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coming soon: secure digital time-stamping in practice
by tcmay＠localhost.netcom.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Earlier I said I would forward to the list a posting I did on digital time-stamping, describing the Haber and Stornetta system. But I'll instead repost Stu Haber's comments, for more detail. --Tim >Date: Sun, 19 Jun 1994 21:52:29 -0700 >From: stuarth(a)netcom.com (Stuart Haber) >To: cypherpunks(a)toad.com >Cc: stuarth(a)netcom.com >Subject: coming soon: secure digital time-stamping in practice >Sender: owner-cypherpunks(a)toad.com >Precedence: bulk >Status: RO > >On Thursday, June 16 Tim May very nicely described a digital >time-stamping scheme: > >> The canonical reference for digital timestamping is the work of Stu >> Haber and Scott Stornetta, of Bellcore. Papers presented at various >> Crypto conferences. > >See below for pointers to the papers. > >> Their work involves having the user compute a hash of the document he >> wishes to be stamped and sending the hash to them, where they merge >> this hash with other hashes (and all previous hashes, via a tree >> system) and then they *publish* the resultant hash in a very public >> and hard-to-alter forum, such as in an ad in the Sunday New York >> Times. >> >> In their parlance, such an ad is a "widely witnessed event," and >> attempts to alter all or even many copies of the newspaper would be >> very difficult. (In a sense, this WWE is similar to the "beacon" term >> Eric Hughes used recently in connection with timed-release crypto.) >> >> Haber and Stornetta plan some sort of commercial operation to do this, >> and, last I heard, Stornetta was moving to the Bay Area (where else?) >> to get it started. > >We do indeed plan to do just that. Bellcore has spun off a company, >Surety Technologies, whose charter is to bring digital time-stamping >into widespread use. Resisting the charms of the Bay Area, we decided >to stay in New Jersey. > >Instead of closing off our trees once a week and publishing their roots >in the national edition of the Sunday New York Times, as we've been >doing for over two years now (including this week: look for the Public >and Commercial Notices towards the end of the main news section of >today's paper -- on p. 30 if you get the NY-area edition), we are >planning to close our trees at sub-minute intervals and make their roots >widely available. By the end of the summer, we plan to have a service >bureau (to build the trees) up and running, and client software >available to access the service -- both for time-stamping documents and >for validating (document, time-stamp certificate) pairs. > >> This service has not yet been tested in court, so far as I know. > >Nor as far as I know. But we do plan to push this issue, on several >legal and regulatory fronts, so as to enhance the legal acceptance of >appropriately authenticated digital documents. > >Here are the references: > "How to Time-Stamp a Digital Document," > S. Haber and W.S. Stornetta, > Journal of Cryptology, vol. 3, pp. 99-111 (1991). > A similar version appeared in the CRYPTO '90 Proceedings > (Springer-Verlag LNCS, Vol. 537), pp. 437-455. > > "Improving the Efficiency and Reliability of Digital Time-Stamping," > D. Bayer, S. Haber, and W.S. Stornetta, > Sequences II: Methods in Communication, Security, and Computer Science, > ed. R.M. Capocelli, A. DeSantis, U. Vaccaro, pp. 329-334, > Springer-Verlag (1993). > > >Stuart Haber | Surety Technologies provides >Chief Scientist | Digital Notary(sm) service on the Internet. >Surety Technologies, Inc. | General info: info(a)notary.com >stuart(a)notary.com | (201) 993-8178, fax -8748 > > .......................................................................... Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, tcmay(a)netcom.com | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero 408-688-5409 | knowledge, reputations, information markets, W.A.S.T.E.: Aptos, CA | black markets, collapse of governments. Higher Power: 2^859433 | Public Key: PGP and MailSafe available. "National borders are just speed bumps on the information superhighway."

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15 years!
by cyber1＠io.org 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Mats Bergstrom <matsb(a)sos.sll.se> says: > I commented on this before but feel like repeating myself: So an alt.2600 > tec-addict makes some hardware hacks on his cellular - and gets 15 years > in the slammer for catching some airwaves. A punishment scale suggestive > of a very repressive state! Many laws passed in the last decade have penalties which are coercive rather than punitive. The real intent is to force the accused to give up his accomplices. In fact, law enforcement has had some successes employing this tactic, but at what cost! -- Alex Brock

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Disruptive Tactics
by cyber1＠io.org 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

There was some discussion recently concerning problems which could arise if the U.S. federal government had a medical database on its citizens. One example of abuse of medical records is documented in the report of the "Krever Royal Commission on the Confidentiality of Health Records", published in 1980 in Canada. In the particular case I'm citing, a (now disbanded) RCMP (federal police) dirty-tricks squad obtained medical records of a dissident, and used them for disruptive tactics. Quoting from page 45: "The letter distributed at King Edward School attempted to use accurate health information to sow dissension, disruption and distrust among the members of the Young Socialists. The three letters were written and distributed by the RCMP. Superintendent Ian William Taylor ... expressly admitted that the letters addressed to Mr. Riddell and the letter distributed at the King Edward School were written by members of the RCMP with the authorization of senior RCMP officers." One of the letters begins as follows: "COMRADE: We have been most disturbed by indications of increasing emotional instability on your part, witnessed by psychiatric consultations, violent outbursts of temper and frequent periods of irritability. We note too from the enclosed letter that your condition has not escaped the notice of others." (etc.) Please note that I have no sympathy at all with the political objectives of this group, but I think the incident is a good example of the sort of abuse which can result when highly personal records are accessible by a government. -- Alex Brock

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PATNEWS: PKP cryptography members suing each other - DUCK!!!! (fwd)
by Harry S. Hawk 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

a conscious being, Gregory Aharonian wrote: > From srctran(a)world.std.com Sat Aug 20 07:08:04 1994 > Subject: PATNEWS: PKP cryptography members suing each other - DUCK!!!! For some time, the US government's plans to come up with a standard for digital signatures for electronic documents has run into a variety of problems, one of which is the fact that some of the algorithms the government wants to use are patented and in private hands, with threats of infringement lawsuits. In fact, the government recently agreed to pay an MIT professor royalties in return for use of his patent. Other patents involved are held by the consortium Public Key Partners (PKP) of Sunnyvale, California. Well as it turns out, members of PKP are now suing each other (isn't patenting fun :-). One member, Cylink (Sunnyvale) is suing another member, RSA Data Security (Redwood City, CA) over RSA's use of some MIT technology (MIT also being a member of PKP, along with Stanford). Cylink filed suit in June, and the squabble could lead to the break up of PKP, which will either simplify or complicate the use of their technology in the government's DSS digital signature standard. Stay tuned. Greg Aharonian Internet Patent News Service (for subscription info, send 'help' to patents(a)world.std.com) (for prior art search services info, send 'prior' to patents(a)world.std.com)

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PK Partners suing each other!
by rishab＠dxm.ernet.in 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

I've been off the list for a while, I hope I'm not repeating things. The Internet patent news service has some interesting stuff on an internal battle between PK Partners. The full text of the suits filed by Cylink and RSADSI is 30k, so I'm not posting it here. Rishab --------------- .... Other patents involved are held by the consortium Public Key Partners (PKP) of Sunnyvale, California. Well as it turns out, members of PKP are now suing each other (isn't patenting fun :-). One member, Cylink (Sunnyvale) is suing another member, RSA Data Security (Redwood City, CA) over RSA's use of some MIT technology (MIT also being a member of PKP, along with Stanford). Cylink filed suit in June, and the squabble could lead to the break up of PKP, which will either simplify or complicate the use of their technology in the government's DSS digital signature standard. .... For many years, there has been an ongoing controversy in the cryptogrpahy field dealing with patents. At the heart of these matters is a patent awarded to Diffie and Hellman while at Stanford, which along with a few other patents, make up the portfolio for which PKP defends and is affecting US Government activities with digital signature standards. Someone has filed a lawsuit challenging these patents, partly on the grounds that Diffie and Hellman talked about their ideas in public before they applied for the patents, and thereby forfeited their patent rights. What follows is a copy of the complaint as filed in court. The complaint is interesting as an example of such documents, as well as being good grounds to have some or all of the patents overturned. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Rishab Aiyer Ghosh "Clean the air! clean the sky! wash the wind! rishab(a)dxm.ernet.in take stone from stone and wash them..." Voice/Fax/Data +91 11 6853410 Voicemail +91 11 3760335 H 34C Saket, New Delhi 110017, INDIA

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Re: Cray contract info
by pcw＠access.digex.net 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

ge. >| >| The PIM chips will be packaged by Cray utilizing its advanced multiple >| chip module (MCM) packaging technology that allows the CRAY-3 to operate >| with a record breaking 2.08 nanosecond clock rate. The PIM chips are >| manufactured by National Semiconductor Corporation. The CRAY-3/SSS is >| expected to be demonstrated in the first quarter of 1995. After this >| initial demonstration, interested parties will be invited to try out other >| applications. I should note that this is almost 10 times faster than the Coherent Chips. Given that there is no need for interprocessor message passing in the DES tests, I rate that this chip could be 20 times faster than the earlier design. That puts it at 100 days per DES attack. This sounds like a pretty fun machine to get. All of the old vector performance of the Cray bundled with the fun of the old CM-1/CM-2. You could get some _great_ results on specific problems. -Peter Wayner

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e$ as "travellers check?
by Jonathan Rochkind 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

There has been all this talk about potential legal problems with banks issuing ecash. Lots of terms have been tossed around which I only bearly understand like "bearer bonds" and such. And some things I understand more, like the prohibition on private scrip. But someone a long time ago brought up traveller's checks, and the similarity between them and ecash. The similarity seems pretty darn close to me. You pay some money to American Express, you get a note issued by them, you give it to a merchant, he redeems in with AE for money. There's a fee charged somewhere along the line. Well, you pay some money to First Digital Bank, you basically get an electronic promissary note, you give it to a merchant for a service or product, and he redeems it with First Digital for US dollars. I dont' know much about economics, but as far as I can tell this seems a pretty solid analogy. If I'm missing something, can someone try to explain to me using small words what it is I'm missing. Otherwise, what regulation is there of people who issue traveller's checks? It's clearly not _illegal_ to issue travellers checks, so I dont' see why it would be illegal under current laws to issue ecash, despite all the interesting talk about bearer bonds and private issued scrip. But perhaps there is strict regulation or something?

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Re: In Search of Genuine DigiCash
by rah＠shipwright.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 4:24 PM 8/19/94 -0700, Eric Hughes wrote: >The withdrawal transaction posts a debit to a customers demand deposit >account (decreasing it) and a credit to the suspension account >(increasing it). NewJargonNotice("suspension account") Is this new nomenclature? It sounds less risque than "float", I must say... >Where digital cash is immediately useful is online as a retail level >wire transfer system. [snip] >the cost of networking is >dropping and the cost of computation is dropping. I personally don't >expect that off-line digital cash techniques will ever actually be >economically most efficient. Existing alternates (e.g. credit cards) >work well enough today, and by the time PDA's work well enough and are >cheap enough to be universal, the cost of an online verification will >be down in the fractions of a cent. Immediate and final clearing must save money, somehow, but right now, it's hard to prove whether cash is still king in cyberspace. I have a (somewhat religious, in the sense that it may not be empirically proved in my lifetime) belief that that's the case. That's why I like to agitate for a test. Yes, Tim, I know, you guys aren't bankers... Cheers, Bob Hettinga ----------------- Robert Hettinga (rah(a)shipwright.com) "There is no difference between someone Shipwright Development Corporation who eats too little and sees Heaven and 44 Farquhar Street someone who drinks too much and sees Boston, MA 02331 USA snakes." -- Bertrand Russell (617) 323-7923

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Re: In Search of Genuine DigiCash
by rah＠shipwright.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 4:43 PM 8/19/94 -0700, Eric Hughes wrote: >If there were already a fully identified digital money system, Is there one? >On the other hand, there is likely also a local maximum where the >premium is fairly small. In this case you get not only all the people >above, but a large percentage of the people who are willing to pay >just a little more for privacy. > >As to where these local maxima actually are, and which yields the >larger profits, I have no idea. It all boils down to Bedford Forrest's maxim "Get there first with the most men." (Sun Tsu said it first, but Forrest probably wouldn't have liked to know that, I'm sure) If in fact there is no method for making cash transactions on the internet, particularly "off-line" transactions with no trusted third party in the loop at transaction time, then digital cash is all we have. Eric has destroyed the point about the efficacy or need for off-line transactions already, but to expand on his last sentence, there needs to be empirical evidence to back up or refute his and my opposing claims. >The costs associated with anonymous digital cash may well be less that >for identified digital money systems. [reasons elided] > >Digital cash, on the other hand, needs a redeemed note database, but >this is one of its only unique costs. [snip] >It is likely that digital cash is more efficient economically, since >it unbundles a bunch of previously linked services and allows them to >be purchased separately by those who actually need them. Halleluja! Eric, for the last three months, you have said that there was no way to prove whether digital cash was more cost effective than other forms of e$, and thus potential efficiency was useless as an economic argument for its adoption. Perry and have held that it must be, and you have just now given a bunch of real good reasons. Now we need to figure how to test all this out... I love this place... Cheers, Bob Hettinga ----------------- Robert Hettinga (rah(a)shipwright.com) "There is no difference between someone Shipwright Development Corporation who eats too little and sees Heaven and 44 Farquhar Street someone who drinks too much and sees Boston, MA 02331 USA snakes." -- Bertrand Russell (617) 323-7923

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Creating privacy crises: Society hacking
by cactus＠bb.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

In the composition of my last message, I was thinking in the back of my mind about how we could foment an information privacy crisis. This could very well be a Good Thing, a societal hack to serve as a wake- up call. At the HOPE conference, there was someone selling CD-ROMs of the DMV records for Oregon for $125. The same folks promise to add more states soon: next in line is Texas. Perhaps one could generate a privacy crisis by collecting that information and conducting a mass mailing to every person in the database: "we have this information on you. So could anybody with $125. Call your congress critter and complain." Some people don't consider their DMV records critical -- so perhaps a mailing from a company of their credit history would open their eyes (More effort than the $125 + postage, but probably a better yield). It's just a thought and it would require some amount of time & money, but it's a doable hack with finite resources. Thoughts? Is this totally off the wall, or do y'all think that somebody with a small but not tiny amount of money would be into doing this? -- L. Todd Masco | "Large prime numbers imply arrest." - Previously meaningless cactus(a)bb.com | grammatically correct sentence. Now...

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