December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

NYT Account Request
by forgot＠nytimes.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

You have requested your ID and password for The New York Times on the Web. Please follow the instructions below. 1. Please make a note of your subscriber ID: nifft 2. Next, to get the password for this account, using your Web browser go to this unique URL: http://www1.nytimes.com/forgot/snp.cgi?ul=nifft~475280 This page will allow you to choose a new password. Make sure you have copied the address EXACTLY as it appears here. (If you're getting an "Error" page, the address was probably entered incorrectly. See "Help With Copying and Pasting" at the bottom of this e-mail.) 3. Follow the instructions on the screen to choose a new password. After you have entered a password you will automatically enter our Web site. The New York Times on the Web Customer Service forgot(a)nytimes.com ******************** Help With Copying and Pasting 1. Using the mouse, highlight the entire Web address, (e.g. http://www1.nytimes.com/forgot/snp.cgi?ul=nifft~475280) shown above in step 2. It's essential to highlight the entire address, even if it extends over two lines. 2. Under the Edit menu at the top of your screen, select "Copy". 3. Go into your Web browser (open it if it's not already opened). 4. Click in the "Netsite" or "Address" bar -- the place in your Web browser where it says what Web address you're currently looking at -- and delete the address that's currently there. 5. In the blank "Netsite" or "Address" bar, paste the address by selecting the "Edit" menu at the top of your screen and choosing "Paste". 6. Press Enter. 7. Follow the instructions to choose a new password. ******************** If you did not request your ID and password for your NYT Web registration, someone has mistakenly entered your e-mail address when requesting their password. Please simply ignore this message, or, if you wish, you may go to the address above to select a new password for your account.

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Re: UK spooks invent RSA, DH in 1973
by John Young 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Peter Gutmann wrote: >There's an interesting paper at http://www.cesg.gov.uk/ellisint.htm which >claims that UK spooks invented both RSA and DH in 1973 and 1974 respectively. We've converted the Ellis Postscript doc to HTML: http://jya.com/ellisdoc.htm

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No Subject
by Anonymous 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Hotmail, Juno, Aol... > > How about using the email address as the hostage info? The goods are sent to > the email address, so the sender knows that the email address is good. On > breach of contract, the sender has the option of selling the email address of > the reciever to a bunch of known spammers. > > More rambling... ;) > > -- > Steve > > P.S. If this particular contribution to your idea goes anywhere, I want credit. :) > --

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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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No Subject
by David Honig 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

You will note that you are reading prima facie evidence of violation of this new law. Wednesday December 17 11:58 AM EST New Law Crack Down on Internet Theft WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Clinton signed into law on Tuesday a controversial bill imposing criminal penalties on copyright violators even if they do not profit from their actions, the White House executive clerk's office said Wednesday. The No Electronic Theft Act, passed by Congress last month, was strongly backed by the software and entertainment industries but opposed by science and academic groups. Under the law, a person who "willfully" infringes on copyrighted material worth at least $1,000 could be subject to criminal prosecution even if he does not make money. Under current law, copyright violators cannot be charged with criminal misconduct unless they profit from the violations. Software and entertainment groups, including the Business Software Alliance, the Motion Picture Association and the Association of American Publishers, said the change was essential to protect software, music recordings and other creative products easily pirated over the Internet. They cited a 1994 court case dismissing criminal copyright charges against an Massachusetts Institute of Technology student who posted on the Internet for free downloading copies of popular software programs. But last month a leading group of scientists, the Association for Computing, wrote to Clinton asking him to veto the bill because it might inadvertently criminalize many scientific publications available over the Internet, and might limit the "fair use" doctrine. The new law includes a sliding scale of penalties depending on the severity of the copyright infringement. For making one or more copies with a total retail value of at least $1,000 but less than $2,500, the violator could be imprisoned for up to one year and fined up to $100,000. For copies with a retail value of $2,500 or more, the violator could imprisoned for up to three years and fined up to $250,000. A second offense could lead to a prison term of up to six years. ------------------------------------------------------------ David Honig Orbit Technology honig(a)otc.net Intaanetto Jigyoubu M-16 : Don Quixote :: PGP : Louis Freeh Let freedom ring (or screech at 28.8)

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"where would you find"
by Anonymous 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

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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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17 Dec '03

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TEST
by Anonymous 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

TEST

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Dr. Dobbs Crypto CD
by Mike Gurski 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Has anyone received their DDJ crypto CD that's been advertised for the past half year? -- Michael Gurski mailto:gurski@solipsys.com Solipsys Corporation http://www.solipsys.com 6100 Chevy Chase Drive, Suite 200 phone:(301)483-0423 Laurel, MD 20707-2929 fax:(301)483-8901

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