December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

http://www.nuyenta.com
by NuYenta 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

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The Joys of Being Canadian
by Anonymous 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

>Phone Company Rep: "What's your Social Security number? >Answer: "I don't have one. I'm Canadian." > >Power Company Rep: "What's your Social Security number? >Answer: "I don't have one. I'm Canadian." > >Cable Company Rep: "What's your Social Security number? >Answer: "I don't have one. I'm Canadian." > >Doctor to Seasoned Citizen: "I can't treat you privately or I'll be barred >from taking Medicare patients for two years." >Answer: "Sure you can. I'm Canadian." Now the question is: When they find out you lied will they care?

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Re: Comparing PGP to Symantec's Secret Stuff
by Vin McLellan 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

(I just posted this in a discussion on alt.security.pgp, and thought it might also be of interest to the List. _Vin) ALCO Jakarta <alcojkt(a)bit.net.id> queried the Newsgroup: > Could anyone give me a quick trun-down on the difference between these two > programs and which one is more secure? Is the latter more practical to use > than PGP 2.6.2? That's comparing real crypto vs a sophisticated version of the Captain Crunch crypto ring. PGP in all of its forms uses strong crypto, which is why it is difficult to legally export it from the US to any overseas entity, except branches and subsidiaries of US firms. (Thus, the effort to sustain the international version of PGP, and PhilZ's long travail while the US govt tried to investigate how those sneaky non-Yanks got their hands on this oh-so-useful RSA/IDEA utility.) Norton Secret Stuff secures the data using the 32-bit Blowfish encryption algorithm -- which is why it's approved for unrestricted export outside the US by the U.S. government. It's far better than, say, ROT13 -- but it would not provide meaningful confidentiality or security for anything of any worth, or anything which might otherwise spur a curious and clever grad student to spend somewhere between a couple hours (with a college computer lab at his proposal) to a few days (on a fast PC) doing a brute force search of all possible 32-bit keys. A more complex comparison would put PGP against Norton's YEO, but that too is an apples to oranges matchup, albiet with strong crypto on both sides. PGP was designed to be a mail encyptor. YEO -- with RSA + RC4, RC5, DES, DES3, and Blowfish too, I think -- was designed as a file and disk encryptor. Each is optimized for its primary function. The lack of published source code is an issue, but if you see such a product being purchased by multinationals or US defense contractors you can be certain the implementation -- which is the real arena of vulnerability, once the algorithm is chosen -- has been carefully studied by informed cryptographers. (For non-American product, look for similar purchases by government-connected agencies in the vendor's nation.) You don't sound like the source code is going to do _you_ any good, right? Like most buyers, you have to trust the judgement of talented pros somewhere. > > I use PGP and don't find it's use so difficult to master even as a rookie > in cryptographic matters. But this Secret Stuff program is commerical so I > don't trust it's degree of security to gov't snooping based on my suspicion > of corporate submission to gov't will. Is that a reasonable assumption? Actually, corporate or commercial products are better than that. Secret Stuff is overtly weak crypto. It's also free from Symantec. Norton YEO from Symantec, or any competitive heavy-duty product like RSA SecurPC, will be clearly labelled as to the relative strength (key length) of their crypto -- strong for domestic user; weak for the intl mass market -- in terms anyone with a basic understanding of crypto and crypto export regs can understand. Export permits for the strong domestic versions of products like these will be all but impossible to obtain for mass market sales to non-American individuals. (Neither of these firms probably sells or even tries to sell the export version overseas; the weaker products exist largely because US corporate buyers demand an interoperable product that _can_ be shipped to overseas associates.) Export permits to ship the strong-crypto version of these products American corporations will require that the vendor have a key recovery mechanism -- no big deal, since we are dealing with stored files, so backup access is a standard requirement for disaster recovery -- which is to be held by the US firm in a location which makes it accessible to legal US court orders. Any and all US firms will respond to a legal court order to provide information. (Commercial firms in other nations will provide any info they hold when confronted with a court order too, right?) It is always rash to expect any commercial firm in any nation to be either a martyr or an arbiter of moral or political issues. Corporate officers have fiduciary responsibilities and they can be replaced. Corporations get a set of rules from the society in which they operate, and then -- within the context of those rules -- they seek to maximize their profit and their stockholders' return on investment with a certain degree of ruthless intensity. That's the nature of the beast. When corporate self-interest and some corporate executive's personal philosophy line up, we get some interesting fireworks -- sometimes even heroic moments which dramatically change the course of a government's industrial policy, as in the US banks vehement rejection of the NSA's CCEP and Clipper programs. The apparent exception really validates the rule. It's really rare for the US govt to try to overtly challenge or crush an American firm like they did with RSADSI for a decade. The NSA tried to bully the US banking industry and got handed its collective head -- and got branded as naive and turned into something of a laughingstock as well. On the other hand, commercial vendors which provide a product for sale have to describe and warranty that product as having certain properties. If those products are used by individuals or commercial customers and fail to measure up to their advance billing, the vendor is thereafter liable for significant (even company-threatening) losses, in both recompense and punitive damages. That's commercial law in the US -- no matter what sort of mealy-mouth language might be in the shrink-wrap license. US lawyers get a blueprint of an altar upon which they can sacrifice such firms when they get their law degree. Corporate "submission to gov't will" is a real issue, particularly for vendors of privacy and security tech -- but for US firms, it is far more likely to play out formally (as with a court order for a message recovery key) or in some negotiated backroom deal where the government demands some feature added, or asks for some feature to be removed from free-market product, before the vendor is given some commercial advantage like a government contract, or GSA approval, or an export permit. You see the whole American IT industry being put through this sort of blackmail in the current US crypto export policy. Only vendors which have or agree to design key/message "recovery" mechanisms in file or communications crypto apps get export permits to ship their 56-bit versions of their crypto products -- or (among other vendors,) crypto-enhanced applications like RDBSs and operating systems -- to the international market. Nothing subtle or secret about that -- and historically, the model has probably been pretty much the same, if less blatent. US export controls in crypto exist to bludgeon the vendors, so that the US govt can obtain something it wants in that company's domestic or overseas product lines. (It certainly does not restrict the international bad guy's access to strong crypto, no matter what the latest Four Horseman propaganda is.) Today, I think this leverage is probably being applied more on the big US vendors of operating systems and networking software and major applications -- all of which require crypto for their commercial products today -- than it is upon the puny crypto vendors (who are, relatively speaking, small potatos and aren't allowed to sell strong versions of their products -- even with message-recovery -- to anyone interesting, anyway;-) In commercial encryption products, the hidden backdoors of myth and legend are far less likely, given the liability issue and US commercial law. Overt and well-labelled backdoors are a different story. <sigh> Surete, _Vin "Cryptography is like literacy in the Dark Ages. Infinitely potent, for good and ill... yet basically an intellectual construct, an idea, which by its nature will resist efforts to restrict it to bureaucrats and others who deem only themselves worthy of such Privilege." _ A thinking man's Creed for Crypto/ vbm. * Vin McLellan + The Privacy Guild + <vin(a)shore.net> * 53 Nichols St., Chelsea, MA 02150 USA <617> 884-5548

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Re: UCENET II and Peter duh Silva
by Charlie Comsec 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Information Security <The(a)NSA.sucks> wrote: > : While that's technically true, it's even more true of non-anonymous e-mail > : addresses. Usenet posts are much easier to forge than PGP signatures, and > : it's quite simple to sign up for a throwaway e-mail account under an assumed > : name. It's not very secure from a privacy standpoint, but it's even less > : secure from a "positive ID" POV. > : > : At least with a PGP-signed anonymous post, readers are alerted up front that > : they are reading the work of an author who is withholding his/her identity. > : But if you read a post from "john_smith(a)hotmail.com", is it really someone > : named "John Smith" or not? > > I'm not following this...anyone can generate PGP keys, and digital signatures > are not necessary to indentify an account... Sure, anyone can generate a PGP key. It's almost as easy as generating a throwaway e-mail address. And what does posting from a certain e-mail address or signing one's post with a certain PGP key prove? It proves that the poster KNEW a certain piece of INFORMATION, either an account password or a PGP secret key. It's usually inferred that the person who possesses that information is the person who generated it. Of the two, guessing a PGP secret key is orders of magnitude harder than guessing someone's password, logging on, and impersonating them. In addition, PGP signing is "portable". No matter where I post from, if I sign my post with the same key, you can assume it's me who posted it. It's more difficult to do that with an e-mail address. Let's say that you have a common name like "John Smith" and you post as jsmith(a)someisp.com. Are you saying that's your "identity"? What if Someisp, Inc. suddenly files for bankruptcy and shuts down without warning? Did you lose your identity? You could open a new account as "jsmith" somewhere else and claim you are the same person who previously posted as jsmith(a)someisp.com, but so could anyone else who desired to impersonate you. If you were signing your posts with a PGP key, then all you'd have to do is make a post from your new ISP, sign it with the same key, and your "identity" is "transferred". - --- Finger <comsec(a)nym.alias.net> for PGP public key (Key ID=19BE8B0D) -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.3i Charset: noconv iQEVAwUBNJahmQbp0h8ZvosNAQEqmAf+IG/gtP4flSv/RPP7530NuD5MeMgH8WGo 75E/o+3GkN5Ksl0hL0bdpUhDvqeHnwsdc2xO5j0UEzqIZGKapa1YvJGK0wrUU/FB UrUzcrHkvtXAdJD8GRTaA/Xgzjh2eJGOImzaIHbPOZBa4MPxYm7bEZaroHR2G2IP AkNFbJzBETP9nLmePupRSqmhN8GwC5BLRLjkXLDDXJ/9s04vNoBGUEsv4aA0iRad cdkHjHSs9FfOOTJPPG+GdDA+Z1LuyjnugcoTfYPtsu7PwgWE/tAxOCVPI6sHrhze I1a4KZSVn1AoNd0ii7Mcw4Fp73SUcuZ74+EJovToOyBu++bqZdOYsA== =jF0X -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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Re: UCENET II and Peter duh Silva
by Charlie Comsec 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- politas(a)dynamite.com.au (Politas) wrote: > Surely that isn't the important thing. More important is that the > person really has an email address of "john_smith(a)hotmail.com". Then > it's up to Hotmail to be able to trace that email address back to the > previous step, assuming that they are being forced to do so by a > warrant or some other legal reason. > > Personally, I think that all messages should be able to be traced to a > real person, although this tracing should not be possible without > legal action. Are you saying that Hotmail should be made a guarantor of the identity of its accountholders, or merely that they could be required, under certain circumstances, to divulge what information (if any) it possesses, regardless of its accuracy? AFAIK, the latter case is currently operative, since Hotmail's records are presumably already subject to subpoena (in the USA, at least -- I just realized you're posting from an Aussie domain). IOW, when you sign up for a hotmail.com account, you're presumably required to give them a "name". If I signed up as "John Smith", should they be required to verify that I'm really John Smith, or merely disclose that the account belongs to someone who identified him/herself as "John Smith"? If you're saying what I hope you're NOT saying, it would amount to a form of "identity escrow", and I suspect that Hotmail would probably choose to discontinue offering free e-mail accounts rather than take on that sort of responsibility. - --- Finger <comsec(a)nym.alias.net> for PGP public key (Key ID=19BE8B0D) -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.3i Charset: noconv iQEVAwUBNJaaXwbp0h8ZvosNAQHqtQf+LGGPWLQFPGfGgwKIHKOTAXQ74S08rGqt i8yiuSY2RgC+CXzbXJaMmDQ9gAcPMmCKJqzc2O4bkresg+hz6/Cl6d+m+3FO4Nz+ HKeaEMlg3EXHuxTnhsx4vSAWubdbpC+OfkU6kQHf1YU1zWZnIV9c7SbWmSNeaYhq sXLl6+YlPFwwZ0N5bUBqNkOsAQQveNFd/91mYGAZBi2R6P95F+RDV3/Jv3elhXgu egBb2Igf7imK/U6zFhgm6+jCdFdpGOfJ030UAMulezFi/czaiNdLNR3jE4nnfrwQ 4qexxqUkwzNrNWX0M9T/YQ7wl+jIWi3KKj4s4QLHTKXhoHNDY7hPsw== =W6Zl -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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Clinton announces NEW GVT PROGRAMS to develop technology
by Declan McCullagh 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

WASHINGTON (AP) - Honoring 14 American scientists' "passion for discovery," President Clinton today announced $96 million in new government-assisted programs to develop chip-sized supercomputers, hand-held video phones and radio-transmitting ID cards to locate lost children. "Who knows what will be known in only 25 years," Clinton marveled, pointing to recent innovations on the Internet and human genome research. "We must rise to master the forces of change and progress as we move forward." The $96 million already provided by Congress for this budget year, combined with industry funds, would leverage roughly $200 million for research and development, Clinton said. "The discoveries of tomorrow will be made possible by the scientists of today and by our continued commitment to their passionate quest," Clinton said. The Defense Department and semiconductor industry are teaming up to pay for long-term university projects meant to eventually allow U.S. companies to manufacture fingernail-sized silicon chips containing billions of transistors. A Commerce Department initiative offers, through competitions, funds to small companies working on breakthroughs in areas such as portable video communications, radio transmitters to keep track of children and affordable DNA diagnostics. [...]

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NIST IPsec-WIT (Web-based Interoperability Tester) on-line
by Robert Hettinga 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

--- begin forwarded text Date: Tue, 16 Dec 1997 07:48:46 -0500 (EST) To: ipsec(a)tis.com Cc: rob.glenn(a)nist.gov From: rob.glenn(a)nist.gov Subject: NIST IPsec-WIT (Web-based Interoperability Tester) on-line MIME-Version: 1.0 Sender: owner-ipsec(a)ex.tis.com Precedence: bulk The NIST IPsec-WIT (Web-based Interoperability Tester) is on-line and ready for use. IPsec-WIT is an interoperability test system built around the NIST Cerberus IPsec reference implementation and commonly available WWW technology. IPsec-WIT allows its users to remotely control and execute series of interoperability tests with the Cerberus prototype. Test case selection, configuration, execution and results analysis are all controlled remotely by WWW browser. IPsec-WIT is currently operational for IPv4 IPsec protocols (with over 60 test cases) and will soon support IPv6 as well as key management protocol testing. For access to IPsec-wit and additional information see: http://ipsec-wit.antd.nist.gov. It is recommended that you read through the tutorial before testing for the first time. Comments and recommendations can be sent to ipsec-wit-dev(a)mail.antd.nist.gov. Best Regards, Rob G. rob.glenn(a)nist.gov PS - Sorry if you have already seen this once. I sent it out yesterday afternoon and haven't seen it yet. --- end forwarded text ----------------- Robert Hettinga (rah(a)shipwright.com) Philodox e$, 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA "... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity, [predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire' The e$ Home Page: http://www.shipwright.com/ Ask me about FC98 in Anguilla!: <http://www.fc98.ai/>

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OTP
by nobody＠REPLAY.COM 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Tim C[ocksucker] May's abysmal grammar, atrocious spelling and feeble responses clearly identify him as a product of the American education system. 0 //\/ Tim C[ocksucker] May \/\ ... /

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The naming of the Presidential Pooch
by Declan McCullagh 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

The stakeout before the press conference. Note the hard-hitting questions from DC political reporters: Q There he is. So what's his name? PRESIDENT CLINTON: Isn't he pretty? Q But what's his name? PRESIDENT CLINTON: Press conference. Press conference. Q (Laughs.) His name is "press conference"? PRESIDENT CLINTON: Huh? Q His name is "press conference"? PRESIDENT CLINTON: That's a good idea. That's probably what I should have called him. (To the puppy) Do you want to go see them? Q Mr. President, where does he sleep? Where does the puppy sleep? PRESIDENT CLINTON: Upstairs. Q Upstairs? Does he have his own little doggy bed? PRESIDENT CLINTON: He has a little house in the kitchen. He's sleeping in the kitchen right now. Q Does he sleep in a little dog house? PRESIDENT CLINTON: Yeah, he sleeps in a little dog house. And we got another - Q He is really trained? PRESIDENT CLINTON: You may get a chance to see here in a minute! (Laughter.) Yes, he's done quite well, so far. Hi, Jimmy. Q And what can he do? PRESIDENT CLINTON: (Commands the puppy) Sit! THE PRESS: Oh! All right! PRESIDENT CLINTON: (To the puppy) That's good. Very good. Q What's he eating, Mr. President? PRESIDENT CLINTON: A little dog biscuit. He's pretty well trained. And, you know, I get up in the morning and take him for a walk early, at 7:00. And then I give him breakfast, then we go for another walk. And then he has lunch and goes for another walk. Q Who takes him at lunch time? PRESIDENT CLINTON: Well, so far, I have. Q He likes the press, Mr. President. PRESIDENT CLINTON: Yeah, he does. So do I. Q He doesn't bother your allergies? PRESIDENT CLINTON: No. I've never been - yeah twice, three times. I'm trying to work this out. Q It's going to take awhile. PRESIDENT CLINTON: It's going to take awhile. It's kind of like peace in Ireland or the Middle East, you know - (chuckles) - it's - Q What happened when they met? PRESIDENT CLINTON: Socks was a little scared of him, I think. And yesterday - you could have had a great picture yesterday. She jumped way up - he jumped way up on my shoulder. Socks climbed right up and got up on my shoulders so that they would have an appropriate distance. But we're giving them items that the two of them have, you know, to try to get used to the scent. And I'll get it worked out. Q What's his name? Q He likes grass. PRESIDENT CLINTON: He can hang out in the - he can hang out nearly anywhere. We've got a little flexible cage back in the dining room now in the White House. He comes over to the Oval Office with me in the morning. He does fine. Q Without telling us the name, can you tell us if it came from a senator? PRESIDENT CLINTON: No. In the end, it didn't. It didn't. I'll tell you about - I'll answer questions about it at the press conference. Q What were your finalist names? Can you give us any of that? PRESIDENT CLINTON: I'll do that too, at the press conference. Yeah, we went through - we went through about - you know, we got thousands of names. It was great! And I had so much fun reviewing them. And then we went - (to the puppy) - don't eat that, you just had lunch! - (returning) - and we got down to about seven or eight, and then we got down to three and finally made a decision. (To the puppy) Come on, kiddo. Come on. Let's go. Q He's beautiful. PRESIDENT CLINTON: Thank you. I think he's beautiful, too. END

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m2n@alpha.jpunix.com is down
by John A. Perry 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Now that I've posted that operating a mail2news gateway is a minimal effort, the m2n at jpunix.com has been under a steady spam attack for the past 72 hours. I fought it all day yesterday and came in this morning to find that the spammer had just moved to a different ISP and started spamming again. I have no choice but to shut down the m2n for now in order to stop the spam. If anyone is interested the body of the spam looks like this: Subject: Publicity agents are fun! Hoping you'll have a superly-NICE nite, a FUN day tomorrow, and the most excellent TIMES forever more. - -------------------------------------- This message was brought to you by MarketCom's MktAgent, the interNet's premier webwalking publicity engine. Locate over 100,000 Email penpals in only 5 days with our FREE demo model. http://www.MarketCom.com/MktAgent/ Of course everyone on USEnet is blaming jpunix.com for the SPAM but I knew that would happen when I first started the m2n. Anyway here's hoping that the spammer will get tired and move on and then I'll be able to start it back up. John Perry KG5RG perry(a)alpha.jpunix.com PGP-encrypted e-mail welcome! Amateur Radio Address: kg5rg(a)kg5rg.ampr.org WWW - http://www.jpunix.com PGP 2.62 key for perry(a)jpunix.com is on the keyservers. -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.2 iQCVAwUBNJfAr1OTpEThrthvAQEdXQP/Sc7IVlvi1GbuVMZ+Nv3rWPluxybxZpuJ oSSNI0LObO20dBhI3IZIiWof5I3jpwoIuT8Ha/6IOLO7Rxmat9xj1h3E4j/Mrb6b diTaRiifPG1MiMeuNIYkPSefwqInlQrKSIQ28SEn3/Mc8WclWXEU3+8MQ/gsNc/c E3QZ71TegtM= =LH3k -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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