December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

RE: I thought of an initialy regulated industry!... (fwd)
by Blanc 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

>From Jim Choate: : The bottem line as to why free-market economies don't work is that it isn't : in the producers best interest to have a educated consumer. They might buy : somebody elses product or start their own company. Both of those are bad for : profits. : : Free-market mavens forget that producers are just as greedy and corrupt as : everyone else, there is no fair competition in an unregulated market given : the pshychological make up of human beings. ................................................................................ ........ Free market economices don't "work", simply because they are run by humans, who regularly suffer psychological breakdowns, envy, and mistakes of judgement, not to mention disreputable marketing departments. Regulated economies, however, are run by government drones, and are therefore perfect vehicles which, with unfailing success, make all of their captive customers happy. Everyone knows this, as we witness the apparent success of all those regulated economies overseas which outshine the U.S. by three (maybe four) orders of magnitude. No one over there envies the U.S. productivity and standard of living, and they never are moved to leave and come live over here, to give up the benefits which extreme regulation confers upon them, in place of the (admittedly mixed) free-market fiasco which operates over here, where all things are uncertain and frighteningly unpredictable. In fact, many people become so disgusted with the monopolies and disfunctional liberty which exists here, that they regularly expatriate to go live in places like Sweden, Germany, even Canada, where they have the peace of mind and assurance that State coercion will provide for their every need - in a most efficient, timely, prompt, and user-friendly manner. They never have to worry about who has more or less, who is better or worse, or who knows better than anyone what is best for everyone. It's all been pre-established and exists incontrovertibly in their national consumer database. .. Blanc

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RE: Another question about free-markets..
by Blanc 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

>From Jim Choate: : Now in a free-market, by definition, there is no law. What then is the : responsibility of businesses other than the pure unadulterated pursuit of : profit? If this includes lying, denying consumers information, etc. what : harm is done, they have fulfilled their responsibility to their shareholders : (potentialy quite lucratively) and broken no law. Within this environment it : follows that a primary strategy for such executives is the elimination of : *all* competition. And since there is no law other than the measure of profit : all can be justified. ................................................................................ There might be no Law. But there would still be Reality - and for some people, this is *much* harder to deal with. If customers sit around like lumps on a log depending upon the kindness of strangers, well they're not doing themselves any favors. But such a person is not a customer. They are an invalid (or will be, eventually). In a free-market economy, everybody - not only corporations, not only customers - have to be rational about what they're doing. Everybody has to "be on their toes", alert to what truly is in their interest, and prevent themselves from accepting, from supporting, self-defeating offers from Trojans bearing spam. You learn or you die, just like in the movies. .. Blanc

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Re: Another question about free-markets... (fwd)
by Jim Choate 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Forwarded message: > Date: Mon, 5 Oct 1998 10:03:25 +0100 > From: Steve Mynott <stevem(a)tightrope.demon.co.uk> > Subject: Re: Another question about free-markets... > On Sun, Oct 04, 1998 at 11:53:28PM -0500, Jim Choate wrote: > > > Now in a free-market, by definition, there is no law. What then is the > > no in a free market there is no state > > there are laws based on natural rights Ok, who writes the laws? Who enforces the laws? Who decides what is natural? Remember, we have *NO* participants in a free market other than the producer and the consumer. Two, and *only* two, parties are involved. ____________________________________________________________________ The seeker is a finder. Ancient Persian Proverb The Armadillo Group ,::////;::-. James Choate Austin, Tx /:'///// ``::>/|/ ravage(a)ssz.com www.ssz.com .', |||| `/( e\ 512-451-7087 -====~~mm-'`-```-mm --'- --------------------------------------------------------------------

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RE: GPL & commercial software, the critical distinction (fwd)
by Jim Choate 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Forwarded message: > From: Matthew James Gering <mgering(a)ecosystems.net> > Subject: RE: GPL & commercial software, the critical distinction (fwd) > Date: Mon, 5 Oct 1998 00:29:33 -0700 > state (you have no govt), at least in the manner we have now, whereas a > Laissez Faire state could enforce it (you have limited govt). That says > nothing about whether IP should exist in current form or at all, simply > that it *could* exist under LF. [other stuff deleted] Ok, so you're talking out of both sides of your mouth then. On one hand you speak of a free-market (vis-a-vis Laissez Faire) and then in the same breath, with not even a blink of an eye, you speak of limited government. You can't have your cake and eat it too. Sorry. This is gibberish. ____________________________________________________________________ The seeker is a finder. Ancient Persian Proverb The Armadillo Group ,::////;::-. James Choate Austin, Tx /:'///// ``::>/|/ ravage(a)ssz.com www.ssz.com .', |||| `/( e\ 512-451-7087 -====~~mm-'`-```-mm --'- --------------------------------------------------------------------

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RE: Another question about free-markets... (fwd)
by Jim Choate 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Forwarded message: > From: Matthew James Gering <mgering(a)ecosystems.net> > Subject: RE: Another question about free-markets... > Date: Sun, 4 Oct 1998 23:34:09 -0700 > > Now in a free-market, by definition, there is no law. > > A free market is not the absence of law (that is anarchy), a free market > is the absence of government intervention in trade and commerce. And how does government intervene and interfere? By making law. ____________________________________________________________________ The seeker is a finder. Ancient Persian Proverb The Armadillo Group ,::////;::-. James Choate Austin, Tx /:'///// ``::>/|/ ravage(a)ssz.com www.ssz.com .', |||| `/( e\ 512-451-7087 -====~~mm-'`-```-mm --'- --------------------------------------------------------------------

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Capitalism and Monopolies (was RE: GPL & commercial software, the (fwd)
by Jim Choate 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Forwarded message: > From: Matthew James Gering <mgering(a)ecosystems.net> > To: "Cypherpunks (E-mail)" <cypherpunks(a)cyberpass.net> > Subject: Capitalism and Monopolies (was RE: GPL & commercial software, the > critical distinction) > Date: Sun, 4 Oct 1998 23:01:16 -0700 > Jim Choate wrote: > > Only after the early 1890's when the situation got so bad > > they had to do something. Prior to that there was no federal > > intervention in railroad operations per se > > Completely false. Not totaly. > Traffic to/from the West coast did not warrant the > capital investment in transcontinental railway, so the government make > *exclusive* lands grants to specific railroads to extend the railways to > the West coast (100M acres between 1863-7) . Those subsidies created the > monopolies, the source of coercive power over Western farmers. Protest > against this arbitrary power was blamed on the market instead of the > government subsidies, and resulted in the Interstate Commerce Act of > 1887, and the Sherman Act of 1890. Only *after* it was clear that these companies could not do it themselves because of a lack of sufficient traffic to support the business. I must congratulate you. You're the first person in a long while who actualy took the time to develop an argument based on *fact*. Well done. > I should have stated government "distortions" instead of "regulation." > That includes subsidies. Even better, a distinction between 'law' and a 'grant'!.... > The placement (ownership) of these rights, their value, restrictions and > enforcement are the result of a free market? No, government > intervention. Actualy no, try buying a piece of land and enforcing the title *without* registering it at the country seat or its likes. > Did anyone ever state monopolies result from federal regulations? > Government distortion/intervention, that can come at any level. Acts of > force or coercion can create a monopolistic situation, free trade > cannot. Absolutely it can because it actualy allows a freer hand in developing strategies to decrease the market potential of ones competition. There is *nothing* in free-market definitions or descriptions which will prevent gross abuse of the consumer by the manufacturer. Remember in a free-market there is the requirement for 'fair competition' which is contrary to the very theory of business operation, which is to maximize profit and reduce competition. Now if we lived on Vulcan and we were all logical Vulcans it might work, unfortunately we're not and human beings will specificaly go after their competition, which without some sort of regulation being impossed leads to obvious results; initialy a very fluid and dynamic market that settles down with the survival of the fitest getting bigger and bigger. As these companies get big enough they can no longer react as quickly as they once did (intertia of strategy among other things). At some point it becomes easier to cooperate than to continue to fight. That cooperation leads to a melding and promotes even more monopolization. > So what is the discriminating factor(s) distinguishing industries that > can and cannot be monopolized? Saturation of the consumer market, high start-up costs in either infrastructure or intellectual resources, and others. I posted a list of some characteristics to the list a while back. You can look for it. If I get time I'll post it to the list again. > Don't forget capital markets; Are you speaking of capital markets in the sense of fluid and available funding or of the existance of businesses that produce the capital assetts needed by other businesses (eg creating rail-cars for rail-roads)? a free fluid capital market can and will > support a smaller competitor if potential long term profits will support > it. You can't pay your employees today with tomorrow profit. This isn't a Popeye's hamburger vendor... There is another question I'd like to pose. In a free-market economy there are only two participants, the consumer and the producer, what if anything in the definition prevents one or the other from employing an agent in their stead to 'negotiate' with the other. Does this by definition introduce a third party or is it a permissible extension of the two-party system? ____________________________________________________________________ The seeker is a finder. Ancient Persian Proverb The Armadillo Group ,::////;::-. James Choate Austin, Tx /:'///// ``::>/|/ ravage(a)ssz.com www.ssz.com .', |||| `/( e\ 512-451-7087 -====~~mm-'`-```-mm --'- --------------------------------------------------------------------

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FW: I thought of an initialy regulated industry!... (fwd)
by Trei, Peter 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

> -----Original Message----- > From: Blanc [SMTP:blancw@cnw.com] > Sent: Monday, October 05, 1998 12:10 AM > To: 'Cypherpunks Distributed Remailer' > Subject: RE: I thought of an initialy regulated industry!... (fwd) > [...] > > Free market economices don't "work", simply because they are run by > humans, who regularly suffer > psychological breakdowns, envy, and mistakes of judgement, not to mention > disreputable marketing > departments. Regulated economies, however, are run by government drones, > and are therefore perfect > vehicles which, with unfailing success, make all of their captive > customers happy. > [four paragraphs of well written irony removed] For those interested in a thoughtful (though slightly one sided) look at this issue, I strongly reccomend PJ O'Rourke's new book 'Eat the Rich'. He examines several locations (US, Sweden, Albania, Cuba, Russia, Hong Kong, Shanghai) in an attempt to figure out why (economically) "some places suck and others don't" His bottom line is that the rule of law (especially contract law) is critical, as well as democratic government. He's much more interested in on-the-ground economic experience than in government figures, and is the only economics writer who can make me laugh out loud. He does have his blind spots - I would have liked to see what he makes of Singapore. Peter Trei [Excuse the lousy formatting - I'm using a Microsoft product]

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Re: importance of motivation
by Martinus Luther 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

>From Tim May: > Any trendy new diagnosis always gets some recruits...dyslexia, ADD >(*), the abuse excuse, etc. (* Like any trendy thing, it gets renamed > to keep its panache. ADD has been renamed to something with four > letters, which I now forget (must be ADD).) And it is worse than that, they're scum, Tim. They claim (in last months SciAm) that 5% of kids have ADHD (some sources have it at 15%). This isn't a disease, this is one end of the normal variation in behaviour. It is as if you diagnosed an adult male height of less than 5 foot 4 inches as "dwarf" and prescribed growth hormone. Or as if you operated on any woman over 5 foot 10 to shorten her legs. http://www.nimh.nih.gov/publicat/adhd.htm says 3 to 4 times as many boys as girls have it. So they are saying that ADHD affects 15 to 60 percent of all boys! This isn't one end of the normal range of behaviour, this is just plain normal. The psycho-babble establishment is proposing drugging 5 to 15 percent of the population to alter their behaviour. If this "diagnosis" had been around when I was a kid they would have drugged me. I found a 14 point checklist for ADHD on the web at: http://www.docnet.org.uk/autopage/messages/23.html In the last 48 hours my daughter has shown 11 of these. And I've shown 14. This is just normal life they are talking about. This is the misuse of psychiatric medicine for political control, as much as anything that went on in Stalin's Russia. (the personal is political - if one young man behaves in a way unacceptable to their elders that is personal - if 5 million do it is political). I object, strongly, to some guy in a white coat saying the problem with my life is my brain and he wants me to take this little pill and then it will be alright. Which is not to say that some people don't have real problems for which Ritalin is a workaround. But 15%, 10% or even 5% isn't psychiatry it is politics. Large parts of our daily life is tedious, boring, of no direct relevance to anything we are interested in. Most kids in school are made to sit through boring lessons. Bloody hell! They made us do sport. Is anything more shitlike? Most adults at work make themselves do things they have no interest in other than for the money they might get out of it (which is where we cam in with all that discussion about research that shows that people perform less well on tasks done primarily for reward - Marx was right about alienation, you know) A healthy person *ought* to have trouble paying attention to some of the things they are asked to do. Maybe we will have better lives if we drug ourselves (Ritalin, Prozak, E, daytime television) to get through the shit of the day but let it be a decision adults make for themselves, not one imposed on children by parents or the psychatric eastablishment. I could do with a cup of tea... > We've had some nutballs and losers (luser spelling: loosers) on this > list. People who claim the reason they can't make a coherent > argument or hold a steady job is because of something some > psychobabbler told them was their excuse. It's weird how people do that. If a doctor gives something a long name is suddenly becomes alright. Some parents are ashamed that their kids can't read well. Put it in Greek and call it "Dyslexia" and all of a sudden it isn't something you do, or are, or don't do or aren't capable of - it becomes something you *have*, not really part of you, baggage, a burden that could one day be dropped, something that has been done to you, imposed on you, soemthing that is not your fault. Reality hasn't changed, just the words used to describe it, yet it is now less threatening. The germ theory of disease is stretched to the limit. Pasteur showed that some diseases are caused by microorganisms. Simple cause and effect. One baterial disease is caused by pone organism, another by another. That is deeply embedded in our thoughts. So now all disease, all misfortune, has to be given a name, put in a box and traced back to a simple cause. I'm not fat, I have an eating disorder. I'm not stupid, I have a learning disability. I'm not sad, or worried, or bored, or scared - I have depression or an anxiety disorder or an attention deficit disorder. Some societies attribute all misfortune to witchcraft - if your cow dies then someone, somewhere must have cursed you. We now attribute all misfortune to something outside ourselves, not part of us. It wasn't me, it was my syndrome. And its all part of the pressure put on familys by business. Conform, consume, keep quiet. Don't rock the boat. Turn up on time, wear our clothes, work our hours. No alcohol on the premises. Or at lunchtime. Take this here drugs test - we don't want dope fiends and hippies in our office. Stressed out? Bored? Overworked? Tense, anxious, nervous soul-ache? Nothing acts faster than Ritalin. Especially when cut with Prozac to prolong that cool, mellow feeling. Time off to look after the children? Not if you want the job to be open when you come back. Just give them a bite of our magic apple and they will be alright. What's that you say about drugs? No, these are Good Drugs. The men in the white coats say so. And what's more they are patentable and we own shares in Ciba Geigy, Lilly, Fison's and Hoffman La Roche. Good Drugs keep you working until we want to let you go. Good Drugs keep you consuming until you have no more money to pay us with. Good drugs keep you working for our profit. Good Drugs keep you from complaining, striking, joining a union, praying, helping, loving, singing, fighting back in any way whatsoever. Good Drugs keep you from realising that half your work goes into our pockets. Good Drugs keep you scared, scared of poverty, scared of being different, scared of standing out, scared of using your head to think any thoughts we don't want thank. Good Drugs keep you addicted to your job, your country, your government, your boss. The Best Drug is the mortgage. John the Ranter/ ______________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com

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Review of TriStrata Public Information
by Bruce Schneier 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Review of TriStrata Public Information 1 Introduction Over the past several months, a new company called TriStrata has been getting substantial press for a new "one-time pad" cryptography system. Most of these press reports took at face value the company's claims about their technology and product, and did not try to analyze whether or not they were true. Counterpane Systems believes it is important to dig under the hype and figure out what the real story is behind their technology. We reviewed the publicly available documentation on TriStrata, and found a system whose architecture is that of an early-1970s pre-public-key cryptography security system. Central servers, upon which the security of every message rests, must be kept absolutely secure; yet they run on Windows NT. These servers are all powerful, in that they can forge messages, rewrite audit logs, fake authentication, and lie about anything else in the system. Users cannot access their files unless they are connected to this server. TriStrata does not use a one-time pad at all, and none of the security proofs about a one-time pad apply to their system. Their reliance on this encryption technology forces them to use security protocols long abandoned by the rest of the security industry. Even their performance enhancements bely the fact that encryption is rarely the bottleneck in any communications system. Note: For a less-technical summary of this review, please see sections 4.0, 4.1, and 5.0. 2.0 The TriStrata System 2.1 Structure The TriStrata system uses a centralized server, called the TESS (TriStrata Enterprise Security Server). The documentation is not very clear, but document reference 3 suggests that each company would have its own TESS. Every encryption or decryption operation requires a "permit" from the TESS. To encrypt a file or message: 1. The user contacts the TESS over the network. This can be any type of network, such as the Internet or a local area network. 2. The user and the TESS authenticate each other using a proprietary protocol called Private Access Line (PAL). 3. The TESS sends a permit to the user machine, which is used to encrypt the file or message. The TESS also sends a "seal" to the user. This seal is only readable by the TESS. 4. The user simply stores the seal with the file (if it is encrypted locally), or sends the seal along with the encrypted message (if it is to be transmitted to another user). To decrypt a file or message: 1. The user retrieves the seal and sends the seal to the TESS (along with the authentication data from the PAL protocol). 2. The TESS opens the seal, and determines whether the user is allowed to decrypt the data. 3. If the user is allowed to decrypt the data, the TESS sends a decryption permit to the user. 4. The user's local machine uses this permit to decrypt the file or message. The TESS keeps full audit logs of all operations, and includes procedures that allow designated recovery agents within the company to recover the keys to any file. The system is claimed to provide identification (who is using the system), authentication (who sent a message), access control (restriction of access to authorized users), integrity (assurance message is unaltered), and non-repudiation (sender cannot deny having sent it). They have received an export license for their system. 2.2 Authentication The authentication method used to authenticate the user to the TESS and vice versa is a crucial part of the security architecture. The TriStrata documentation contains no further information than that this is handled by the Private Access Line protocol. 2.3 Encryption Algorithm The Random KeyStream (RKS) encryption algorithm used by TriStrata is hailed as "a new fundamental technology." It is claimed to be very fast, but the documentation only contains raw speeds, without documenting which platform these speeds were achieved on. The encryption technology is also claimed to be unconditionally secure. To quote the web site: "No matter how much mathematical analysis or computing power is applied to the cryptanalysis of RKS, there is simply no algorithm and no underlying pattern to break. As Herbert Yardley foresaw in 1931, cryptography as a profession is dead." 3.0 Our Comments 3.1 The Central Server Structure Cryptographic systems that use a central access control server are nothing new. The Kerberos protocol uses a central server for similar tasks. Using such a central server as the TESS has several advantages and disadvantages. The main advantages are: - There is a central place that administrates all the access rights. This makes various administrative tasks easier. - Revocation of access is automatically supported by the system. No separate revocation mechanism is necessary. - The central server can keep comprehensive auditing logs of security-related operations. The main disadvantages are: - The central server contains confidential information, namely the master keys that can decrypt any file. It is thus a very tempting target for attack. The central server must be very well protected. At the same time, the server must be reachable from across the network, and must be reliable, as nothing can work without a functioning server. The end result is a server that is expensive (due to all the requirements) and that still is an obvious point of attack. - The central server is a single point of failure. TriStrata uses a redundant server structure with fail-over, so that a second server takes over when the first fails. A fail-over structure protects against technical errors, but does not necessarily protect against denial-of-service attacks. The TESS is based on a "security hardened" version of Windows NT, an operating system that is not known for its resistance to malicious attacks. - The system is effectively a closed system. Only users who are registered at the server can partake in the system. It is not clear how two users that belong to different servers would communicate. The TriStrata documentation mentions electronic commerce extensively, but it does not discuss how two users at two different companies can use the TriStrata system to communicate with each other. - Since the server contains crucial confidential information, every company must run its own server. A failure of the server, such as a leak of the master keys from the server, can reveal all of the company's information. This is the kind of task that should not be outsourced. In contrast, the key server of a public-key-based system is much easier to outsource as it can be designed so as not to be critical for security. - The TriStrata solution does not allow a user that is off-line to access any encrypted files. A salesman that keeps his data encrypted on his portable computer cannot access the data without contacting the TESS. If he cannot get network access for some reason (e.g., on an airplane, mismatched phone plug, etc.), he cannot access his own files. The TriStrata solution is a return to a very old style of centralized key management. For some applications this is a good solution, but there are many situations in which a centralized server is not appropriate. For example, one function that a central server cannot do well is non-repudiation between adversarial parties (one of the critical functions in electronic commerce). The TESS system seems to provide non-repudiation through inspection of the logs of the TESS. But if a message is sent between two companies, which TESS do they use? The company that owns the TESS that is used can manipulate the logs in their own favor. The end result is that there is no watertight proof that the message was sent or received. In effect, this solution takes us back to the days before public-key cryptography. Since its invention in the late 1970s, the ideas of certificates, public key infrastructure, decentralized key management, separation of encryption and digital signature functions, etc., have all been implemented in response to insecurities in centralized systems. For example, public-key infrastructures use trusted third parties like the TESS, but in a public-key system, compromise of the trusted third party only allows an attacker to issue false certificates, not to decrypt and read messages. 3.2 Authentication We have no further information on the PAL protocol. The documentation does state that the communication with the TESS consists of a single message from the user to the TESS, and a single reply back. Elsewhere it says that the TESS is stateless, which makes it easy to do a fail-over should one TESS fail. It is not clear to the reviewers how the PAL protocol works, if we assume it consists of two messages and is stateless for the TESS. These two properties together would suggest that an attacker can replay requests to the TESS. If nothing else, this introduces fake entries in the audit log. Some of these attacks can be hindered by the use of local clocks, but every solution along these lines we have ever seen is always troubled by clock synchronization problems. We note that the PAL protocol is critical for the security of the overall system. If an attacker can impersonate another user, then he can request the proper permit from the TESS to decrypt a file, and will get access regardless of the security of the actual encryption algorithm. The PAL protocol deserves careful scrutiny before the TriStrata system is put to use. The most straightforward attack against the TriStrata system is to introduce some hostile code into the client's PC (for example, a virus or Trojan horse). This hostile code can then steal the necessary authentication information and send it back to the attacker. This type of attack is a generic attack against any security system, not just the TriStrata system, but it shows that the "provable security" is at best limited to a small part of the system and does not extend to the whole system. 3.3 Encryption To put it bluntly: the TriStrata system does not use the one-time pad system (Vernam cipher) for encryption. A true one-time pad uses a random key that is distributed through a separate secure channel. While a one-time pad is, in fact, theoretically unbreakable when used properly, the details of using it properly make it entirely unusable in any modern commercial or military setting. A true one-time pad gains its unbreakable security from the fact that the key is as long as the message. Since all keys are equally likely, and a particular ciphertext could represent any message, given a particular key, the ciphertext reveals nothing about the plaintext message without the correct key. These random keys must be entirely random; this usually requires generating them from some external random source (such as thermal noise or radioactive decay). And both the sender and the receiver must have this secret key, which must be exchanged in some fashion which the attacker cannot penetrate. The requirement that the keys be as long as the data to be exchanged and that the key needs to be transported via some secure mechanism makes the one-time pad system entirely impractical. In order to send a 1 MB message, the sender and receiver must exchange a 1 MB-long key. Then the sender could send the message and the receiver could use the key to decrypt it. The key would then have to be thrown away and never used again. If the sender wanted to exchange messages with a hundred people, he would have to pre-agree on different keys between each recipient. For a company with a thousand employees, this means that there are 499,500 different key sets, which need to be replenished any time they are exhausted by message exchange. Because the key has to be as long as the message, there is no way to use an established system to exchange more keys, since in order to securely send as 1 MB key a user needs 1 MB of additional pre-agreed key. (And if users can exchange these keys, why can't they just exchange the messages?) This means that all keys have to be exchanged via some other mechanism (such as a courier). This kind of system was used for the U.S.-Soviet teletype "hot line" and it is occasionally used for paper ciphers and spies, but that's it. There is no way in which a true one-time pad can be implemented over a computer network. From the information provided by TriStrata, we believe that the encryption method used is a keystream method where an algorithm generates a key stream which is then XORed with the plaintext to generate the ciphertext. This is known as a pseudo one-time pad, and is also called an OFB stream cipher. One of the modes of DES works in this manner, as does the RC4 encryption algorithm. This is not new technology. A pseudo one-time pad encryption algorithm can be secure, but claiming that it is secure because it is based on the one-time pad is ridiculous. The strength of the cipher algorithm depends on the method used to generate the key stream. The speed given for the encryption method is fairly fast, but without knowing what platform was used to achieve these speeds, no sensible comparison can be made. To give some comparison material: the leading candidates for the AES block cipher encryption standard can encrypt data in about 18 clock-cycles per byte on a Pentium II. A standard 350 MHz desktop machine thus achieves nearly 20 Mbytes per second. This compares to the TriStrata claimed speed of 36 Mbytes per second for a standard desktop machine. The TriStrata figures are faster, but only by a factor of two. This would be a nice speedup, but it does not present a fundamental breakthrough in speed. Reference 4 is a magazine article report that contains more information about the encryption algorithm. As with any magazine article, the accuracy of the information is hard to judge. Nevertheless, the information it provides fits well with the information we have from TriStrata. The TESS generates a single 1 Mbyte block of random data using a hardware random number generator. This block is distributed to all clients. (A second block is used for authentication, but we have no further information on the algorithm.) The encryption algorithm keeps several pointers into this random block and derives the random key stream from the data the pointers point to. This is a known technique, first used by Maurer in his randomized cipher [Reference 5]. The TriStrata documentation talks about a virtual keystream of over 10^30 bytes, which would correspond to 5 pointers into a 1 Mbyte block. This suggests an effective key size of at most 100 bits. On the other hand, the website also claims that it would take 3.5 x 10^33 years to defeat one TriStrata-encrypted message, which would suggest either a larger key space or a fundamental misunderstanding of the mathematical properties of Maurer's system. The random block is the same for all the clients. It has to be, as the client that does the decryption needs the same random block as the client that does the encryption (and sending 1 Mbyte blocks around in the permit is too slow). Therefore, we cannot view this random block as a secret. After all, a secret shared amongst thousands of users is not a secret any more. If we want a more conventional representation of the encryption algorithm, we can represent the random block as a randomly generated 20 by 8-bit S-box. We have no knowledge about the details of this encryption algorithm, but the most straightforward variants of this type are susceptible to a meet-in-the-middle attack on the pointer space. This could reduce the effective key size to as little as 60 bits. The journalist did a speed test of TriStrata's file encryption utility. On a 200 MHz Pentium Pro, 128 MB RAM and PCI Ultra-SCSI disk subsystem it encrypted a 58 MB file in 18 seconds. This corresponds to a speed of 3.2 Mbytes per second. Presumably this speed is limited by the speed of the disk I/O. On this platform a traditional encryption algorithm such as Blowfish can encrypt at 10 Mbytes per second; the super-fast RKS encryption is presumably faster than this. Although this test does not give us any real speed data, it does show that encryption speed is not the bottleneck in most situations. In this situation, the disk I/O is much slower than the cryptography, making the encryption speed irrelevant. 3.5 Proprietary Encryption Algorithms The nature of cryptography is such that there is no way to prove that a cipher is secure, since this amounts to proving a negative assertion: that there is no way to break it easily. Anyone, from the most unsophisticated amateur to the best cryptographer, can create an algorithm that he himself can't break. What is hard is creating an algorithm that no one else can break, even after years of analysis. And the only way to prove that is to subject an algorithm to years of analysis by the best cryptographers around. Because of this situation, the only recognized criterion for secure cryptographic systems is peer review: having other cryptographers examine a cipher and attack it. Even cryptographic organizations which operate in secret, such as the NSA, have an extensive internal peer review system. >From past experience we know that systems that are kept secret and presented as "provably secure," "unbreakable," "a new fundamental technology," or "one-time pad" are usually not very good at all. Those who say these things generally do not understand the current state-of-the-art of mathematical cryptography, and make fundamental mistakes in their system design. Encryption algorithms that are unpublished have a dismal record. The literature is littered with the corpses of encryption algorithms that were broken once they were published. Until TriStrata publishes its algorithm and it is open to peer review there is no professional reason to presume it is secure. 4.0 The Real Problem in Security Systems It is interesting to note that TriStrata gives a lot of attention to the encryption algorithm. From all the problems that security systems face at the moment, the encryption algorithm is probably the least important one. There are many good encryption algorithms available in the published literature that can be used for free. TriStrata chose to develop their own algorithm. Although this can be a lot of fun, it is a decision that is hard to justify, as new algorithms can only be considered secure after an ample time of peer review. Cryptographic systems are broken constantly, but the attacks are almost never against the algorithms. The really difficult problems in security systems are key distribution, management, reliability, robustness, etc. TriStrata uses the solution of having a central server, as necessitated by its choice of encryption technology. This solution is suitable in some situations, but there are many problems that cannot be handled by this approach. In fact, the problems associated with central servers and centralized key distribution have been driving the development of public-key--based systems for the last two decades. TriStrata, by implementing a Maurer-style randomized stream cipher and the centralized key management it requires, has taken the one piece of the cryptographic puzzle that we can solve--symmetric encryption--and made what they perceive to be security improvements. However, they did this at the expense of the really hard problems in cryptography...ones that their system does not seem to adequately solve. 4.1 Trust and Security Systems Whenever someone buys a commercial product, he is trusting that the manufacturer did a good job designing and building the product. This is especially important with security products. If someone buys a word processor and it does not perform as advertised (e.g., the print function does not work), he will eventually notice (he won't be able to print his documents). If someone buys an encryption product, it can function normally (encrypting and decrypting documents successfully), but that is no indication that it is secure. Security is completely separate from functionality, and no amount of beta testing can ever uncover a security flaw. In the commercial world, we rely on the public review process to evalute the security of systems. Internet security infrastructures, such as IPSec, PKIX, and SSL, have been discussed and debated for years. Versions have been proposed, security flaws have been found, fixes have been implemented, and so on. Cryptographic algorithms in these protocols are ones that have been around for years, and have had extensive cryptographic review by the best in the field. Even this is no guarantee of security--implementation flaws are found (and fixed) in the code that implements these protocols, but it establishes a certain degree of confidence. TriStrata has chosen to ignore all public standards in favor of their own proprietary technology, while at the same time refusing to make technical details of their technology public. In order to use their system, the purchaser must trust that their cryptographers are better than the collective wisdom of the world's academic cryptographers, that their protocol designers are better than everyone who has worked on the open Internet protocols over the last few years, that their implementers are better than everyone who has made and evaluated the public implementations of those protocols. The purchaser must trust that TriStrata's misuse of the academic terminology does not reflect a misunderstanding of that technology, and that their technology is so much better than what everyone else has agreed upon that it makes sense to make that leap of faith. In the end, a star-studded board of directors and upper management does not obviate the need for good science, open systems, and peer review. It's simply foolish to trust a system that has not been evaluated. 5.0 Conclusions A system like TriStrata's can be made to work within its limitations. It is certainly not the universal solution to the world's security problems. However, there is a huge amount of hype and very little substance to the documentation. Many of the statements made are incomplete, vague, or suggest facts which cannot be true. The cryptographic claims are wild and unsubstantiated. Parts are clearly written by someone who does not understand modern cryptography, and who is not well versed in the cryptographic literature. Certain areas of the documentation give the impression that they were written with the intent to deceive the reader, but ignorance is probably a better explanation. Based on past experience with systems that made similar unsupported security claims, we are very skeptical about the security of the TriStrata system. We reviewed the system as we have reconstructed it from various hints in the text, as well as conversations with people who have been involved with the system. Until TriStrata releases technical information about its product, it is not possible to give a complete evaluation of their technology. References: [1] TriStrata web site, http://www.tristrata.com, on Sept. 22nd, 1998. [2] Walter Hamscher, Alastair MacWillson, and Paul Turner, "Electronic Business Without Fear: The TriStrata Security Architecture," Price Waterhouse. [3] "Building a Secure Future with CTR Business Systems and TriStrata Security," leaflet. [4] Dan Backman, "TriStrata: A Giant Step In Enterprise Security," Network Computing Magazine, 15 September 1998. Online, http://www.nwc.com/915/915sp1.html [5] Ueli M. Maurer, "A Provably-Secure Strongly-Randomized Cipher," Advances in Cryptology -- Eurocrypt '90 Proceedings, Springer-Verlag, 1990, pp. 361--373. ********************************************************************** Bruce Schneier, President, Counterpane Systems Phone: 612-823-1098 101 E Minnehaha Parkway, Minneapolis, MN 55419 Fax: 612-823-1590 Free crypto newsletter. See: http://www.counterpane.com

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RE: GPL & commercial software, the critical distinction (fwd)
by Brown, R Ken 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

> James A. Donald wrote > > [oddly irrelevant stuff about Satan skipped] > > > A big company has no monetary advantage over a small company. > > > Suppose Firm A controls 90% of the market and firm B > > controls 10% of the market. Artificially low prices cost the > > big firm nine times as much as the small firm. Under > > capitalism, the small company can duke it out on equal > > terms with the big firm, and with great regularity, > > that is exactly what they do. > > Sometimes. And sometimes they don't. Sometimes half-a-dozen big boys just > gang up on the smallest. > > Anyway, your example ignores cross-subsidy whcih is the usal way to do > this. > > And bigger companies precisely *do* have a financial advantage over small > - they can borrow money at lower rates and they have more ways of hedging. > When they operate in more than one part of the world a certain amount of > hedging is built in. In general economies of scale aren't, but finance is > one area where they do work. > > There are more forms of competition than a price war Also if it comes to a > *legal* slugging match the total amount > > > >> Garbage (what we call rubbish over here) collection is > >> different again. It's not at all a nutural monopoly and > >> there is nothing stopping anyone offering to do it as a > >> business. But it is a natural for social ownership, > > > You mistake the political adventures of your local elite for > > universal laws. > > Just like you Americans do when you drivel on about guns in ways that most > other people either don't care about or find repulsive? > Anyway, I wasn't talking abou the elite but the majority. > > > In some parts of the world rubbish collection is private. > > Yes, I know that. In some parts of this coutnry also. Anywere genuinly > rural for a start. What's that got to do with what I said? > > > There is no "natural monopoly" that is not somewhere > > a private industry, and often it is a private industry in a > > place that is otherwise quite socialist. Public and private > > ownership reflect the accidents of politics and history more > > than they reflect the natural characteristics of the industry > > in dispute. > > I agree with this completely, but I don't think it invalidates anything we > said. You are confusing 3 quite different questions: > > - social ownership versus private ownership > - competition versus monopoly > - free trade versus protection > > Ken Brown > >

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