March 2004 - cypherpunks-legacy

uncomfortable suspicion: french fending off US PKI domination
by Major Variola (ret.) 17 Mar '04

17 Mar '04

COMPUTER SECURITY French Move To Fend Off U.S. Domination With some help from Germany, the French are discreetly seeking an alternative to U.S. domination of the field of computer authentication systems and security (Public Key Infrastructure: [...] [ 617 words 5,5USD ] http://www.intelligenceonline.com/ The jist is that Infrasec will be replacing Verislime for the French, Versign being the "object of uncomfortable suspicion"

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Re: Saving Opportunistic Encryption
by Eugen Leitl 17 Mar '04

17 Mar '04

On Tue, Mar 16, 2004 at 03:29:42PM +0800, Sandy Harris wrote: > >So, the apparent solution for me seems to be the approach that the SPAM > >blacklists used - publish information in a subspace of the forward DNS > >space instead of using the authoritative in-addr.arpa area. > > > Worth discussing at least. No, anything requiring publishing DNS records won't fly. OE is *opportunistic*. It doesn't care about what the true identity of the opposite party is. Any shmuck on dynamic IP should be able to use it instantly, with no observable performance degradation, using a simple patch. If it doesn't fit these minimal requirements, it will die, just the same way FreeS/WAN did. -- Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07078, 11.61144 http://www.leitl.org 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE http://moleculardevices.org http://nanomachines.net [demime 1.01d removed an attachment of type application/pgp-signature]

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Re: Saving Opportunistic Encryption
by Anonymous via the Cypherpunks Tonga Remailer 17 Mar '04

17 Mar '04

Hi, Sandy Harris wrote: >Tarapia Tapioco wrote: >>A possible implementation looks like this: >>... >> >>* Linux/KAME's IKE daemon racoon is patched to attempt retrieval of an >> RSA key from said DNS repository and generate appropriate security >> policies. >> >>Cleaner solution, but more work probably. > >Why would you use racoon? FreeS/WAN's Pluto is available, under GPL, >already does OE, and works with 2.6 kernel IPsec (though I'm not >certain if patches are needed for that). Wouldn't it be a better >starting point? I have to take a look at this. Using racoon was my first idea because it seems to be the "official" Linux thing these days and is portable to the *BSDs, too. It's probably only the NIH syndrome at work. Also, using pluto suffers from the general FreeS/WAN problem of not allowing contributions from USAians. Anyway, thanks for the reminder - while the project is still at the "half-assed idea tossing" state, hacking FreeS/WAN should still be an option.

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[wearables] Wearable Computers and Body Privacy take 2
by R. A. Hettinga 17 Mar '04

17 Mar '04

--- begin forwarded text

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[wearables] Wearable Computers and Body Privacy take 2
by Thad E. Starner 17 Mar '04

17 Mar '04

Thanks to everyone for their comments so far. Here is a second version of the article that sounds a little less, uh, paranoid. As usual, I'm trying to fit too much in too little space, but this verison is a little cleaner. See what y'all think. Thad ------ Wearable Computers and Body Privacy About 10 years ago, I made a bet with a colleague that the first large wearable computing market would evolve from portable consumer electronics like MP3 players instead of growing out of the mobile phone market. Apparently I am in the process of losing that bet. Today's mobile phones are integrating wireless messaging, video and audio recording, web browsing, e-mail, and many computing applications. Previously, these features could only be found on prototype wearable computers. With the addition of a high resolution screen, such as MicroOptical's SV-6 head-up display, and a fast mobile text entry method, such as Handykey's Twiddler one-handed keyboard, these mobile phones will be very similar to our current research prototypes, at least in hardware specifications. With such additions, much of Vernor Vinge's vision with respect to wearable computers in his story ``Synthetic Serendipity'' will be possible for a large consumer base. In fact, many of wearable computing's early demonstrations should be possible with this current generation of mobile phones with embedded cameras: augmented realities where computer graphics are overlaid on the physical world; sharing points of view in real-time; ad hoc collaborations with remote colleagues; and access to web search engines to provide assistance during a conversation, for example. However, I'd like to discuss a major feature and challenge to these devices: privacy. Wearable computing may provide some privacy-protections for the field of ubiquitous computing. Many instantiations of ubiquitous computing place cameras, microphones, and other sensors in the environment around us. Yet, who receives this information or provides controls against logging it? Who provides the money for installing and maintaining the infrastructure and ensures that the infrastructure is not perverted for improper use? By concentrating sensing and data storage on the body, a wearable computer allows its user to ``control his own bits.'' The user determines when and where his data is released and how much to trust the infrastructure around him. For example, when a wearable user enters work in the morning, he may instruct his wearable to inform his office of his arrival so that his office unlocks his door or starts a pot of coffee. However, the user would probably tell his wearable not to share his identity with billboards he walks past to avoid the sort of targeted advertising portrayed in the film ``Minority Report.'' Of course, some bargain hunters may choose to share their identity with advertisers to obtain better deals, much like membership cards in today's grocery stores. While wearable computers provide the user a sense of physical security and control over his private data, many people express concern over potential violations of privacy for others who happen to be near the wearable user. In fact, wearable computers provide little new recording capability. Hidden cameras have been commonly available for over two decades, and hidden body-worn microphones have been used for over half a century. In truth, much of the populace in developed countries already carry a hidden microphone in their pockets - the mobile phone. While mobile phone users believe that their phones are ``off'' when not in use, most modern phones actually use a ``soft'' power switch which only turns off parts of the phone. In theory, a service provider, government agency, or technically savvy cracker could reprogram a mobile phone to record or transmit the user's audio without their knowledge! Perhaps what we need is a legal concept of ``body privacy.'' Misuse of information sensed or stored on a user's body should carry the same penalties as theft of personal items carried on the body. Similarly, the same burden of proving sufficient cause should be required of law enforcement agencies when searching body-worn devices as when searching the user's body. Given today's technology, a mobile phone user might record all his conversations himself. While this possibility certainly exists, as a society in general, we do not worry about our colleagues recording confidential conversations and using the information against us. Such an action would be a violation of the implicit social contracts we have already evolved for everyday life. In some sense, our colleagues are accountable in that, if the information is used inappropriately, we know who to blame. In my research group, we avoid even this possibility by using noise canceling microphones with our wearable computers. While these microphones can hear the user's side of the conversation, the microphone's physical characteristics are designed to avoid capturing environmental noises such as the other person's speech. My conversational partner may choose to make his speech available to my wearable through the use of his own noise-cancelling microphone, but, again, he controls his own data. By using a combination of physical sensor limitations, legal recourse, and social conventions, I believe that wearable computers can improve our lives while protecting our privacy. However, in order to determine the issues involved, we need communities of early adopters to experiment with the use of these devices and encourage meaningful discussion on the topic. --- end forwarded text -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga <mailto: rah(a)ibuc.com> The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/> 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'

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[wearables] Wearable Computers and Body Privacy take 2
by Thad E. Starner 17 Mar '04

17 Mar '04

Thanks to everyone for their comments so far. Here is a second version of the article that sounds a little less, uh, paranoid. As usual, I'm trying to fit too much in too little space, but this verison is a little cleaner. See what y'all think. Thad ------ Wearable Computers and Body Privacy About 10 years ago, I made a bet with a colleague that the first large wearable computing market would evolve from portable consumer electronics like MP3 players instead of growing out of the mobile phone market. Apparently I am in the process of losing that bet. Today's mobile phones are integrating wireless messaging, video and audio recording, web browsing, e-mail, and many computing applications. Previously, these features could only be found on prototype wearable computers. With the addition of a high resolution screen, such as MicroOptical's SV-6 head-up display, and a fast mobile text entry method, such as Handykey's Twiddler one-handed keyboard, these mobile phones will be very similar to our current research prototypes, at least in hardware specifications. With such additions, much of Vernor Vinge's vision with respect to wearable computers in his story ``Synthetic Serendipity'' will be possible for a large consumer base. In fact, many of wearable computing's early demonstrations should be possible with this current generation of mobile phones with embedded cameras: augmented realities where computer graphics are overlaid on the physical world; sharing points of view in real-time; ad hoc collaborations with remote colleagues; and access to web search engines to provide assistance during a conversation, for example. However, I'd like to discuss a major feature and challenge to these devices: privacy. Wearable computing may provide some privacy-protections for the field of ubiquitous computing. Many instantiations of ubiquitous computing place cameras, microphones, and other sensors in the environment around us. Yet, who receives this information or provides controls against logging it? Who provides the money for installing and maintaining the infrastructure and ensures that the infrastructure is not perverted for improper use? By concentrating sensing and data storage on the body, a wearable computer allows its user to ``control his own bits.'' The user determines when and where his data is released and how much to trust the infrastructure around him. For example, when a wearable user enters work in the morning, he may instruct his wearable to inform his office of his arrival so that his office unlocks his door or starts a pot of coffee. However, the user would probably tell his wearable not to share his identity with billboards he walks past to avoid the sort of targeted advertising portrayed in the film ``Minority Report.'' Of course, some bargain hunters may choose to share their identity with advertisers to obtain better deals, much like membership cards in today's grocery stores. While wearable computers provide the user a sense of physical security and control over his private data, many people express concern over potential violations of privacy for others who happen to be near the wearable user. In fact, wearable computers provide little new recording capability. Hidden cameras have been commonly available for over two decades, and hidden body-worn microphones have been used for over half a century. In truth, much of the populace in developed countries already carry a hidden microphone in their pockets - the mobile phone. While mobile phone users believe that their phones are ``off'' when not in use, most modern phones actually use a ``soft'' power switch which only turns off parts of the phone. In theory, a service provider, government agency, or technically savvy cracker could reprogram a mobile phone to record or transmit the user's audio without their knowledge! Perhaps what we need is a legal concept of ``body privacy.'' Misuse of information sensed or stored on a user's body should carry the same penalties as theft of personal items carried on the body. Similarly, the same burden of proving sufficient cause should be required of law enforcement agencies when searching body-worn devices as when searching the user's body. Given today's technology, a mobile phone user might record all his conversations himself. While this possibility certainly exists, as a society in general, we do not worry about our colleagues recording confidential conversations and using the information against us. Such an action would be a violation of the implicit social contracts we have already evolved for everyday life. In some sense, our colleagues are accountable in that, if the information is used inappropriately, we know who to blame. In my research group, we avoid even this possibility by using noise canceling microphones with our wearable computers. While these microphones can hear the user's side of the conversation, the microphone's physical characteristics are designed to avoid capturing environmental noises such as the other person's speech. My conversational partner may choose to make his speech available to my wearable through the use of his own noise-cancelling microphone, but, again, he controls his own data. By using a combination of physical sensor limitations, legal recourse, and social conventions, I believe that wearable computers can improve our lives while protecting our privacy. However, in order to determine the issues involved, we need communities of early adopters to experiment with the use of these devices and encourage meaningful discussion on the topic. --- end forwarded text -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga <mailto: rah(a)ibuc.com> The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/> 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'

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Saving Opportunistic Encryption
by Tarapia Tapioco 16 Mar '04

16 Mar '04

We've recently seen FreeS/WAN die, not least due to the apparent practical failure of Opportunistic Encryption. The largest blocking point for deployment of OE always seemed to be the requirement for publishing one's key in the reverse DNS space. While most tech-savvy people are able to get access to forward domain space, reverse DNS space is still more heavily centralized and thus inaccessible to the general public. So, the apparent solution for me seems to be the approach that the SPAM blacklists used - publish information in a subspace of the forward DNS space instead of using the authoritative in-addr.arpa area. A possible implementation looks like this: * Keys are kept in TEXT record like with old-style OE, as a.b.c.d.opportunistic.net. The format of the text record contains * IKE authentication RSA key * optional "secure" owner identity, as in x.509 or PGP sig. * server signature. On the client side: * Keys are published via a TCP client. This ensures there's a minimal level of authentication that the submitter of a key is also in control of the IP address. Additionally, when an overwrite is attempted, we could attempt to obtain an ICMP echo response over the old SA and only accept the update when the old SA is dead. * J. Random libpcap application listens for traffic to different IP addresses and checks said DNS repository, manipulates security policy accordingly. This is just a dirty hack since it necessarily misses packets when the other node is first contacted, but it seems to be the easiest hack-me route, and it requires little to no platform integration, just * a libpcap implemenation * a command line interface to IPSEC security policies Check at least for Linux and Windows, probably *BSD too. * Linux/KAME's IKE daemon racoon is patched to attempt retrieval of an RSA key from said DNS repository and generate appropriate security policies. Cleaner solution, but more work probably. Obvious weaknesses: As the SPAM blacklists showed impressively, running an unpopular service on the net these days will get you DDoS'ed out of existence. Distributing the keys over the whole DNS space like FreeS/WAN OE did is the cleanest solution here, but I guess a cypherpunkly approach would also be "good enough" to get this thing started: Just use a configurable list of domains instead of just opportunistic.net, each with a different key, and publish these lists like those for remailers are currently published. Thoughts? (On a side note, minder.net has dropped a lot of my recent posts via remailers. Is there a better node for this?)

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Scarce objects -- bearer certificates for usage control
by szabo＠szabo.best.vwh.net 16 Mar '04

16 Mar '04

(Bob -- feel free to forward this to whatever list(s) you think might be interes ted -- Nick). I desribe an architecture providing usage control (as opposed to access control) for mutually suspicious objects (i.e., objects interacting across trust boundar ies), using bearer certificates: http://szabo.best.vwh.net/scarce.html Nick Szabo http://szabo.best.vwh.net/ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ --- end forwarded text -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga <mailto: rah(a)ibuc.com> The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/> 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'

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Scarce objects -- bearer certificates for usage control
by szabo＠szabo.best.vwh.net 16 Mar '04

16 Mar '04

(Bob -- feel free to forward this to whatever list(s) you think might be interes ted -- Nick). I desribe an architecture providing usage control (as opposed to access control) for mutually suspicious objects (i.e., objects interacting across trust boundar ies), using bearer certificates: http://szabo.best.vwh.net/scarce.html Nick Szabo http://szabo.best.vwh.net/ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ --- end forwarded text -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga <mailto: rah(a)ibuc.com> The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/> 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'

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Chinese WiFi and Encryption
by Tyler Durden 16 Mar '04

16 Mar '04

http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/mar2004/tc20040315_6034_tc05… What I don't see mentioned in this little article is that fact that WEP is largely useless in terms of security. So in a way the Chinese were attempting to jump into that hole. Of course, Zhong Nan Hai will have a nice backdoor for themselves. In In China things will play out like this if they successfully enact the standard: t=0: Standard enacted t= 6 months: Some concerns stated about the new standard's security. Jong Nan Hai issues statements in reply 'proving' that the concerns are unwarranted. t=9 months: Standard is hacked wide open...a simple tool is posted on the Internet internationally, and by Chinese locally. t=10 months: All links to the hack internationally are shut down, any locals still crowing about the security are arrested. Jong Nan Hai either ignores claims of a hack or else states that a simple patch has closed the hole, which was no big deal anyway. t=14 months: WiFi routinely hacked in China. Jong Nan Hai continues to claim standard is secure, except for very rare cases. But states that anyone eavesdropping will be prosecuted and possibly executed. t=18 months: Jong Nan hai claims standard is safe because of government control. Meanwhile, no Chinese use WiFi for anything critical. -TD _________________________________________________________________ FREE pop-up blocking with the new MSN Toolbar get it now! http://clk.atdmt.com/AVE/go/onm00200415ave/direct/01/ Reporting-MTA: dns;hotmail.com Received-From-MTA: dns;mail.hotmail.com Arrival-Date: Tue, 16 Mar 2004 09:57:48 -0800 Final-Recipient: rfc822;cypherpunks(a)minder.net Action: failed Status: 5.0.0 Received: from mail pickup service by hotmail.com with Microsoft SMTPSVC; Tue, 16 Mar 2004 09:57:48 -0800 Received: from 12.10.219.37 by by7fd.bay7.hotmail.msn.com with HTTP; Tue, 16 Mar 2004 17:57:48 GMT X-Originating-IP: [12.10.219.37] X-Originating-Email: [camera_lumina(a)hotmail.com] X-Sender: camera_lumina(a)hotmail.com From: "Tyler Durden" <camera_lumina(a)hotmail.com> To: cypherpunks(a)minder.net Subject: China & WiFi Encryption Date: Tue, 16 Mar 2004 12:57:48 -0500 Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; format=flowed Message-ID: <BAY7-F98EoRF0o059DF00064d5d(a)hotmail.com> X-OriginalArrivalTime: 16 Mar 2004 17:57:48.0896 (UTC) FILETIME=[3197AE00:01C40B80] http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/mar2004/tc20040315_6034_tc05… What I don't see mentioned in this little article is that fact that WEP is largely useless in terms of security. So in a way the Chinese were attempting to jump into that hole. Of course, Zhong Nan Hai will have a nice backdoor for themselves. In In China things will play out like this if they successfully enact the standard: t=0: Standard enacted t= 6 months: Some concerns stated about the new standard's security. Jong Nan Hai issues statements in reply 'proving' that the concerns are unwarranted. t=9 months: Standard is hacked wide open...a simple tool is posted on the Internet internationally, and by Chinese locally. t=10 months: All links to the hack internationally are shut down, any locals still crowing about the security are arrested. Jong Nan Hai either ignores claims of a hack or else states that a simple patch has closed the hole, which was no big deal anyway. t=14 months: WiFi routinely hacked in China. Jong Nan Hai continues to claim standard is secure, except for very rare cases. But states that anyone eavesdropping will be prosecuted and possibly executed. t=18 months: Jong Nan hai claims standard is safe because of government control. Meanwhile, no Chinese use WiFi for anything critical. -TD _________________________________________________________________ Find things fast with the new MSN Toolbar includes FREE pop-up blocking! http://clk.atdmt.com/AVE/go/onm00200414ave/direct/01/

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