April 2004 - cypherpunks-legacy

[Neuclear-general] ANNOUNCE: NeuClear XMLSig 0.13 Released
by R. A. Hettinga 28 Apr '04

28 Apr '04

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The future of security
by R. A. Hettinga 28 Apr '04

28 Apr '04

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RSA-576 Factored
by R. A. Hettinga 28 Apr '04

28 Apr '04

<http://mathworld.wolfram.com/news/2003-12-05/rsa/> MathWorld Headline News RSA-576 Factored By Eric W. Weisstein December 5, 2003--On December 3, the day after the announcement of the discovery of the largest known prime by the Great Internet Mersenne Prime Search on December 2 (MathWorld headline news, December 2, 2003), a team at the German Federal Agency for Information Technology Security (BIS) announced the factorization of the 174-digit number 1881 9881292060 7963838697 2394616504 3980716356 3379417382 7007633564 2298885971 5234665485 3190606065 0474304531 7388011303 3967161996 9232120573 4031879550 6569962213 0516875930 7650257059 known as RSA-576. RSA numbers are composite numbers having exactly two prime factors (i.e., so-called semiprimes) that have been listed in the Factoring Challenge of RSA Security.. While composite numbers are defined as numbers that can be written as a product of smaller numbers known as factors (for example, 6 = 2 x 3 is composite with factors 2 and 3), prime numbers have no such decomposition (for example, 7 does not have any factors other than 1 and itself). Prime factors therefore represent a fundamental (and unique) decomposition of a given positive integer. RSA numbers are special types of composite numbers particularly chosen to be difficult to factor, and they are identified by the number of digits they contain. While RSA-576 is a much smaller number than the 6,320,430-digit monster Mersenne prime announced earlier this week, its factorization is significant because of the curious property of numbers that proving or disproving a number to be prime ("primality testing") seems to be much easier than actually identifying the factors of a number ("prime factorization"). Thus, while it is trivial to multiply two large numbers p and q together, it can be extremely difficult to determine the factors if only their product pq is given. With some ingenuity, this property can be used to create practical and efficient encryption systems for electronic data. RSA Laboratories sponsors the RSA Factoring Challenge to encourage research into computational number theory and the practical difficulty of factoring large integers and also because it can be helpful for users of the RSA encryption public-key cryptography algorithm for choosing suitable key lengths for an appropriate level of security. A cash prize is awarded to the first person to factor each challenge number. RSA numbers were originally spaced at intervals of 10 decimal digits between one and five hundred digits, and prizes were awarded according to a complicated formula. These original numbers were named according to the number of decimal digits, so RSA-100 was a hundred-digit number. As computers and algorithms became faster, the unfactored challenge numbers were removed from the prize list and replaced with a set of numbers with fixed cash prizes. At this point, the naming convention was also changed so that the trailing number indicates the number of digits in the binary representation of the number. Hence, RSA-576 has 576 binary digits, which translates to 174 digits in decimal. RSA numbers received widespread attention when a 129-digit number known as RSA-129 was used by R. Rivest, A. Shamir, and L. Adleman to publish one of the first public-key messages together with a $100 reward for the message's decryption (Gardner 1977). Despite widespread belief at the time that the message encoded by RSA-129 would take millions of years to break, it was factored in 1994 using a distributed computation that harnessed networked computers spread around the globe performing a multiple polynomial quadratic sieve (Leutwyler 1994). The result of all the concentrated number crunching was decryption of the encoded message to yield the profound plain-text message "The magic words are squeamish ossifrage." (An ossifrage is a rare predatory vulture found in the mountains of Europe.) Factorization of RSA-129 followed earlier factorizations of RSA-100, RSA-110, and RSA-120. The challenge numbers RSA-130, RSA-140, RSA-155, and RSA-160 were also subsequently factored between 1996 and April of this year. (Amusingly, RSA-150 apparently remains unfactored following its withdrawal from the RSA Challenge list.) On December 2, Jens Franke circulated an email announcing factorization of the smallest prize number RSA-576. The factorization was accomplished using a prime factorization algorithm known as the general number field sieve. The two 87-digit factors found using this sieve are 3980750 8642406493 7397125500 5503864911 9906436234 2526708406 3851895759 4638895726 1768583317 x 4727721 4610743530 2536223071 9730482246 3291469530 2097116459 8521711305 2071125636 3590397527 and can easily be multiplied to verify that they do indeed give the original number. Franke's note detailed the factorization process in which "lattice" sieving was done by J. Franke and T. Kleinjung using hardware at the Scientific Computing Institute and the Pure Mathematics Institute at Bonn University, Max Planck Institute of Mathematics in Bonn, and Experimental Mathematics Institute in Essen; and "line" sieving was done by P. Montgomery and H. te Riele at CWI, F. Bahr and his family, and NFSNET (which at that time consisted of D. Leclair, P. Leyland, and R. Wackerbarth). Post-processing of this data to construct the actual factors was then done with the support of the BSI. For their efforts, the team will receive a cash prize of $10,000 from RSA Security. However, award seekers need not be deterred. As the following table shows, RSA-640 to RSA-2048 remain open, carrying awards from $20,000 to $200,000 to whoever is clever and persistent enough to track them down. A list of the open challenge numbers may be downloaded from RSA or in the form of a Mathematica package from the MathWorld package archive. number digits prize factored RSA-100 100 Apr. 1991 RSA-110 110 Apr. 1992 RSA-120 120 Jun. 1993 RSA-129 129 $100 Apr. 1994 RSA-130 130 Apr. 10, 1996 RSA-140 140 Feb. 2, 1999 RSA-150 150 withdrawn? open RSA-155 155 Aug. 22, 1999 RSA-160 160 Apr. 1, 2003 RSA-576 174 $10,000 Dec. 3, 2003 RSA-640 193 $20,000 open RSA-704 212 $30,000 open RSA-768 232 $50,000 open RSA-896 270 $75,000 open RSA-1024 309 $100,000 open RSA-1536 463 $150,000 open RSA-2048 617 $200,000 open References Franke, J. "RSA576." Privately circulated email reposted to primenumbers Yahoo! Group. Gardner, M. "Mathematical Games: A New Kind of Cipher That Would Take Millions of Years to Break." Sci. Amer. 237, 120-124, Aug. 1977. Leutwyler, K. "Superhack: Forty Quadrillion Years Early, a 129-Digit Code Is Broken." Sci. Amer. 271, 17-20, 1994. NFSNet: Large-Scale Distributed Factoring. http://www.nfsnet.org RSA Security.. "The New RSA Factoring Challenge." http://www.rsasecurity.com/rsalabs/challenges/factoring RSA Security.. "The RSA Challenge Numbers." http://www.rsasecurity.com/rsalabs/challenges/factoring/numbers.html Weisstein, E. W. Mathematica package RSANumbers.m. -- ----------------- 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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Lowering the Bar for Threats
by Eric Cordian 28 Apr '04

28 Apr '04

Federal Prosecutors say the conviction of Matthew Hale on charges including trying to have a federal judge killed sends an important message. But don't they always? The "plot" to kill the federal judge in this case consisted of a recorded conversation with an FBI Informant which went something like this... FBI Shill: Are we gonna exterminate the rat? Hale: I'm going to fight within the law and, but, ... if you wish to, ah, do anything, yourself, you can. Uh, right. Emboldened by their latest success in pushing the envelope, the Feebs now plan to monitor so-called "Hate Sites" more closely, and warn that under the new standards, simply publishing someone's address could be considered a murder threat. Meanwhile, a man totally unconnected with the case is under 24 hour Feeb protection because he has the same name as the aforementioned FBI Shill, and someone posted his address on the Web by mistake. Murder plotting is easy. Comedy is hard. In other threat related news, a 15 year high school freshman in Washington was questioned by the Secret Circus after a portfolio of drawings he turned in featured an armed Middle Eastern man holding an oversized Shrub head on a stick. We can all thank God he didn't publish the President's address. So apparently, if someone asks me if I plan to kill the President, and I reply that I intend to conform my behavior to all the requirements of the law, but that I wouldn't cry uncontrollably if Shrub were dropped by parachute into a mob of screaming Iraqi women with cleavers, that's apparently good for a long prison sentence these days. I wonder how long it will be until Americans get their houses pushed over with bulldozers for criticizing the government. Probably at least until after the election. -- Eric Michael Cordian 0+ O:.T:.O:. Mathematical Munitions Division "Do What Thou Wilt Shall Be The Whole Of The Law"

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Fact checking
by Tim Benham 28 Apr '04

28 Apr '04

> Date: Tue, 27 Apr 2004 11:06:50 -0400 > From: "Tyler Durden" <camera_lumina(a)hotmail.com> > Subject: Re: Fact checking > > >How do you start motivating a lazy and apathetic public to learn about > >their > >candidates, and vote? Door-to-door campaigns? Talks at the local > > library? Grocery store posters? > > Well, imagine if we could buy votes...I'd bet we could scrounge up a few > hundred thousand votes for the price of a few vials of crack. Then imagine > we 'elect' bin Laden as a Senator or something with these votes. > > I bet people would start voting after that. If they don't, offer them two vials of crack! More benefits of the vote buying scheme are being discovered daily. Maybe it could be trialled at a local level in the US. You could get it started with one of those proposition thingies you have over there. It shouldn't be difficult - how much would it cost to get someone to sign a petition? cheers, Tim

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Paying for drinks with wave <br> of the hand
by R. A. Hettinga 28 Apr '04

28 Apr '04

<http://worldnetdaily.com/news/printer-friendly.asp?ARTICLE_ID=38038> WorldNetDaily Wednesday, April 14, 2004 YOUR PAPERS, PLEASE ... Paying for drinks with wave of the hand Club-goers in Spain get implanted chips for ID, payment purposes Posted: April 14, 2004 5:00 p.m. Eastern By Sherrie Gossett Being recognized has never been easier for VIP patrons of the Baja Beach Club in Barcelona, Spain. Like a scene out of a science-fiction movie, all it takes is a syringe-injected microchip implant for the beautiful men and women of the nightclub scene to breeze past a "reader" that recognizes their identity, credit balance and even automatically opens doors to exclusive areas of the club for them. They can buy drinks and food with a wave of their hand and don't need to worry about losing a credit card or wallet. "By simply passing by our reader, the Baja Beach Club will know who you are and what your credit balance is," Conrad K. Chase explains. Chase is director of the Baja Beach Club in Barcelona. "From the moment of their implantation they will also have free entry and access to the VIP area," he said. In the popular club, which boasts a dance floor that can accommodate 3,000, streamlined services and convenience matter to Chase's VIP customers. Baja Beach Clubs International is the first firm to employ the "VeriPay System," developed by Applied Digital's VeriChip Corporation and announced at an international conference in Paris last year. The company touts this application of the chip implant as an advance over credit cards and smart cards, which, absent biometrics and appropriate safeguard technologies, are subject to theft resulting in identity fraud. Palm Beach-based Applied Digital Solutions (NASDAQ:ADSXD) unveiled the original VeriChip immediately after the 9-11 tragedy. Similar to pet identification chips, the VeriChip is a syringe-injectable radio frequency identification microchip that can be read from a few feet away by either a hand-held scanner or by the implantee walking through a "portal" scanner. Information can be wirelessly written to the chip, which contains a unique 10-digit identification number. Media seized on the novelty factor of the chip implant, driving it to worldwide headlines in 2001. Last year, Art Kranzley, senior vice president at MasterCard, speculated on possible future electronic payment media: "We're certainly looking at designs like key fobs. It could be in a pen or a pair of earrings. Ultimately, it could be embedded in anything q someday, maybe even under the skin." Chase calls the chip implant the wave of the future. The nightclub director has been implanted along with stars from the Spanish version of the TV show "Big Brother." "I know many people who want to be implanted," he said. "Actually, almost everybody has piercings, tattoos or silicone." Will the implant only be of use at the Baja? "The objective of this technology is to bring an ID system to a global level that will destroy the need to carry ID documents and credit cards," Chase said. During a recent American radio interview, Chase said the CEO of VeriChip, Dr. Keith Bolton, had told him that the company's goal was to market the VeriChip as a global implantable identification system. With only 900 people implanted worldwide, though, the global mandate isn't exactly around the corner, and current applications are extremely limited. Chase added, "The VeriChip that we implant at Baja will not only be for the Baja, but is also useful for whatever other enterprise that makes use of this technology." He also alluded to plans for FN Herstal, which manufactures Browning and Smith and Wesson firearms, to develop an implant-firearm system that would make a firearm functional only to the individual implanted with its corresponding microchip. A scanner in the gun would be designed to recognize the owner. Chase's mention of the FN Herstal-Verichip partnership came a full week before it's formal announcement by Applied Digital yesterday. Chase believes all gun owners should be required to have a microchip implanted in their hand to be able to own a gun. While yesterday's Associated Press story on the prototype is primarily from the angle of police usage, WND reported two years ago that from the he outset of the company's acquisition of its "Digital Angel" implant patent q said to be GPS trackable q Applied touted the implant as a potential universal method of gun control. Chase also claimed that the VeriChip company had told him that the Italian government was preparing to implant government workers. "We are the only company today offering human implantable ID technology," said Scott R. Silverman, chairman and chief executive officer of Applied Digital Solutions. "We believe the market opportunity for this technology is substantial, and high-profile successes such as in Spain will serve as catalysts for broader adoption." Since 1999, the Applied Digital Solutions has boasted that it also has a GPS-trackable chip in the works, but four years later the device has yet to come to market. Some mechanical engineers contend such a device requires substantial antenna length and that creating a self-contained unit in the space of a tiny chip is virtually impossible. In addition, questions of accuracy of new GPS consumer items have been raised by the press. A previous Wall Street Journal "road test" of different manufacturers' GPS watches and devices for children had some kids tracked to the Sahara Desert, rather than New York City where they were. Despite the kinks that may need to be worked out, security of loved ones and personal property remains one of the chief marketing focuses of personal GPS devices and RFID chip firms. Meanwhile, in Barcelona the VeriChip is gaining a following of enthusiastic "early adopters." "Everyone embraced the electronic payment application," Chase said. "My customers like the fact that they do not have to carry a credit card or ID card with them. With the VeriPay system, they no longer have to worry about their credit cards getting lost or stolen." -- ----------------- 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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Arrested for webmastering
by Major Variola (ret.) 28 Apr '04

28 Apr '04

Computer Student on Trial for Aid to Muslim Web Sites By TIMOTHY EGAN Published: April 27, 2004 OISE, Idaho, April 23 Not long after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, a group of Muslim students led by a Saudi Arabian doctoral candidate held a candlelight vigil in the small college town of Moscow, Idaho, and condemned the attacks as an affront to Islam. Today, that graduate student, Sami Omar al-Hussayen, is on trial in a heavily guarded courtroom here, accused of plotting to aid and to maintain Islamic Web sites that promote jihad. As a Web master to several Islamic organizations, Mr. Hussayen helped to maintain Internet sites with links to groups that praised suicide bombings in Chechnya and in Israel. But he himself does not hold those views, his lawyers said. His role was like that of a technical editor, they said, arguing that he could not be held criminally liable for what others wrote. Civil libertarians say the case poses a landmark test of what people can do or whom they can associate with in the age of terror alerts. It is one of the few times anyone has been prosecuted under language in the antiterrorism law known as the USA Patriot Act, which makes it a crime to provide "expert guidance or assistance" to groups deemed terrorist. "Somebody who fixes a fax machine that is owned by a group that may advocate terrorism could be liable," said David Cole, a Georgetown University law professor who argued against the expert guidance part of the antiterrorism law this year, in a case where it was struck down by a federal judge. <snip> http://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/27/national/27BOIS.html?pagewanted=all& ....... Compare to the recent law where editing a paper from a nasty nation would be illegal. The IEEE kissed Ashcroft's ass, other periodicals objected more. ------ Of course there are limits in regards to freedom of speech. They are as follows: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances." Everything else is, of course, allowed. -Sunder

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DNA tracking
by Major Variola (ret.) 28 Apr '04

28 Apr '04

Rapist being hunted with DNA London, , Apr. 28 (UPI) -- British authorities are using a new DNA technique to catch a serial rapist and burglar, the Times of London reported Wednesday. Known as "ancestral testing," the technique aims to discover the rapist's family background and narrow the number of suspects. DNA samples taken from victims have established the rapist is descended from native Americans, Europeans and sub-Saharan Africans. Those samples also indicate the criminal's family originally came from an island in the Caribbean. Scotland Yard wants police and civilian staff from West Indian backgrounds to provide samples so a DNA map can be created to pinpoint the rapist's origins. Police also are using another DNA technique to check criminal records to see if a relative of the attacker has come to police notice. The perpetrator is responsible for 84 burglaries, four rapes and 27 indecent assaults over 12 years. His sex crimes are against elderly women. http://washingtontimes.com/upi-breaking/20040428-100131-6387r.htm

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[IP] Florida town to record all license plate numbers; check drivers (fwd from dave@farber.net)
by Eugen Leitl 28 Apr '04

28 Apr '04

----- Forwarded message from Dave Farber <dave(a)farber.net> -----

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looping
by Riad S. Wahby 28 Apr '04

28 Apr '04

Looping should be fixed now. Sorry y'all; I suck. -- Riad Wahby rsw(a)jfet.org MIT VI-2 M.Eng

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