December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

Re: puff pieces vs tough crypto issues (Re: Singapore TOILET ALERT)
by Ariel Glenn 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Kent Crispin writes: >They could wave around TIS's products (designed by noted cypherpunk >Carl Ellison, I believe), or NorTel's Entrust, just as well. Hell, in >a few months they may be able to wave around Adam Backs CDR product, >which also facilitates GAK...[deleted] sure, but PGP has a certain name recognition that appears to extend beyond the computing business community; ask your average cs student what PGP is and they'll have heard of it *and* its reputation. Ask them about Entrust and see if you get the same result. (I could do that here with my managers as a demo. :-) Now figure out what your representatives in Congress know: even less. So, PGP gets cited by Congress as an example, and the other corporations building in GAK or who have signed on to get that good export license for DES don't. Ariel Glenn ariel(a)columbia.edu

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Re: PGP, Inc.--What were they thinking?
by Phillip M. Hallam-Baker 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

I should point out before starting that I now work for Verisign. This following personal opinion however and may not reflect any corporate policy that may or may not exist. I can understand the pressures on PGP to support key escrow. When I designed the Shen trust system for the Web I allowed for an escrow facility for much the same reasons that have been cited. If it was not for the unrelenting pressure from the US government to support GAK I am sure that commercial escrow would be a checkbox item. The problem is that as long as the pressure is there any step towards commercial escrow is also a step towards GAK. The problem with PGP's move is that it is the first significant break by the Internet software provider community. This will make it much easier for Netscape or Microsoft to cave in. It will also build the pressure on them. I wonder what would happen to Bills problem with the DoJ if he had a sudden change of heart. Somehow I don't see Netscape and Microsoft holding the line on GAK if PGP are happily exporting their product and grabbing market share. I really did not expect Phil Zimmerman to be the first to blink. I also don't understand it from the corporate perspective. PGP may be picking up some business in the corporate market but at the cost of alienating a significant part of the hacker community which has been his best supporter up till now. I would think his best strategy would have been to build on this customer base rather than sell it out at the first opportunity. If Phil Z. wants to get into the Enterprise market he is going to have to start speaking their language. Most companies today are looking for open standards. PGP may have been the de facto security solution three years ago but the reality today is several million copies of Comminicator and Explorer with S/MIME built in. If you are prepared to load certs manually for each person you communicate with you can even use the Web of trust model with S/MIME. Its easier if you can rely on a CA. I probably don't have to remind many people on this list that few people make security a priority although they are prepared to do so if it has little impact on them personally. I really don't want to get into a standards flamewar, the point I'm making is that this is a bigger issue in the Enterprise market than key escrow at this point. Phil claims to have an RSA license, if he wants to go after the enterprise market he can support S/MIME. Phill

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Use crypto, face a death squad
by pgut001＠cs.auckland.ac.nz 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

There have been various rumours and comments over the past few years that the use of crypto in certain countries (Syria, Iraq, possibly China) is very dangerous for the end user, but very little actual evidence to substantiate this. About a week ago I got some evidence (well, something better than the usual rumours) on the situation with using crypto in Iraq which people might find interesting. I was talking to someone who worked for a large multinational corporation which maintains a comprehensive directory of who to contact in each country they operate in (basically every country on earth, this was before the gulf war so Iraq was included) for any kind of emergency. This consists of a huge file of data intended to cover every imaginable type of situation. Included in the information on Iraq was a comment to the effect that you should never, ever use any form of encryption when sending messages to the contact people there. He can't remember the exact details any more, but the implication was that any encrypted messages sent to them would result in them quietly disappearing. Since this was a very big company with a lot of sensitive information which it would go to great lengths to protect, I would assume they had very good reasons for advising against the use of crypto in this instance. Peter.

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Re: PGP, Inc.--What were they thinking? (fwd)
by Jim Choate 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Forwarded message: > Date: Wed, 22 Oct 1997 19:57:59 -0600 > From: TruthMonger <tm(a)dev.null> > Subject: Re: PGP, Inc.--What were they thinking? > *Starts* eavesdropping? Where you been, Bubba? > When a Company has the 'right' to wiretap you, search you, and make > you piss in a jar, as well as having their own armed forces monitoring > you and patrolling your workplace, the main difference between them > and the government is that the corporation usually doesn't pretend > to allow you to vote. This is plain and simple bullshit. There are a variety of differences between a government and what they can do by general charter in a democracy and a company which operates on specific contracts. > TruthMonger ParanoiaMonger is more like it. ____________________________________________________________________ | | | The financial policy of the welfare state requires that there | | be no way for the owners of wealth to protect themselves. | | | | -Alan Greenspan- | | | | _____ 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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Trip to SF/Bay Area around November 24, cypherpunk meeting?
by Declan McCullagh 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

I'm thinking of spending a few days in the Bay Area in about a month, maybe the week of Thanksgiving. My S.O., a cypherpunkish Net and telecommunications lawyer here in DC, seems likely to join me. I'd love to come to a Bay Area cypherpunk meeting if there are any then, and spend some time with folks out there. Any plans to have one around Nov 24-27? This is more of a pleasure than a business trip, though I'll write an article if there are any interesting developments on the crypto-front. (Any suggestions on places to stay?) -Declan

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Proof IE4 not an OS, was Re: Bill Gates, the Bully Savior
by James Love 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Nifty comment by Michael McMain on JavaLobbyCafe(a)iceworld.org list: -------------------------- A friend at work made an interesting point about MS's claim that IE4 is simply an OS extension and not an application. All the DA has to do is turn on a Power Mac, start IE4, turn to MS and say "So what other parts of your OS run on the Macintosh exactly?".

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DC cypherpunks party on Sunday, November 2
by Declan McCullagh 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

A DC cypherpunk working meeting and party is tentatively scheduled for Sunday, November 2. The party is open to all, including non-cypherpunks and even (especially?) NSA spooks. (I somehow got suckered into organizing this portion.) Folks who showed up to my party and the cypherpunk meeting before it last month remember that Marc Rotenberg and his wife at that time volunteered to host the next one. Their home is near the National Cathedral in NW Washington, DC. About a 20 minute walk from the Woodley Park Metro, lots of parking. Special guests likely will include Peter Neumann and Simon Davies. Details forthcoming. -Declan

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(Fwd from f-c) Note from PGP employee on MRK
by Declan McCullagh 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

>X-POP3-Rcpt: declan(a)relay.pathfinder.com >Subject: Re: PGP, Inc.--What were they thinking? >Date: Wed, 22 Oct 97 20:38:14 -0400 >x-sender: Jamie-McCarthy.org(a)mm.mailbank.com >From: Jamie McCarthy <jamie(a)mccarthy.org> >To: <fight-censorship(a)vorlon.mit.edu> >cc: "Jason Bobier" <jason(a)pgp.com> >Mime-Version: 1.0 >Sender: owner-fight-censorship(a)vorlon.mit.edu >X-Loop: fight-censorship(a)vorlon.mit.edu >X-FC-URL: Fight-Censorship is at http://www.eff.org/~declan/fc/ >X-FC-URL: To join send "subscribe" to fight-censorship-request(a)vorlon.mit.edu > >A friend of mine by the name of Jason Bobier <jason(a)pgp.com> happens >to work at PGP, Inc. I'll preface his comments by pointing out that >I'm sure he doesn't speak for the company in any way. > >> Unfortunately these people just don't get it. Corporations refused >> to buy 5.0 because it did not have any way for the corps to get at >> email encrypted to their employees. There are some very legitimate >> uses of this, such as when an employee dies and someone else has >> to take over for them. >> >> Without corps buying the product, there is no PGP, Inc., and thus >> no dedication of resources to the production of PGP. This leads us >> back to the floundering state of development that PGP was in >> before 5.0. >> >> They also don't seem to realize that you always have the ability >> to remove the MRK from your list of recipients. >> >> Sometimes I really feel like screaming at these people. _All_ of >> the developers at PGP are personal privacy zealots and no one >> likes the idea of the MRK. That is why we refuse to make them >> required. It is also why there still are freeware and personal >> versions of the product. I wish they would just realize that we >> aren't some evil group of people that are solely plotting how to >> make the most money off of this. Most everyone at PGP has >> internalized personal privacy as a cause (actually most had it >> before they joined PGP). >> >> *sigh* OK, enough ranting. Feel free to quote various parts of >> this if you feel like responding to the list. >> >> Jason > > >-- > Jamie McCarthy new email => jamie(a)mccarthy.org > homepage: http://www.absence.prismatix.com/jamie/ > fan of: http://www.nizkor.org/ >

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by newsglob＠tnlb.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

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Re: Technical Description of PGP 5.5
by William H. Geiger III 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- In <3.0.2.32.19971022210316.00727944(a)netcom10.netcom.com>, on 10/22/97 at 09:03 PM, Lucky Green <shamrock(a)netcom.com> said: >At 07:12 AM 10/15/97 -0700, Kent Crispin wrote: >>Correct me if I'm wrong, but this seems to imply that the CMR fields >>in the key structure are really just a convenience -- if PGP, Inc. >>didn't write an smtp filter that enforced a CMR key, someone else >>(say a firewall vendor) could do so easily, defining whatever >>relationship between keys they wanted. >Anybody with half a brain, a copy of perl, and the PGP 5.0 source from >http://www.pgpi.com/ could write a similar filter in a matter of hours. I made this point at the very begining. Source code is not even needed, all one needs to know is the encryption & signature packet formats to be able to pull the keyID's. >I am going to install PGP's SMTP filter on my box. To make it impossible >to accidentally send unencrypted mail to certain people. :-) I already have this inplace as a Rexx script on my E-Mail client. :)) >>To make that a bit stronger, it seems like *any* model that uses >>persistent encryption keys essentially enables CMR-like functionality >>in a smtp filter -- it could be done using pgp 2.6. My set-up works with 2.6->5.0. It's just not persistent keys but the ability to encrypt to multiple recipiants. Of cource even without these features this functionality can implemented by moveing encryption to the server. Only signing & decryption need to be on the client machines. It may even be more efficent in a corporate enviroment to do so. There are performance questions in a high volumn enviroment but I have developed techniques that greatly enhance the perfomance of PGP when working with large keyrings. I know C2-Net has done work with their Stronghold product for supporting hardware based encryption to improve performance on high volumn servers, it would be intresting to see how well these cards would lend themselves to PGP. >Correct. But this isn't going to stop people from complaining. >PGP 5.5 is considerably better than PGP 5.0. The LDAP support alone is >reason to upgrade. The UI is improved and if you don't want to use >message recovery, just don't turn it on. I will agree that 5.5 is an improvement but to be honest I am not that crazy about it. Not that all of it is PGP's fault alot has to do with the OS it runs on. NT just isn't ready for prime time. I have my own GUI I designed for PGP on the OS/2 platform so I am a little biased in that area. :) - -- - --------------------------------------------------------------- William H. Geiger III http://www.amaranth.com/~whgiii Geiger Consulting Cooking With Warp 4.0 Author of E-Secure - PGP Front End for MR/2 Ice PGP & MR/2 the only way for secure e-mail. OS/2 PGP 2.6.3a at: http://www.amaranth.com/~whgiii/pgpmr2.html - --------------------------------------------------------------- -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.3a Charset: cp850 Comment: Registered_User_E-Secure_v1.1b1_ES000000 iQCVAwUBNE7+aY9Co1n+aLhhAQFhwgP/SdJSeNgbG/SRgR15gwtb22QFOF/VBEL6 K047yXYEwJ/2Vd/zEwJ8AU/6ycVawtGMFpIGyLQHG91ATVear7CSHmsa6KMPH7EC dtK2bbEQlpJsgGbQpXNt6gHOuKYRZIXp65XIlEvu8qW3CJLUGz+RTNnKOAIFkUe2 JWWYRj7N5Wc= =xwCN -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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