December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

Re: The War is Underway (fwd)
by Lucky Green 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 01:22 PM 5/11/97 -0400, Black Unicorn wrote: >As I recall, 3des ( DESk1 -> DESk2^-1 -> DESk3 ) has an effective >keylength of 112 bits. Less than IDEA. Schneier discusses this. Unfortunately, Schneier doesn't do a very good job at discussing the strength of 3DES. This probably is to be expected, since there is no fixed effective keylength of 3DES and a more detailed discussion would likely exceed the format of Applied Cryptography. The work factor of breaking 3DES depends on the number of known plaintexts. At best, the effective keylength is 112 bits. At worst (this is an unlikely, perhaps unrealistic worst) the effective keylength is ~90 bits. Contrast this with DESX, which has been proven to be twice as hard as DES, therefore having an effective keylength of 112 bits. >It costs little today to develop a cipher with larger keyspace. (DES with >independent subkeys already exists and has a basic keyspace of 768 bits. >A meet in the middle attack reduces keyspace to 2^384. Schneier discusses >the cipher briefly). If users are willing to deal with large keys (I >certainly am) then software designers are restraining a more secure >implementation. It costs lots to develop a cipher with a larger keyspace that has a known, or reasonably assumed, work factor of higher than 112 bits. Again, it takes years to cryptanalyze a new cipher. It isn't software designers that are restraining more secure implementations. The software designers don't have any better algorithms to work with because the theorists haven't agreed on anything better yet. -- Lucky Green <mailto:shamrock@netcom.com> PGP encrypted mail preferred "I do believe that where there is a choice only between cowardice and violence, I would advise violence." Mahatma Gandhi

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DES challenge news (fwd)
by 3umoelle＠informatik.uni-hamburg.de 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Distributed key cracking efforts have been discussed in detail on cypherpunks and coderpunks for quite some time. A Swedish group trying to solve RSADSI's DES challenge chose to ignore the results. Here is what they got (from RISKS 19.14): >Date: Mon, 12 May 1997 17:56:54 +0200 (MET DST) >From: Thomas Koenig <ig25(a)mvmap66.ciw.uni-karlsruhe.de> >Subject: DES challenge news You may remember RISKS-19.09, in which I discussed the risks in a network-wide attack on the RSA DES challenge: The Swedish group at http://www.des.sollentuna.se/ didn't give out its source, so the client could, in fact, do anything, such as crack a master EC-card key. The reason given was client integrity. Well, a month after this, the promised source code release has not happened. Instead, it appears that somebody disassembled part of the client, made a version that reported fake "done" blocks, and then sent these to the servers. Moral? Don't ever think that nobody can read compiled code. Don't try to run a cooperative effort like this in a closed development model. Thomas Koenig, Thomas.Koenig(a)ciw.uni-karlsruhe.de, ig25(a)dkauni2.bitnet. ------------------------------

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Information request
by DataET Research 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

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Rwanda and "anarchy"
by Rich Graves 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Kent Crispin wrote: > On Tue, May 13, 1997 at 08:21:13PM -0800, Tim May wrote: > > At 6:34 PM -0800 5/13/97, Kent Crispin wrote: > > > > >First of all, it neglects to consider that governments may have > > >prevented more murders than they caused. This is unknowable, since > > >we don't have any worthwhile control cases. (I suppose we > > >might examine a state of anarchic chaos (eg Rawanda) and compare the > > >percentage of murders...but such cases are symptoms of other human > > >ills, and cannot be used as a meaningful comparison, I believe.) > > > > Rwanda (or Ruwanda, or...) is a _very_ poor example to pick, as this was > > not any kind of anarchy such as any of us have ever advocated. Rather, > > Rwanda was a near-textbook example of one tribal faction (Hutus or > > Tutsis) coming to power and inititiating a pogrom against the rival > > faction (Tutsis or Hutus). > > > > Calling this an "anarchy" is comparable to calling the pogrom by the > > Third Reich against Jews, gypsies, cripples, and others an example of > > anarchy. > > Nonsense. > > "anarchy n. the absence of government or control, resulting in > lawlessness. 2. disorder, confusion" -- Oxford American Dictionary > > Which part of that would you say didn't apply to Rwanda? I would say "none." Tim is essentially correct. Ironically, we know he's correct thanks to the United Nations and Judge Goldstein's International Criminal Tribunal, which Tim would oppose. (The answer to bad government is more government?) Jean-Marie Higiro was Rwanda's Minister of Telecommunications. He saw the radio turn into a tool of totalitarian propaganda. The killings were encouraged and organized by the government. He was there. Lindsey Hilsum was the only English-speaking reporter in Rwanda when the killings started. She described the situation as "anarchy" because she did not understand the language or the political situation. She later retracted that story, and spent several more months in Rwanda and Burundi documenting what really happened. She eventually testified before the ICT on what she saw. I think she's a really cool person. Raymond Bonner joined Lindsey in Rwanda later. You might recognize his name -- he's the guy who was fired by the New York Times because the Reagan Administration didn't like his reporting on human rights violations in El Salvador. Gilles Peress is a French photojournalist who documented the genocide in Rwanda both for himself and for the ICT. I met these folks and browsed the relevant documentation, recordings, and photos on April 11th. I believe them when they say it was planned. Blaming it on "evil government," though, is ludicrous. There was quite a lot more going on. If you want to look at anarchic chaos, try, maybe, Albania, or Los Angeles after the Rodney King verdict. But even in those cases, the violence had specific targets for specific reasons. It wasn't unstructured anarchy, and it didn't last long. For all the press, there were few deaths in either case. > In fact, the correlation between anarchy and war is very strong, for > obvious reasons. Perhaps that is why most intelligent people don't > consider anarchy a desirable state of affairs. There is no such thing as anarchy, and there never will be. -rich http://www.stanford.edu/~llurch/

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The E-Bomb
by John Young 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Dave Emery has pointed to an article, "The E-Bomb - a Weapon of Electrical Mass Destruction," which describes the work being done on EMP weapons. The piece is at Infowar.com, but we've borrowed a copy to put at: http://jya.com/ebomb.htm (93K + excellent diagrams) It may help explain that unearthly blast in the Aussie Outback discussed here a few weeks ago. Someone suggested HAARP as an explanation, and another hinted at other godawful research being done that similar to what the genius Tesla was doing early in the century to shatter the planet and fry the sky, and now, it seems, coming true.

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BXA Docs
by John Young 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

BXA has published two short crypto-related docs, both dated May 8, 1997. William Reinsch's testimony on Goodlatte's bill: http://jya.com/bxa050897.htm Press release on Reinsch's ABA talk about the new regulations for financial transactions: http://jya.com/bxa050897-2.htm

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96 Wiretap Report
by John Young 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

We offer the text and three summary tables of the U.S. Courts "1996 Wiretap Report" at: http://jya.com/96wiretap.htm (36K)

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Re: Quadratic residues
by nobody＠huge.cajones.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Tim May's mother attempted to pro-choice the unwanted little bastard by fishing with a coat hanger in her giant cunt, but failed miserably to pull the rabbit and succeeded only in scraping out the contents of little Timmy's fetal cranium (not much to begin with). (_) _____ (_) /O O\ Tim May ! I ! ! \___/ ! \_____/

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Re: Rwanda and "anarchy"
by jimbell＠pacifier.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 14:48 5/14/97 -0700, Rich Graves wrote: >Kent Crispin wrote: >> In fact, the correlation between anarchy and war is very strong, for >> obvious reasons. Perhaps that is why most intelligent people don't >> consider anarchy a desirable state of affairs. > >There is no such thing as anarchy, and there never will be. I think it's at least a little tacky for you to ignore recent work which may have already shown your claim to be false. For the rest of you out there, I suggest that you check out AP part 9. There are excellent reasons that people considered true anarchy to be unattainable, because it was considered fundamentally unstable. Even I believed that, before 1995. Now, I've changed my opinion, and for good reason. Anarchy becomes stable if the population can anonymously target those who threaten danger to the rest. AP will do exactly this, so anarchy will become stable. Jim Bell jimbell(a)pacifier.com

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OTP
by lucifer＠dhp.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Timmy May's reheated, refurbished, and regurgitated cud is completely inappropriate for the mailing lists into which it is cross-ruminated. \|/ /~~~~~~~\ | O O | -ooo-----U-----ooo- Timmy May

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