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Crypto cartoon
by Major Variola (ret) 17 Apr '03

17 Apr '03

from the cryptography mailing list: Today's (April 16ths) "Foxtrot" will amuse readers of this list. http://www.ucomics.com/foxtrot/

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Reason's Cathy Young complains of post-9-11 "panic-mongers"
by Declan McCullagh 16 Apr '03

16 Apr '03

http://www.reason.com/cy/cy040803.shtml ... Should we be on guard against sacrificing civil liberties to national security? Yes. But despite the panic-mongering, this is still America, and we still have checks and balances. Journalist Steven Brill, whose book After examines post- Sept. 11 America, notes in a Salon interview that judges and legislators, including Republicans, have curbed some of the excesses of John Ashcroft's Justice Department. ... Measures such as limiting terror suspects' communications with their lawyers in order to prevent potential terrorist acts are controversial, and rightly so. But they are a far cry from Stalinism. ... Yes, this is a different America than it was on Sept. 10, 2001. But it wasn't Ashcroft, President Bush, or the Republican Congress who conspired to rob us of our freedom; it was the terrorists. ...

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This document saved from http
by eugen 16 Apr '03

16 Apr '03

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Plan Would Use Software, Not Devices, to Fight Piracy
by R. A. Hettinga 16 Apr '03

16 Apr '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 Wherein Paul Kocher proves, once again, that secure messages on insecure public networks will always beat insecure messages on "secure" private networks. So much for book-entry to the screen buffer. Take *that* WAVE-oids. :-) Of course, the old crypto saw still prevails: The only thing DRM gets you is who the copy was stolen *from*, not who stole it. So, I still predict an eventual convergence to a cash-settled auction market for authenticated copies of any digital work, and, of course, I think Paul's work is a great step in this direction. Financial cryptography is the only cryptography that matters. Cheers, RAH - ------- <http://www.nytimes.com/2003/04/15/technology/15CRYP.html?pagewanted=p rint&position=top> The New York Times April 15, 2003 Plan Would Use Software, Not Devices, to Fight Piracy By JOHN MARKOFF A prominent computer security researcher has proposed a technical solution aimed at forging a middle ground in the increasingly bitter battle by Hollywood and Silicon Valley over the best way to protect digital content from consumer piracy. Cryptography Research has begun circulating its proposal, which it calls Self-Protecting Digital Content, among entertainment companies. It plans to make it available publicly this week, in an effort to break the impasse over the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, which Congress passed in 1998 with strong lobbying support from Hollywood and other creators of intellectual property. Cryptography Research's proposal would shift the location of copy-protection code from the consumer products that play music and movies and run software to the content files produced by entertainment companies and software developers. The plan aims to help avoid the immense costs of building piracy protection into personal computers, video game players, satellite receivers and other devices produced by technology manufacturers. While it would not eliminate the possibility of digital theft, its advocates said it would drastically curb piracy while easing the burden on the technology industry. They say the plan would also avoid invading the privacy of consumers who do not engage in piracy and make it easier and less costly for content owners to recover if a copy-protection system is broken. The authors of the report include Paul Kocher, a leading American cryptographer, who was involved in the development of an important Web standard for protecting the security of commercial transactions. Consumer electronics makers create coding to wrap what they hope will be unbreakable shells of software around digital content on CD's, DVD's and the like. Once the copy protection systems are undermined, however, it is simple for pirates to make unlimited copies of the music, video or software. Under pressure from Hollywood and the recording industry, the personal computing industry has now embarked on an ambitious project to build copy protection hardware into the circuitry of all PC's. The efforts, including the PC hardware industry's Trusted Computing Platform Alliance and Microsoft's Palladium system are being sold to users on the grounds that they will protect information privacy and computer security. But if the hard-wired approach proves to be fallible, allowing a determined enemy to bypass this digital Maginot line, the standards efforts could turn into a financial disaster for the computer industry and harm Hollywood as well. "We use the term brittle," said Mr. Kocher, who consults widely in the consumer electronics industry on cryptography issues. "You have a strong external shell, but the inside is software and completely vulnerable." Under the proposal from Cryptography Research, based in San Francisco, the hardware would be radically simplified and the complexity of protecting the information would be embedded within the music, video or software file itself. As part of the approach, each file would embed a digital mark, making it possible for a stolen copy to be traced. The advantage of the system is that the tracing technology would only come into play if a file is widely copied. "It's a clever idea," said Bruce Schneier, founder and chief technical officer of Counterpane Internet Security, a computer security company. "This makes the job of the attacker more annoying. Paul is approaching the problem more sensibly than others." Most security experts now believe that there will never be a perfect solution to digital piracy. But most earlier proposals would involve such extensive invasions of privacy that many experts worry that they could end up producing a consumer backlash against the entertainment and technology industries. Mr. Kocher said he decided to explore a new approach after years of watching the mounting tension among Hollywood, electronics manufacturers and consumer advocacy groups. "I find the problem of piracy absolutely fascinating," he said. "Most people view this as a war between Hollywood and technology companies. But I view it as the security industry has done a terrible job of attempting to solve Hollywood's piracy problem." -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: PGP 8.0 - not licensed for commercial use: www.pgp.com iQA/AwUBPpwuzsPxH8jf3ohaEQIlqwCglu3m7jIz/PH8EaZ8UndYUx0+QEoAoPyn gxCurY25EdNuI36vZRmvkZYz =DdZh -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- -- ----------------- 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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RSA Show impressions
by Steve Schear 16 Apr '03

16 Apr '03

This year's RSA show was, like it predecessors, mostly a schmooze event. Shrunk at least 1/3 in floor space from the 2001/2 events, it certainly reflected the changes in this industry. I was surprised and a bit dismayed that I saw few familiar faces. A brief talk with Stacy Cannan, of L.J. Kushner, the leading security industry recruiter, confirmed my suspicions that many senior level people had left the industry in the past two years. The booths were mostly manned with the latest generation of newly graduated fodder. There didn't seem to be much activity (or smiles for that matter) in most booths. This is probably reflecting the exit/acquisition of some early players, decreased level of IT spending, and the increasing impact of open source security solutions. About the most amusing thing was receiving a "Regime change begins at home" button from one of the executives. steve

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Re: All Your Bases Are Belong To Us [GATTACA]
by Tyler Durden 16 Apr '03

16 Apr '03

Variola wrote... >From: "Major Variola (ret)" <mv(a)cdc.gov> >To: "cypherpunks(a)lne.com" <cypherpunks(a)lne.com> >Subject: All Your Bases Are Belong To Us [GATTACA] >Date: Wed, 16 Apr 2003 09:08:08 -0700 > >White House seeks to expand DNA database > >WASHINGTON DNA profiles from juvenile offenders and from adults >who have been arrested but not convicted would be added to the FBI's >national >DNA database under a Bush administration proposal. And apparently mainland Chinese research has shown that the most appropriate DNA in such cases comes from the eyeballs, kidneys, or liver. -TD _________________________________________________________________ The new MSN 8: smart spam protection and 2 months FREE* http://join.msn.com/?page=features/junkmail

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All Your Bases Are Belong To Us [GATTACA]
by Major Variola (ret) 16 Apr '03

16 Apr '03

White House seeks to expand DNA database WASHINGTON DNA profiles from juvenile offenders and from adults who have been arrested but not convicted would be added to the FBI's national DNA database under a Bush administration proposal. Under current law, only DNA from adults convicted of crimes can be placed in the national database, which is used to compare those samples with biological evidence from the scenes of unsolved crimes. As of January, there were about 1.3 million DNA samples in the database, U.S. officials say. http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2003-04-15-dna-usat_x.htm

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No Freedom to Speak - Court blocks security conference talk
by Jei 16 Apr '03

16 Apr '03

http://news.com.com/2100-1028-996836.html By John Borland Staff Writer, CNET News.com April 14, 2003 A pair of students were blocked by a federal court from presenting information at a Georgia security and hackers' conference on how to break into and modify a university electronic transactions system. Washington D.C.-based education software company Blackboard successfully convinced a Georgia state court to block the students' presentation, which was scheduled to be given at the Interz0ne conference in Atlanta last weekend. Blackboard argues that the restraining order blocked the publication of information gained illegally, which would have harmed the company's commercial interests and those of its clients. But conference organizers contend that the students' free speech rights were abridged. "The temporary restraining order pointed out that the irreparable injury to Blackboard, our intellectual property rights and clients far outweighed the commercial speech rights of the individuals in question," said Michael Stanton, a Blackboard spokesman. The company claims that the speech being blocked is commercial speech because the students were a "small competitor" to Blackboard. One of the students, Georgia Institute of Technology's Billy Hoffman, had threatened to give away code allowing any computer to emulate Blackboard's technology, the company claims. Programmers' rights to publish or present information that would help break security technology has been an increasingly controversial issue over the past few years. Much of the controversy has focused on the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, which contains a provision making it illegal to break technological security measures protecting copyrighted works, or even to publish information explaining how to do so. The best-known case in this area had to do with Princeton University professor Edward Felton's attempts to present information on how to break protections created by the now-defunct Secure Digital Music Initiative. Felton said that SDMI attorneys told him he would be violating copyright law if he presented his work. The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), a key part of the SDMI effort, denied making legal threats. Although an initial cease and desist letter sent to the Interz0ne conference organizers hinted that the students may have violated the DMCA, the complaint that resulted in the temporary restraining order did not touch on that copyright law. Instead, the restraining order was grounded largely in federal and Georgia state antihacking laws and a state trade secrets act. The information set to be presented was gleaned after one of the students had physically broken into a network and switching device on his campus and subsequently figured out a way to mimic Blackboard's technology, the company told the judge. Because that alleged act would be illegal under the federal and state laws, publication of the resulting information should be blocked, it argued. The state judge agreed, at least temporarily. A hearing on a permanent injunction against publication or presentation of the work will be held in Georgia state court Wednesday. The students, Hoffman and the University of Alabama's Virgil Griffith, could not immediately be reached for comment.

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Baghdad looters returning swag
by R. A. Hettinga 15 Apr '03

15 Apr '03

<http://www.bayarea.com/mld/cctimes/news/5636572.htm?template=contentModules…> San Jose Mercury News Posted on Tue, Apr. 15, 2003 Baghdad looters returning swag Widespread rumor says cleric forbade wives from allowing their thieving husbands to touch them By Carol Rosenberg KNIGHT RIDDER NEWSPAPERS BAGHDAD, Iraq -Some people are surrendering the booty they took in the Dura district of Baghdad, perhaps in response to a rumored edict by a Muslim cleric forbidding Iraqi wives from having sex with looter husbands. Muslim clerics have been demanding that ill-gotten goods be surrendered, though none here could confirm the sex-ban order, said to have been issued in Najaf. One cleric said the rumor of the edict was widespread and that it would be consistent with Islamic teaching. "A good Muslim woman would not let this man touch her, as a signal to everybody that this is not a way to behave," said Sheik Ali Jabouri, who also preached Monday morning that people must give up their loot. "The people were destroying their civilization, their heritage; they were destroying their good Iraqi Muslim character," Jabouri said. "I think these waves of bad people, the enemies of peace, will stop. You will soon see how good the people are, how willing they are to apply the good Islam." Whatever the reason, workers from the huge Dura power plant weaved through the district Monday, recovering looted items from their neighbors. "They started to put it outside their houses, so we go around and collect it. It is my country and I am happy to serve it," said Nasser Ghali, 43, easing a truck crammed with office equipment past two U.S. tanks to Dura's huge power plant compound in southern Baghdad. His fourth shipment of the morning, it contained chairs, desks and bookcases that had been stripped from the plant in the havoc of looting that followed Saddam Hussein's fall last week. Staff Sgt. Adam Jablonowski, who grew up near Miami, supervised gate security and said stolen equipment had been "coming in all day," including vehicles and other supplies. No doubt part of the inspiration for turning over looted goods was the hope that Iraqi engineers guarded by U.S. forces could restart the huge plant, which maintenance engineer Tony Mateus said stopped serving some 3 million customers amid U.S. air strikes about 10 days ago. Mateus said about half the usual 500-member work force turned up at the gates of the plant Monday, eager to figure out how to fix the problem. Engineers concluded that a natural gas line was cut north of the city, and that fuel was needed to fire up the plant. Now, Mateus said, Iraqi civilians and U.S. forces were trying to figure out how to restart it without natural gas. The plant was damaged, he said, first by U.S. airstrikes and then by Iraqi looters, but not beyond repair. Mateus, a Christian Iraqi, said he and 10 other men from Dura barricaded themselves inside throughout the war, armed, to ward off widespread thievery, and were more or less successful. -- ----------------- 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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Re: DMCA Crypto Software
by Major Variola (ret) 15 Apr '03

15 Apr '03

At 06:56 PM 4/15/03 +0200, Thomas Shaddack wrote: >> John Markoff reports today on Paul Kocher/Cryptography Research's >> proposed software protection of DMCA content: >> http://cryptome.org/dmca-kiss.htm > >The embedding of watermarks will make computer intrusions a very >attractive way to "steal" content, which then can be widely distributed >without too high chance of repercussions for the distributor, as the >original owner will take the heat. Victimization, anyone? There's that, and the watermark removal you mentioned, (see Felton et al.) but why bother? Someone from someplace not under the grip of the DMCA regime will buy the marked file, and not care about its propogation. If incoming media files are blocked by a national firewall (no first amendment for imports.. customs can seize your porn when you re-enter the US) well, crypto just laughs at this.

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