 3 adds extra security against attackers gaining access to encrypted traffic after the fact -- the recipient no longer has the key -- this is a form of forward secrecy. Systems designed to the CDR design principles are of significantly less use to GAKkers than PGP Inc's GAK compliant Commercial Message Recovery (CMR) design. The CDR design significantly hinders the take up of GAK if widely deployed. Design principle 3 -- forward secrecy -- is inherently hostile to GAKkers, and is the strongest statement you can make against GAK: you are purposelly _destroying_ communications keys at the earliest possible moment to ensure that GAKkers can not obtain the keys by legal and extra-legal coercion, black mail, and rubber hose cryptanalysis. The whole system translates into the Feds having to come and physically take your disk to obtain information about you, which is much better than GACK, and not what the GAKkers are interested in at this point. The GAKkers would like to install themselves, and coerce companies into installing for them (via GAKker/USG/NSA/NIST organised efforts such as the 56 bit export permit for companies installing key escrow; and efforts such as the Key Recovery Parners Alliance (KRAP)). I fear that PGP Inc's CMR proposal inadvertently meets most of the NIST/NSA specified KRAP requirements. What the GACKers want is systems where they can perform routine key word scanning and fishing expeditions into your communications from the comfort of their offices, without your knowledge. This is push button Orwellian government snooping. Within the constraints imposed by the CDR design principles, there is plenty enough flexibility to acheive the commercial data recovery functionality to similarly weak levels of enforcability as achieved by the CMR design. Weak levels of enforceability are appropriate because there are other exceedingly easy bypass routes: super-encryption, and walking out of the office with a DAT tape. I would like to organise a collaborative effort to write a white paper discussing how to implement various functionalities using the CDR design principle. Then I would like to see discussion of which set of these functionalities which best acheive the user requirement for company data recovery. Lastly I would like to see a collaborative development effort to provide a example implementation of a CDR system which can be used as a discussion point for the OpenPGP standardisation process. I suppose the best place to discuss this process is the IETF forum for discussion of the OpenPGP standard, the OpenPGP mailing list (subscribe by sending message body "subscribe ietf-open-pgp" to "majordomo(a)imc.org"). I have already had people express in email to me their interest in doing this. Those people can speak up if they want to. Technical input is sought from people opposed to GAK compliant software, and from PGP Inc, and others defending PGP's GAK compliant CMR proposal. Adam -- Now officially an EAR violation... Have *you* exported RSA today? --> http://www.dcs.ex.ac.uk/~aba/rsa/ print pack"C*",split/\D+/,`echo "16iII*o\U@{$/=$z;[(pop,pop,unpack"H*",<> )]}\EsMsKsN0[lN*1lK[d2%Sa2/d0<X+d*lMLa^*lN%0]dsXx++lMlN/dsM0<J]dsJxp"|dc`

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One Nation on-line working group
by Global Web Builders 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

If you did not request to be put on the One Nation mailing list please respond with "REMOVE" in the Subject line while leaving the message (below) intact. No email is sent without a request having first been received. GWB, Scott Balson, One Nation web site operator. ____________________________________________________________________________ __________ Dear One Nation supporters in NSW, Pauline Hanson's One Nation is now establishing an on-line working group of One Nation members. Conditions of involvement in this working group are: - being a bona-fide paid up member of One Nation. - the desire to be proactive in undertaking tasks and assisting One Nation where you can. This working group will play a very important support role for the party as we approach the next federal election. We do not want to say too much more until working group members have been selected. If you would like to enquire about joining this group please complete the information below: ______________________________________________________ Your Full Names: Your Full Address: Your Contact Phone no: Your Fax no: Your One Nation Membership number: One Nation branch (at which you are a member): _____________________________________________________ Thank you in anticipation of your valued support in this important area. Pauline Hanson

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commercial data recovery
by Zooko Journeyman 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

[Note-- I am not subscribed to ietf-open-pgp at this time. My apologies if this submission from a non-subscriber is unwanted. I will be brief. --Zooko] Adam, I applaud your effort to steer discourse toward productive work re: GAK, CMR, CDR. I haven't thought about your idea enough to have a definite opinion, but at first blush it seems a promising strategy to design high-security and forward-secrecy for communication but recovery/sharing features for stored data. I wonder if it is too much early-days to start talking about advanced protocols e.g. secret-splitting in IETF-Open-PGP? Probably so. Better just punch out a standard with current tech... Hm. What about the idea of storing your data remotely (for cost-efficiency, safety, etc.) using encryption to maintain your privacy? In that case, the distinction between comms and storage keys is blurred. A company may choose to e.g. store all long-term data at Zooko's Backup Server, encrypted in such a way that some combination of corporate keys (controlled by individual employees and/or departments) is necessary to decrypt each package of data. This would open the door, as you fear, for a government to mandate that _its_ key be added to each set, with authority to open any package even without the cooperation of any corporate keys. I'm not sure how to weigh the relative risks and benefits. I (ever so humbly) think that Zooko's Backup Server would be a great value for businesses, and that part of that value would be the ability to make data unlockable by various keys, both for administrative/internal security purposes and for robustness against accidents and saboteurs. Zooko's Backup Server can be physically located in a country free of such intrusive organizations, but of course it is the intrusive organizations of the _client's_ country that become important with that kind of protocol... Regards, Zooko P.S. There is already a company whose name I have forgotten that offers hard-drive backups over TCP/IP. They use some encryption but I don't know how strong.

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ipnat problems continued
by Matthew Patton 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

I've tried varios purmutations of the map rules to no positive effect. map ppp0 192.168.1.0/24 -> 206.142.xx.yy/32 portmap tcp/udp 10000:20000 repeat except substitute ^^^^^^^^^^^^^ with 0.0.0.0 or ppp0. Neither works. I ran tcpdump on ppp0 on the gateway and sure enough, the box is sending down the modem link 192.168.1.10 (the particular LAN host trying to initiate an outside connection) as the source IP. Now if everything were correct shouldn't it be the IP addr of the local end of the PPP link as hosted on the gateway box? (ie 206.142.xx.yy) ipnat -l has never once shown any indication of active connections. Either nat is seriosly not working under stock v2.1 (anyone prove it does work?) or there are some undocumented and not exactly obvios dependencies with regard to kernel options. Can someone please mail me a kernel config that is guarenteed to work on a stock v2.1 box for i386 architecture? BTW, how come kernal option IPNAT isn't documented ANYWHERE? It's not even in the ALL file. -------- Windows95: noun. 32-bit extensions and a graphical shell for a 16-bit patch to an 8-bit operating system originally coded for a 4-bit microprocessor, written by a 2-bit company that can't stand 1 bit of competition. (author unknown)

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Why CMR is bad civic hygene;the short version
by Bruce Schneier 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

The FBI has publically stated that they want to ban unescrowed encryption. A couple of years ago, people like Brock Meeks and EPIC predicted this; they were universially regarded as alarmists. The problem with corporate key escrow is that it puts an infrastructure in place that can very easily, with a simple switch of public policy, turn into GAK. Diffie has said that the FBS's position is a strawman, and that some kind of voluntary system will be put in place as a compromise. Then, in a few years, eliminating the voluntary nature will be seen as "closing a loophole." Technological infrastructure moves very slowly. Political moods can move very quickly. If companies (like PGP) install a key escrow infrastructure, it will take one well-timed disaster to convince Congress to pass a law putting the whole thing under government control. As Phil Zimmermann said many years ago (I have no idea where he stole it from): "It's poor civic hygene to install technologies that may someday facilitate a police state." Data recovery is essential for stored corporate data. This is a seperate problem than corporate key escrow. Communications keys (used for email) are fundamentally different than storage keys (used for files). Someone sent me email recently and told me that those keys are treated the same in PGP; I have trouble believing that this is true. And if everyone is bashing PGP Inc badly over this, it's because people expected more out of them. A company like TIS, who gets significant (I originally wrote "most of its," but I don't know if that's true anymore) funding from the NSA anyway, is expected to roll over for the Feds. PGP Inc was not. Bruce ********************************************************************** Bruce Schneier, President, Counterpane Systems Phone: 612-823-1098 101 E Minnehaha Parkway, Minneapolis,MN 55419 Fax: 612-823-1590 http://www.counterpane.com

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PGP Key Escrow and Congress
by Bruce Schneier 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

The attached is from Barbara Simons of the U.S. ACM. Note item 4, where Congressional staffers point to PGP as an example of key escrow software being possible. To those of us fighing the government control of cryptography, this is not helpful. Bruce -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon, 13 Oct 1997 13:27:03 PDT Reply-To: "Barbara Simons" <simons(a)VNET.IBM.COM> Sender: ACM US Public Policy Committee <USACM(a)ACM.ORG> From: "Barbara Simons" <simons(a)VNET.IBM.COM> Subject: Hill ... Blues To: USACM(a)ACM.ORG On Thursday and Friday of last week I met with Hill staffers of the following Congresspeople: Sen. Feinstein, Sen. Boxer, Rep. Eshoo, Rep. Campbell, and Sen. Kerrey. As you may have noticed, there was a Ca. theme to the group, with the exception of Nebraska's Kerrey, of S909 fame. Both Feinstein's and Boxer's staffer suggested that I speak with Kerrey's staff, which is how I ended up meeting with Christopher McLean, Kerrey's Legislative Counsel, and Lorenzo Goco, who is Special Assistant to the Vice Chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. My discussion with them was very interesting and somewhat lively. I don't know whether or not they had noticed our letter in opposition to S909, but they at least appeared to be surprised when I said that we had written such a letter, a copy of which was given to each at the meeting. I had the strong impression that McLean and Goco had had a hand in the writing of S909. They certainly were well versed in the arguments. Here is some of what they said: 1. S909 impacts only the government, NOT universities that receive government funding for networks. This is not our interpretation of the bill, and I'd be interested in hearing from some of the lawyers who are on USACM as to whether or not they agree with McLean and Goco. 2. If we are concerned about the well being of the computer industry in the U.S., we should be supporting S909, since the alternatives are either a more draconian bill or no bill at all, with the maintenance of the status quo export restrictions. They claim that Clinton will veto any bill that does not contain provisions that address some of law enforcement's concerns. 3. If we are concerned about inappropriate behavior vis-a-vis key escrow or recovery, we should be supporting S909, since it includes strong penalties for unlawfully revealing or obtaining others' keys. 4. The NSA states that key recovery is doable and will not jeopardize national security. And there is an existence proof for key recovery software in the new PGP release. 5. Yes, they would like to see widespread use of key recovery, but their idea is to encourage the development of encryption with key recovery by using the buying power of the government to cause widespread and inexpensive key recovery encryption to come into being. 6. They are simply doing what the NRC report recommended, namely "testing" key recovery on the government without imposing it on the citizenry. 7. Key recovery or key escrow are simply attempts at maintaining the status quo for law enforcement, who are now able to wiretap at will. Some of these are old arguments that we've been hearing for a while, but some are newer. In particular, points 4 and 6 are difficult to refute without getting into some technical details. Both points also undercut the argument that a key recovery infrastructure potentially weakens security. After all, the NSA thinks it's secure enough that it can be used by the government. Barbara

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Miss Canadian Slut International
by Bianca 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Dear Mr. Beauvais, I noticed on a visit to your website that you are a "Proud sponsor of Miss Canada Int. 97/98." I was wondering if you are reconsidering your sponshership in light of the fact that they award the title to sluts and whores. I was watching Jenny Jones, and thought that the lady, Gabrielle, was a very nice young woman, and a good role model for young women, but a representative of Miss Canada International corrected my error by pointing out that the woman is a trashy whore for taking a job with a legitimante Canadian business which she disapproved of. Accordingly, I am informing all of my male friends that it will be perfectly acceptable to slip their hands up the skirts of future Miss Canada International contestants, since they are all sluts and whores. I was wondering if this also applies to the models you represent and work with, since you seem to be proud of an sponsering an organization that regards the bright and talented young women who represent them as sluts and whores. Do you also regard the women that you work with as sluts and whores? Sincerely, Bianca

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Australian Key Escrow Bill Before Parliament for VPNs
by nobody＠REPLAY.COM 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

------- Forwarded Message Date: Tue, 14 Oct 1997 17:08:36 +1000 From: Paul Montgomery <monty(a)apnpc.com.au> Subject: [Oz-ISP] Interception law IS a threat to ISPs A couple of ISPs in messages under the "Interception" heading have pooh-poohed the new interception law that is going through government processes at the moment. FYI, the following PC Week Australia story shows that it's not something to be sneezed at, if you want to differentiate yourself by offering remote access or VPN services that are secured using encryption. As mentioned in the story, Telstra, OzEmail, Access One, Connect.com.au and Magna Data are only the largest of growing band of ISPs who are already constructing VPNs for business customers. It's going to take more than an a packet sniffer to decrypt secure messages going through your network. If you're preparing a VPN trial with something like Data Fellows' F-Secure VPN software, which doesn't allow for key recovery, then you're up the proverbial creek as regards your obligations under this new law. You'll have to keep an extra key for the Feds, ASIO, NCA etc, and only use cryptography software that includes key recovery. You'll also have to be involved in a lengthy approval process with the Attorney-General's department and the ACA, which is dangerously open-ended. The system will be that you have to submit your plans for new secure network products every year, and the law enforcement agencies have a set amount of time to protest that they can't access it. This process will add three months, at minimum IMHO, to the development of new services. And yes, INTIAA has been keeping an eye on it, but they've been getting the wrong information from the Department of Communication. I wouldn't say they've been lied to, but they've been given the wrong end of the stick. - -- START STORY [from PC Week Australia, October 17, pp 1/38] New Law Hurts Net Security Security forces want access to encrypted ISP traffic By Paul Montgomery [reproduction for commercial purposes not allowed etc etc] The Virtual Private Network (VPN) revolution in Australia is being undermined by new legislation from the Liberal government that would weaken security on communications passing through Internet service providers (ISPs). The Telecommunications Legislation Amendment Bill, which went to a second reading in the Senate last week, is aimed at giving government agencies such as the Federal Police, ASIO and the National Crime Authority access to data and voice trafficand ISPs will have to fund its implementation. The bill threatens ISPs ability to provide secure remote access and VPN services, by compelling them to include an extra cryptographic key for police, in a weakened version of encryption that is called key escrow. Any modifications needed to encryption technology would not only weaken security, but mean extra costs passed on to corporate customers. Senator Richard Alston, the Minister for Communications, the Information Economy and the Arts, said in a speech to the Senate that interception was an essential service and that Attorney-General Daryl Williams would be given the power to determine the specifics of the proposed laws effect. Senator Alston recently took over policy coordination for cryptography (see PC Week, October 3, page 12), but the decision on this bill was made back in March. The introduction of some new telecommunications services have been significantly delayed, with obvious adverse consequences for business and consumers, Alston said, which sources say is a reference to Telstras OnRamp ISDN service. Alston also hinted that the government was lobbying switch vendors, at an international level, to include interception capabilities in their equipment. Chris Cheah, assistant secretary of the networks policy branch at Senator Alstons department and one of the officials involved in drafting the bill, confirmed that the bill applied to ISP-encrypted VPN and remote access services. If [ISPs] are offering VPNs which have built-in encryption, and theyre saying to their customers that they will deliver in a secure form to a person at the other end, then they will have to provide decryption, Cheah said. He stressed, however, that there would be no requirement for an ISP to decrypt an end users own encryption. Telstra, OzEmail, Access One, Connect.com.au and Magna Data are already offering VPNs, expected to be a lucrative market for network outsourcing, but a central part of the technology is the security gained from scrambling messages with strong cryptography, using such products as F-Secure VPN from Data Fellows (see page 16). Danny Ng, business development manager for Internet and intranet at Bay Networks, said that because Internet access is not an inherently high-margin business, many ISPs were looking to differentiate themselves by offering outsourced remote access or VPN services. VPN technology is evolving very quickly, and one of the cornerstones to it is security, which usually means encryption, Ng said. For major carriers such as Telstra, the delivery point could be the local exchange closest to the agency wanting the interception, but it would most likely remain at the premises for smaller ISPs, according to Cheah. If ISPs want to get into serious carriage service provision, they will be subject to the same provisions as telcos. That means being able to provide interception capabilities, Cheah said. The bill also removes the burden of keeping up with Internet technology from police and security agencies by ordering ISPs to prepare annual reports on their plans for new crypto services. Luke Carruthers, secretary of ISP representative body INTIAA (Internet Industry Association of Australia), said that the impression he had from meetings with the government on the bill was that ISPs would not have to decode encrypted transmissions. INTIAA is meeting with the Australian Communications Authority and the government this week to work out the details of the legislation. Carruthers will argue the ISPs case. I would expect this issue to be taken up fairly strenuously by the people who it affects the most, he said. - -- END STORY - -- Paul Montgomery, Net journalist for PC Week, lives like a JavaBean. mailto:monty@apnpc.com.au Tel: +61-2-9936-8793 Fax: +61-2-9955-8871 ------- End of Forwarded Message

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Security flaw in PGPverify of INN
by Lutz Donnerhacke 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Hi, I was urged to send you the following information. I noticed CERT and tale itself. But tale claims that the problem is not a problem of pgpverify, it's a problem of some krauts trying to send checkgroups monthly using a bot. The checkgroups mentioned were send since a year. They do not include Date: and Message-ID: because these values were not predictable by the human signer and the bot does not know the passphrase to work with. In consequence there are checkgroups out there which can be resend at any time causing a lot of trouble, because the signature is still valid even if a new Message-ID: and Date: line are used. The obvious fix is to modify pgpverify to block such control messages. ftp://ftp.iks-jena.de/pub/mitarb/lutz/ contains the necessary fixes. HTH Content-Type: application/pgp-signature

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Telstra Australia admits it lied about net
by nobody＠REPLAY.COM 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

http://www.australian.aust.com/computer/fulltext/c1014b.htm Telstra: We were wrong about Net By GEOFF LONG October 14: A Telstra official has admitted that the carrier overestimated the congestion problems associated with the Internet, one of the prime reasons given when it wanted to introduce timed local calls. Speaking at the launch of Telstra's Big Pond Business services, Big Pond general manager John Rolland said congestion caused by Internet users connecting for long periods was not as big an issue as they first thought. He added that the about-face was in line with similar findings from North American carriers and switch manufacturers Alcatel and Ericsson. Mr Rolland said that the main problem areas are where ISPs are situated, but that these were manageable: "What is clear is that in the medium term we will have hot spots, especially around ISPs." However, these could be addressed by working with the ISPs and managing connectivity better. The remarks came in response to Telstra promoting permanent modem connections as part of its Big Pond Business offering.

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