December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

Re: Driver Licenses (fwd)
by Jim Choate 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Forwarded message: > Date: Tue, 10 Feb 1998 02:12:05 +0100 (CET) > From: Lucky Green <shamrock(a)cypherpunks.to> > Subject: Re: Driver Licenses > On Mon, 9 Feb 1998, Tim May wrote: > > If a U.S. Passport is not considered enough I.D., because it doesn't have > > the Big Brother Inside magstripe, one walks away from the transaction. > > Just as a data point, in the State of Oregon, an US passport is *not* > valid ID for alcohol purchases. Magstripe or no magstripe. You can add Texas to that list. You can use a passport to get a Tx DL or ID card but it in and of itself is worthless for personal ID in most cases. Most places here specificaly require a valid drivers license from some state, they don't seem too interested in if Big Brother certifies your identity. ____________________________________________________________________ | | | 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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The Wit and Wisdom of Tim May
by Anonymous 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

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Re: Washington on the verge of being nuked?
by David Honig 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 06:34 PM 2/9/98 EST, Dr.Dimitri Vulis KOTM wrote: >One can "disrupt" the water supply by just making a credible assertion that >it's been poisoned - but it won't kill nearly as many people as actual >poison (or virus/bacteria). > Psychops? That doesn't work when you have sufficient health-orgs and telecomm to get the word out that the water's ok. Actually, a lot of people drink bottled water here :-) but the 10 million kilos of shit excreted by LA every day would build up pretty fast. Electric power is probably as vunerable as waterways, despite conscious efforts to make the grid redundant. Of course both are controlled by computers, as uncle sam is realizing. In LA, all it takes to create a looting riot is to cut electricity to the city's alarm systems... .... Major freeway intersections are closed down 2-3 times a year in LA due to bomb threats, which are usually just threats -no bombs are found. You can snarl the roads very easily at the right time of day, since the roads' bandwidth is already exceeded and congestion persists after the clog is removed. At *least* once a month a major piece of freeway is shut down for an hour or so for "police activity", one hears on traffic reports, often around rush hour. Crypto relevance: traffic signals can be controlled by modem, a Civ-E friend tells me. They are built to be fail-safe (blinking red), but ever seen rush hour commuters deal with all blinking red? Even tanks can't get through a gridlocked city (a factor in Korean invasion planning). ------------------------------------------------------------ David Honig Orbit Technology honig(a)otc.net Intaanetto Jigyoubu Lewinsky for President '2012

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RYNO Seminar -- 18 February
by sbcom＠wainfleet.ids.on.ca 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

GETTING ELECTRONIC MEDICAL RECORDS INTO THE EXAM ROOM You are cordially invited to join RYNO, 4MD, Citrix and Symbol Technologies for a FREE seminar on a cost-effective method of getting electronic medical records into the exam room. At this half-day event you will hear several success stories on how other Health Care Institutions have implemented this program and benefited from innovative technology to increase profitability and efficiency. If you are interested in this technology, but cannot make it to the seminar, please contact RYNO's Healthcare Vertical Manager, Veronica Henderson at vhenderson(a)ryno.com or call her at 1-800-366-7966, xt 265 to learn more. Date: Wednesday, Feb. 18th, 1998 Time: Registration & Breakfast 9:00am* Seminar: 9:30am Adjourn and Hosted Lunch: 12:00pm* Location: Marriott Hotel, Walnut Creek 2355 North Main St. Walnut Creek, CA 94596 510-934-2000 RSVP: 707-746-6252 x262 or email - jramirez(a)ryno.com Please respond by February 13th *Breakfast and Lunch are complimentary Please feel free to RSVP anyone else who may be interested in attending. We look forward to seeing you there! Joy Ramirez RYNO 4271 Park Road Benicia CA 94510 707-746-6252 x262 jramirez(a)ryno.com SYMBOL TECHNOLOGIES AND 4MD CORPORATION: Healthcare provider needs can finally be addressed electronically. Symbol Technologies and 4MD Corporation provide a complete point-of-care solution for healthcare providers using a Winframe Server. 4MD Corporation has developed a simple, yet powerful, browser-based, Clinical Decision Support (CDS) application that runs on the Symbol wireless thin client over a Citrix Winframe. Healthcare providers can now pull up patient records, review electronic medical records, lab reports, radiology reports and other patient information as well as clinical guidelines all at a patient's bedside, or in the exam room on a handheld, flatscreen, mobile thin client. Symbol Technologies and 4MD Corporation solutions are designed for high-performance data management, and for satisfying the unique demands of healthcare applications where mobility, durability and ease of operations are a must. WINFRAME: Is the only software that allows you to access a single server with virtually any Windows application from across any type of network connection by any desktop without the software being installed on the desktop! Allows you to use existing hardware (old 386, 486 PC's) and still use advanced software applications, thus getting longer use out of the hardware and saving money. Gives IS departments more control and manageability over the network. Allows remote offices to access information easily from the main headquarters. Saves in maintenance costs. WHY WINFRAME? Today, more than ever, I/S professionals are pursuing cost-effective and efficient solutions to enterprise-wide application deployment. Deploying business-critical Windows-based application?s across the enterprise is a monumental task for today?s I/S professionals. They?re faced with huge obstacles including manageability requirements, multiple desktop computing platforms, clogged networks on heavily trafficked LAN?s, inadequate application performance for remote users, and poor security. And, if that?s not enough, they?re expected to solve these problems faster, with fewer people and a smaller budget! RYNO: RYNO is an award winning Bay Area VAR with top level expertise in both networking and software development. We serve healthcare institutions from building the network to developing the GroupWare applications that make a network function efficiently as a whole. RYNO?s mission is to provide our customers with increased profitability and efficiency by providing superior technology solutions. RYNO in partnership with Citrix Solutions is offering you a free seminar introducing WinFrame, a new paradigm in information management systems! DIRECTIONS TO WALNUT CREEK MARRIOTT: DRIVING FROM SAN FRANCISCO: I-101 North - follow signs to Bay Bridge (right lanes) to I-580 East. One mile to Highway 24 Concord/Walnut Creek. Highway 24 East to I-680 North. Continue I-680 North to North Main Street exit. Turn left on North Main Street and right on Parkside Drive. Hotel is located on the corner of Parkside Drive and North Main Street. DRIVING FROM OAKLAND: Follow signs to I-880 Freeway North (towards Oakland). Take I-880 to I-980 - Walnut Creek. This turns into Highway 24. Drive East on Highway 24 (use left lanes) to I-680 Interchange.Drive North to I-680 for 1.5 miles to North Main Street Exit. Turn left on North Main Street and right on parkside Drive. Hotel is located on the corner of Parkside Drive and North Main Street. DRIVING FROM SACRAMENTO: Follow the signs to I-680 South Concord and Walnut Creek. Cross the Benicia Bridge and proceed to Walnut Creek, exiting on North Main Street. (Approx. 5 miles). Stay in the right lane and turn right after exiting North main. The hotel is one block East on the right side of the street. DRIVING FROM SAN JOSE: Follow the signs to I-680. As you approach Walnut Creek, stay to the right and exit at North Main Street. Turn left on North Main Street and right on Parkside Drive. Hotel is located on the corner of Parkside Drive and North Main Street. /////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// This Message was Composed using Extractor Pro Bulk E- Mail Software. If you wish to be removed from this advertiser's future mailings, please reply with the subject "Remove" and this software will automatically block you from their future mailings. ////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////

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Financial Cryptography 1998 Workshop UPDATE
by Robert Hettinga 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

--- begin forwarded text Resent-Date: Mon, 9 Feb 1998 14:37:24 -0400 X-Authentication-Warning: online.offshore.com.ai: list set sender to fc98-request(a)offshore.com.ai using -f Subject: Financial Cryptography 1998 Workshop UPDATE To: fc98(a)offshore.com.ai Date: Mon, 09 Feb 1998 10:20:13 -0800 From: Ian Goldberg <iang(a)cs.berkeley.edu> Resent-From: fc98(a)offshore.com.ai X-Mailing-List: <fc98(a)offshore.com.ai> archive/latest X-Loop: fc98(a)offshore.com.ai Precedence: list Resent-Sender: fc98-request(a)offshore.com.ai CALL FOR PARTICIPANTS - UPDATE The Financial Cryptography 1998 (FC98) Workshop for Senior Managers and IS Professionals March 2-6, 1998 The InterIsland Hotel Anguilla, BWI <http://fc98.ai/> FC98 is sponsored by: * RSA Data Security Inc. <http://www.rsa.com/> * C2NET, Inc. <http://www.c2.net/> * Hansa Bank & Trust Company Limited, Anguilla <http://www.hansa.net/> * Sicherheit und Privat- International Bank * Offshore Information Services <http://www.offshore.com.ai/> * e$ <http://www.shipwright.com/> FC98 Conference and Exhibition February 23-27, 1998 FC98 Workshop for Senior Managers and IS Professionals March 2-6, 1998 The Inter-Island Hotel Anguilla, BWI Workshop and Conference Reservations: <http://fc98.ai/> Last year, the Financial Cryptography '97 (FC97) Workshop was the world's first intensive financial cryptography workshop for senior managers and IS professionals. This year, the Financial Cryptography '98 (FC98) Workshop will be held Monday through Friday, March 2-6, 1998, at the Inter-Island Hotel on the Carribbean island of Anguilla. This workshop will follow the peer-reviewed financial cryptography conference and commercial exhibition, Financial Cryptography 1998 (FC98), which will be held the preceding week, February 23-27, 1998. The goals of the combined workshop, conference and exhibition are: * to give senior managers and IS professionals a solid understanding of the fundamentals of strong cryptgraphy as applied to financial operations on public networks, * to provide a peer-reviewed forum for important research in financial cryptography and the effects it will have on society, and, * to showcase the newest products in financial cryptography. The Workshop Ian Goldberg, the Workshop chair, has picked an outstanding team of instructors in financial cryptography and internet financial system security to teach the courses in this workshop. The Workshop will consist of 40 hours of intensive instruction and lab time over 5 days. Students will have access to Internet-connected workstations. Who Should Attend The Workshop is intended for senior IS managers and technical professionals who want to get completely up to speed on the design, development, and implementation of financial cryptography systems, the core technology of internet commerce. After the workshop, senior managers will have a hands-on understanding the strengths and liabilities of currently available financial cryptography and internet transaction security software and hardware, and thus be able to make better asset allocation decisions in this area of explosive technology growth. Senior technical professionals with strong IS experience will be able to implement those technologies and to pass on what they've learned to their clients and colleagues when they return home. The Workshop will be held in a casual but intensive atmosphere at the very cutting edge of financial technology on the internet. Someone has likened the experience to a financial cryptography bootcamp. At the end, Workshop attendees should be utterly conversant in cryptography as it applies to finance. Workshop participants will not only know what everyone else is doing now in internet commerce, but, more important, because they understand the implications of strong financial cryptography on ubiquitous public networks, they will be able to know what to do *next*. The Workshop Leader Ian Goldberg is a Ph.D. student in security and cryptography at the University of California, Berkeley. He was the first winner of RSA Data Security Inc.'s Secret-Key Challenge, breaking a 40-bit cipher in just 3.5 hours. In late 1995, he discovered what became a much-publicized flaw in Netscape's implementation of SSL. He is a recognized expert in electronic payment systems, and in DigiCash's ecash digital bearer certificate protocol in particular. He has produced several ecash clients for Unix and Windows, as well as an ecash module for the Stronghold web server, which has extended the existing ecash system for better security, privacy, and ease-of-use. The Principal Instructors Gary Howland has spent the last four years with several companies that are primarily working with secure electronic commerce (including Digicash), where he has been involved with the design and development of secure payment protocols, and the application of these protocols to such tasks as electronic cash, bond trading, loyalty systems, and online gambling. He is also responsible for the development of the a freely available cryptographic library for java and perl. John Kelsey is an experienced cryptographer, cryptanalyst, and programmer who has designed several algorithms and protocols. He pioneered research on secure random number generators, differential related-key cryptanalysis on block ciphers, and the chosen-protocol attack against cryptographic protocols. His research has been presented at several international conferences, and he has broken many proposed commercial cryptographic algorithm, protocol, and system designs. Kelsey has a degree in Computer Science and Economics from the University of Missouri Columbia. Adam Shostack is Director of Technology for Netect, Inc, a Boston based startup building state of the art server security management applications. He has extensive background in designing, implementing and testing secure systems for clients in the medical, computer, and financial industries. His recent public work includes 'Apparent Weaknesses in the Security Dynamics Client Server Protocol,' 'Source Code Review Guidelines,' and comparisons of freely available cryptographic libraries. Workshop Topics * Security on the Internet o Internet Protocols: IP, TCP, UDP o Higher-level Protocols: Telnet, FTP, HTTP, SSL o Solid Foundations for Cryptographic Systems o A History of Internet Attacks o Building Internet Firewalls o Building a Bastion Host o Turning your Bastion Host into a Web Server o Non-internet Internet Security * Cryptography o The Need for Cryptography o History of Cryptography o Classical Methods o Modern Methods o Private and Public Key Cryptography o Authentication vs. Security o Certification and Public Key Infrastructures o Cryptographic Protocols o Engineering a Cryptographically Secure System o Why Cryptography is Harder than it Looks o Security Through Obscurity and How to Recognize Snake Oil * Internet Payment Systems o Payment models: coin-based, cheque-based, account-based o Security Issues o Privacy and Anonymity Issues o Smartcards vs. Software o Existing Payment Schemes + credit cards + First Virtual + CyberCash + DigiCash o Forthcoming Payment Schemes + SET + Mondex + Millicent + micropayments * Setting Up an ecash-Enabled Web Server o Setting up the Web Server o Signing up for ecash o Installing the ecash Module o Setting Prices o Logging o Advanced Methods + ecashiers + moneychangers The price of the workshop is $5,000 U.S. You can pay for your FC98 workshop ticket with Visa or MasterCard, with ecash, or with any of a number of other internet commerce payment protocols, at the regstriation site: <http://fc98.ai/>. Please register and make your plane and hotel reservations as soon as possible; workshop space is extremely limited. The workshop price includes meals (but not lodging) at the InterIsland Hotel and lab space, plus the delivery and installation of hardware, network access, internet commerce software, all to a location like Anguilla. And, of course, 40 hours of instruction and structured lab activity. We have priced the workshop to be competitive with other comprehensive business and professional technology workshops of similar total session length. In addition, the first ten FC98 workshop participants will receive a 50% reduction in their FC98 Conference and Exhibition fee, for a savings of $500 off the $1,000 conference admission. You can register, and pay for, your workshop ticket at <http://fc98.ai/>. Air Transportation and Hotels Air travel to Anguilla is typically done through San Juan or St. Maarten/Martin. There are several non-stop flights a day from various US and European locations. Connection through to Anguilla can be made through American Eagle, or through LIAT, or in the case of St. Maarten, with a short ferry ride to Anguilla. See your travel agent for details. Anguilla's runway is 3600 feet, with a displaced threshold of 600 feet, and can accomodate business jets. Obviously, you should talk to your aviation staff for details about your own aircraft's capabilities in this regard. Anguilla import duties are not imposed on hardware or software which will leave the island again, so, as long as you take it with you when you leave, you won't pay import duties. Please Note: Your FC98 Workshop fee only covers meals at the InterIsland Hotel. The InterIsland is actually a small guesthouse attached to a large conference facility, and so rooms there are in short supply. Fortunately, there are lots of small hotels and guesthouses nearby. For more information on these hotels, please see <http://fc98.ai/> for more information. Other hotels on Anguilla range from spartan to luxurious, all within easy walking or driving distance of the Workshop at the InterIsland. More information about Anguillan hotels can be obtained from your travel agent, or at <http://fc98.ai/>. Registration and Information for Other FC98 Events To register and pay for your ticket to the FC98 conference itself, see: <http://fc98.ai/> For information the selection of papers for the FC98 conference see: <http://www.cwi.nl/conferences/FC98> If you're interested in Exhibition space, please contact Blanc Weber: <blancw(a)cnw.com> If you're interested in sponsoring FC98, also contact Blanc Weber: <blancw(a)cnw.com> Financial Cryptography '98 is held in cooperation with the International Association for Cryptologic Research. The conference proceedings will be published by Springer Verlag in their Lecture Notes in Computer Science (LNCS) series. The FC98 Organizing Committee: * Vince Cate and Bob Hettinga, General Chairs * Ray Hirschfeld, Conference Chair * Matt Franklin, Conference Co-Chair * Ian Goldberg, Workshop Chair * Blanc Weber, Exhibit and Sponsorship Manager And our sponsors... * RSA Data Security Inc. <http://www.rsa.com/> * C2NET, Inc. <http://www.c2.net/> * Hansa Bank & Trust Company Limited, Anguilla <http://www.hansa.net/> * Sicherheit und Privat- International Bank * Offshore Information Services <http://www.offshore.com.ai/> * e$ <http://www.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: Drivers Licenses
by David Miller 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Anonymous (remailer(a)htp.org) wrote: > My question is, how much information can be stored on these strips? The data that's stored on most of the cards (credit cards, hotel keys, gym cards, etc.) are encoded with 5 bits per character. I believe that this is also known as Baudot encoding. You can store somewhere around 80 characters per track on "normal" cards, and most cards contain a 1/2" magnetic stripe that can hold 4, 1/8" tracks. So, I would estimate that your drivers license would hold a total of about 320 characters on all four tracks with standard encoding techniques. If you are interested in rendering only individual tracks unreadable, it can be done. I have done it by scratching off the magnetic material as you described. Of course, all tracks run horizontally across the card, with track 1 being the track closest to the edge of the card. So, if you wanted to destroy track 1, you could scrape off the 1/8" of the strip closest to the long edge of the license. Have fun. --David Miller middle rival devil rim lad

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The Latest Horiuchi Antics
by Eric Cordian 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Now that the Feds have gotten the Horuichi case moved out of state jurisdiction into a federal courtroom, they want their federal judge to dismiss all charges. ----- BOISE, Idaho (AP) The federal government on Monday sought the dismissal of a state involuntary manslaughter charge against the FBI sharpshooter who killed Randy Weaver's wife at Ruby Ridge six years ago. The Justice Department petition filed in federal court argued that Lon Horiuchi was protected by the Supremacy Clause of the U.S. Constitution so he cannot be subject to state prosecution for actions in the line of duty. "It is imperative that federal officials be protected from state prosecution in such circumstances because without the protection ensured by the Supremacy Clause, rigorous enforcement of federal law would be severely chilled to the detriment of the general public good,'' the petition said. Horiuchi was among dozens of federal agents who surrounded Weaver's remote mountain cabin in the Idaho Panhandle in August 1992 in an attempt to arrest Weaver on an illegal weapons charge. Weaver's 14-year-old son, Sam, and deputy U.S. Marshal William Degan of Quincy, Mass., were killed in the gunfight that touched off the 11-day siege. Vicki Weaver was fatally shot by Horiuchi on the second day. Both Randy Weaver and family associate Kevin Harris were acquitted in 1993 of federal murder and other charges in connection with the siege. Weaver was also acquitted of the weapons charge that had prompted federal agents to confront him. Last August, five years to the day after Mrs. Weaver's death, prosecutor Denise Woodbury filed the involuntary manslaughter charge against Horiuchi. The Justice Department had earlier declined to prosecute Horiuchi. The prosecutor also charged Harris with murder in Degan's death, but that charge was dismissed on a double-jeopardy ruling. On Jan. 7, U.S. District Judge Edward Lodge moved the case to federal court. Horiuchi pleaded innocent. His trial is scheduled for March 10. -- Eric Michael Cordian 0+ O:.T:.O:. Mathematical Munitions Division "Do What Thou Wilt Shall Be The Whole Of The Law" "America is like a corrupt hard drive. It's full of virii and huge inefficient programs written in Java and Visual Basic. Whan a hard drive gets to the point that it is as screwed up as America is, it's beyond repair. America needs to be formatted."

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RE: Cyber 'Nannys"
by WebWarrior3＠InfoWar.Com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

An anonymous person wrote, in reference to CyberSitter type 'blocking' software: "These companies are attempting to provide the services desired by their customers... They give concerned parents a sense of safety..." While I do not disagree that these companies should be able to market their products, I wholeheartedly disagree with the fact that often their customers (the adults who bought the software or subscribed to he 'service') are not allowed to have a list of what is actually blocked, and decide for themselves if they want their kids to have access to any of these sites. It would be beating a dead horse to describe, here, the potential value of some of the information that is blocked by these packages; one only has to take a look at any of the published news reports (or actually use one's sense of reason) to see that there are many web sites that contain some of the words that are automatically bloked by these 'services' that are absolutely not...smut <for lack of a better term>, hate speech, or illegal/illicitly oriented. On another, perhaps more severe (to you, Anonymous poster,) angle, they DO NOT, NOR CAN THEY provide a genuine saftey zone for the children who are to be 'protected.' They are providing a false sense of security to parents who, for one reason or another, feel that they are not able to provide their children with direction on what to, and what not to, view on the internet as well as what to do if the instance arises that something that is deemed taboo happens to pop up on their monitor when they click on the 'Chutes and Ladders' web site <for example, I don't know if there is one...trying to be safe and guess that there is not>. I am assuming that there is no latent support for the use of these packages in public libraries, so I won't go into that issue. In general, these programs are flat out crap. They purport to do something that is impossible to accomplish and they often refuse to even inform their customers what they actually ARE doing. Scott R. Brower http://www.infowar.com http://www.efflorida.org

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Algorithms used in PGP 5.x; Relative strength of Blowfish
by Alan Tu 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

What are the algorithms used in PGP 5.x, symetric ones, that is? For anything besides 3DES and IDEA, what are their relative strengths to 3DES or IDEA? Could someone tell me what their key lengths are? Also, what's the relative strength of Blowfish to 3DES or IDEA? Its key length is variable, as I recall. Could someone tell me the range? --Alan

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Re: What's the latest in factoring?
by Alan Tu 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Dear Bill, Sorry, but you may see this message twice. Bill Stewart wrote: >>>>> There are two countervailing arguments about very long keys; one is that if you understand cryptography well enough to evaluate the issue, you'll know you don't need to bother, but the other is that if you don't understand crypto very well, maybe you should be overly conservative. <<<<< Well, personally, I guess by your def I'm in the second group, since I didn't know I don't need to bother. >>>>> Remember that factoring difficulty is roughly exponential; adding logn bits about doubles the cracking workload (depending on which factoring method is being used). Factoring a 1024-bit number is _much_ harder than factoring a 512-bit number, and factoring a 2048-bit number is well into age-of-the-universe difficulty level. The practical level of factoring right now is about 512 bits, for either a distributed internet effort or an NSA internal one; <<<<< I kind of knew this from a hypothesis, so PGP 5.x is being conservative, possibly overly so by your definition. I've seen a screen on a friend's computer and the default is something like 2048. By the way, we don't know about NSA. They may be able to factor any number, if they have an algorithm. >>>>> in the unlikely event that Moore's law lets us double processing power 100 times in the next 150 years, that means a 1500-bit key could be crackable. So 2048 bits is certainly more than enough for _your_ lifetime. Increasing processing power 2**100 times is likely to be tough :-) After all, features in current microprocessors are on the order of 100 atoms wide. And by the time we've developed the level of nanotechnology needed to speed up processing that much, there'll be tiny audio bugs listening to you type your passphrase into your keyboard and reporting it back to the Central Intelligence Corporation, or picking up the electromagnetic fields from your direct neural interface, so the crypto strength won't matter much. <<<<< I believe in Moore's law, since in 1992-1993 I read an analysis that Moore's law was true for the last 100 years. I think its still true today. Your last set of thoughts is chilling, isn't it? But consider this. People 10, 20, 30 years ago like us are saying that the government can eavesdrop on their communication in the future, just as you are saying now. Look now. I am very proud that I am part of the e-crypto revolution (my coined word). I am helping to slow down NSA. I hope that, by the time the tech you hypothesize about is here, we again will have technology to slow down NSA. >>>>> But do you really _need_ to factor the prime number to crack PGP? No. Remember that PGP uses the RSA key to encrypt session keys for IDEA, or for signing MD5 hashes of documents, rather than using it directly. So you can decrypt the message by cracking IDEA, or forge a message by finding MD5 collisions. Cracking IDEA's 128-bit keys was estimated to be about as hard as factoring a 3100-bit number, though improvements to factoring technology may make a 4096-bit number as easy as IDEA. Also, PGP 2.x passphrases are encrypted with IDEA, so if they've got your secring.pgp and can crack 4096-bit keys, you're toast, <<<<< I know this. The point is that most if not all people know that RSA is the weak link, not IDEA. Would you rather start to work on a 1024-bit RSA key or IDEA passphrase of an enemy? Obviously the RSA key. Barring any mathematical weakness in IDEA, I am not worried about IDEA. By the way, my three-year-old info says that IDEA was being mathematicly attacked in many quarters, civilian and non-civilian alike. If they was anything, I would have heard by now, but I still want to ask. Has any significant cryptanalysis attack against IDEA been "successful"? >>>>> even if your passphase isn't just your dog's name spelled backwards. Similarly, by the time processing power doubles 100 times making your 1500-bit key insecure, MD5 will be long toasted. Either way, there's no need to go beyond 4096-bit keys ever, with old-style PGP. Even if you're being overly conservative, that's more than enough. <<<<< You seem to be suggesting that MD5 will lead to the downfall of all of our keys. Let's think about your toasting of MD5. The worst thing that can happen to a one-way hash function is that it can go both ways. So its dead for signatures. So let's suppose now that I can take any document and produce another document with a higher or lower dollar figure in it and come up with the same hash. I can do this easily. But to somehow exploit MD5 to crack a passphrase it is impossible because you have nothing to start working with. You only have an encrypted key, encrypted with an 128-bit IDEA key. Look, for our lifetimes, I don't see much point in going beyond 4096 bits either, maybe even 3072. >>>>> Newer versions of PGP dump RSA and IDEA for patent reasons, but they also offer alternatives to IDEA and MD5 which may be stronger. (SHA-1 is stronger than MD5, triple-DES requires immense amounts of storage to reduce it to a strength similar to IDEA, and just being extensible means you can replace algorithms that are obsolete.) <<<<< Triple-DES is not stronger than IDEA, although it is secure for the most part. According to Phil Zimmerman, its effective key length is 112 bits to 128 bits for IDEA. Its also 3 times slower than DES, which is comparably slow anyway. Also, to settle this issue once and for all in my mind, the Win95 version of PGP, what symetric algorithms do you have to choose from? Does anyone have any comments on the relative strength of Blowfish? What about the mathematics of Blowfish? Has anyone tried to cryptanalyze it yet? Also, I apologize for going on like this, I'll post a separate question on that. >>>>> The other side of practical is how much work it takes to use long keys, and how many people who want to talk to you use them. The answer to the latter is "Not many" for RSA keys over 2048. The former is about N**2 for decryption and N**3 for key generation, and about linear for encryption with short exponents, so it'll take you 64 times as long (once) to generate the key, and 16 times as long to decrypt or sign anything, compared to the far-more-than-strong-enough 2048-bit key, which is already 4 times as hard to use and 8 times as hard to generate as a 1024. <<<<< As I said, I have a 2048-bit key in hibernation. I haven't posted it to a key server, but a friend who recently got PGP decided to use my public key ring, and use my 2048-bit key. There are only two places in which this key of mine is accessible. Anyway, I don't see the 4 time slowdown for using my secret key. (I have a 133 MHz). However, the effect is probably true for slower processors. I agree that we shouldn't bother with keys above 4096 bits because its not necessary and it takes too long to communicate with people who have slower processors. >>>>> It's not worth the bother, unless you know have a really, really special application that needs to remain secret until long after you've overthrown the government. On the other hand, at least the RSA patent will have expired by then :-) <<<<< I already addressed this point. >>>>> The Diffie-Hellman implementations in PGP 5.x will let you use key lengths up to 4096, but the speed behaviour is a bit different. In particular, key generation is much faster, so generating overkill-length keys isn't as boring. <<<<< First of all, Win95 (not my computer) seems slow to me, even if that person's processor is faster than mine. And I hear so much disk reading or writing, no wonder its slow. Boring? Win95 cannot make you bored. Go do something else, or play a MIDI file. You can multi-task. --Alan

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