- cypherpunks-legacy - lists.cpunks.org

Re: NYT on Internet Flaws
by James A. Donald 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 10:46 AM 10/22/95 -0400, MDresser(a)aol.com wrote: > Generalizing about > reporters is about as intellectually valid as generalizing about hackers. On the contrary: Hackers are self selected, and so are very diverse. Reporters are selected from above by an incestuous elite who have their hands in each others pockets, and so are very homogenous. --------------------------------------------------------------------- | We have the right to defend ourselves | http://www.jim.com/jamesd/ and our property, because of the kind | of animals that we are. True law | James A. Donald derives from this right, not from the | arbitrary power of the state. | jamesd(a)echeque.com

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hot news at DigiCash
by Bryce 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hot news at DigiCash. One, a real live bank is going to be issuing Ecash denominated in U.S. dollars. See "http://www.digicash.com/" and "http://www.marktwain.com/". Two, the one million trial cyberbucks have been issued and no more will be issued, although the First Digital Bank will continue to run the trial for now. In honor of the occasion I hereby offer E=100 US=$8.00 SELL-OFFER "Sun Oct 22 19:34:28 MDT 1995" 2 bryce(a)colorado.edu Pretty soon we'll be able to exchange First Digital Bank trial cyberbucks for Mark Twain Bank cyberbucks denominated in U.S. Dollars. I wonder if our trial cyberbucks will be considered collector's items? I know that I will always be proud of *mine*... Bryce signatures follow "To strive, to seek, to find and not to yield." <a href="http://ugrad-www.cs.colorado.edu/~wilcoxb/Niche.html"> bryce(a)colorado.edu </a> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.2 Comment: Auto-signed under Unix with 'BAP' Easy-PGP v1.01 iQCVAwUBMIrzb/WZSllhfG25AQEGNAQApa3hQlc7jWZBIzsSUqh4o6LQfhoCPzaJ dEOHWDTS+1L8IyNo1PS3Z0hZNeDDiGda7PsilwLouH6M8kUtD7BFXyU/31QDZnXq oLdiq/OJ3A5U04ElEtRXRn7m0eQtoPv4V41UkR0GGkLx93DyGPC6ecXX4vE14oKq jLc4Dt296gc= =gnEm -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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Re: textbooks
by patrick＠Verity.COM 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Good suggestions all, but don't forget "Network Security Private Communication in a PUBLIC World" by Kaufman, Perlman and Speciner. This book covers a lot of great stuff. It doesn't use complicated math when not required, and explains the math very clearly when it's needed. It explains DES and IDEA well enough in plain language that you can understand how to implement them. While I love Bruce's book, it's much harder to understand than NSPC. I highly recommend this book to everyone. I don't think any crypto library would be complete without it. It's in contention for the official bible of crypto along with Bruce's book. Patrick > From: "Dana W. Albrecht" <dwa(a)corsair.com> > > I also suggest "A Course in Number Theory and Cryptography, 2nd Edition" > by Neal Koblitz, published by Springer Verlag. > > "Applied Cryptography" is certainly the book of choice, but Koblitz > is an excellent secondary reference for covering a lot of the relevant > mathematics in more depth. > > In my opinion, "Applied Cryptography" was written from the perspective > of computer science, "The Codebreakers" was written from the perspective > of history, and Koblitz's book was written from the perspective of > mathematics. > > They are all nicely complementary. > > Dana W. Albrecht > dwa(a)corsair.com > _______________________________________________________________________ / These opinions are mine, and not Verity's (except by coincidence;). \ | (\ | | Patrick J. Horgan Verity Inc. \\ Have | | patrick(a)verity.com 1550 Plymouth Street \\ _ Sword | | Phone : (415)960-7600 Mountain View \\/ Will | | FAX : (415)960-7750 California 94303 _/\\ Travel | \___________________________________________________________\)__________/

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Microsoft "Encrypted" Documents Hack FYI
by llurch＠networking.stanford.edu 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

I would provide the hack itself, but I'm on a Mac that lacks a proper Base64 handler at the moment. For people who only know how to use Netscape, the URL is news:465l8h$6sa@oznet03.ozemail.com.au. -rich From: lyal collins <lyalc(a)ozemail.com.au> Newsgroups: alt.security,comp.os.ms-windows.apps.misc,comp.os.ms-windows.win95.misc Subject: Re: More Microsoft Security Bugs Date: 19 Oct 1995 13:53:21 GMT Organization: not very, at the moment Lines: 366 Message-ID: <465l8h$6sa(a)oznet03.ozemail.com.au> References: <llurch-1510951157410001(a)tip-mp3-ncs-3.stanford.edu> NNTP-Posting-Host: slsyd3p02.ozemail.com.au Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="-------------------------------297591414826100" X-Mailer: Mozilla 1.22 (Windows; I; 16bit) Further to word document password protection, the attached offer a simple way to recover text in such files with this "protection". The source is included - at least one shwareare developer has taken up on this technique and releases a VB based version. cheers, lyal -rich graves, llurch(a)networking.stanford.edu moderator of the win95netbugs list http://www-leland.stanford.edu/~llurch/win95netbugs/faq.html My old PGP key has been compromised. Please finger this account for the revocation certificate and my new key.

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Re: crypto export from the UK
by aba＠dcs.exeter.ac.uk 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Jon Baber <jbaber(a)mi.leeds.ac.uk> writes: > sameer <sameer(a)c2.org> wrote: > > Could people in the UK please tell me what the crypto export > > laws are like there? I know someone who wrote some really great crypto > > code in the UK but isn't willing to distribute it because of crypto > > export laws... I was under the impression that it was legal to export > > crypto from the UK. > > I believe that the laws regarding the export of crypto from the UK are > very similar to the ITAR regs in the US. I thought they were markedly different! I always understood there were NO restrictions on crypto export, import or use to western countries. There used to be COCOM agreements which said that you should get approval to send commercially produced crypto to some blacklisted countries (Iraq, etc). I also read that the COCOM restrictions did not claim to apply to free software. Anyway, I read that the COCOM agreement has expired, so none of this applies anymore, even. There are a number of surveys around, and the above is my understanding from reading those. If you have any thing else I should be reading I'd like to see it. > However our Government seems to take the view that putting crypto > software on the net is not exporting it, the exporting is done > whenever anyone from an export restricted country downloads the > software and is done by them rather than by the person who made the > software available. I also have heard this. > Strong crypto is therefore openly available from a number of places in > this country, particually sable.ox.ac.uk at the university of Oxford. Indeed. > Of course IANAL and the government may change it's mind about the > interpretation of these things but I would expect that your > acquaintance would be perfectly safe distributing his software via > sable (the ftp site (and its predicessor) have been distributing > crypto software for a number of years and I have not heard of any > problems). I think he would be safe emailing it, putting it on the WWW, or posting it to USENET. There are no selective access restrictions on *any* crypto ftp/http sites that I know of in the UK (like various ones in the US which make a sho of enforcing the export restriction by not allowing export to non-US domain names.) Adam

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pkcs7 examples
by Eric Young 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Greetings peoples, I have just about finished writing routines to parse and write pkcs7 objects. I have written all the backend digital envelope routines and so now I have to decide on the the library API and test things. I currently only have a single pkcs7-signedData example, one that is being used to 'transport' x509 certificates and CRL's. Do any of you out there have pkcs-7 'objects' you can send me? I especially want examples of pkcs7 signedAndEnveloped. For those that don't know, pkcs7 is used in S/MIME and is a superset of PEM. The degenerative case of signedData is being used by protocols such as SSLv3 to transport X509 CRL's. thanks in advance. eric (whos SSL library is becoming a kitchen sink of crypto related stuff) -- Eric Young | Signature removed since it was generating AARNet: eay(a)mincom.oz.au | more followups than the message contents :-)

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Quantum Computation article
by cjl 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

David P. DiVincenzo from the IBM Research Division has written an article in the 13th October issue of SCIENCE magazine (vol. 270, pg. 255-261) entitled "Quantum Computation". The article is nicely divide into subsections: - Building blocks of quantum logic - Quantum circuits - Peter Shor's prime factorization - The decoherence problem - Outlook >From the outlook section "It is evident from this survey of the current state of the art in quantum experimental physics that the construction of quantum computers is presently in the most rudimentary stage, and that to even think about a procedure like Shor factorization, which might require millions of operations on thousands of qubits, might be absurdly premature." If that is the good news for Cypherpunks, then the great news is the following. ". . even a few bits of quantum computation will be very useful in performing so-called Bell measurements, which could be used to implement quantum teleportation, in which an unknown quantum state can be trasmitted to a remote location. At perhaps the 10-qubit level, a quantum computer becomes capable of performing Schumacher's quantum coding, which would be of interest in the implementation of efficient quantum cryptography. And at perhaps the 100-qubit level, a quantum computer becomes an efficient repeater for a noisy (that is partially decohered) quantum cryptographic link." It looks like the advantages of quantum computing accrue to Alice and Bob, long before it becomes useful to Eve and Mallet. A must read for aficianados of "alternative computing". Here are some URLs from the references http://vesta.physics.ucla.edu/~smolin/ (Quantum Information Page, Center for Advanced Accelerators) http://eve.physics.ox.ac.uk/QChome.html (Quantum Computation and Cryptography page, Clarendon Laboratory, Oxford University) C. J. Leonard ( / "DNA is groovy" \ / - Watson & Crick <cjl(a)welchlink.welch.jhu.edu> / \ <-- major groove ( \ Finger for public key \ ) Strong-arm for secret key / <-- minor groove Thumb-screws for pass-phrase / )

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Rising Sun Postscript Code
by anonymous-remailer＠shell.portal.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

I thought that with all of the talk about Postscript, I might demonstrate what the language can do. Here is a Postscript program which will run automatically on any machine. I call it "Rising Sun". Just attach your headers. Domo Arigato, Hara De Kangaeru %--------------Prologue------------- /inch { 72 mul } def /rays { 0 5 180 { gsave rotate 0 0 moveto 5 inch 0 rlineto stroke grestore } for } def /sunRays %called as: x y sunRays { newpath translate .5 setlinewidth rays 0 0 25 0 180 arc gsave 1 setgray fill grestore 2 setlinewidth stroke } def %-----------Script----------- %first set font and show letters /Helvetica-BoldOblique findfont 3 inch scalefont setfont 1 inch 5 inch translate 0 0 moveto (SUN) false charpath gsave stroke grestore %now set clipping path from restored text path clip gsave (SUN) stringwidth pop 2 div -10 sunRays grestore showpage

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Re: airport security
by Marshall Clow 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

> Without actually agreeing with the FAA, the reason you can't have a name > other than your own on your ticket, as well as why you are required to > be in your assigned seat on take-off and landing is because if there is > a plane crash, they need to be able to identify an otherwise difficult > to identify body. This does have some relevance to airport security if > a plane is blown up. > I do not believe that this is true. Southwest Airlines has "open seating" on all of their flights, where you board and then sit in any seat that you choose. (IMHO, an annoying policy) When a flight is (close to) full, and the flight is running late, many flight attendants will instruct the last few passengers to "sit in any open seat". I have seen this on Reno Air, American, and United. -- Marshall Marshall Clow Aladdin Systems mclow(a)coyote.csusm.edu Warning: Objects in calendar are closer than they appear.

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Re: Sun speaks out - but not to the cypherpunks
by daw＠lagos.CS.Berkeley.EDU 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- In article <v02110101acaf51651ef9(a)[204.156.156.4]>, Todd Glassey <todd(a)lgt.com> wrote: [ lines marked > > are from fc(a)all.net (Dr. Frederick B. Cohen) ] > Pardon the flame but I really have just about heard enough of this BS... [...] > >> The area where we can (must) build trust is the computing base. > >> Traditionally, this has been the OS, but in the case of java, it is > >> the java interpreter (such as netscape 2.0 and hotjava). The browser > >> is now the TCB (trusted computer base) for all practical purposes... > > > >Read: The Java interpreter is supposed to be a TCB. [...] > >Who here truly believes that the implementations of Java meet the > >requirements of a TCB? [...] > Dr. Fred, you seem to spend a lot of engery slamming Java and HotJava. [ ... flame deleted ... ] No, here I think Dr. Cohen's comments are right on the mark. The Java interpreter *is* supposed to be a trusted computing base. Do we have any reason to believe that this trust is well-placed? (If you don't agree, go through the Orange Book evaluation criteria, and pay special attention to the assurance sections...) - --- [This message has been signed by an auto-signing service. A valid signature means only that it has been received at the address corresponding to the signature and forwarded.] -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.2 Comment: Gratis auto-signing service iQBFAwUBMIwG2CoZzwIn1bdtAQEpowGAgHiyk0tTQk5SO/3TR5EZRMFmUy/TjQmu NbYIt0R/Tf0g9xWbolm5XN0alu947uJs =UZH0 -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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