December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

Onion routing
by ulf＠fitug.de 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

To protect against timing analysis, Onion routing uses encrypted and padded links, and the connection between the user and his local onion router is assumed to be secure. Obviously, padding offers protection against external adversaries only. The onion routers themselves know when an anonymous connection is opened, how much data is transferred, and when it is closed. So in contrast to the mix net (where it is sufficient to use one honest mix in a chain), honest onion routers that are used between two cooperating onion routers do not offer additional protection. Onion routers have a fixed number of neighbours. If the first onion router does not have any honest neighbours, there is no anonymity. Generally, the maximal connected component of honest onion routers forms the anonymity set. Does that mean that every onion router needs to maintain many encrypted links, or is there a more efficient solution?

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NTY compression proposal
by Jim Choate 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Hi, It has been proposed to compress the keys from 100 cypherpunks down to a 64 character add in the NYT. Let's consider the math a moment to determine if this is realizable. Each key will require some sort of identifier, to make it simple lets assume 8 characters to identify the cypherpunks and 8 bytes to represent their key (64-bits). This mean that each line will contain 16 bytes. With a hundred entries that is 1600 bytes or 12800 bits. Now 64 characters of text in a newspaper represents approx. 64 6-bit characters (we can't use a full 8-bit because the paper doesn't normaly support that many characters in normal text). This provides us with 384 bits. The proposal leads to a requirement for an algorithm with an average compression factor of: 12800/384 or 33.33:1 with no data loss. That's a pretty hefty compression factor for average responce. Is there a loss-less algorithm which provides this level? ____________________________________________________________________ | | | The most powerful passion in life is not love or hate, | | but the desire to edit somebody elses words. | | | | Sign in Ed Barsis' office | | | | _____ The Armadillo Group | | ,::////;::-. Austin, Tx. USA | | /:'///// ``::>/|/ http://www.ssz.com/ | | .', |||| `/( e\ | | -====~~mm-'`-```-mm --'- Jim Choate | | ravage(a)ssz.com | | 512-451-7087 | |____________________________________________________________________|

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Barry Smith (FBI) to speak on encryption policy
by Dr. Alan Sherman 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

The UMBC Security Technology Research Group presents A Law-Enforcement Perspective on Encryption Policy Barry Smith Supervisory Special Agent, FBI moderated by journalist Peter Wayner 3:30pm - 5:00pm Friday, March 6, 1998 Lecture Hall V (LOCATION SUBJECT TO CHANGE) University of Maryland, Baltimore County http://www.cs.umbc.edu/events/spring98/crypto.shtml The second lecture and discussion in a two-part forum on encryption policy. Journalist Peter Wayner will introduce and moderate the event, which is free and open to the public. In Part I, freedom activist John Gilmore and Fritz Fielding (Ex-Associate General Councel, NSA) gave their divergent views, focusing on the Burnstein case. Barry Smith will articulate the needs of law enforcement to conduct lawful wiretaps; he will advocate the use of key-recovery techniques to achieve this end as a way that provides adequate privacy to law-abiding citizens. Schedule: The event will begin with a brief (10 minute) introduction by Peter Wayner. Following Barry Smith's talk, which will last approximately 45 minutes, there will be an opportunity to ask questions for approximately 20-30 minutes. Questions: Attendees are encouraged to ask questions in advance by sending email to sherman(a)cs.umbc.edu Directions: Take Exit #47B off interstate I-95 and follow signs to UMBC. LH V is on the 100-level of the Engineering Computer Science (ECS) Building, directly behind the University Center. There is a visitor's parking lot near the I-95 entrance to UMBC. Host: Dr. Alan T. Sherman Associate Professor, Computer Science sherman(a)cs.umbc.edu http://www.umbc.edu (410) 455-2666 This event is held in cooperation with the UMBC Intellectual Sports Council Honors College Phi Beta Kappa honors society CMSC Council of Majors IFSM Council of Majors

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movie "good will hunting"
by Vladimir Z. Nuri 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

highly recommend this movie, "good will hunting". excellent script that will leave you startled at times. plot is that a young kid from a very rough background who is a janitor at MIT seems to be a math genius possibly on the level of Ramanujan. reason I am posting here: there's a really great rant by the character at one point as he sits in an office with an NSA rep and a medal-laced general and insults them about a job offer in the agency to work under classified conditions. the NSA rep offers him math research into state of the art theory but requires that the work be classified. I think there is a line about how the NSA has 7 times the budget of the CIA but they don't like to make that well known. (one might say it was sort of a rant on the morality of confidentiality. <g>) if anyone would care to tape this and post a transcript I think it would be very interesting to other cpunks. its a rare reference to NSA in the popular media. of course not on the level of "sneakers" as far as crypto references, but an interesting snippet nonetheless, and I think that some people here might identify a lot with the protagonist.

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Re: CAD Stego (fwd)
by Jim Choate 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Forwarded message: > Date: Sun, 18 Jan 1998 21:37:28 -0500 > From: John Young <jya(a)pipeline.com> > Subject: Re: CAD Stego (fwd) > Why the focus on color, the easiest thing to avoid using, > or layers, ditto? Superfluous for serious CAD, these > dainty decorations from Martha Stewartville. The reason I addressed them is that they were what you brought up. Those dainty decorations are critical to every industrial use of CAD that I have ever been exposed to or used in an industrial setting. I'll have to disagree with your opinion on their utility. > Most messages could be concealed in "hatched" objects, > bit-bloated as they are, indistinguishable from the elements > used to hatch. All black and white; maybe a dot of red for > cashmere dupe. Ok, let's address hatching from the perspective of use as a means to encrypt data. Let's further use AutoCAD since it is by far the most used in industrial settings. I think you will find that most other CAD programs use one or more of the methods in AutoCAD. AutoCAD offers a standard set of hatching objects via the HATCH and BHATCH commands. In both cases the actual hatch patterns are 1-bit patterns meant to be tiled. The HATCH command itself is normaly used for gross backgrounds and such because it doesn't respect object boundaries. The BHATCH command does respect object boundaries and is used much more in industrial and machine drafting. In both cases the color of both the background and line color must be specified. The hatching pattern is then simply tiled across the appropriate area. It is possible to add other non-standard hatch patterns but again, they are 1-bit deep and tend to be regular so there isn't a lot of room to put data. It is possible to include AutoLisp routines to do such hashing but I fail to see how one would stego encrypted data in source code describing how to draw the pattern. There are two means to store reference to those patterns in a file. The first is simply to include a pointer to a standard table of hash patterns that every copy of the program will understand. I suspect that there isn't much room there for stego. Now if we extend the standard hash table we are required to include those hash patterns in our file and suitable coding to tell the foreign program to include them appropriately. I don't see a lot of room there for stego. The alternate is to include the actual hash pattern in the file specificaly not linked to the hash table, in other words an indpendant object we will manipulate through normal mechanisms. While I will agree that if you could guarantee that Mallet didn't actualy view the file as a graphic but rather as a file via some sort of character editor (eg od -c or od -h as the simplest) there isn't much room for getting caught. However, if you were to bring it up as a graphic and view it you find the actual hash pattern is limited because it can be of only a particular size for the hashing display and handling routines to handle. CAD programs at their basest level understand a limited set of objects; coordinate pairs, sets of such pairs for drawing lines, and color. Other geometric objects (eg circles or hatches) are usualy built up through some sort of algorithmic application of these basic objects. In the better CAD programs those objects are routines that are shared as standard functions in the program or through a cookie-cutter mechanism. The way new functions are added is to add some form of PDL (eg AutoLisp) function. The cookie-cutter mechanism usualy is limited by the 1-bit depth and the limited size of the patterns. Let's look at the mechanism that most CAD and graphics programs use for color manipulation. In very few programs that I have ever come across are the colors of each pixel actualy represented by some depth that allows the full range of colors for every pixel. In general some color map mechanism that takes a limited set of colors (usualy arrayed in a table) and allows the program to select a given color from that table. Such special effects as color cycling are created by writing a program that dynamicaly changes the color stored in each member of that table. This is very fast and allows every pixel for a given color to change in concert instead of the delay of having to go to every pixel and test its color and then change it; very slow. The way that most programs allow more colors than allowed by a given color table is they create some sort of interrupt for each line of the dispaly when the display gets a retrace pulse. When this pulse happens (on a 1024 x 768 it occurs every 1/768 seconds - a long time by computer standards) a routine changes the color map to the one appropriate for that line of the display. Some higher performance displays use a d/a mechanism so that each pixel on the display is addressible. These sorts of displays allow the color map to be changed for each pixel but they are very expensive in hardware and list price, both tend to limit the applicability to commen stego exchange outside a limited group. ____________________________________________________________________ | | | The most powerful passion in life is not love or hate, | | but the desire to edit somebody elses words. | | | | Sign in Ed Barsis' office | | | | _____ The Armadillo Group | | ,::////;::-. Austin, Tx. USA | | /:'///// ``::>/|/ http://www.ssz.com/ | | .', |||| `/( e\ | | -====~~mm-'`-```-mm --'- Jim Choate | | ravage(a)ssz.com | | 512-451-7087 | |____________________________________________________________________|

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Re: let's do it: NYT ad with hash of fingerprints (fwd)
by John Young 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Adam Back wrote: >What do you mean that you must include ID? Someone must give an email >address, or phone number? Should be ok to fit one of those in the >remaining 24 - 32 chars. ID once meant name, address and telephone number, now a name, tel num and e-mail is okay (along with "Advt"). The NYT claims it owes this to its readers to show who's not who. The "ads" are called "reader notices" by the NYT, which calls to verify the bona fides of the purchaser. And they will not publish everything requested (no vitriol, darn it). There's vetting but mawky pleas swing the censor, indeed, the vetter seems to boost haywire to keep the mad buying. Is that not a Brit legacy, too? Here's the poop for arrangements (as of 1/96): Reader Notice The New York Times 226 West 43rd Street New York, NY 10036 Vox: 1-800-421-4571 Fax: 201-343-6703

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Re: NTY compression proposal (fwd)
by Jim Choate 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

All editing errors are my own, I re-formatted the original text to better address the points. Forwarded message: > Date: Sun, 18 Jan 1998 19:17:32 -0800 > From: Steve Schear <schear(a)lvdi.net> > Subject: Re: NTY compression proposal > Compression efficiency depends upon > 1) the entropy of the input data We are looking at selecting 100 64-bit keys out of a set of 2^64, that is not a lot of opportunity there, given a random key generation process, for a lot of commen patterns in the key set. If we don't have a lot of commen patterns in the text we don't get a lot of compression. > 2) the allowable losses In this case we can't afford any loss. > 3) finding an efficient algorithm to code for that entropy. Which if we do the math requires something in the neighborhood of 33:1, for a loss-less algorithm that's a pretty hurky boundary condition. > I think I'm on fairly firm ground assuming that key data entropy is very= > high and therefore little or no compressible is feasible. My point exactly, which would lead us to the conclusion that our requirement of a 33:1 compression factor is not realizable. ____________________________________________________________________ | | | The most powerful passion in life is not love or hate, | | but the desire to edit somebody elses words. | | | | Sign in Ed Barsis' office | | | | _____ The Armadillo Group | | ,::////;::-. Austin, Tx. USA | | /:'///// ``::>/|/ http://www.ssz.com/ | | .', |||| `/( e\ | | -====~~mm-'`-```-mm --'- Jim Choate | | ravage(a)ssz.com | | 512-451-7087 | |____________________________________________________________________|

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Future War on TDL...
by Jim Choate 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Hi, Check out Futurewar on The Discovery Channel, it's been playing since 8pm Central. Bruce Sterling appears for a blipvert. ____________________________________________________________________ | | | The most powerful passion in life is not love or hate, | | but the desire to edit somebody elses words. | | | | Sign in Ed Barsis' office | | | | _____ The Armadillo Group | | ,::////;::-. Austin, Tx. USA | | /:'///// ``::>/|/ http://www.ssz.com/ | | .', |||| `/( e\ | | -====~~mm-'`-```-mm --'- Jim Choate | | ravage(a)ssz.com | | 512-451-7087 | |____________________________________________________________________|

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ashcroft on encryption
by Vladimir Z. Nuri 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

------- Forwarded Message Date: Sun, 18 Jan 98 17:51:16 -0500 From: vols-fan(a)juno.com (R L Johnson) To: ignition-point(a)majordomo.pobox.com Subject: IP: Senator Wants Back Door to Encrypted Data Closed http://www.wired.com/news/news/politics/story/9661.html Senator Wants Back Door to Encrypted Data Closed Reuters 3:15pm 14.Jan.98.PST WASHINGTON - Sounding the opening bell of a renewed battle over encryption policy, Senate Republican John D. Ashcroft has declared he would oppose legislation that would mandate that all software made in the Unites States be equipped with features that would allow government access to all encrypted data. "Americans must be free to communicate privately, without the government listening in," Ashcroft said in a statement Tuesday. "The privacy concerns here are fundamental and call for serious consideration by the Senate." The Missouri Republican said he would hold a hearing next month on the issue in the Senate Judiciary's Constitution, Federalism, and Property Rights subcommittee he chairs. Ashcroft's remarks followed a battle last year in Congress over regulation of encryption technology, which scrambles information and renders it unreadable without a password or software "key." Encryption has become an increasingly critical means of securing electronic commerce and communications on the Internet. But the scrambling capability can also be used by criminals to hide their dealings from law enforcement agencies. A bill approved by the Senate Commerce Committee last year would impose strong incentives to promote the use of encryption with a back door to allow covert government decoding of any information. And legislation approved by some committees in the House would go even further, requiring the back door in all products sold in the United States. Ashcroft said he opposed the Senate measure, sponsored by Bob Kerrey, Democrat of Nebraska, and John McCain, Republican of Arizona. Majority Leader Trent Lott asked Ashcroft to "pay special attention" to the issue, Ashcroft said. ********************************************** To subscribe or unsubscribe, email: majordomo(a)majordomo.pobox.com with the message: subscribe ignition-point email@address or unsubscribe ignition-point email@address ********************************************** http://www.telepath.com/believer ********************************************** ------- End of Forwarded Message

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Interlock Protocol
by Jim Choate 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Hi, The Interlock Protocal (Applied Crypto 2nd. ed., pp. 49) is just exactly what I have been looking for to address the MITM issues in regards the data haven model I have been working on. I had completely forgotten about this technique. I should read AC more often...;) Thanks again for the pointer! ____________________________________________________________________ | | | The most powerful passion in life is not love or hate, | | but the desire to edit somebody elses words. | | | | Sign in Ed Barsis' office | | | | _____ The Armadillo Group | | ,::////;::-. Austin, Tx. USA | | /:'///// ``::>/|/ http://www.ssz.com/ | | .', |||| `/( e\ | | -====~~mm-'`-```-mm --'- Jim Choate | | ravage(a)ssz.com | | 512-451-7087 | |____________________________________________________________________|

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