- cypherpunks-legacy - lists.cpunks.org

Aptical foddering
by tcmay＠got.net 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 5:31 PM 8/23/95, Robert Hettinga wrote: >Tim, just what does "aptical" mean? ;-). > As in "aptical foddering." I put this as my occupation on my draft registration form (Selective Service, aka "the draft") in 1969, from memories of a science fiction story. The canonical nonsense term, but vaguely plausible. I have used it often in the past 26 years. Someone about a year ago (sorry, forgot whom) sent me a note saying he recognized this from a Keith Laumer short story, something along the lines of "Graduating Class" or somesuch. (Not this title, but something with a school or class theme.) Relevance to crypto? If you have to ask what aptical foddering has to do with crypto....! --Tim May ---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---- Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, tcmay(a)got.net 408-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero Corralitos, CA | knowledge, reputations, information markets, Higher Power: 2^756839 | black markets, collapse of governments. "National borders are just speed bumps on the information superhighway."

1 0

Re: Certificates/Anonymity/Policy/True Names
by Jeff Barber 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

[ Oops -- this was supposed to go to the list too. ] Michael Froomkin writes: [ Note: I've rearranged a couple of paragraphs ] > On Mon, 21 Aug 1995, Bill Stewart wrote: > > > can be substantial even if the suit is bogus.) Under what conditions do > > you expect somebody to sue a CA? > > CA certifies key saying that holder has corporate power to enter into > deals upto $1million. Keyholder commits fraud, arguably outside > corparate powers. > CA certifies that a document is authentic and time-stamps it. Lawyers > did not do due dilligence, books were cooked, everyone who touches > document gets sued. This seems to be confusing different entities. The roles in these examples aren't the CA's role. In the usual crypto lingo, the CA only certifies that a key belongs to a certain individual. Some entity within the corporation is responsible for saying whether an individual can do deals up to $1 million. Some other organization provides time-stamps (though it's possible that a CA could be dragged into your second example). But let's keep the terminology straight: a CA as used in crypto literature means the agent who certifies that "this key belongs to X" (for some definition of X). > CA certifies you are Jack Ripper based on phony id. In fact you are Sam > Spade. CA sued for recovery of ensuing fraud. > > In each of these cases, if the CA did exactly what it promises and no > more, it (arguably) deserves a way to short-circuit the suit, thus > keeping its costs down. This is a better example to start from. I agree with your sentiment but don't necessarily agree with the conclusion. Let's start from the important "if" in your sentence. If the CA publicly guarantees only that it checks for a certain ID and can prove it did this (perhaps by producing a picture or photocopy of the ID it examined), it shouldn't have too much trouble defending the case. No reason why it should need any special short-circuit. Eventually, successful defenses will show that it's a waste of time to attack the CA if the CA did what it promised. If it guarantees more (say, that "this key *really* belongs to 'X'"), then it better be prepared to establish that fact to its own satisfaction before issuing the certificate (via birth certificates, passports, fingerprints, retinal scans or all of the above). If it fails to do those things, then it is and should be liable. After all, that's what the CA is getting paid for: to keep the promise it's implicitly making and take the heat to back up its promise. > Since (in the absence of any rules given the newness of the technology) it > is very likely that a rich CA would get nuisance suits every time a deal > in which it particiapted went sour, the absence of rules will either > raise costs CAs have to charge (e.g. to buy insurance) or will keep rich > folk out of the industry (which isn't good either, since you want CAs to > buy security and to last). Thus the need for clear liability rules. I think this is just part of the landscape for a CA. Again, that's what they're getting paid for. As for the rules, the courts will work those out through litigation. How else? :-) BTW, VeriSign is acting as a CA now for Netscape Commerce Server and Open Market Secure Web Server certificates, and perhaps others -- see: http://www.verisign.com/ I don't know exactly what guarantee VeriSign's making or what they expect their liability to be, but they are making a reasonable effort to establish the identity of server certificate holders (copy of letters of incorporation, business licenses and so forth). And they are charging $290 for a first-year certificate. It seems to me this $290 (though not huge for a business) is a lot more than it costs them just to check the papers and execute the mechanics of creating the certificate. The rest is their compensation for taking the "risk" of issuing the certificate's implicit guarantee. Presumably, some of that money goes toward insuring themselves against the kinds of claims you cited above. Just my thoughts -- IANAL. -- Jeff

1 0

Re: The End of the Ecash Trial?
by rah＠shipwright.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 12:35 PM 8/23/95, Nathan Loofbourrow wrote: >I have yet to see a date, but Digicash states several times in their >press releases that Cyberbucks are only a trial currency, and that at >some point in the future the trial will come to an end. We've talked about this a little bit on ecm. Someone from Digicash is on record there as saying that trading in c$ came as a complete surprise. The hitch about continuing to honor c$ is that there needs to be a bank. Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but it seems that the current system does work on an offline, peer-to-peer basis. Nonetheless, ocassionally, you still need to verify that the money hasn't been double spent, and for that you need a bank. The problem with being a bank is the price of the bank software, which is where David Chaum and Co. want make their money. Thus, the last price I got (offhand) from David on the phone a year ago was $250k + 10% of net profits. Given the cost of hardware, people, lawyers, and if you actually back the certificates with dollars in a bank of deposit (not being what we want do to here, admittedly) bankers, and more lawyers. Could add up to a mulitmillion dollar proposition. Of course, it could be done with donated professional time, bandwidth, hardware and donated bank software from Digicash. But it's hard to see that happening from here... Cheers, Bob Hettinga ----------------- Robert Hettinga (rah(a)shipwright.com) Shipwright Development Corporation, 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA (617) 323-7923 "Reality is not optional." --Thomas Sowell >>>>Phree Phil: Email: zldf(a)clark.net http://www.netresponse.com/zldf <<<<<

2 1

Re: SSL Challenge - problem with NT client?
by Peter Trei 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

(I think we need a separate code cracking list) I've got the NT client up and running. It can connect to the server, and download the challenges and I can request and select keyspace. But I can't seem to ungray the 'search' button, so I can't test it. Any ideas? Peter Trei Senior Software Engineer Purveyor Development Team Process Software Corporation trei(a)process.com

1 0

Re: The sorry state of non-US crypto
by Damien.Doligez＠inria.fr 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

>Italy: ftp://ftp.dsi.unimi.it/pub/security/crypt/ >UK: ftp://ftp.ox.ac.uk/pub/crypto/ >Croatia: http://pgp.rasip.fer.hr/ >Germany: ftp://ftp.darmstadt.gmd.de/pub/crypto/ Don't forget Australia: http://psych.psy.uq.oz.au/~ftp/Crypto/ It's especially relevant because there is a version of Mosaic that uses 128-bit SSL (i.e. truly secure). I have most of these pointers in my SSL crack Web page (which has evolved quite a bit in one week). -- Damien

1 0

PGP for elm
by Ferreira, Ben 296-4158 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Anyone know if there is a PGP interface or elm version that supports PGP?

1 0

Re: DES & RC4-48 Challenges
by dan＠milliways.org 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

On Wed, 23 Aug 95 11:53:22 -0500 you wrote: >Dan Bailey writes: >> According to Biham and Shamir's Differential Cryptanalysis of DES, >> "An interesting feature of the new attack is that it can be applied > >If I read this correctly, then the keys used for generation of the chosen >plaintext-cyphertext pairs is irrelevant and once the required computation is >done, one can crack any '...one of the keys can be cputed in real time while >it is still valid.'.. > I haven't read this entire book, mainly because a lot of it is over my head with some pretty esoteric proofs. The impression I got was that if the cryptanalyst is steadily keeping up with the key changes until he collects the required 2^36 from a pool of 2^47 valid plaintext/cyphertext pairs, he then can recover the last key used. I don't understand what constitutes a "valid" pair in this context. Also, I'm not sure if all the computation he's done to get to that point is applicable in his attack on the next key. It appears not. If all of his precomputation was somehow salvagable, I think we'd already have heard about someone actually doing it. But then again, I don't understand how his precomputation could *not* be applicable. He'd just have to drop off the computations done for the first key. Perhaps the difficulty in this problem comes from not knowing when the source is changing keys. According to Schneier, "To get the requisite data for this attack, you have to encrypt a 1.5Mbits/second data stream of chosen plaintext for almost three years." (240) With the massively-parallel nature of Cypherpunks, this is probably feasible, assuming we could figure out what needed to be done. Another angle is cracking a reduced-round version of DES. 8-round DES can be analyzed in 2^9 using differential cryptanalysis. Since I'm sure the press doesn't really understand using multiple rounds in iterated cryptosystems, maybe that little detail would slip by. 2^9 could easily be handled by an Alpha in the evening. Dan >So what, exactly does this mean? Can I do most, if not all of the feeding of >chosen plaintext into my personal DES box in my basement, do the required >computation (admittedly there is a lot of work to do here), then go out and >start breaking wire-transfers with a minimal of chosen plaintext? That is >what the above quotation would seem to imply. > >Seems incredible... I surely must be reading much more into the passage than >is really there... > >andrew > > > ****************************************************************************** "I think, therefore I am" - Descartes Dan Bailey "I don't think, therefore I'm a moustache." - Sartre dan(a)milliways.org Worcester Polytechnic Institute and The Restaurant at the End of the Universe ******************************************************************************

1 0

is there...
by Perry E. Metzger 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Is there an online version of Raph's anonymous remailer list for FTP or on the web? I suddenly need to give it to someone. .pm

3 2

Re: e$: The Book-Entry/Certificate Distinction
by tcmay＠got.net 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 4:10 AM 8/24/95, Alan Penny wrote: >The other night I heard that some of the rules for selling stock have >been changed to allow companies to sell stock directly to investors. >I have been thinking that this may have the potential to support an >interesting system. My company sold stock to me directly, through a Stock Participation Plan and an Incentive Stock Option Plan. >Imagine "Portfolio Accounts" with a debit-card like access method. I use a debit card which directly accesses my stock account. More on this in a moment. >Instead of paying for an item at a store with money or credit you use >your Portfolio-Account card and buy the item with shares/micro-shares >of stock. Stock brokers may offer this type of service in response the >competition of companies bypassing them. Stock brokers could setup >services that mediate between transactions calculating trades and values >"on-the-fly" (anonymity could be tricky to build into this system). This is where it breaks down. Stock prices are denominated in dollars (or the local currency, as applicable). And local purchases are denominated in dollars. Nobody pays "one microMicrosoft" for a loaf of bread. They pay $1. And Microsoft stock sells for $100, not 100 loaves of bread. >If the company you worked for paid you with stock instead of money this >would complete the loop. The IRS and other tax authorities have this one figured out: barter economies are not generally a way to avoid taxes. >This also has the interesting feature of avoiding all taxes. Until you >"cash out" your account you would not have to pay taxes, if you never >need cash out your account, you never need to pay taxes. I suspect that >our friendly governments would try to "correct" this "problem" in the >long run if they can. If you are paid in barter for some service, taxes are still owed, based on the estimated value of services rendered. By the way, a simpler example than all this talk of partial shares of companies is simply to talk about paying each other in gold, or oil, or any other commodities. Try to convince the IRS that taxes are not owed because one was paid in ounces of gold instead of dollars. --Tim May ---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---- Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, tcmay(a)got.net 408-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero Corralitos, CA | knowledge, reputations, information markets, Higher Power: 2^756839 | black markets, collapse of governments. "National borders are just speed bumps on the information superhighway."

1 0

Brute SSL Challenge
by David Neal 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Just skip this silly little message if you know enough to optimize the brutessl code. Didn't know of a better place to put this, so please no flames. Hopefully everyone on here is accomplished enough to know optimizing the brutessl code helps immensely. If not, well I used gcc -O6 -funroll-loops -fomit-frame-pointer -finline-functions -c search.c gcc -O6 -funroll-loops -fomit-frame-pointer -finline-functions -o brutessl \ brutessl.c search.o To go from 5,000 keys per second to 10,100 keys per second.

3 2