January 2005 - cypherpunks-legacy

RE: Scientific American on Quantum Encryption
by Trei, Peter 20 Jan '05

20 Jan '05

I've actually seen these devices in operation. The thing that impressed me most was that the path need not be a single fiber from end to end - you can maintain quantum state across a switchable fiber junction. This means you are no longer limited to a single pair of boxes talking to each other. True, the SciAm article doesn't address a lot of issues, but the fact remains that this technology is interesting and important. Peter Trei > -----Original Message----- > From: owner-cypherpunks(a)minder.net > [mailto:owner-cypherpunks@minder.net]On Behalf Of Eugen Leitl > Sent: Thursday, January 20, 2005 6:17 AM > To: transhumantech(a)yahoogroups.com > Cc: cypherpunks(a)al-qaeda.net > Subject: Scientific American on Quantum Encryption > > > > Scientific American has little clue, as usual (see their > nanotechnology > retraction). > > Link: http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/01/20/0358215 > Posted by: samzenpus, on 2005-01-20 06:35:00 > > from the just-try-and-break-it dept. > [1]prostoalex writes "Scientific American claims that > [2]advances in > commercially available quantum encryption might obsolete > the existing > factorization-based solutions: "The National Security > Agency or one of > the Federal Reserve banks can now buy a > quantum-cryptographic system > from two small companies - and more products are on the > way. This new > method of encryption represents the first major commercial > implementation for what has become known as quantum information > science, which blends quantum mechanics and information theory. The > ultimate technology to emerge from the field may be a > quantum computer > so powerful that the only way to protect against its prodigious > code-breaking capability may be to deploy quantum-cryptographic > techniques.""

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[IP] The second sincerest form of flattery (fwd from dave@farber.net)
by Eugen Leitl 20 Jan '05

20 Jan '05

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

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Two men plead guilty in online file-sharing case
by R.A. Hettinga 19 Jan '05

19 Jan '05

<http://www.wstm.com/global/story.asp?s=2831591&ClientType=Printable> <<Back Two men plead guilty in online file-sharing case LOS ANGELES A Johnson City man is one of two defendants to plead guilty in Los Angeles to federal charges over the online file-sharing of music, movies and software over peer-to-peer networks. The U-S Justice Department says William Trowbridge of Johnson City and Michael Chicoine of San Antonio each pleaded guilty yesterday to one count of conspiracy to commit felony copyright infringement. Officials say the two are the first people convicted for online file-sharing. The two men were targeted as part of an investigation which focused on online piracy over peer-to-peer, or P-2-P, networks. Such networks enable computer users to access files directly from the computers of other users on the network. The 50-year-old Trowbridge and 47-year-old Chicoine also pleaded guilty to acting for commercial advantage or private financial gain. Each faces a maximum sentence of five years in prison and a 250-thousand dollar fine. They could also be ordered to pay restitution to victims when they are sentenced in April. -- ----------------- 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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OpenVPN
by Eugen Leitl 19 Jan '05

19 Jan '05

If you haven't checked it out yet, you should. Really easy to set up (two Windows XP machines through a NAT on DSL, ping ~50 ms, preshared key, single port open; right now). Looking forward to see how C3-accelerated AES (OpenSSL next stable will support it out of the box) will do, across multiple platforms. Le IPsec c'est mort, vive le OpenVPN. -- 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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[IP] CA State bill could cripple P2P (fwd from dave@farber.net)
by Eugen Leitl 19 Jan '05

19 Jan '05

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

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[IP] more on CA State bill could cripple P2P (fwd from dave@farber.net)
by Eugen Leitl 19 Jan '05

19 Jan '05

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

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"Microstate": A Mouse Roars
by R.A. Hettinga 19 Jan '05

19 Jan '05

<http://online.wsj.com/article_print/0,,SB110608639391629354,00.html> The Wall Street Journal January 19, 2005 COMMENTARY A Mouse Roars By VLADIMIR KAVARIC January 19, 2005 PODGORICA, Serbia and Montenegro -- Since the publication in 1776 of "An Inquiry Into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of the Nations" by Adam Smith, the impact of free-market activity and international trade on economic development is well-known. The experience of recent decades shows that the most successful countries with the highest growth rates are those that have implemented pro-market policies and allow freedom in economic affairs. That's why a transition economy like Montenegro sees its best chance in openness, private initiative, international competition, and economic freedom. Montenegro, the smallest state of the former Yugoslavia with little more than 600,000 inhabitants, presents its economic development concept with the slogan "Montenegro -- Microstate." Microstate in this case has nothing to do with the size of the population or the country. Rather, the Montenegrin Microstate concept, developed by Professor Veselin Vukotic, assumes a minimal role for the state in the economy, low taxes, simple business regulations, a stable institutional framework, and the protection of property rights. The first steps on this road have already been taken. Montenegro adopted the euro as the country's legal tender and thereby minimized the inflation taxation of its citizens. Without that step, the central bank in Montenegro, a transitional economy with weak institutions, would have been under constant pressure to print money. The adoption of the new tax law will introduce one of the lowest corporate tax rates in Europe: a mere 9%. Capital-exchange restrictions have been eliminated and the repatriation of profits made by foreign investors in Montenegro is free. Interest rates are market determined and more than 99% of the prices are freely set. Treating foreign investors just like domestic ones, enjoying the same rights and legal protections, is intrinsic to Montenegro's privatization, investment and business regulations. In order to encourage new business development, the required starting capital for a limited liability company has been reduced to $1. The aluminum industry, which accounts for 60% of total exports, is in the process of being privatized. The tender for Telekom Crna Gore, the national fixed-line operator, is also already underway. Tourism is another area where Montenegro has enormous potential to expand. A majority of hotels are still state-owned but those are now all up for sale while the country is open for new investments. According to the World Tourism Organization, Montenegro's tourism industry will be one of the fastest growing in the world. The biggest obstacles to economic freedom at the moment are high government expenditures and the large number of administrative barriers. A reform of the judicial system would also significantly improve the business ambience. These barriers are, for the most part, part of the old socialist legacy. As anywhere else in the world, the most vigorous objections to the implementation of economic freedom in Montenegro come from rent-seeking groups, monopolists, and people that benefit from state redistribution. But Montenegro also has to overcome a barrier that is peculiar to its political situation. As one of the basic preconditions for signing the Association and Stabilization Agreement with the EU, Brussels insisted on the "harmonization" of economic systems between Serbia and Montenegro. Given the fact that Montenegro wants to develop an open and service-oriented economy while Serbia wants to protect its agriculture and inherited heavy industries, the harmonization of these systems is more than just problematic. The most illustrative example is the harmonization of custom rates. Through this process, Montenegro was forced to increase its custom rates from an average 2.8% to 6%. Montenegro even had to increase custom rates for those products that it doesn't produce itself, such as sugar and textiles. There are, however, new encouraging developments in this area. At a recent conference in Maastricht, the EU proposed a more flexible approach to the accession process of Serbia and Montenegro, the so-called "dual track" path. This dual track process demonstrates that the EU recognizes that the economic realities of Serbia and Montenegro are quite different and that they need to be taken into account. Accepting and acknowledging the economic realities of Serbia and Montenegro would present a new era in interstate relationships in the Balkans. Montenegro would be given the opportunity to take full responsibility for its economic policy. At the same time, the international community would gain stable relations in the region based on respecting mutual interests. An open economy in Montenegro would add to the competitive landscape of the region. More competition (and not harmonization) will lead to prosperity in this part of Europe. Mr. Kavaric is deputy finance minister of Montenegro. -- ----------------- 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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Schneier on Security: Microsoft RC4 Flaw
by R.A. Hettinga 19 Jan '05

19 Jan '05

<http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2005/01/microsoft_rc4_f.html> Bruce Schneier Schneier on Security A weblog covering security and security technology. January 18, 2005 Microsoft RC4 Flaw One of the most important rules of stream ciphers is to never use the same keystream to encrypt two different documents. If someone does, you can break the encryption by XORing the two ciphertext streams together. The keystream drops out, and you end up with plaintext XORed with plaintext -- and you can easily recover the two plaintexts using letter frequency analysis and other basic techniques. It's an amateur crypto mistake. The easy way to prevent this attack is to use a unique initialization vector (IV) in addition to the key whenever you encrypt a document. Microsoft uses the RC4 stream cipher in both Word and Excel. And they make this mistake. Hongjun Wu has details (link is a PDF). In this report, we point out a serious security flaw in Microsoft Word and Excel. The stream cipher RC4 [9] with key length up to 128 bits is used in Microsoft Word and Excel to protect the documents. But when an encrypted document gets modified and saved, the initialization vector remains the same and thus the same keystream generated from RC4 is applied to encrypt the different versions of that document. The consequence is disastrous since a lot of information of the document could be recovered easily. This isn't new. Microsoft made the same mistake in 1999 with RC4 in WinNT Syskey. Five years later, Microsoft has the same flaw in other products. Posted on January 18, 2005 at 09:00 AM -- ----------------- 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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Carnivore No More
by Eugen Leitl 19 Jan '05

19 Jan '05

Link: http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/01/15/1424207 Posted by: CowboyNeal, on 2005-01-15 15:03:00 from the calling-it-quits dept. [1]wikinerd writes "FBI has [2]retired the controversial Carnivore software, strongly criticized by privacy advocates for its email capturing abilities. However, it is believed that unspecified commercial surveillance tools are employed now. What does that mean for Internet users' privacy?" [3]Click Here References 1. http://portal.wikinerds.org/ 2. http://www.securityfocus.com/news/10307 3. http://ads.osdn.com/?ad_id=5671&alloc_id=12342&site_id=1&request_id=5016758… p=click&page=%2farticle%2epl ----- End forwarded message ----- -- 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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Type III Anonymous Message from Antani anonymous remailer
by nobody＠firenze.linux.it 18 Jan '05

18 Jan '05

This is a Type III anonymous message, sent to you by the Winston Smith Project mixminion server at firenze.linux.it. If you do not want to receive anonymous messages, please contact antani- admin(a)firenze.linux.it. For more information about anonymity, see https://remailer.firenze.linux.it or https://e-privacy.firenze.linux.it. -----BEGIN TYPE III ANONYMOUS MESSAGE----- Message-type: plaintext Where are the remailer mail2news gateways still operating? If there are any anymore... Stale pages serving up dead links to defunct services. Google has let me down. -----END TYPE III ANONYMOUS MESSAGE-----

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