- cypherpunks-legacy - lists.cpunks.org

Re: Exportable if Escrowed Changes Nothing!
by anon-remailer＠utopia.hacktic.nl 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Joey Grasty writes: > Governments: can't live with 'em, can't shoot 'em. ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ It is precisely this kind of self-defeating pessimism that has allowed the current state of affairs to develop.

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Cypherpunks' ideal escrow agent
by Childers James 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

I've seen the idea of voluntary key escrow discussed before on this list. (And no, not the government's idea of "voluntary", either.) A question I would raise is this: What would be the ideal setup for an escrow agency? If I were to open up an agency for business, what would be some characteristics you would look for? "Freedom is meaningless unless | ic58(a)jove.acs.unt.edu - James Childers you can give to those with whom| No man's freedom is safe you disagree." - Jefferson | while Congress is in session EA 73 53 12 4E 08 27 6C 21 64 28 51 92 0E 7C F7

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Re: Cypherpunks' ideal escrow agent
by liberty＠gate.net 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- James Childers <ic58(a)jove.acs.unt.edu> wrote: >I've seen the idea of voluntary key escrow discussed before on this list. >(And no, not the government's idea of "voluntary", either.) A question I >would raise is this: What would be the ideal setup for an escrow agency? >If I were to open up an agency for business, what would be some >characteristics you would look for? Exactly what the government *doesn't* want, I'm afraid... I would want them to honor *only* warrants which involve crimes dealing with at least the possibility of an individual, articulable victim. Despite much hot wind about "terrorism" from the FBI to the contrary, the reason for "GAK" [I liked "FUCKED" better] is to allow prosecuting the tax-and-spend drug war to remain possible. Also, the temptation to ignore any warrant requirement and screen *political* e-mail if a "minor" political party started to gain prominence would be nearly overwhelming to any non-angels with "real-time" decryption capability. Political debates these days are (obviously) won by sound bite, and advisors want to be prepared for a sound "byte" such as "tax-and-spend drug war" [Oops, can't use that one now!] :) flying through cyberspace toward an opponent, just as Reagan was (supposedly) prepared for Carter's lines before their debates. <zipping up my Nomex bodysuit now...> JMR -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.2 Comment: Freedom isn't Freeh iQCVAwUBMDUDZ21lp8bpvW01AQFx0wP/b5c5xTxyGygbTcRJriErK9dD0ahfFXEu SSpqmExn+E+aD6tYNQNEDS50pnT8wOI7IKQjVLGGEZKfmeZRIU7gnT0jttbHV14c QnMGkMsEsVK3R2YkWPGavhPeJwdrwHrvYC/xUFzrtSJHQQ1u7X3LXubjS2vikcVJ mxqfYoUympA= =YEMs -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- Regards, Jim Ray "The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing. One cannot help but be in awe when he contemplates the mysteries of eternity, of life, of the marvelous structures of reality. It is enough if one merely tries to comprehend a little of this mystery every day. Never lose a holy curiosity." -- Albert Einstein ------------------------------------------------------------------------ PGP key Fingerprint 51 5D A2 C3 92 2C 56 BE 53 2D 9C A1 B3 50 C9 C8 Key id. # E9BD6D35 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Support the Phil Zimmermann (Author of PGP) Legal Defense Fund! email: zldf(a)clark.net or visit http://www.netresponse.com/zldf ________________________________________________________________________

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Re: Certificates/Anonymity/Policy/True Names
by tcmay＠got.net 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 6:47 PM 8/18/95, Michael Froomkin wrote: >I have a question which is of course purely hypothetical. > >Suppose you were designing the legal framework that would govern the >operation of Certification Authorities (the people who issue certificates >vouching for public keys used for digitial signatures), called CAs for >short. The CAs will operate in a hierarchical model (not a >PGP-web-of-trust model), with a state agency being at the root, and >issuing certificates for private CAs. I don't see any basis for having a state agency as the root...lots of things that are grounded in law have no origin/connection to the state. But, I'll assume your hypothetical (though I think the assumption that government = root leads down a dangerous path). >You have decided to allow the private CAs to issue certificates of varying >degrees of corroberation so long as the degree of verification used is >deducible from the certificate. E.g. a certificate might say "we check >the passport"; or "we check driver's license" or "we took blood, hair, >fingprint, retinal scan and first-born child". It might even say "we >checked nothing". You have also decided that a CA may issue a certificate >in the name of a pseudonym, so long as the CA retains information about >the True Name. Now the issue arises as to whether one should allow the CA >to issue certificates to pseudonyms where it has *no record* of the real >identity of the person proffering the key pair. It all depends on what the purpose of certification is in the first place, and whether alternative heierarchies of certification exist outside the one that has government as root. For example, I may instantiate many keys for use in experiments, or as agents in a market microworld, and I may "vouch" for them. These "agents" have no True Name, are not persons, but still have varying levels of certification (to me, at least) A company may even have multiple agents. Multiple departments, multiple users, etc. The web-of-trust model, which, loosely phrased, says "I say I believe this is the key of so-and-so, and you can believe me or not. We don't need no steenking badges!" The beauty of this is that any person or program can generate lots and lots of keys, for experiments, agents, etc. Now if it is desired to have the "legal system" mesh with this certification process, the governemnt is still not needed. Contract law suffices. If the Alice Corporation claims the Bob Company signed a document with a fraudulent key )or whatever the scenario might be), then each side can present in a court what the contracts they agreed to said and what the facts were. This happens all the time, though "I am not a lawyer," in disputes about whether a contract was signed properly, about whether the signer had the right authority, etc. And it is apparently not necessary to have the "state" establish itself, for example, as the keeper of signatures. I concede that there is a path back to the legal "is-a-person" status of parties, such as credentials for identity. In cases involving software agents and "virtual persons" (which is where key certification tends to come in), a stipulation can be made that a Real Person is to be involved in the loop. >Is there any reason why a person would want such a certificate? In other >words, given that the recipient of a digital signature will easily be >able to check the value of the certificate (nil), won't the >transaction/communication be in all ways identical to one where there was >no certificate at all. So is anything of value lost by prohibiting such >a certificate? So long as I am not prohibited from getting together with others (on a list like our, in a corporation, with offshore folks, etc.) and setting up our own system--of whatever nature--then I suppose it doesn't matter. But you ask "So is anything of value lost by prohibiting such a certificate?" Well, why prohibit something unless a real and compelling problem exists? it might turn out to be very useful to have certificates even for keys that belong to entities or agents that have no True Name attached to them. I've given some examples, and can think of more. --Tim May ---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---- Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, tcmay(a)got.net (Got net?) | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero 408-728-0152 | knowledge, reputations, information markets, Corralitos, CA | black markets, collapse of governments. Higher Power: 2^756839 | Public Key: PGP and MailSafe available. "National borders are just speed bumps on the information superhighway."

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Red Shift
by nobody＠REPLAY.COM 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Citibank Theft New York (AP) -- Russian computer hackers broke into a Citibank electronic money transfer system and stole more than $10 million before they were caught, according to newly-unsealed court documents. The money was shifted from Citibank to accounts in Finland, Russia, Germany, the Netherlands, the United States, Israel and Switzerland, FBI agent Steven Garfinkel said. Citibank said six people have been arrested in the scheme and that none of its clients lost money.

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Re: Netscape security
by John Young 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Responding to msg by altitude(a)cic.net (Alex Tang) on Fri, 18 Aug 2:52 PM >It seems that one of the problems with Damien's >cracking job was that it was "not sanctioned". Look >at the WSJ article, they didn't mention his >name...they just called him "a hacker". It shows how >public opinion still sees groups like the cypherpunks >as just that, a bunch of punks. > >With some "respected" business on our side, it may make >a much bigger impact (better publicity, better >leverage, etc.). While the WSJ story mentioned no names, other than the esteemed CypherName and our cypheragent who lured the reporter, later stories have given individual credit and amplified the "mainstream" impact of the cabalistic hacker culture crack. This segue may be due to the PR-mad corporations and the LEA's seeking to profit by the drama given to outsiders to get their safety-products approved, to pose themselves as being more devoted to the public weal than the devil- punks (liars or inadverdent truthsayers?). Or, it may just be a more interesting (lucrative) to pump the outsider, hacker aspect. Reporting on hackerdom has been oft used to boost a shrewd wannabe-an-insider's rep in the mainstream -- no names now, you know who they are, most are doing quite well, Zarathrustra bless their complicit Guccioni-success. So, hackers, punks, cypherpunks, up all night, right, watch them come calling for an interview when you misbehave in outrageous and wondrous and techno-magical ways. Gotta get lurid stories to allure the customer/advertiser/voter. Damien, Hal and the SSL-non-anonymous hackers, watch your backs, think of Kevin and his oh-so-admiring, trust-me provocateurs. Just my Time-averse sensor-jigger, sensing threat models.

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WhiSSLing in the Dark
by nobody＠REPLAY.COM 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Netscape Encrypted Data Cracked Tokyo, Japan, Aug. 18 (NB) -- Two computer users have managed to break Netscape's Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) encryption code in response to a challenge posted to the Internet. But far from scaring people away from using the system for online purchases, the results could reassure people of the safety. In mid July Hal Finney, a US computer user, posted data in an Internet message that he recorded when he sent an order, containing a fake name and credit card details, to Netscape's own computer. Setting a task for the hacking community, he wrote, "The challenge is to break the encryption and recover the name and address info I entered in the form and sent securely to Netscape." Early this week, news came from Damien Doligez, a French computer user, that he had cracked the code and revealed the contents of the message. Several hours later a message from an American team also claimed the same feat, actually cracking it two hours earlier than Doligez. While the results look damaging on the surface, Netscape, and Doligez, pointed out the amount of computer processing power needed to hack just one message and the difficulty in repeating the process. Roseanne Siino of Netscape told Newsbytes, "The real issue is whether this compromises security on the net. He used 120 computers for 8 days just to crack one message." Siino points out that to break into another message would require another eight days at the same 120 workstations and 2 parallel computers. In home computer terms, Doligez guesses a network of about 80 Intel Pentium-based machines would be equivalent to the system he had access to via his workplace, INRIA in Paris, and computers an Ecole Polytechnique and ENS. Netscape estimates the total cost of this computing time at around $10,000, meaning there are many more economical ways of getting credit cards numbers than hacking into Netscape SSL messages. Doligez agrees, writing on his home page: "The technical implications are almost zero. Everybody who understands the technical details knew perfectly well that this was do-able and even easy. You have to understand what happened exactly. I did not break SSL itself. I did only break one SSL session that used the weakest algorithm available in SSL. If I want to break another session, it will cost another 8 days of all my machines." The vulnerability of the encryption system is shown by its international use. The coding system available via Netscape software from the Internet makes use of a 40-bit encryption key. A stronger version, using a 128-bit key, is available to US citizens but restricted from export outside the United States by government regulations. Netscape's Siino explained the US government allows export of the lower security version "because they can break it." There are some hopes that this demonstration will help persuade the US government to lift export restrictions on some harder-to-crack versions of the code. Netscape is currently developing a new Secure Courier code which just encrypts the financial data in the messages using 56-bit keys. Siino explained, "You can export over 40-bit keys for a specific application." The new system should be available early next year. Many companies working on secure transaction systems hope the much more secure 128-bit code version of the system will be available for export eventually. This is said to be almost unbreakable, requiring a trillion times more processing power to crack than the 40-bit version. Internet users can view a copy of the original challenge, access Doligez's home page with details of his result, get copies of the program used to crack the code and read Netscape's response to the news through a special section at Netscape, http://home.netscape.com/newsref/std/key_challenge.html Press contacts : Roseanne Siino, Netscape, +1-415-528-2619 , Internet email roseanne(a)netscape.com; Damien Doligez, Internet email damien.doligez(a)inria.fr ; Hal Finney, Internet email hfinney(a)shell.portal.com)

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Re: Export policy change
by Andrew Loewenstern 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

> I will cheerfully escrow keys for 1$ ecash/key. Please be advised, > however, that key storage will be on an old 40M RLL drive on an > 8088 machine, so retrieval may be a bit slow and unreliable....... hey, my escrow service will store your keys on modern equipment... Plus, I don't care you encrypt your key (with still-legal, non-exportable, escrow-free, strong-crypto) before you escrow it. :-) andrew

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PGP Certification Service for Pseudonyms
by Bill Stewart 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Time to stretch some paradigms :-) I've decided to offer a service of certifying PGP keys for Pseudonyms. Normally, it only makes sense to sign PGP keys for people you can trust to really be who they say they are, but this means you can't sign keys for people who want to use pseudonyms, which would be a Good Thing. To try and retain a certain amount of trust in the process, here's my policy for doing so: 0) I only sign pseudonyms with the psuedonym-signing key below, which tries to make it clear how trustable it isn't.. 1) First Come, First Served - The first user of a given name gets it, and the only guarantee I'll make about verification is that I won't sign more than one key with the same name unless the later key is signed by the earlier key. 2) At least for now, keys need to indicate pseudonymity in the name. 3) If you're using a name I recognize, I might check it out with the person I know who uses that name. 3A) If you're claiming to be L.Detweiler, I'll want a fax of your ID :-) Procedures: 1) Requests by email; I will mail a copy of the key to the keyserver and to the address you sent the request from if I can. 2) Price is 1 Digicash e$, or 1 Tacky Token, or a big prime number, or an interesting cypherpunk-related URL (well-known sites only count if it's something new. New code is always interesting!) 3) I'll post interesting payments to http://idiom.com/~wcs/ , and if it's something that takes a while to verify (e.g. I haven't gotten my free stuff from digicash.com yet :-) and your payment bounces, I'll probably post that too :-) Pseudonym John Doe sent me a composite number 897098274398742! Enjoy! Bill ############################################################################ 1024/B57ECBC5 1995/08/18 Bill Stewart Unauthenticated Pseudonym Signing Key <stewarts(a)ix.netcom.com> PGP-Fingerprint: 70 96 C9 B8 38 05 61 0C A5 30 D0 82 7A 74 16 15 - -----BEGIN PGP PUBLIC KEY BLOCK----- Version: 2.7.1 mQCNAzA1FMYAAAEEAKW0NWw3NyyFSuo1tQRbK8hBQDJ8Kdi0VlNqJrxKYcdbMMsW 3Mcy9aqU9Z2o4ZzqFGWVVgXARwBzIK996yL+6tNPeVZQeDa64gmuTc12oYhfocjt AhEv6+f/oEYBiKjhSfoVVuoe8sudFH2e1Q5wjpd8LGZux15gN/nzJsm1fsvFAAUR tEtCaWxsIFN0ZXdhcnQgVW5hdXRoZW50aWNhdGVkIFBzZXVkb255bSBTaWduaW5n IEtleSA8c3Rld2FydHNAaXgubmV0Y29tLmNvbT6JAJQDBRAwNRcy+fMmybV+y8UB AaYjA/iyfRbaYmNrlH81Pig/3c9Co2pPXWXJW4MES/5syRvebZEmbWaXFKpIwXh6 OBT1oKZtN8WfGxENyWcXyyoiOaRR/9tt3c3VqJ98oAgJcB9W217q4NGWiG2X6mlB IQYZ8Lcdl6aX2pftHGbFZ0AR45RKYcIdQOPVC87NLzJYEDxkiQBVAwUQMDUXFHB8 FQG9p6e1AQF/BQH+JROoAsFoo9CmzUfP2c8w8OqfNSlGkZ6gHRsJ6zgzXkJJwQ89 gJcK9HkIFPgec1/HiTmRtLWrqeDB9WVzorTnMokBFQMFEDA1Fi6IHBX3yeGy8QEB GdAH/RknVXw5UDCkEXXrrLUyNBvDpokBb7rarpJQ1SXB+YvvfcMDyotUTyhb5QZi LWOi8OrSeUD0l/LyJjQ01ejMUC3Y5z4KVyKel4E+3CwMWkuJpkoe0AkQ3TUfXqtd AM7H2kC13hXrprQKOAMJMArcHxocP9GkIRKx7URDM7vE6lmaXYEd6i5uFICNNFNM MggRfVTCr8RecP+kAWvbFJQ3ET2/ctP/wzb2uJoXlzFTebAMlh32d4UrQyo2iE1h qSF6G+GKYbtl61OJU0FySAPPV2bO5xVqgsySm9mmjEs7W2l3gyddMallbnE5vFJr 0xSOd/9ZKNfq+0Cxdy7KuW3PobY= =OBBP - -----END PGP PUBLIC KEY BLOCK----- -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.7.1 iQBVAwUBMDUk2fthU5e7emAFAQEqZwH/ZOGPWCOldIsueBZWbmSAEGcXoUlXqJNS 8DoFNO0W1qs7+2kcKxM55UahdcOdaJe/lTbtf2PLgRmEzkV2mYLSyw== =kpgd -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- #--- # Thanks; Bill # Bill Stewart, Freelance Information Architect, stewarts(a)ix.netcom.com # Phone +1-510-247-0664 Pager/Voicemail 1-408-787-1281 #--- "The fat man rocks out Hinges fall off Heaven's door "Come on in," says Bill" Wavy Gravy's haiku for Jerry

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Re: Certificates/Anonymity/Policy/True Names
by Bill Stewart 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 02:47 PM 8/18/95 -0400, Michael Froomkin writes about CAs, and asks why a CA or customer would want a certificate for a pseudonym without any identification or True Name. >given that the recipient of a digital signature will easily be >able to check the value of the certificate (nil), won't the >transaction/communication be in all ways identical to one where there was >no certificate at all. So is anything of value lost by prohibiting such >a certificate? It's useful for a couple of reasons 1) Continuity - For a single transaction, it doesn't make much difference; for multiple transactions/communications it does. If you want to use the nym JohnDoe, and you register with keys.com, you can do repeated transactions (e.g. posting to the net) as JohnDoe/keys.com, and nobody can impersonate you as long as keys.com doesn't allow duplicates. This allows people to build reputations under pseudonyms, and do repeat business or have readers bother to read their postings. Without certification (whether web-based or hierarchy-based), you're stuck with always posting your messages with a given key and hoping people can decide whether they've really got yours or some other JohnDoe. Our local Black Unicorn is this way - few of us know his True Name, but his reputation is established. On the other hand we can't really tell if the many postings by the L-Name are from a single person, a cooperating group, or imposters who decided it would be fun to borrow his reputation for the day. Tim May has occasionally proposed that the key is really all that matters, and that the name tacked onto it is just an untrustable convenience, but I'd say that certification does increase that convenience by adding some trust. 2) Policy-vs-Mechanism - Realistically, there'll be software out there that wants an Official CA-approved certificate to talk to anyone. If nobody's willing to give certificates to nyms, then nyms can't participate. 3) What's your definition of "prohibit"? If you mean "Keys.com decides not to offer the service", they lose the cash they might have made selling certificates to nyms, lose some customer goodwill, but maybe gain an improved reputation in other parts of the market, and JohnDoe can always go to Nyms-R-Us.org and register as JohnDoe32767. If you mean "the government should ban it", I've done enough anarchist ranting about how that sort of thing degrades society :-) However, if you mean "The Certificate Authority Cabal should agree not to offer any certificates without real ID and contractually forbid lower-level certifiers to do it either", well, it's a sad thing for society, but they can do it if they want. You lose the ability to participate as a nym, you lose privacy, you lose the value that you might have gained by transactions with people who wanted to retain their anonymity. RSA does offer personna certificates to unauthenticated people. (Also see my follow-on message about my offer to sign PGP keys for nyms.) 4) Are there negatives about dealing with unattributable pseudonyms? Of course. But you don't have to deal with them, and there will be CAs who don't, and services that refuse to deal with unauthenticated pseudonyms, just as there are on-line services like the Well that allow "unlisted" identifications but do keep track of true names for their users. It would be nice if certification authorities did indicate how much trust they have in the identity of a given key's owner, but markets will take care of that. Thanks; Bill Stewart #--- # Thanks; Bill # Bill Stewart, Freelance Information Architect, stewarts(a)ix.netcom.com # Phone +1-510-247-0664 Pager/Voicemail 1-408-787-1281 #--- "The fat man rocks out Hinges fall off Heaven's door "Come on in," says Bill" Wavy Gravy's haiku for Jerry

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