December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

Swiss Consortium Chooses RPK Fast Public Key Cryptosystem for Next Generation Wireless Electronic Transactions
by Jack Oswald 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Also see recent press coverage in Infoworld: RPK announces deal for fast crypto with Swiss consortium http://www.infoworld.com/cgi-bin/displayStory.pl?97059.wrpk.htm SET 2.0 on the way http://www.infoworld.com/cgi-bin/displayArchive.pl?/97/16/t04-16.1.htm PRESS RELEASE For Release May 19, 1997 RPK, Inc.: Jack Oswald, +1 408.479.7874, joswald(a)rpkusa.com, http://www.rpk.co.nz ADESA, Inc.: Maurice Jaccard,+41 22.910.29.14, maujacca(a)iprolink.ch Swiss Consortium Chooses RPK Fast Public Key Cryptosystem for Next Generation Wireless Electronic Transactions Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (EPFL) and ADESA, Inc. introduce HAWK VLSI cryptography-enhanced processor San Francisco, CA - RPK, Inc. announced today that a consortium of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (EPFL) and ADESA, Inc., a Swiss application specific integrated circuit (ASIC) design firm have chosen the RPK Fast Public Key Cryptosystem to provide strong cryptographic security in a next generation wireless electronic transactions application. At the same time, EPFL and ADESA unveiled HAWK a new generation cryptography-enhanced microprocessor specifically designed for use in high speed/low power embedded applications. "The RPK encryption technology won the design review after an extensive evaluation of all existing cryptosystems based on well known and understood cryptographic techniques," said Maurice Jaccard, Managing Director of ADESA, Inc. "With RPK there are no compromises. We get uncompromised security, high speed and low cost of implementation." "RPK is a strong encryption technology based on well know and trusted cryptographic techniques," said Jack Oswald, President and CEO of RPK Inc. "Having RPK chosen by the Swiss for this breakthrough electronic-commerce application is the strongest endorsement we could possibly achieve for the RPK technology." Wireless Electronic Transactions Application The collaboration of RPK, EPFL and ADESA has resulted in a prototype application that promises to become the "wallet of the future". This new wireless electronic transaction application may take the form of a credit card, a watch or a key chain and will sport features analogous to the leather wallets used today by billions of people worldwide. Early designs of the system allow the user to withdraw and hold cash in multiple currencies, as well as, purchase and hold vouchers for hotels, planes and car rentals all through the use of wireless communications technology. Officials in charge of the project envision that such devices could also become a personal key chain for gaining access to motor vehicles, offices and dwellings, in addition to traditional credit card uses. ADESA concluded that performance of the RPK implementation in the prototype far exceeded existing smart card implementations based on the RSA and other algorithms. The RPK technology performs the necessary encryption functions in less than 10 milliseconds using an 823-bit key compared to the best performing RSA-based equivalents that require greater than 100 milliseconds to perform the same type of function using a much weaker 512-bit key. The application is not limited to 823-bit keys. The design of the system, based on the new HAWK processor is flexible and can accommodate and process various sized keys, smaller or larger than 823 bits based on downloadable parameters. ADESA officials explained that the simplicity of the RPK algorithm makes it much simpler to implement than the popular RSA approach. It was RPK's simplicity, offering a much faster and cheaper solution while providing even higher security, that drove the choice over RSA for this application. About the RPK Fast Public Key Cryptosystem RPK is a relatively new public key cryptosystem that is based on mathematics widely used in cryptography today. It was designed to be immediately commercially viable without the years of study that a new area of mathematics normally requires, such as the Elliptic Curve Cryptosystem (ECC). The source of the security for RPK is the same as that of Diffie-Hellman key exchange, a widely used and well studied cryptographic technique. RPK offers real advantages for high speed networking, SmartCard, wireless communication applications as well as high volume software processes such as credit card transactions. RPK has at its core an invention called a Mixture Generator. In the preferred implementation, three fairly long linear feedback shift registers are used. This state machine has two modes of operation. One that uses the shift registers for exponentiation and the other as a generator of a random stream of bits used in a combining phase for the actual encryption. Effectively, RPK allows for the amortization of two "costly" exponentiations over the entire length of a message because the core engine is used to initially establish a secure state of the machine and then switches modes to perform very high speed encryption. This has been referred to as a paradigm shift where the operation of encryption does not require the costly calculations that an RSA or even an ECC implementation would require for each block of data that is about the size of the key. This mechanism can also be implemented in silicon quite efficiently such that at high strength it is much cheaper to produce than alternative technologies. Finally, it is also possible to create a Mixture Generator that is made up of Elliptic Curve groups which would provide a similarly speedy and efficient initialization mode that could still produce high speed encryption as noted above. About the HAWK VLSI Crypto Processor The HAWK VLSI cryptography-enhanced processor is the result of more than three years of research and development conducted at the EPFL in Lausanne, Switzerland in the area of high speed compression and encryption. The HAWK processor will benefit most cryptography implementations but is particularly well suited for use with RPK. "The HAWK processor is the most innovative approach that we have seen yet for implementing cryptographic processes in silicon," said Bill Raike, Chief Technology Officer for RPK Inc. and inventor of the RPK fast public key cryptosystem. "HAWK breaks the barrier for high speed, low cost, low power and high strength encryption for embedded systems." Background RPK, Inc. is a supplier of next generation fast public key encryption technology. RPK was invented and originally patented in New Zealand. The company is therefore unaffected by restrictive U.S. export rules. RPK has been successfully exported to virtually all countries of the world at high strength. The company's headquarters are based in San Francisco, California, USA, with an offshore research and development center located outside of Auckland, New Zealand. http://www.rpk.co.nz ADESA, Inc. is a leading ASIC design firm based in Geneva, Switzerland with expertise in embedded and cryptographic applications. EPFL is a leading teaching and research technical institute in Lausanne, Switzerland. The school is known for its work in advanced processor design. ***

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Re: Public Key Break Paper
by Hal Finney 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Peter Gutmann, pgut001(a)cs.auckland.ac.nz, writes: > (I had another look at the unbalanced RSA proposal in the Autumn 1995 > CryptoBytes as I was trying to find the above article, did anyone ever do > anything with unbalanced RSA or was it just left as a curiosity?). The unbalanced RSA idea, by Shamir, was to choose primes p and q with p considerably less than q, e.g. p = 500 bits, q = 4500 bits. With numbers of this size, the difficulty of factoring a 5000 bit n = pq is still just as hard as if p and q were both about 2500 bits. Then, you only encrypt numbers < p, and it turns out that you can do the decryption mod p rather than mod n, so decrypt is much, much faster than for a conventional 5000 bit modulus. There have been some attacks on this. The main limitation is that the encrypted number is supposed to be < p. There is a chosen-cyphertext attack, taking an x a few bits larger than p, encrypting it, and asking for the resulting decryption. This produces x mod p, which combined with x can be used to find p. Another attack along these lines is to guess x about the size of p, send a legitimate message based on it, then watch the receiver's behavior to try to determine whether the message had decrypted correctly. If x < p it would decrypt OK, otherwise it would decrypt to garbage. Repeat this to narrow down an interval containing p. I believe these were presented by Quisquater at the Crypto 96 rump session, although I think he was referring in part to some attacks which had already been discovered. Hal

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Disneyfication, Privatization of the Public Domain... Turn the Planet into a Strip-Mall and Theme Park.....
by mf＠mediafilter.org 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Disneyfication, Privatization of the Public Domain... Turn the Planet into a Strip-Mall and Theme Park..... Hear the realaudio netcast of Infinity Factory Hosted by Richard Metzger of Disinfo.com talking with Paul Garrin about name.space and the future of the net. originally netcast live on May 11, 1997. (this is a realaudio link, so be prepared...) http://www.pseudo.com/archives/infinityMay11_1997_0848pm.ram name.space: http://name.space.xs2.net DisInfo: http://www.disinfo.com

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PGP version 5 source code?
by lucifer＠dhp.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Will PGP Inc make the source code for the new version of pgp available?

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Jim Bell 2
by John Young 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

The Oregonian, May 20, 1997, Metro Section P-1: IRS says suspect discussed sabotage An affidavit says a Vancouver man arrested Friday talked of sabotaging Portland's 9-1-1 computer and Bull Run water By John Painter, Jr., of the Oregonian staff Vancouver, Wash. -- A Vancouver man arrested Friday by Internal Revenue agents discussed sabotaging the computers in Portland's 9-1-1 center and talked about using a botulism toxin to contaminate the Bull Run water supply, a federal agent said Monday. James Dalton Bell, 38, appeared Monday afternoon in U.S. District Court in Tacoma and was accused in an 18-page affidavit of scheming to overthrow the U.S. government. U.S. Magistrate J. Kelly Arnold set Friday for a detention and preliminary hearing. The government has asked that Bell be held without bail because he is a danger to the community. Bell, who describes himself as a libertarian, has a history of tax disputes with the IRS, which says Bell "has a large, outstanding unpaid balance." Bell is the author of "Assassination Politics," a 10-part essay about a risk-free way of rewarding assassins who successfully kill designated public officials. The essay has circulated on the Internet. The strategy, which Bell says he wrote and posted for discussion, involves uses of encryption to predict and confirm assassinations and electronic digital cash to pay for the killings. Federal agents raided Bell's Vancouver home April 1. He is accused of obstructing government officers and employees and using false Social Security numbers. But government agents think he is far more dangerous than the charges suggest, the affidavit filed by IRS Inspector Phillip G. Scott said. Scott's affidavit said Bell, who has a chemistry degree from the Massaschusetts Institute of Technology, had discussions about using carbon fiber particles to attack computer systems with Greg Daly, a friend who is an electronics specialist overseeing Portland's 9-1-1 communications center. "Daly stated that he and Bell had 'laughed' about attacking the 9-1-1 center with fiber," the affidavit said. Daly also told IRS agents that he had hypothetical discussions with Bell about contaminating water supplies and about making botulism toxin from green beans, the affidavit said. In the April 17 and 18 interviews with IRS agents, Daly said that as part of his job, he "has keys and direct access to the Portland Bull Run water treatment facility." Daly said Monday that the conversations that he and Bell had were merely "intellectual fun-and-games discussions" between old friends who enjoy technical things. "There's a difference between reasonable freedom of speech and unreasonable probability of attack," Daly said. "Standing around and flapping our lips about how it would be funny is way different from even contemplating actual attack." Daly described his friend of 15 years as a "bit of an odd unit" but never dangerous and never serious about attacking the 9-1-1 systems or the Bull Run watershed. "I'd rat him out in a heartbeat for that," Daly said. Thursday, IRS agents searched the home of Robert East, a merchant radioman and a friend of Bell's. Among items seized was 3-foot length of carbon fiber. The affidavit said East told agents that he and Bell had discussed "the possibility of putting the fibers down the air vents of a federal building" to kill its computers and about using the fiber against the IRS. However, Bell has described himself as a "man of ideas, not action," and East said Bell was a "talker, not a doer." [End] Thanks to John Painter.

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Hey, what does this mean?
by Tim May 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Anybody know what this means? ARLINGTON, Va. (Reuter) - David Aaron, a Special Ambassador to an internationoal organization known as the OECD, has been arrested following a pre-dawn raid on his home in the posh Lake Barcroft section of Arlington, near Washington, D.C. According to Arlington detective Tom DeGongue, Aaron was charged Monday in Arlington Circuit Court with one felony count of possession of bomb-making instructions and one misdemeanor count of resisting arrest. According to DeGongue, there were indications found in the home that Aaron had also talked about nuclear weapons and terrorism with others, which could open the door for more charges to be filed. Speaking for Mr. Aaron, his attorney Charles L. Klausen stated that the alleged bomb-instructions were related to research Mr.Aaron had done for novels about terrorists and nuclear weapons, including "State Scarlet" and "Agents of Influence." "Mr. Aaron was legally entitled to read the materials allegedly containing bomb-making instructions," said Mr. Clausen. "In fact, the books seized and the tape-recordings of notes may also be protected by the Special Rights of Journalists Act of 1986," he added. Mr. Aaron could not be reached for comment. He was heard by several witnesses, including memmbers of the tabloid community invited in by the Arlington detectives, to say, "This is outrageous. I'm a well-respected member of the Cosmos Club and the Bohemian Club! I am establishing the world's crypto policy and I fly to capitals around the world. I'm not some two-bit militia member like that guy arrested out in Portland for talking about sabotaging computers! What do you think this is, Soviet Russia?"

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For Whom the Bell Tolls
by mpd＠netcom.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

The current troubles for Jim Bell, and the representation in government affidavits that casual speculation with friends over infrastructure vulnerabilities constituted some sort of conspiracy to do harm, should make all Cypherpunks nervous. Indeed, such discussions about vulnerabilities and risks have been a central theme of this mailing list over the years. I hope I don't wake up tomorrow morning to headlines in the Seattle Times reading "Atomic Force Microscope Central in Duvos Smartcard Plot" or some equally silly thing, based on an out-of-context grep of the Web archives. It is unfortunate that in a country which advertises itself as some sort of bastion of free speech, one must constantly guard ones speech to make sure that it contains no snippets suitable for an inflammatory sound byte on the evening news. Just another of the many manifestations of "The Policeman Inside." -- Mike Duvos $ PGP 2.6 Public Key available $ mpd(a)netcom.com $ via Finger. $

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Re: The USA is the world's biggest terrorist state
by Peter Trei 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Tim may wrote: >[much over-the-top exaggeration of the eevull you-ess gubmint > deleted, then he gets personal:] > I noticed with interest this morning that Peter Trei had an interesting > thought experiment for implementing a variant of assassination politics. > Interesting because not much more than a week or two ago Peter was making > the point that I seemed to have gone off the deep end, or at least was no > longer writing "thoughtful" essays and/or was not focussing on what he > wanted to read about (a hopeless task, of course, to tune one's writings to > the interests of others). > Peter has now thrown in with the "let's see how AP might work." His > variant, "Who do we want to see hit with a bus?," is of course essentially > identical to AP. No, it is not. The above paragraph totally misconstrues what I posted, and I am (again) putting it into the record with this post that I oppose all forms of premeditated killing. What I posted was an idea for a POLL, nothing more. There was no suggestion that of any kind of action or incentive - no advocacy of murder, no anonymous cash, no payoffs, nothing. This is NOT 'implementing a variant of assassination politics', and I take strong exception to your implication that I would support such a thing. I really hate it when you misread, misconstrue, and misquote other people. You really seem to have a very tenuous love of truth and accuracy when falsehood will serve your purpose better (if you think that sounds like the tactics of a certain large organization you dislike, you're right.) Let's take just one paragraph from your latest screed. Can you back up all or even most of the points in it? I don't think so. You wrote: >The United States of America is the world's leading terrorist state. Matter of opinion. I suspect that Libya, Iraq, and Iran are better candidates. If you include internal terrorism, add China, North Korea, and many others ahead of the US. >From mining harbors in countries with democratically elected >governments... I've got only a quibble with this one. We did mine Managua, ie one harbor in one country. While this was clearly unacceptable behaviour, it does demonstrate your tendency to play fast and loose with numbers. >...to financing the blowing up of airliners by dissident >groups Really? Which ones? Be specific. Which airlines, which flights? What were the circumstances in each case? You're using plurals again, so you'd better have multiple instances. >...to assassinating dozens of leaders of countries the USA wished >to shape in different directions, the USA is Terror State Numero Uno. Dozens? As in 12+? Again, which ones? When? Any since the (Carter?) exec order forbidding attacks against heads of state? Tim, can you back up your words with facts, or are your recent posts "... full of sound and fury, signifying nothing."? There are sufficient *real* problems with US policy that your exaggerations are counter-productive. Peter Trei Disclaimer: My posts represent my own opinions, no one elses.

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Metal Virus
by mpd＠netcom.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

With all this talk of germ warfare and carbon fiber attacks, I started thinking of another useful technology which made its appearance a number of years ago, and promptly vanished from sight. Not so long ago, some university scientists invented a catalyst which, even in microscopic amounts, would prevent formation of the contiguous oxide film which protects metals from rapidly reacting with the oxygen in the air. They called a press conference to demonstrate their new invention, which was carried on CNN, and after placing one drop of their magic solution on a metal plate, held it in front of the cameras as white power erupted from various points on its surface and it promptly crumbled to pieces. Now I found this quite an interesting demonstration, and much to my non-surprise, this invention was never mentioned in the media again. A few years later, in an article for Omni Magazine on scientifically advanced technologies for knocking out critical infrastructure, G. Gordon Liddy made mention of a "Classified Liquid Metal Embrittlement Technology," in which a liquid catalyst could be concealed in a object like a magic marker, and applied in small amounts to structurally significant components of aircraft, which would later undergo catastrophic structural failure in fight. This sounded to me a whole lot like the stuff the scientists had shown on CNN in the press conference. Anyone remember this? Would any chemists in the audience care to hazard a guess as to the chemical composition of said catalyst and the mechanism of its interaction with the target to be destroyed? -- Mike Duvos $ PGP 2.6 Public Key available $ mpd(a)netcom.com $ via Finger. $

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Disneyfication, Privatization of the Public Domain... Turn the Planet into a Strip-Mall and Theme Park..... Corection!
by mf＠mediafilter.org 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Sorry if you received this twice! the link to the realaudio has been corrected! Disneyfication, Privatization of the Public Domain... Turn the Planet into a Strip-Mall and Theme Park..... Hear the realaudio netcast of Infinity Factory Hosted by Richard Metzger of Disinfo.com talking with Paul Garrin about name.space and the future of the net. originally netcast live on May 11, 1997. (this is a realaudio link, so be prepared...) http://www.pseudo.com/netcast/shows/infinity/archives/infinityMay11_1997_084 8pm.ram name.space: http://name.space.xs2.net DisInfo: http://www.disinfo.com

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