December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

Symantec Norton, Your Eyes Only.
by Pearson Shane 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Hey all, Just wondering what people think of this product? Good, bad or ugly? Is there an international version and a US version? If so, what limitations are in the international version? Many thanks...

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Re: Public choice theory and the politics of antitrust (fwd)
by Jim Choate 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Forwarded message: > Date: Wed, 14 Jan 1998 18:28:50 -0800 > From: Tim May <tcmay(a)got.net> > Subject: Re: Public choice theory and the politics of antitrust > I think, Declan, that deleting the author's name is a Big Problem. > You have essentially made this author "Anonymous." Does knowing the name of who wrote a piece really have any bearing on the consistency of it? Is so then there would be a clear indication that there is a fundamental flaw with anonymous remailers and their place in society. ____________________________________________________________________ | | | Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make | | violent revolution inevitable. | | | | John F. Kennedy | | | | | | _____ 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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CFP: DECEPTION, FRAUD and TRUST in AGENT SOCIETIES Workshop at AA'98
by Robert Hettinga 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

--- begin forwarded text To: e$(a)vmeng.com Subject: CFP: DECEPTION, FRAUD and TRUST in AGENT SOCIETIES Workshop at AA'98 Mime-Version: 1.0 Date: Wed, 14 Jan 1998 15:30:24 -0500 From: Mary Ellen Zurko <zurko(a)opengroup.org> Sender: <e$(a)vmeng.com> Precedence: Bulk DECEPTION, FRAUD and TRUST in AGENT SOCIETIES Workshop at the Second International Conference on Autonomous Agents (AA'98) <http://www.cis.udel.edu/~agents98> FINAL CALL FOR PAPERS Description of the workshop: The aim of the workshop is to bring together researchers that can contribute to a better understanding of trust and deception in agent societies. Most agent models assume secure and reliable communication to exist between agents. However, this ideal situation is seldom met in real life. Therefore, many techniques (e.g. contracts, signatures, long-term personnel relationships) have been evolved over time to detect and prevent deception and fraud in human communication, exchanges and relations, and hence to assure trust between agents. In recent research on electronic commerce trust has been recognized as one of the key factors for successful electronic commerce adoption. In electronic commerce problems of trust are magnified, because agents reach out far beyond their familiar trade environments. Also it is far from obvious whether existing paper-based techniques for fraud detection and prevention are adequate to establish trust in an electronic network environment where you usually never meet your trade partner physically, and where messages can be read or copied a million times without leaving any trace. Trust building is more than secure communication via electronic networks, as can be obtained with, for example, public key cryptography techniques. For example, the reliability of information about the status of your trade partner has very little to do with secure communication. With the growing impact of electronic commerce distance trust building becomes more and more important, and better models of trust and deception are needed. One trend is that in electronic communication channels extra agents, the so-called Trusted Third Parties, are introduced in an agent community that take care of trustbuilding among the other agents in the network. For example, in some cases the successful application of public key cryptography critically depends on trusted third parties that issue the keys. Although we do not focus in this workshop on techniques for secure communication (e.g. public key cryptography), we would welcome analyses about the advantages and limitations of these techniques for trustbuilding. The notion of trust is definitely important in other domains of agents' theory, beyond that of electronic commerce. It seems even foundational for the notion of "agency" and for its defining relation of acting "on behalf of". So, trust is relevant also in HC interaction; consider the relation between the user and her/his personal assistant (and, in general, her/his computer). But it is also critical for modeling groups and teams, organisations, coordination, negotiation, with the related trade-off between local/individual utility and global/collective interest; or in modelling distributed knowledge and its circulation. In sum, the notion of trust is crucial for all the major topics of Multi-Agent systems. Thus what is needed is a general and principled theory of trust, of its cognitive and affective components, and of its social functions. Analogously the study of deception not only is very relevant for avoiding practical troubles, but it seems really foundational for the theory of communication. First, because it challenges Grice's principles of linguistic communication; second, because the notion of "sign" itself has been defined in semiotics in relation to deception: "In principle, Semiotics is the discipline studying whatever can be used for lying" (U. Eco). Thus not only practical defences from deception (like reputations, guaranties, etc.), but also a general and principled theory of deception and of its forms (including fraud) are needed. We would encourage an interdisciplinary focus of the workshop as well as the presentation of a wide range of models of deception, fraud and trust(building). Just to mention some examples; AI models, BDI models, cognitive models, game theory, and also management science theories about trustbuilding. Suggested topics include, but are not restricted to: * models of deception and of its functions * models of trust and of its functions * models of fraud * role of trust and trusted third parties (TTP) in electronic commerce * defensive strategies and mechanisms * ways to detect and prevent deception and fraud WORKSHOP ORGANIZATION The full-day workshop will be aimed at creating an informal atmosphere for stimulating discussions, interdisciplinary exchange and deep understanding of each other's pespective. We plan to have both: Paper presentations: Long presentations (25-30 min) of the accepted papers, plus 10-15 minutes for discussion (possibly with discussants). Plenary discussion at the end. Panel sessions: A couple of topics will be selected for a focused discussion. Some of the attendees will be requested to participate as panelists. The panels chairs will circulate prior to the workshop a list of questions for the panelists. The accepted papers will be published in the workshop proceedings. The publication of a revised version of the accepted papers is being negotiated with a high quality publisher. SUBMISSION: CRITERIA, FORMATS, PROCEDURE The workshop welcomes submissions of original, high quality papers addressing issues that are clearly relevant to trust, deception and fraud in agent-based systems, either from a theoretical or an applied perspective. Papers will be peer reviewed by at least two referees from a group of reviewers selected by the workshop organizers. Submitted papers should be new work that has not been published elsewhere or is not about to be published elsewhere. Paper submissions: will include a full paper and a separate title page with the title, authors (full address), a 300-400 word abstract, and a list of keywords. The length of submitted papers must not exceed 12 pages including all figures, tables, and bibliography. All papers must be written in English. * The authors must send by email the title page of their paper by January 15th. * Submissions must be send electronically, as a postscript or MSword format file, by January 20th. * The authors must also airmail one hard copy of their paper to two of the organizers as soon as possible after the electronic submission. * No submissions by fax or arriving after the deadline will be accepted. SUBMISSION ADDRESS for the electronic submission Rino Falcone falcone(a)pscs2.irmkant.rm.cnr.it tel. +39 - 6 - 860 90 211 for the airmail hard copy Babak Sadighi Firozabadi Department of Computing - Imperial College 180 Queen's Gate - London SW7 2BZ - U.K. and (notice "and") Cristiano Castelfranchi National Research Council - Institute of Psychology Viale Marx, 15 - 00137 Roma - ITALY tel +39 6 860 90 518 IMPORTANT DATES Deadline for the electronic title page January 15, 1998 Deadline for Paper Submission January 20, 1998 Notification of Acceptance/Rejection March 1, 1998 Deadline for camera-ready version April 1, 1998 Workshop May 9, 1998 PROGRAM COMMITTEE Phil Cohen Dept. of Computer Science and Engineering, Oregon Inst. of Science and Tech., USA Robert Demolombe CERT/ONERA, France Andrew J I Jones Dept. of Philosophy - Univ. of Oslo, Norway Anand Rao Australian AI Institute, Melbourne, Australia Munindar Singh Dept. of Computer Science - North Carolina State University, USA Chris Snijders Dept. of Sociology, Utrecht, The Netherlands Gilad Zlotkin VP Engineering, Israel Gerd Wagner Inst.f.Informatik - Univ. Leipzig, Germany Cristiano Castelfranchi (co-chair) National Research Council - Institute of Psychology- Rome, Italy Yao-Hua Tan (co-chair) EURIDIS - Erasmus University - Rotterdam - The Netherlands Rino Falcone (co-organizer) National Research Council - Institute of Psychology- Rome, Italy Babak Sadighi Firozabadi (co-organizer) Department of Computing - Imperial College - London - UK ========== Rino Falcone IP - CNR National Research Council Division of "Artificial Intelligence, Cognitive Modeling and Interaction" Viale Marx, 15 00137 ROMA email: falcone(a)pscs2.irmkant.rm.cnr.it or falcone(a)vaxiac.iac.rm.cnr.it tel: ++39 6 86090.211 fax: ++39 6 86090.214 ========== -- See <http://www.cs.umbc.edu/agentslist> for list info & archives. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Where people, networks and money come together: Consult Hyperion http://www.hyperion.co.uk/ info(a)hyperion.co.uk ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Full-Strength Cryptographic Solutions for Worldwide Electronic Commerce http://www.c2.net/ stronghold(a)c2.net ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Like e$? Help pay for it! For e$/e$pam sponsorship or donations, <mailto:rah@shipwright.com> ---------------------------------------------------------------------- --- end forwarded text ----------------- Robert Hettinga (rah(a)shipwright.com) Philodox e$, 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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RE: rant on the morality of confidentiality
by Wayne Radinsky 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

The reason morality is impossible to nail down is because it does not exist al all in any absolute sense, at least as far as science is concerned. If you declare, for example, that "murder" is "wrong" you are always left with dilemmas, such as whether soldiers who kill during a war are doing something "wrong". According to the principle of natural selection, all people, including scientists, exist purely to maximize their own inclusive genetic fitness. "Fit" means that an organism is well adapted to it's environment, so "maximizing inclusive genetic fitness" means having the maximum number of offspring which are themselves fit. Keep in mind that all natural selection really does is decide which genes are allowed to propagate, and since genes are just digital information stored on DNA molecules, what we call "life" is really just a complex interaction of matter/energy which determines which bits of information continue to exist over time. The underlying reason people benefit by promoting themselves as moral people, in general, is because of the benefit of what evolutionary psychologists call reciprocal altruism. With reciprocal altruism, both parties benefit if they are in a non-zero-sum situation. Because most situations are non-zero-sum and the benefits are so great, everyone has a stake in promoting themselves as a good reciprocal altruist, in other words, a good, trustworthy, moral person. This is how natural selection explains the existence of the concept of "morality". So it is a myth that scientists live to find deep truths or to benefit humanity. They may do those things, but their real goal is maximizing their own inclusive fitness. However, it may profit them if everyone else believes they live to find deep truths or to benefit humanity. Natural selection has created human beings, and the concept of "morality" in our minds, because moral justifications benefit the people promoting them -- which ultimately benefits their genes. The only way out is to believe in the afterlife, and religion, and that life has meaning beyond the genes and material world. Doing so doesn't make moral dilemmas go away, and you never know, people may just be believing such things for the benefit of genes, after all natural selection has no real concern for "truth". Wayne ---------- From: Blanc[SMTP:blancw@cnw.com] Sent: Wednesday, January 14, 1998 7:20 PM To: waynerad(a)oz.net Subject: Re: rant on the morality of confidentiality >X-Authentication-Warning: netcom5.netcom.com: vznuri@localhost didn't use HELO protocol >To: Tim May <tcmay(a)got.net> >cc: Bill Stewart <bill.stewart(a)pobox.com>, Blanc <blancw(a)cnw.com>, > cypherpunks(a)cyberpass.net, vznuri(a)netcom5.netcom.com >Subject: Re: rant on the morality of confidentiality >Date: Wed, 14 Jan 98 15:07:48 -0800 >From: "Vladimir Z. Nuri" <vznuri(a)netcom.com> > >timmy predictably states the case for moral relativism. > >>I think it's an error to use "moral" or "immoral" as a modifier for "science." >> >>It's a matter of opinion/ethics as to whether some science is "for immoral >>purposes," but calling something "immoral science" is fraught with trouble. >> >>To a vegetarian, any science related to meat production is "immoral science." > >well, the concept of "criminality" is likewise fraught with trouble. >what is criminal and what is not? obviously some definitions stretch >the limits. is a jaywalker a criminal? a political dissident? ok, how >about an axe murderer? similarly, I think your predictable opposition >to the use of the word "immoral" is specious. > >moreover, I think such a misunderstanding, or worldview, is >detrimental to human welfare in general. I think all the evil >government scientists I've been referring to recently would >very much agree with you on rejecting ideas of "morality" and >"conscience". a person does not need an infallible definition >of morality to navigate the world, imho, but a person that has >none, or rejects any such attempt, is part of the problem and >not part of the solution, imho. > >>Personally, I don't view scientific experiments done on condemned prisoners >>as immoral. If a human being has already been sentenced to die, and, for >>example, accepts some payment (perhaps for his heirs) to die in some >>scientifically interesting way, why call it "immoral"? > >oh, well, lets see, you have a very obvious glitch in your reasoning. >you presume the prisoner gives his permssion. now lets see, assume he >doesn't? just to pop a hypothetical example out of the blue, >say someone named timmy gets arrested for gun violations and >gets thrown in jail temporarily. would it be immoral for the >police to remove his organs? perhaps without his permission? >perhaps without anesthetic? if not immoral, what? criminal? criminal >but not immoral? > >>While I would not have, I hope, worked in a Nazi death camp, the science >>obtained is undeniably real science, some of the only solid data we have on >>freezing humans, on exposing them to pathogens, etc. > >I've seen your defense of these experiments before-- its a topic of >interest for you for obvious reasons; it presents a possible glitch >in your moral relativism. > >I don't think BWs claim that there is a difference between >immoral scientists and immoral science. immoral science is what >immoral scientists practice. what's the point? my personal point >is that if we had a culture of people who were concerned about >morality, perhaps we would have institutions that reflect >integrity. > >contrary to most here, I believe that our institutions >are correctly representing the people of a country-- their thoughts, >their motivations, their concerns. its key to the philosophy of >disenfranchisement, apathy, and nihilism (and anarchism) to >claim that the government is not representing the people. what >is the evidence for this? > >because the government is corrupt, >the people are not necessarily corrupt? because the government >is greedy and full of powermongers, the population is not >full of greedy powermongers who would do the same given the >opportunity? government is a mirror into our psyches that >few people care to gaze on, precisely because we are not >the fairest of them all. > >we've got the government we deserve, and it reflects our >own pathologies within our psyches back to us. it reflects our >laziness and apathy, our cynicism, our alienation, our >withdrawal. and it takes a person who can master themselves >to face up to this simple truth-- something that most everone of our >country has failed to admit. > >when we begin to ask questions like "what is integrity" and >"what is moral" and come up with serious answers, our world >will improve. it will degenerate otherwise, and has given us >a tremendous existence proof of that fact to date. > >but just remember, again, that I'm aimlessly ranting here, and there's no >need to take any of this seriously <g> > > >

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Electric Communities notion of identity
by Bill Frantz 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Tim may wrote: >I haven't checked on them in the last few months, but "Electric >Communities" (www.communities.com) was doing some interesting work on >adding security and market mechanism extensions to Java, in a superset >language they called "E." > >Many Cypherpunk list members, past and present worked on aspects of this, >including Chip Morningstar (one of the founders), Doug Barnes, Norm Hardy, >Bill Frantz, Mark Miller, etc. They can speak up and say more. E is a language which supports optimistic distributed programming. It produces .class files which run on unmodified Java Virtual Machines. More information is available from http://www.communities.com Perhaps of more interest to cypherpunks is the model of identity implemented in what is called today EC-Habitats, our graphical "world". (See the web pages for more details.) The model is quite similar to the model used by James A. Donald's Crypto Kong. Identity is a public key. You prove who you are by showing that you hold the private key corresponding to that public key. All of this key stuff is hidden by the user interface. What the user sees is: You meet someone "in world" and give them a nickname. When you meet them again, the software knows that it is the same "person", and refers to them by your nickname for them. Thus people can develop and maintain reputations for each other. ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Bill Frantz | | Periwinkle -- Consulting (408)356-8506 | All politicians should ski.| 16345 Englewood Ave. frantz(a)netcom.com | | Los Gatos, CA 95032, USA

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RE: rant on the morality of confidentiality (fwd)
by Jim Choate 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Note that any errors in transcription are mine, I had to re-edit this to get it to fit on a 80 column screen. Forwarded message: > From: Wayne Radinsky <waynerad(a)oz.net> > Subject: RE: rant on the morality of confidentiality > Date: Wed, 14 Jan 1998 20:32:15 -0800 > The reason morality is impossible to nail down is because it does not exist > al all in any absolute sense, Morality is an individuals or societal groups beliefs of right and wrong. Of course there is no more absolute right morality than there is a right flavor of ice cream, this entire line of reasoning is a non sequitar. Ethics is the issues of what is correct or permissible in relation to a particular human activity such as scientific research or law. When you use 'science' and 'morality' in a comparison you are in actuality comparing apples and oranges. Science is related to *how* one does a particular activity, it is not concerned in the least with *why* that activity should (not) be done in the first place. Science and its philosophy are *not* applicable to all areas of human discourse anymore than the Bible is applicable as a methodology to study quantum physics or aerodynamics. > at least as far as science is concerned. Science isn't concerned with right, wrong, morality, etc. It *is* concerned with a systematic way to ask questions in a *specific* area of discourse. To apply science to religion is as much a disservice to science and religion as it would be to try to apply it to art. > According to the principle of natural selection, all people, including > scientists, exist purely to maximize their own inclusive genetic fitness. Exactly whose theory or principle of natural selection? At the current time I am aware of several different theories that fit the data but which in many aspects are mutualy exclusive. This is entirely too broad a statement to have reasonable merit. We simply don't know enough about what is going on with the processes of life to justify this sort of leap. > Keep in mind that all natural selection really does is decide which genes > are allowed to propagate, Natural selection isn't doing anything. It is a term we apply to a process we observe occurring. That process seems to occur at several levels besides just the genes. > and since genes are just digital information stored on DNA molecules I'm afraid it's a bit more complicated than that. We start with the base pairs, which really are informationaly isolated from the codons which are triplets of base pairs which form a 'word' in the genetic code. It is of some import to realize that the genetic code itself is *not* dependant on the actual mechanism of expression, in other words you can talk about the genetic langauge without any reference to the base pairs themselves. It is the codons that are important. There is a fundamental symmetry break at that level. Each of the codons is mapped to one of 20 amino acids. Since there are 4 bases arranged in 3's there are 64 combinations. This means that for any particular amino acid there is more than one way to code it. There are also several 'stop' codes which break the transcription process as well. >, what we call "life" is really just a complex > interaction of matter/energy which determines which bits of information > continue to exist over time. That works equaly well as a definition of the cosmos. Keep this up and you'll become a pantheist...;) > The underlying reason people benefit by promoting themselves as moral > people, in general, is because of the benefit of what evolutionary > psychologists call reciprocal altruism. With reciprocal altruism, both > parties benefit if they are in a non-zero-sum situation. Because most > situations are non-zero-sum and the benefits are so great, everyone has > a stake in promoting themselves as a good reciprocal altruist, in other > words, a good, trustworthy, moral person. This is how natural selection > explains the existence of the concept of "morality". Oh boy... Not all moralities or religions accept the premise of altruistic behaviour. Further, if you look at the prisoners game, you actualy accrue more from intermittent moral behaviour than from consistent moral behaviour. Human morality has no place in any consistent theory of natural selection that I have ever seen. Please explain how a moral theory as you propose will increase the participants likelyhood for reproduction? Further, if you look at primate research (both non-human and human) what you find is a tendency for promiscuity in both sexes. Males tend to be 'in heat' at all times while females (at least when they are just entering the mating group) tend to follow a estrus or lunar based cycle. Recent studies of primates in Africa have found that the previous theory that band members don't intermingle is actualy incorrect. Upon extended monitoring they find that when the females go into heat each month they sneak off and mate with outlying members of other bands (who are usualy un-paired males). They intentionaly hide this activity from their band mates because if caught they will face a physical assault and potentialy death. This raises the question of whether chimps have morality under your view because it is clearly a measure of right and wrong. Are you willing to give chimps some sort of equal status to humans as a result? Studies of human females find this same sort of behaviour in the young just entering the mating pool. Studies find that young women tend to wear more provocative clothing and explore non-familiar peer groups in relation to their menstrual cycle. > So it is a myth that scientists live to find deep truths or to benefit > humanity. Absolutely, unfortunately the fallicy with such an assertion have nothing to do with the reasons you expound. > They may do those things, but their real goal is maximizing their own > inclusive fitness. So being a scientist increases ones probability for mating? Please be so kind as to offer some proof. Do scientist tend to have more offspring than non-scientist? I think you will find that the actual studies show that the more intelligent and well educated tend to have *fewer* children. This would seem to run contrary to your hypothesis. ____________________________________________________________________ | | | 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: how to release code if the programmer is a target for coercion (fwd)
by Ryan Lackey 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

> man in the middle attack on people signing code How would you do this? There is code. You sign that code with your personal pgp key, which you are assumed to keep secure. Cases: A) The code is authentic, but backdoored: you will look at it when verifying it and refuse to sign it, optionally posting how it is flawed to the world. B) The code is not the actual code used in the product, but unbackdoored: In this case, you sign it, but when someone tries to compile, the real code is not signed, and thus the attacker is no better off. C) The code is not the actual code used in the product, and is backdoored: The NSA is really stupid, then. D) The code is the authentic code, and is unbackdoored: you win. The only attacks would be if you could sneak a bug by the verifiers. With modern execution environments, it is *possible* there could be unintended consequences to almost anything. That's why I think one of the first pieces of code verified should be the JVM. Another attack would be having 5 NSA agents sign a piece of code, but you could prevent that by having the list made up of distinct well known individuals who are unlikely to all be bought -- if the NSA wants to give $100m each to the most frequent 100 posters on cypherpunks, I want to get in line :) -- Ryan Lackey rdl(a)mit.edu http://mit.edu/rdl/

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Re: how to release code if the programmer is a target for coercion (fwd)
by Jim Choate 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Sorry Ryan, I'll need more context to answer this one. Would it be too much to ask for more than a fragment of one sentence...:( Forwarded message: > Subject: Re: how to release code if the programmer is a target for coercion (fwd) > From: Ryan Lackey <rdl(a)mit.edu> > Date: 15 Jan 1998 01:41:01 -0500 > > man in the middle attack on people signing code > > How would you do this? There is code. You sign that code with your personal > pgp key, which you are assumed to keep secure. Cases: I've probably sent out somewhere in the neighborhood of 40+ messages in the last two days, several have related to signing documents in different contexts. I don't recognize this particular fragment. Sorry, I don't memorize my traffic nor do I keep archives of it and I'm way to lazy to go searching the cypherpunks archives at 2am. I'm assuming this has something to do with the eternity server/black_net discussion that has been going on. So I'll take a stab at it, not that it may make any sense in the actual context ... - You generate the code and sign it - You deliver the signed code to a data haven server of some architecture (note that you don't know where it is or who runs it, I'll assume you use some particular usenet newsgroup as your drop point) - Somebody else comes along and sees a list of available items and selects yours (again through a usenet based request mechanism). - They receive the code signed with 'your' key and decide they want to verify the signing (through yet another usenet channel). The problem with this model is in the second step. What is to keep them from removing your signatory, moding the code, and then resigning it. If the recipient desides they want to check the sign they have two choices: - select an anonymous key that has been previously stored on some sort of key server. (if they are running a eternity server blind they could be running a key server blind as well, it follows that at least some of the users of your software wanting to verify the signing will go to this server and hence have corrupted code, if we're using the usenet model this is even more likely since they could be running a feed point for other usenet feeds downstream and hence capture many if not all requests for the product, especialy if they were the only server to actualy carry a copy.) - contact you the author directly (I'm assuming of course you were silly enough to put a publicly available key directly traceable to yourself on it in the first place) in which case they simply intercede from a upstream tap and verify their request in your behalf. In either case there is no guarantee that what comes off the server is what you the source put on there. Hence the long term security of the key is compromised. In particular, in the second case, since they already know who provided the illicit data to the server there motive is clearly to track the users. This breaks the anonymity of the data haven. Implicit in a workable data haven model is the goal of both source and sink anonymity. This means that any signed data on the server must provide a mechanism for the user to verify the sign by access to a suitable key to generate the appropriate hash and compare it to the one that the server delivered. If they match you should have the correct unadulterated document. ____________________________________________________________________ | | | 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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BAY AREA CYPHERPUNKS MEETING, SATURDAY 1/17, OAKLAND
by Bill Stewart 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

The January Bay Area Cypherpunks Meeting will be Saturday afternoon at C2 Software's office in Oakland. Agenda: Export Laws - Lee Tien and Greg Broiles Work in Progress Lots of discussion from RSA Conference. Time: 12-6pm followed by dinner - program starts at 1:00 Location: C2Net Software, Inc. 1440 Broadway Suite 700, Oakland, CA Phone: (510) 986-8770 Fax: (510) 986-8777 Public Transportation - about two blocks from the 12th St BART station. This is the best way to get there from San Francisco, and parking for BART trains is easy. :-) Driving - From South - take 880N to Broadway exit, about .9 mile, park From San Francisco - Take the Bay Bridge to Grand Ave, turn right on Telegraph and continue on Broadway. Map URL: http://www.mapblast.com/yt.hm?FAM=mapblast&CMD=GEO&SEC=find&IC=0%3A0%3A5&IC… Thanks! Bill Bill Stewart, bill.stewart(a)pobox.com PGP Fingerprint D454 E202 CBC8 40BF 3C85 B884 0ABE 4639

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Re: how to release code if the programmer is a target for coercion (fwd)
by Ryan Lackey 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Jim Choate writes: > more than a fragment of one sentence...:( > I'm assuming this has something to do with the eternity server/black_net > discussion that has been going on. So I'll take a stab at it, not that it > may make any sense in the actual context ... Yes, you guessed right :) > > - You generate the code and sign it > > - You deliver the signed code to a data haven server of some architecture > (note that you don't know where it is or who runs it, I'll assume you > use some particular usenet newsgroup as your drop point) > > - Somebody else comes along and sees a list of available items and selects > yours (again through a usenet based request mechanism). > > - They receive the code signed with 'your' key and decide they want to > verify the signing (through yet another usenet channel). > > The problem with this model is in the second step. What is to keep them > from removing your signatory, moding the code, and then resigning it. If the > recipient desides they want to check the sign they have two choices: The problem reduces to one of distribution of public keys. In my model (er, actually Lenny Foner's model, in this case), you distribute something that has intrinsic verifiability -- the eternity source. So whether or not rdl's eternity-dds signing key is compromised is irrelevant to the users -- in fact, the assumption is that since I am a known target, I've been killed or compromised. So, there's this potentially untrusted code out there. People who have known public keys then inspect and sign the code. It is assumed these people have distributed their public keys far and wide, signed by lots of people, etc. As long as you can assume the "PGP web of trust", the distributed software signing thing works. I agree that the current state of PGP use is probably not enough for the "PGP web of trust" -- I've *never* used a key and found it signed by anyone I know. However, I think even the current system puts a pretty high barrier to fraud, and if there started to be fraud, people would start signing each other's keys. A keyserver serving keys like "rdl's eternity-dds release signing key" might be subject to traffic analysis, true. However, as you suggest, you could put the keyserver inside Eternity. Then, the problem just gets shifted -- now you need (a) pgp signing key(s) which has/have signed all of those keys. I think it is unreasonable to think merely signing a key (and distributing your own personal key securely) will be a felony before anything has been done with that key. More to the point, I think it is unreasonable to think the government will go after people purely for signing the source code to a piece of software -- signing does not imply you use it, does not imply that you wrote it, does not imply anything other than that you've looked at it, verified it, and signed it. The government would do just as well to track down the posters to cypherpunks and kill them. -- Ryan Lackey rdl(a)mit.edu http://mit.edu/rdl/

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