December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

re: Hlep
by nobody＠REPLAY.COM 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

A cloud of linear purity began to move over the sand-monster, billowing with precipitory anticipation. Small blood puzzles aligned themselves like melanomas, forming patterns of infinite finality. The puzzle-monsters coalesced as lasers, carving lesions from flesh and riddling the brittle skin with xray cracks. Soon it would be as it before, finally. - A'Tak A'Tdorn

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Q
by Anonymous 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

>Whats up? Fuck off.

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Re: The Octopus and America as the Evil Empire
by bill.stewart＠pobox.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 10:58 AM 2/14/98 -0800, you wrote: >(I was told by a usually reliable source that AT&T rerouted some of their >Long Lines to cross Indian reservations...thus allowing interception by the >TLAs without violating the laws about domestic surveillance. Is this true? >I haven't done any research to try to verify this, but it wouldn't surprise >me. The UK-USA agreement is already a way to circumvent the "no domestic >surveillance without a court order" laws, as we all know by now.) I haven't a clue who to ask, but it would surprise me a bit. [#disclaimer: personal opinion only, not AT&T's] If it was done, it would have been for microwave lines, which are mostly obsolete except in places like Southern Utah and parts of Montana and the Dakotas which don't have enough population density to justify replacing with fiber. Much more likely they were routed through reservations for cheap right of way. Most of the routes have been pretty stable for a long time, because of right-of-way issues, and many of them date from back before the FBI and CIA worried about little details like Constitutionality and different rules on Indian reservations. Thanks! Bill Bill Stewart, bill.stewart(a)pobox.com PGP Fingerprint D454 E202 CBC8 40BF 3C85 B884 0ABE 4639

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Re: Censorship of Library and School Computers
by bill.stewart＠pobox.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Sounds like an obvious target for activism to add a requirement that any censorware systems selected be clearly identified to the public, including the kids, and that the blocking criteria and lists be made available to the parents and adult library users. In particular, many local jurisdictions have sunshine laws that might have applicability, and anything so blatantly Un-American and dangerous as third-party censorship certainly needs to be watched. On the legal side, the idea of a Federal mandate that state and local jurisdictions make decisions that cannot be reviewed by the Feds seems pretty dodgy; certainly the whole issue ought to be reviewable by courts in response to a citizen lawsuit, even if Federal prosecutors can't initiate actions about it. At 09:47 AM 2/10/98 -0800, Robert Cannon wrote to CYBERIA-L(a)LISTSERV.AOL.COM, >Sen. McCain has introduced his bill to require schools and libraries >that acquire Internet access using the universal service fund to >restrict the access of children to indecency. The text of the Bill can >be found at ftp://ftp.loc.gov/pub/thomas/c105/s1619.is.txt It already >has three cosponsors, one of which is our friend Dan "no I wont give up" >Coats. [Quotes from text of bill about how schools and libraries need systems to block material "deemed to be inappropriate for minors"; schools have to select and promise to install to request the money, while libraries have to employ it on one or more computers, though the language appears to be crafted sufficiently vaguely as to not require them to use it on all their computers (or even necessarily on computers accessible to kids :-) ] > `(4) LOCAL DETERMINATION OF CONTENT- For purposes of > paragraphs (2) and (3), the determination of what matter is > inappropriate for minors shall be made by the school, school > board, library or other authority responsible for making the > required certification. No agency or instrumentality of the > United States Government may-- > `(A) establish criteria for making that determination; > `(B) review the determination made by the certifying > school, school board, library, or other authority; or > `(C) consider the criteria employed by the certifying > school, school board, library, or other authority in the > administration of subsection (h)(1)(B).'. > > Thanks! Bill Bill Stewart, bill.stewart(a)pobox.com PGP Fingerprint D454 E202 CBC8 40BF 3C85 B884 0ABE 4639

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Miller-Rabin prime number testing
by vcarlos35＠juno.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Does anyone have any information on the Miller-Rabin probabalistic primality test? I'm pretty sure its on page 260 of Applied Cryptography 2nd edition, but I lent mey copy to someone and he's away. Please email me/the list if you have this algorithm. Thanks. _____________________________________________________________________ You don't need to buy Internet access to use free Internet e-mail. Get completely free e-mail from Juno at http://www.juno.com Or call Juno at (800) 654-JUNO [654-5866]

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Spy Touts Crypto
by John Young 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Date: Sun, 15 Feb 1998 16:40:04 -0500 Frankfurt, Germany (AP) -- Germany's spy chief has denied U.S. allegations that his agents spy on American companies, but he warned German firms that such economic espionage is soaring internationally. Bernd Schmidbauer said in comments published Saturday that, in contrast to most countries' spy agencies, Germany's is not involved in any economic espionage. The Frankfurter Allgemeine daily reported that the FBI last month accused Germany of running a post near Frankfurt that eavesdrops on U.S. phones and tries to break into American computer systems. "We're astounded about those reports from the FBI," the newspaper quoted Schmidbauer as saying. He said the post is involved only in trying to prevent the spread of weapons of mass destruction. The FBI does not normally identify governments it suspects of economic spying. But an article last month, written by an FBI agent for the industry magazine Public Administration Review, lists Germany along with France, Israel, China and South Korea as major offenders. The article said more than 700 investigations involving economic espionage by foreign governments are pending before the bureau. The FBI confirmed that figure last month. The American Society for Industrial Security estimated that American businesses lost $300 billion in intellectual property to foreign and domestic spies last year. Schmidbauer said German companies also are increasingly targeted, and warned that any conversations, faxes or computer information carried over phone lines or mobile phones could be eavesdropped. "A lot of money is being lost through this form of espionage," Schmidbauer said, without giving a figure. "And it's not only east European spies that are snapping up know-how from German companies." "Our companies are relatively naive," he said. "Concrete steps must be taken ... including encoding techniques." [End] Thanks to DN.

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Erich Mielke
by bill payne 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Sunday 2/15/98 7:52 PM J Orlin Grabbe Albuquerque Journal h 2/5/98 Ex-Spy Denied Extra Pension BERLIN - The former head of the East German secret police, a lifelong communist who fled Germany in the 1930s to avoid the Nazis, is not entitled to extra pension money for the time he spent in exile, a court ruled Wednesday. One the No. 2 man in East Germany, Erich Mielke, 90, now lives in seclusion with his wife in an apartment in eastern Berlin. His monthly pension, according to German media, is just under $55 a month. Hoping to boost his income, he applied to Berlin authorities for a supplemental pension for the years he spent in Moscow and Spain, 1931 until the end of World War II. But the court ruled that the main reason for his exile was not fear of persecution, but for his involvement as a young communist street fighter in the killing of two Berlin policemen on Aug. 9, 1931. Your attached article ALSO may include Mielke. Grabbe, a LOT of guys wanted to find out what happened. Israel too. Let's all hope for settlement of this unfortunate matter. Later bill Title: NSA, Crypto AG, and the Iraq-Iran Conflict [Email Reply] NSA, Crypto AG, and the Iraq-Iran Conflict by J. Orlin Grabbe One of the dirty little secrets of the 1980s is that the U.S. regularly provided Iraq's Saddam Hussein with top-secret communication intercepts by the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA). Consider the evidence. When in 1991 the government of Kuwait paid the public relations firm of Hill & Knowlton ten million dollars to drum up American war fever against the evil dictator Hussein, it brought about the end of a long legacy of cooperation between the U.S. and Iraq. Hill & Knowlton resurrected the World War I propaganda story about German soldiers roasting Belgian babies on bayonets, updated in the form of a confidential witness (actually the daughter of the Kuwaiti ambassador to the U.S.) who told Congress a tearful story of Iraqi soldiers taking Kuwaiti babies out of incubators and leaving them on the cold floor to die. President George Bush then repeated this fabricated tale in speeches ten times over the next three days. What is remarkable about this staged turn of events is that, until then, Hussein had operated largely with U.S. approval. This cooperation had spanned three successive administrations, starting with Jimmy Carter. As noted by John R. MacArthur, "From 1980 to 1988, Hussein had shouldered the burden of killing about 150,000 Iranians, in addition to at least thirteen thousand of his own citizens, including several thousand unarmed Kurdish civilians, and in the process won the admiration and support of elements of three successive U.S. Administrations" [1]. Hussein's artful slaughter of Iranians was aided by good military intelligence. The role of NSA in the conflict is an open secret in Europe, the Middle East, and Asia. Only in this country has there been a relative news blackout, despite the fact that it was the U.S. administration that let the crypto cat out of the bag. First, U.S. President Ronald Reagan informed the world on national television that the United States was reading Libyan communications. This admission was part of a speech justifying the retaliatory bombing of Libya for its alleged involvement in the La Belle discotheque bombing in Berlin's Schoeneberg district, where two U.S. soldiers and a Turkish woman were killed, and 200 others injured. Reagan wasn't talking about American monitoring of Libyan news broadcasts. Rather, his "direct, precise, and undeniable proof" referred to secret (encrypted) diplomatic communication between Tripoli and the Libyan embassy in East Berlin. Next, this leak was compound by the U.S. demonstration that it was also reading secret Iranian communications. As reported in Switzerland's Neue Zurcher Zeitung, the U.S. provided the contents of encrypted Iranian messages to France to assist in the conviction of Ali Vakili Rad and Massoud Hendi for the stabbing death in the Paris suburb of Suresnes of the former Iranian prime minister Shahpour Bakhtiar and his personal secretary Katibeh Fallouch. [2] What these two countries had in common was they had both purchased cryptographic communication equipment from the Swiss firm Crypto AG. Crypto AG was founded in 1952 by the (Russian-born) Swedish cryptographer Boris Hagelin who located his company in Zug. Boris had created the "Hagelin-machine", a encryption device similar to the German "Enigma". The Hagelin machine was used on the side of the Allies in World War II. Crypto AG was an old and venerable firm, and Switzerland was a neutral country. So Crypto AG's enciphering devices for voice communication and digital data networks were popular, and customers came from 130 countries. These included the Vatican, as well the governments of Iraq, Iran, and Libya. Such countries were naturally skeptical of cryptographic devices sold in many NATO countries, so turned to relatively neutral Switzerland for communication security. Iran demonstrated its suspicion about the source of the leaks, when it arrested Hans Buehler, a top salesman for Crypto AG, in Teheran on March 18, 1992. During his nine and a half months of solitary confinement in Evin prison in Teheran, Buehler was questioned again and again whether he had leaked Teheran's codes or Libya's keys to Western powers. Luckily Buehler didn't know anything. He in fact believed in his own sales pitch that Crypto AG was a neutral company and its equipment was the best. They were Swiss, after all. [3] Crypto AG eventually paid one million dollars for Buehler's release in January 1993, then promptly fired him once they had reassured themselves that he hadn't revealed anything important under interrogation, and because Buehler had begun to ask some embarrassing questions. Then reports appeared on Swiss television, Swiss Radio International, all the major Swiss papers, and in German magazines like Der Spiegel. Had Crypto AG's equipment been spiked by Western intelligence services? the media wanted to know. The answer was Yes [4]. Swiss television traced the ownership of Crypto AG to a company in Liechtenstein, and from there back to a trust company in Munich. A witness appearing on Swiss television explained the real owner was the German government--the Federal Estates Administration. [5] According to Der Spiegel, all but 6 of the 6000 shares of Crypto AG were at one time owned by Eugen Freiberger, who resided in Munich and was head of the Crypto AG managing board in 1982. Another German, Josef Bauer, an authorized tax agent of the Muenchner Treuhandgesellschaft KPMG, and who was elected to the managing board in 1970, stated that his mandate had come from the German company Siemens. Other members of Crypto AG's management had also worked at Siemens. Was the German secret service, the Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND), hiding behind the Siemens' connection? So it would seem. Der Spiegel reported that in October 1970, a secret meeting of the BND had discussed how the Swiss company Graettner could be guided into closer cooperation with Crypto AG, or could even merged with it. The BND additionally considered how "the Swedish company Ericsson could be influenced through Siemens to terminate its own cryptographic business." [6] A former employee of Crypto AG reported that he had to coordinate his developments with "people from Bad Godesberg". This was the location of the "central office for encryption affairs" of the BND, and the service instructed Crypto AG what algorithms to use to create the codes. The employee also remembers an American "watcher", who strongly demanded the use of certain encryption methods. Representatives from NSA visited Crypto AG often. A memorandum of a secret workshop at Crypto AG in August 1975, where a new prototype of an encryption device was demonstrated, mentions the participation of Nora L. Mackebee, an NSA cryptographer. Motorola engineer Bob Newman says that Mackebee was introduced to him as a "consultant". Motorola cooperated with Crypto AG in the seventies in developing a new generation of electronic encryption machines. The Americans "knew Zug very well and gave travel tips to the Motorola people for the visit at Crypto AG," Newman told Der Spiegel. Knowledgeable sources indicate that the Crypto AG enciphering process, developed in cooperation with the NSA and the German company Siemans, involved secretly embedding the decryption key in the cipher text. Those who knew where to look could monitor the encrypted communication, then extract the decryption key that was also part of the transmission, and recover the plain text message. Decryption of a message by a knowledgeable third party was not any more difficult than it was for the intended receiver. (More than one method was used. Sometimes the algorithm was simply deficient, with built-in exploitable weaknesses.) Crypto AG denies all this, of course, saying such reports are ""pure invention". What information was provided to Saddam Hussein exactly? Answers to this question are currently being sought in a lawsuit against NSA in New Mexico, which has asked to see "all Iranian messages and translations between January 1, 1980 and June 10, 1996". [7] The passage of top-secret communications intelligence to someone like Saddam Hussein brings up other questions. Which dictator is the U.S. passing top secret messages to currently? Jiang Zemin? Boris Yeltsin? Will Saddam Hussein again become a recipient of NSA largess if he returns to the mass slaughter of Iranians? What exactly is the purpose of NSA anyway? One more question: Who is reading the Pope's communications? Bibliography [1] John R. MacArthur, Second Front: Censorship and Propaganda in the Gulf War, Hill and Wang, New York, 1992. [2] Some of the background of this assassination can be found in "The Tehran Connection," Time Magazine, March 21, 1994. [3] The Buehler case is detailed in Res Strehle, Verschleusselt: der Fall Hans Beuhler, Werd Verlag, Zurich, 1994. [4] "For years, NSA secretly rigged Crypto AG machines so that U.S. eavesdroppers could easily break their codes, according to former company employees whose story is supported by company documents," "No Such Agency, Part 4: Rigging the Game," The Baltimore Sun, December 4, 1995. [5] Reported in programs about the Buehler case that were broadcast on Swiss Radio International on May 15, 1994 and July 18, 1994. [6] "Wer ist der befugte Vierte?": Geheimdienste unterwandern den Schutz von Verschlusselungsgeraten," Der Spiegel 36, 1996. [7] U.S. District Court for the District of New Mexico, William H. Payne, Arthur R. Morales, Plaintiffs, v. Lieutenant General Kenneth A. Minihan, USAF, Director of National Security Agency, National Security Agency, Defendant, CIV NO 97 0266 SC/DJS. November 2, 1997 Web Page: http://www.aci.net/kalliste/

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high speed management method
by nobody＠REPLAY.COM 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Please teach high speed management method of block cypher to me. Thanks

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Re: <fyi> World-market Crypto for SSL (fwd)
by Ken Williams 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

suggestions or help with this one? what do you ppl think? Regards, tattooman http://152.7.11.38/~tattooman ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Sun, 15 Feb 1998 11:48:01 -0500 From: XXX To: Ken Williams <jkwilli2(a)unity.ncsu.edu> Subject: Re: <fyi> World-market Crypto for SSL Hi Ken, Thanks for the note. I've got an idea I wanted to bounce off you, since Tattooman seems a suitably non-corporate persona. I'm one of those who believes that the world will be a better place if all people have ready access to strong crypto, for their own personal musing (for what hope has democracy -- or individualism, or community -- if people can not safely muse on unpopular or illicit options, deciding what is right by carefully considering what is wrong as well as right.) I also believe that strong crypto is all that can allow online international commerce, and commerce and trade is the fundamental alternative to war, armed might, and spook-driven controls on inter-cultural relationships.) The core struggle of our time is likely to be between those who want to rely on from-the-top bureaucratic control, essentially militaristic control of friends and foe, and those who trust instead in evolving common needs and mutually beneficial trade interactions between societies and nations. (The fact that the most valuable resource of any future information age -- intellectual capital, human brainpower -- is much more equitably distributed among nations than other "natural" resources, like coal, or gold, also gives me hope for a future in which all nations can offer intellectual trade-good of value and partake of a health and profitable-to-all world trade.) Here's my thought: in the immediate future, Fortify (or some similar freeware product) will offer anyone in the world a chance to upgrade the tens of millions of export-quality (weak crypto) versions of Netscape in circulation, to make them strong-crypto products with both SSL (and soon S/MIME) available to all. One of the big questions in how this world-wide struggle between statist forces who want to restrict individual (and corporate) access to strong crypto internationally, and those of us who instead want to foster the widespread use of strong crypto, is how to educate and promote the use of strong-crypto versions of Netscape (since that is today the upgradable product available worldwide.) What I would like to see is one or several CGI packages which folks could put on their websites which would quickly alert a user that the browser he is using has only limited and restricted export-quality weak crypto, and that he or she should immediately consider upgrading to strong crypto by obtaining Fortify (or other upgrade packages) from XXX website. C2, which is accessible through the Fortify website: www.fortify.net has something like this for SSL. I'm looking into getting something similar for S/MIME -- assuming McKay or others get the S/MIME-enhanced version of Fortify in circulation within a few weeks. Any ideas about how to get this going? Regards, XXX PS. Your note caught me as I was thinking this through, so you doubtless got a more wordy and political response than you expected. Still, this is an open issue of great importance, IMNSHO, and I'd be grateful for any energy or suggestions you might offer.

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Turn Your Computer Into a Personal Mail Server
by owner-cypherpunks 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Look at the Headers in this Message. If you like what you see read on. This message was sent to you courtesy of the amazing new technology of the "Rapid Fire Mail Server" (RFMS). RFMS transforms your computer into a personal mail server. With no additional hardware, RFMS software will give you complete control of your mailings, because the mail you send will originate from your computer and be delivered directly into the mailbox of your recipient. Since the mail originates from your computer, it is no longer necessary to use your Internet Service Provider's mail server. When you use the previous generation stealth or cloaking type programs, they work by uploading your mail to your provider's mail server. They can also be programmed to send mail through other providers mail servers without authorization (this is considered theft of service). The problem is, the previous generation stealth type programs upload the messages faster than these mail servers can process them. Many times this causes a provider's mail server to bog down and crash. Obviously, this will make providers furious with you. Furthermore, you may think that you are sending hundreds of thousands of messages, unfortunately, most of it simply gets filtered and deleted by the mail server. You are lucky to get 10%-20% of that mail delivered. With Rapid Fire Mail Server software YOUR computer emulates a mail server and YOU actually control and watch all your mail being delivered piece by piece. There is a 100% delivery rate with this program anywhere on the internet. We did say 100% delivery rate to any internet email addresses. A bold claim but it is true. This is the latest technical advance in bulk email since the advent of the stealth type programs. This program verifies domains and validity of email addresses before sending mail. This dramatically reduces your bounced back undeliverables. Bounced back undeliverables can sure bog down a server. You can also control where you want any bounced back mail to go. It can go to any email address you want with Rapid Fire Mail Server. Rapid Fire Mail Server can work with ANY dial up internet account, an ISDN line or a T-1 or T-3. It runs on Windows 95 or NT. We have not heard of any person losing a dial up account with this software. One reason bulk email is so frowned upon with numerous ISP's is people try to send as much mail as they can, as quick as they can and crash the mail server of the ISP. This won't happen with Rapid Fire Mail Server software since you don't use the mail server of the ISP to send your mail. The program actually sends the mail directly from your computer which is now a bona fide mail server, to the recipients mail server avoiding any potential blocks that would prevent you from reaching those on your mailing list. You do not have to "forge" headers or randomize anything to have 100% of your mail delivered, although the program does allow for randomization and customizing of headers. You can send mail omitting the "to" "from" and "reply to" portions of your headers. Want to send out your messages in color. Not a problem with Rapid Fire Mail Server. Just select a font color with your mouse, and then click on a background color as well. Want to make your font bold or put it into italics, just point and click. Want your message centered or shifted left or right, once again just point and click. Rapid Fire Mail Server works with any Windows 95 or NT computer. It requires no additional hardware or software. The Rapid Fire Mail Server sends at speeds up to 80,000 messages per hour DELIVERED using a modest pentium and a 28.8 modem. Rates will dramatically increase with an ISDN or cable modem and of course with a T-1 they will be even faster. If you want to take advantage of this breakthrough in Bulk EMail Technology give us a call. Oh, if you were wondering the program costs $700. We don't plan on repeat mailings for this product. If you think the price is too high, well we can sell you Stealth for $200. You might be happy with Stealth if you don't mind frequent loss of dial-up accounts, a lot of complaints, not getting a lot of your mail delivered due to blocks and crashed mail s ervers deleting your mail, along with the resulting low response rate from your mailings, then stealth would probably make you happy. LOL Call us at 1-612-557-0034 for more info and ordering info. So give us a call today.

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