December 2003 - cypherpunks-legacy

Interactive Week exclusive - Clinton Admin. to announce new Crypto regs. this PM
by Will Rodger 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Something you might find interesting.... By Will Rodger Washington Bureau Cheif Inter@ctive Week The US government will announce later today that will soon lift controls on technology crucial to doing business over the Internet, White House advisor Ira Magaziner said yesterday evening. Under plans expected to be outlined at a noontime press briefing today, the federal government will require that producers of specialized, narrowly focused data scrambling products submit only to one-time government approval before they sell powerful encryption products abroad. Current policy requires case-by-case approval in most instances. "Basically it will say that for basic financial and electronic applications there will be no export restrictions and no requirement for key recovery," Magaziner said. US Undersecretary of Commerce William Reinsch is expected to give details of the plan. Reinsch could not be reached for comment. Computer industry executives and public interest groups said the new arrangement, though far short of deregulating all encryption, was a step in the right direction. "This is evidence that the administration acknowledges that manufacturers of foreign encryption products do exist," said Peter Harter, public policy counsel at Netscape Communications Corp. "Their policy has put American industry in the back seat and now were trying to catch up." David Banisar, policy analyst at the Washington-based Electronic Privacy Information Center, called the move a "small step forward." Nonetheless, "it still doesnt reach the needs for secure e-mail or other purposes," he said. Computer software and hardware eligible for decontrol under the proposed regulations must fit several criteria, said Kawika Daguio, a public affairs specialist with the American Bankers Association who helped hammer out an agreement for the new regulations. .Though products designed for use by the general public may be unlimited in the strength of the encryption techniques they employ, they must also be strictly limited in use, he said. Software written for home banking, for instance, must be usable only for bank transactions and not easily modified for general use. Most programs handed out by banks for PC banking at home fit that criteria, he said. Programs that use the industry SET standard for credit card purchases over the Internet should easily meet Commerce Department criteria, too, since the SET standard encrypts only those data essential to making online purchases; the limited uses of the standard render it all but useless for general use. Visa, MasterCard and American Express developed the standard. "Id expect programs written with SET to get very rapid approval - within weeks," Daguio said. In addition, US companies will have leeway to export any kind of encryption to any bank as long as that encryption is used only for legitimate, internal bank functions. Products designed for merchant-to-merchant transactions without a bank in between would still be subject to stricter controls, including use of weak software routines that make decoding by law enforcement easy, or deposit of decoding keys with law enforcement bodies prior to export. Commerce Department regulations will spell out details this month or next, Daguio said. Though more sweeping in nature than past government regulations, the US banking industry has long enjoyed more freedom to use powerful encryption technologies abroad than other industries. Successive administrations have granted banks that leeway since by definition they must have greater safeguards over employee behavior than all but a handful of industries. In addition, financial applications have long been easier to design for export since they typically require encryption of only a few standard data fields. If sufficiently limited in design, the reasoning goes, they pose no threat to law enforcement concerned about smugglers or terrorists who may want to evade detection by law enforcement. The government and the computer industry have for years been locked in disputes over the relative importance of encryption technologies and their potential for misuse. Since encryption encodes sensitive information like credit card numbers, voice traffic over public networks and anything else that can be converted into an electronic stream of ones and zeroes, proponents of electronic commerce have insisted the technology must be widely deployed to assure the security of computer networks worldwide. Absent US encryption exports, they claim, American companies will soon lose their leadership role in a technology crucial to the countrys competitiveness. Federal officials, on the other hand, have said export of the technology threatens global security, since terrorists and criminals in outlaw states like Libya and North Korea could easily use the technology to defeat wiretaps and data searches increasingly prized by law enforcement and national security agencies. In response, they demand that exports of powerful encryption include so-called key recovery - a method by which law enforcement can gain access to the encryption keys used to encode messages. Many public interest groups have condemned the plans, however, saying such a transfer of power to law enforcement threatens to usher in an era of ubiquitous and illegal eavesdropping. Several bills pending in Congress would do away with nearly all controls. Reinsch was expected to testify at congressional hearings on one of the bills this morning. -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.2 iQEVAwUBM3HngkcByjT5n+LZAQHL+Af/WdDoOuORps0gkZQmI4B6mgY63HeTzKZH kW19knlqU6SMC/GSdFrZLiWZhkDec2/wLzq57wdzlPjdPd+5wCvTYWmJAX68Kf6b 9g6cm3AbhZSKmaOtUtwOmUwAtuS5DPaGiPejAc9716K0/U9+0YBNKMZ/qVYAhrLc yR4yxLqpXd68zhirYIxtjHcB1fDzRO6F91stxvvDsg2bg2pPvLidWOBoknMZmCQt ALV5Z1yuik6tNOIPx+4ty7kWMMIQ0E3DqVKPxVAbFchCTohcee55U6Pmg3pbYtVg rrhYr4W8s/juv/9JrVa99+usyt/ohe+N3HcYtJ5WVLF2ED3UT/YDBg== =Q3/z -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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mailing list
by Rory Picard 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

james(a)accesshub.com

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IP: Crypto News Flash (fwd)
by Bill Stewart 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

>From: "Michael Froomkin - U.Miami School of Law" > <froomkin(a)LAW.MIAMI.EDU> >Subject: IP: Crypto News Flash (fwd) >To: CYBERIA-L(a)LISTSERV.AOL.COM > >Amazing if true. Part of my amazement is that Sen. Kerry, who I think of >as somewhat moderate if not somewhat liberal, would be a party to this. ... >---------- Forwarded message ---------- >Date: Thu, 08 May 1997 12:51:01 -0400 >From: David Farber <farber(a)cis.upenn.edu> >Subject: IP: Crypto News Flash > > >CyberWire Dispatch // Copyright (c) 1997 // May 1997 > >Jacking in from the "Take My Crypto, Please" port: > >Washington, DC--A new anti-crypto bill now floating around Washington >would place restrictions on the import of strong crypto products into the >U.S. and possibly outlaw the use of non-government approved encryption >products. > >During a morning briefing at the Capitol, Sen. Bob Kerry >(D-Neb.), talking about his impending new crypto bill, which he will call >the "Secure Public Interest Act" said that the bill WILL include >IMPORT restrictions on crypto software. > >Incredible. We've heard rumblings the folks behind crypto strangling >efforts would jump to import controls on crypto software if key escrow >weren't widely adopted. > >Restricting imports, of course, is a kind of de facto domestic >restriction as well. It means that companies can't import strong >foreign made crypto products to use in their worldwide offices, forcing >them to use the govt. mandated weaker crypto products. > >Next step: outlawing some domestic crypto products. > >Kerry, when asked if there would be restrictions on private encryption, >said "I don't envision that at the outset, but it might end up in the bill." > >Meeks out... > > # Thanks; Bill # Bill Stewart, +1-415-442-2215 stewarts(a)ix.netcom.com # You can get PGP outside the US at ftp.ox.ac.uk/pub/crypto/pgp # (If this is a mailing list, please Cc: me on replies. Thanks.)

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Encryption--RSA v. PGP
by Robert Hettinga 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

--- begin forwarded text MIME-version: 1.0 X-MIME-Autoconverted: from quoted-printable to 8bit by listserv.aol.com id LAA22230 Date: Thu, 8 May 1997 11:02:39 -0500 Reply-To: Law & Policy of Computer Communications <CYBERIA-L(a)LISTSERV.AOL.COM> Sender: Law & Policy of Computer Communications <CYBERIA-L(a)LISTSERV.AOL.COM> From: "Kevin J. Connolly" <kconnolly(a)EVW.COM> Subject: Encryption--RSA v. PGP To: CYBERIA-L(a)LISTSERV.AOL.COM -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- RSA Data Security, Inc. filed an action in the Superior Court of California, San Mateo County, against Pretty Good Privacy, Inc. PGP has been claiming that its license to distribute RSA-based encryption software is based on a chain running from Public Key Partners to Viacrypt, Inc. PGP acquired Viacrypt, Inc. in January 1996 and has been selling RSA-based encryption software for commercial use ever since. The complaint, filed by Tomlinson Zisko Morosoli & Maser, alleges that PGP's license is derived from a license to Lemcom, which in turn has been terminated. This might well mean the end of PGP. This would certainly be a bad outcome for security and freedom on the Internet. I will be following these developments and report to the list. It's ironic that RSA is doing this while complaining about PGP conduct as a freeloader. I doubt that public key encryption would be anywhere as notorious as it has become if it were not for Phil Zimmermannn's crusade; and I haven't noticed RSA offering to help with Phil's legal expenses. Kevin J. Connolly The opinions expressed in this communication are those of the author, not of Eaton & Van Winkle. This communication is not legal advice. If it were legal advice, it would be accompanied by an invoice. -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.2 iQCVAwUBM3HrGTQOqu5WyMfpAQFX7AP/T0R54+S05FqKJ+zZXVb1uCHMrPZmagEm aiW9Dfgwo/K3tXbkrbS0WEtCc8tZobXbL7fLOT82qzKvXehRsERILV2keeaXlAe7 WN5c66SjaWe/xGfLQ/8UAnzaBl6l+olG8gN2zxGatbLDcKuakP7j0LGRuzhTXAaG BOYGDUbsSAY= =VCFW -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- --- 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/

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El Gamal
by harka＠nycmetro.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- aba(a)dcs.ex.ac.uk wrote: >PGP has been standardising on El Gamal which is not covered by RSA's >patents, for precisely the reason that RSA Inc has a bad record as a >litigious patent worker. El Gamal is a variant of Diffie-Hellman, >and the patents on Diffie-Hellman are set to expire RSN (later this >year, Sept?) How does El Gamal compare functionally and security-wise to RSA and who developed it? >I think that the initial PGP products are using RSA, however I >understood PGP is moving to El Gamal, where RSA is due to be >relegated to a `for backwards compatibility only' feature. Is El Gamal used in the source for PGP 3.0? Ciao Harka -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.2 iQEVAwUBM3JpGjltEBIEF0MBAQFDfQf8CawUGU1ynDlmcmsloy7zsh5oQUhcxPSv Luy17oVmbWVeCWpCbqqiWFoRh1+QzBBc8Yfbb2/2LOw1KFyIq5lQ8Ly64JPuVMgV HUocUDnPE7Q18eVVXOfNyG6vg/s0PBRqREVrx1QWn37idPduMTg0TE/IHZqFVrso 3XdVroh41aX7qVnan2+nRnVCbrV9xMvNteWOUl/nADLHCAkoMl/eCcQVY/XSmFjc SsUbNNgCDBJlZhAwAI/CBLM7CBVt4okZQkdKeLNWsrm1tG2yha7vl/2AI6k1Y70H 2g1zTrhqK7q/rqkNL6DKyam/NZ1FKXtO0BsTLsV6KqmI7SnGN4UZXw== =f4Qu -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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We want to kiss you, NOW
by Shift Control 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

A is for Aardvark B is for Bite C is for the Cure D is for Dribble E is for Eurovision F is for Frog G is for Glasgow kiss H is for Halitosis I is for Implants J is for Judas K is for Kiss 'n' tell L is for Lips M is for Mistletoe N is for Necking O is for Osculation P is for Pucker Q is for the Queen R is for Radio stations S is for Snog T is for Tongue U is for Ulcer V is for Vampires W is for Wet X is for X Z is for Zit Shift Control is for kissing, in all its colours Shift Control is ready and waiting with a purse for you Shift Control is at www.shiftcontrol.com __________________________________________ Shift Control is produced by the Guardian's New Media Lab with help from Boddingtons and Stella Artois Dry To unsubscribe from this mailing list send e-mail to shiftcontrol-request(a)nml.guardian.co.uk with the following text in the body of the mail message: unsubscribe

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Mega Death
by John Young 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

White House press briefing May 8: Q Mike, Attorney General Reno today confirmed that the Justice Department is investigating the possibility of a high-level Israeli spy in the U.S. government. How is it going to impact relations with Israel at this point? MR. MCCURRY: No comment on that subject.

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[ADMIN] Stego in posts
by nobody＠huge.cajones.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

>> In a message dated 97-05-05 20:54:49 EDT, you write: >> >> << >> Write a guys/girls name here_______________ or say aloud. In 21 days he/she >> will show his/her love 4-U!! CAUTION! Any guy/girl who breaks this chain >> will have bad like w/ guy/girls 4-ever!!!!!!!!!!! >> Pass this on 10 times!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! >>

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Re: key recovery vs data backup
by Kent Crispin 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

On Wed, May 07, 1997 at 09:56:21PM -0700, Lucky Green wrote: > At 11:47 PM 5/7/97 -0400, Carl Ellison wrote: > >I was saying that if Sam needs to read my encrypted file/mail, then I should > >list Sam as a crypto-recipient. If Acme,Inc. needs to read my encrypted > >file/mail, then I should list Acme,Inc. as a crypto-recipient. > > > >There's no safe of keys. It's even simpler to explain to an executive. > > Several people on this list asked me to elaborate on my claim that KR is > not required. I doubt that I could put it more succinctly than Carl has in > his post. Unfortunately, it doesn't solve the problem at all. In fact it doesn't even address the problem. So much so that reading these replies makes me think that I am looking at different problem than you. So perhaps backing up to discuss the problem a bit would be helpful. I hope you will forgive me if this is old ground. The problem is key management for an organization. The keys are used to protect and authenticate data owned, not by any individual, but by an organization. Keys are generated for the organization's purposes, not the purposes of any individual. Furthermore, the individual privacy of an individual who works for an organization is not a necessary priority for the organization. Organizations are composed of many individuals, some of which may not share the goals of the organization, or who may indeed be inimical to the organization. And the members of an organization may vary widely in competence, personal responsibility, and so on. Thus, the members of an organization cannot be trusted to do the "right thing". [I am using "organization" in a loose sense, so that we can consider a business an organization, and an employee as a member of that organization.] In fact, in most cases, only a small fraction of the members of an organization care more about the welfare of the organization than about their personal welfare. So people will almost always be more concerned about their own personal data security than they will for that of an organization. This, coupled with difficulties of coordination and control, and the above conditions, means that in a global sense information security for an organization will always be difficult, regardless of the security of the crypto they use. For a moment consider the analogy with physical keys. Consider the key management problem of a moderate sized corporation that occupies a large office building. There are office keys, storeroom keys, supply room keys, conference room keys, bathroom keys, keys to filing cabinets -- there are *lots* of keys, lots of different delegations of authority involved. In many cases there is a "key czar", a "building coordinator" that hands out keys, and gets them back when someone changes offices or jobs. It *has* to be this way -- you can't rekey the entire building when a janitor quites. So, occasionally it is necessary to rekey a lock, but typically keys are just reused. Many office keys are designed to be difficult to casually duplicate, for this reason. Of course any key *can* be duplicated, but that's not really that important -- the building is full of employees during the day, and the night watchman checks each person that enters after normal hours. All these physical keys all fit locks that can be broken quite easily -- there is essentially *no* possibility of something valuable being lost behind a lock that cannot be broken. This is vastly different from cryptographic keys -- for all systems of interest, encryption represents locks that cannot be broken. Data behind a lost cryptographic key is gone forever. You can't call a locksmith or a safe cracker. It's really just gone. With this background, perhaps now you can see why I say that Carl's solution doesn't even address the problem. The problem is management of complexity. Carl says "encrypt to Acme Corp". Who in Acme Corp? What part of the organization that is Acme Corp is authorized to know this particular bit of information? Because some of the employees are idiots you want this built automatically into the application they are using for encryption/email/whatever. How does this software know what policy is appropriate for which employee? How is that policy distributed? What is the interface that allows a policy to be defined? How do you protect the policy definition from subversion? Contrast that with a key-safe model, where a copy of every encryption key is kept in a secure database. The encryption client software only talks to the key-safe when a new key is generated, over a cryptographically secure channel, of course. There is no policy the client has to know. The user encrypts freely without concern about who else should get copies. The organization knows that there is very little chance of data loss because of lost keys, and can use any policy it chooses to recover keys, from the company president's ad hoc whim to a carefully specified organization al security policy. Access to the key-safe is critical, of course, but it can be made very secure -- a special-purpose piece of hardware that requires passwords from n out of m key czars before access is granted, for example. Or the contents of the key safe can be encrypted via keys escrowed through a secret sharing mechanism -- Kent Crispin "No reason to get excited", kent(a)songbird.com the thief he kindly spoke... PGP fingerprint: B1 8B 72 ED 55 21 5E 44 61 F4 58 0F 72 10 65 55 http://songbird.com/kent/pgp_key.html

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Cryptography Short Course
by Robert Hettinga 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

--- begin forwarded text Date: Thu, 8 May 1997 22:09:58 -0400 (EDT) From: Christof Paar <christof(a)ece.WPI.EDU> To: DCSB <dcsb(a)ai.mit.edu> cc: Arlene Lowenstein <arlowenstein(a)jake.WPI.EDU> Subject: Cryptography Short Course MIME-Version: 1.0 Sender: bounce-dcsb(a)ai.mit.edu Precedence: bulk Reply-To: Christof Paar <christof(a)ece.WPI.EDU> WPI's Continuing Education Program is offering a 5-day short course in cryptography. I will be teaching the course from August 4-8, in Waltham. Waltham is 10 miles West of Boston. Please find below a detailed course description and a registration form. If you have any question about course contents etc., please feel free to contact me by email. For questions regarding registration, contact Arlene Lowenstein at: arlowenstein(a)jake.wpi.edu Best regards, Christof ************************************************************************* Christof Paar http://ee.wpi.edu/People/faculty/cxp.html Assistant Professor email: christof(a)ece.wpi.edu Cryptography Group phone: (508) 831 5061 ECE Department, WPI fax: (508) 831 5491 100 Institute Road Worcester, MA 01609, USA ************************************************************************* ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Worcester Polytechnic Institute 5-Day Short Course APPLIED CRYPTOGRAPHY AND DATA SECURITY Seminar Leader: Dr. Christof Paar Many of today's information technology applications have data security as a central system requirement. Applications such as wireless computer networks, electronic commerce, and many www applications rely heavily on a high degree of system security. This five-day course will provide you with an in-depth introduction to the field of applied cryptography. Virtually all important aspects of public-key and private-key algorithms as well as protocols will be introduced. The course keeps the theoretical background and technical applications well-balanced. You will leave the course with a solid, broad knowledge of state-of-the-arts cryptography. You will have skills to carefully choose and design a security scheme for a given application. Background Note: The seminar is based on a highly successful course which has been taught to more than 150 professionals in industry and graduate students on campus. COURSE OUTLINE Day 1, AM - Introduction Principles of cryptography. Classical algorithms. Attacks on cryptographic systems. Day 1, PM - Private-key algorithms Stream ciphers. Pseudo-random generators. One-time pads. Day 2, AM - Private-key algorithms Data Encryption Standard (DES): Function, performance, implementation, security. Overview on other modern block ciphers. Key length and long-term security. Day 2, PM - Usage of private key-algorithms Operation modes of block ciphers. Multiple encryption. Key whitening. Day 3, AM - Public-key cryptography Introduction. One-way functions. Some number theory. Day 3, PM - Public-key algorithms RSA: Function, performance, implementation, security. Recent attacks. Day 4, AM - Public-key algorithms The generalized discrete logarithm problem. Diffie-Hellman key exchange. ElGamal encryption. Elliptic curve cryptosystems. Day 4, PM - Protocol building blocks Digital Signatures. Hash Functions. Security Services: Privacy, authentication, integrity, identification, non-repudiation. Day 5, AM - Key distribution Key distribution protocols. Principle of Kerberos. Certificates. Trusted authorities. Day 5, PM - Identification Smart Cards. Principles of identification. Challenge-and-response protocols. Course summary. WHO SHOULD ATTEND Engineers and other technical professional who develop, implement, or assess information security applications in software or hardware. Technical managers who need a solid understanding of data security issues will also greatly benefit from the course. ABOUT THE INSTRUCTOR Dr. Christof Paar leads the Cryptography and Data Security group at WPI's ECE Department. His research interests include security issues in wireless and ATM networks, efficient algorithms for elliptic and hyperelliptic curve systems, and hardware implementation of cryptosystems. DATES AND LOCATIONS August 4 - 8, 1997 in Waltham, MA (10 miles from Boston) FEE $1795 for first registration $1625 for subsequent registrations --------------------- print and cut here ----------------------------- WPI CONTINUING EDUCATION REGISTRATION FORM Please print out, complete, and return this form to Office of Continuing Education, WPI, Worcester, MA 01609-2280, call (508) 831-5517 or FAX this form to (508) 831-5694. Make copies of this form for multiple registrations. Title of Seminar: APPLIED CRYPTOGRAPHY AND DATA SECURITY Date of Seminar: August 4-8, 1997, WPI Waltham Campus, Waltham, MA Name (Mr.)(Ms.) ___________________________________________________ Title _____________________________________________________________ Organization ______________________________________________________ Business Address __________________________________________________ City _______________________________________ State ________ Zip _________________________ Business Phone ____________________________ FAX _____________________ Home Phone ______________ Fee Enclosed (Make checks payable to WPI) ______ Bill my Company, P.O.# __________ Please charge my: VISA Mastercard Discover Name on card ________________________________________________ Exp. date _____________________ Card # ______________________________________________________ Signature ___________________________________________________ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ To unsubscribe from the dcsb list, send a letter to: Majordomo(a)ai.mit.edu In the body of the message, write: unsubscribe dcsb Or, to subscribe, write: subscribe dcsb If you have questions, write to me at Owner-DCSB(a)ai.mit.edu --- end forwarded text ----------------- Robert Hettinga (rah(a)shipwright.com) Philodox e$, 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/

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