- cypherpunks-legacy - lists.cpunks.org

RE: Forced Oaths to Pieces of Cloth
by Trei, Peter 10 Feb '03

10 Feb '03

> Bill Frantz[SMTP:frantz@pwpconsult.com] [...] > Unfortunately having started to question the relation between the pledge > and the ideals of the country, I started to wonder why I was pledging to > the flag, instead of the country. So over the years, I have a somewhat > edited version (removed parts in brackets): [...] One interesting variation {and a suggestion of an alternative) comes from naval diplomacy. When there's an official US/UK naval dinner, toasts are drunk (at least on shore or on British ships - I think US ships are dry). The Americans always toast the British Monarch. The Brits in return propose a toast to the US Constitution. While I have a lot of problem with the Pledge in any form, I think it would be greatly improved if it were made to the Constitution, rather than the flag. Peter Trei

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Re: Putting the "NSA Data Overwrite Standard" Legend to Death... (fwd)
by David Howe 10 Feb '03

10 Feb '03

at Monday, February 10, 2003 3:09 AM, Jim Choate <ravage(a)einstein.ssz.com> was seen to say: > On Mon, 10 Feb 2003, Dave Howe wrote: >> no, lilo is. if you you can mount a pgpdisk (say) without software, >> then you are obviously much more talented than I am :) > Bullshit. lilo isn't doing -anything- at that point without somebody > or something (eg dongle) being present that has the -plaintext- key. > Without the key the disk isn't doing anything. So no, lilo isn't > mounting the partition. It -is- a tool to do the mount. I don't understand why this concept is so difficult for you - software *must* perform the mount; there is absolutely no way you could personally inspect every byte from the disk and pass decrypted data to the os at line speed yourself. lilo is the actor here. If you gave a program spec to a programmer and said "write this" you wouldn't be able to claim you wrote the code yourself, no matter how good or essential the program spec was. > As to mounting the disk without software, not a problem it could be > done all in hardware. Though you'd still need the passphrase/dongle. you couldn't *mount* a disk in hardware; you *could* decrypt on-the-fly and make the physical disk look like a unencrypted one, but you would still need non-crypto software to mount it. >> for virtual drives, the real question is at what point in the boot >> process you can mount a drive - if it is not until the os is fully >> functional, then you are unable to protect the os itself. if the >> bootstrap process can mount the drive before the os is functional, >> then you *can* protect the os. > No you can't. If the drive is mounted before the OS is loaded you can > put the system into a DMA state and read the disk (screw the OS) > since it's contents are now in plaintext. no, you can't. data from the hardware is *still* encrypted; only the output of the driver is decrypted, and a machine no longer running bootstrap or os is also incapable of decryption. you *could*, if good enough, place the processor in a halt state and use DMA to modify the code to reveal the plaintext, but it would be a major pain to do so and would require both physical access to the machine *while powered up and without triggering any anti-tamper switches* after the password has been supplied. This is actually a weakness in firmware cryptodrives (as I have seen advertised recently) - once the drive is "unlocked" it can usually be swapped over to another machine and the plaintext read. > You can also prevent the > default OS from being loaded as well. Indeed so, yes. however, usually that decision has to be made before the password would be entered - so making more awkward. you *could* finangle the bootstrap though; there must *always* be part of the code outside the crypto envelope (but of course this can be removable media such as the usb drive mentioned, and stored securely when not in use) > Clue: If you own the hardware, you own the software. indeed so. however, if that applied to machines not already running, the police wouldn't be so upset when they find encrypted files on seized hardware.

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RE: Columbia crypto box
by bear 09 Feb '03

09 Feb '03

On Sat, 8 Feb 2003, Lucky Green wrote: >In July of 1997, only days after the Mars Pathfinder mission and its >Sojourner Rover successfully landed on Mars, I innocently inquired on >the Cypherpunks mailing list if any subscribers happened to know if and >how NASA authenticates the command uplink to what at the time was >arguably the coolest RC toy in the solar system. ... >Apparently, my original inquiry had been copied and forwarded several >times. By the time my inquiry had reached the office of the President, >just as in a children's' game of telephone, my question of "are they >using any decent crypto" had turned in to "hackers ready to take over >Mars Rover". ... >Needless to say and regardless of anyone's intent, such concern >would be entirely unfounded if the uplink were securely authenticated. > >Which I believes represents an answer to my initial question as to >whether the uplink is securely authenticated. Actually, I don't think it does. It's been my experience that the decision-makers never even *KNOW* whether their systems are secure. They've been sold snake-oil claims of security so many times, and, inevitably, seen those systems compromised, that even when responsible and knowledgeable engineers say a system is secure, they have to regard it as just another claim of the same type that's been proven false before. So I can easily imagine them just not knowing whether the link was secure, thinking that the NASA engineer's job of "securing" uplinks might be no better than Microsoft's job of "securing" communications or operating systems, because they've had it demonstrated time and again that even when they hear words like "secure", the system can be compromised. The fact is that the NASA engineer has a huge advantage; s/he's not working for a marketing department that will toss security for convenience, s/he's not working on something whose code has to be copied a million times and distributed to people with debuggers all over the world, s/he's not trying to "hide" information from people on their own computer systems, and s/he's not complying with deals made with various people that require backdoors and "transparency to law enforcement" in every box. So the NASA engineer's actually got a chance of making something secure, where the Microsoft engineer didn't. Microsoft has to claim their junk is secure, but in their case it's just marketing gas. But all this is below the notice of the decision makers; they *LIVE* in a world where marketing gas is indistinguishable from reality, because they don't have the engineer's knowledge of the issues. So having the decision makers get real nervous was likely to happen, whether the link is secure or not. There's no information there except that the decision makers have finally realized they don't really *know* whether the link is secure. That's progress, of a sort. >[Remind me to some time recount the tale of my discussing key management >with the chief-cryptographer for a battlefield communication system >considerably younger than the shuttle fleet. Appalling does not being to >describe it]. Battlefield systems have been that way forever. Battlefield information only has to remain secure for a few seconds to a few hours, and they exploit that to the max in making the systems flexible and fast enough for actual use. You want appalling? In the civil war, they used monoalphabetic substitution as a "trench code" -- on both sides. Bear --------------------------------------------------------------------- The Cryptography Mailing List Unsubscribe by sending "unsubscribe cryptography" to majordomo(a)wasabisystems.com

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Implementation of Chosen-Ciphertext Attacks against PGP and GnuPG
by Steve Schear 09 Feb '03

09 Feb '03

[Apologies if this item was passed through the list. It was news to me.] Implementation of Chosen-Ciphertext Attacks against PGP and GnuPG K. Jallad, J. Katz, and B. Schneier Information Security Conference 2002 Proceedings, Springer-Verlag, 2002, to appear. ABSTRACT: We recently noted that PGP and other e-mail encryption protocols are, in theory, highly vulnerable to chosen-ciphertext attacks in which the recipient of the e-mail acts as an unwitting "decryption oracle." We argued further that such attacks are quite feasible and therefore represent a serious concern. Here, we investigate these claims in more detail by attempting to implement the suggested attacks. On one hand, we are able to successfully implement the described attacks against PGP and GnuPG (two widely-used software packages) in a number of different settings. On the other hand, we show that the attacks largely fail when data is compressed before encryption. Interestingly,the attacks are unsuccessful for largely fortuitous reasons; resistance to these attacks does not seem due to any conscious effort made to prevent them. Based on our work, we discuss those instances in which chosen-ciphertext attacks do indeed represent an important threat and hence must be taken into account in order to maintain confidentiality. We also recommend changes in the OpenPGP standard to reduce the effectiveness of our attacks in these settings. http://www.counterpane.com/pgp-attack.html "Reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled." -- Richard P. Feynman --------------------------------------------------------------------- The Cryptography Mailing List Unsubscribe by sending "unsubscribe cryptography" to majordomo(a)wasabisystems.com

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The Crypto Gardening Guide and Planting Tips
by pgut001＠cs.auckland.ac.nz 07 Feb '03

07 Feb '03

After much procrastination I recently put the Crypto Gardening Guide and Planting Tips online at http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~pgut001/pubs/crypto_guide.txt, this may be of interest to readers. From the introduction: There has been a great deal of difficulty experienced in getting research performed by cryptographers in the last decade or so (beyond basic algorithms such as SHA and AES) applied in practice. The reason for this is that cryptographers don't work on things that implementors need because it's not cool, and implementors don't use what cryptographers design because it's not useful or sufficiently aligned with real-world considerations to be practical. As a result, security standards are being created with mechanisms that have had little or no security analysis, often homebrew mechanisms or the standards editor's pet scheme. The problem is a lack of communication: Cryptographers often don't seem aware of the real-world constraints that their design will need to work within in order to be successfully deployed. The intent of this document is to cover some of those real-world constraints for cryptographers, to point out problems that their designs will run into when attempts are made to deploy them. Also included is a motivational list of extremely uncool problems that implementors have been building ad-hoc solutions for since no formal ones exist. Peter. --------------------------------------------------------------------- The Cryptography Mailing List Unsubscribe by sending "unsubscribe cryptography" to majordomo(a)wasabisystems.com

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Re: Feds pull plug on suspicious "cyberwarfare" .gov site
by Mike Rosing 05 Feb '03

05 Feb '03

On Wed, 5 Feb 2003, Declan McCullagh wrote: > Wonder if any current .gov domains are owned by individuals pulling a prank? > > -Declan > > >Date: Wed, 5 Feb 2003 08:46:20 -0500 > >From: Declan McCullagh <declan(a)well.com> > >To: politech(a)politechbot.com > >Subject: FC: Feds pull plug on suspicious "cyberwarfare" .gov site > > > >I've placed a mirror of AONN.gov here: > >http://www.politechbot.com/docs/aonn/ I followed down the page and found a name, then googled for it. Check this out and laugh your butt off! http://www.manhunt.com/features/html/89.shtml Patience, persistence, truth, Dr. mike

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Re: Transport, the near future
by Peter Fairbrother 05 Feb '03

05 Feb '03

Steve Schear wrote: > > My preference is the space elevator. In simple terms, the space elevator > is a ribbon with one end attached to the Earth's surface and the other end > in space beyond geosynchronous orbit (35,800 km altitude). The competing > forces of gravity at the lower end, and outward centripetal acceleration at > the farther end, keep the ribbon under tension and stationary over a single > position on Earth. This ribbon, once deployed, can be ascended by > mechanical means to Earth orbit. If a climber proceeds to the far end of > the ribbon and releases, it would have sufficient energy to escape from > Earth's gravity and travel to the Moon, Mars, Venus and the asteroids. > > http://www.highliftsystems.com/ > > > "Reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be > fooled." > -- Richard P. Feynman It's a nice idea, but it needs a tensile-strength-to-mass ratio equivalent to holding a girl and her mother up by a single thread of her 10 denier stockings. Not easy to achieve. You'd need carbon nanotubes or the like, and at the moment we can't build it. You also need 45,000 km or so of tether. Expensive. Huge investment, fragile. Unrealistic, imo. Rotating tethers on the other hand can use hi-test fishing line. Really, no kidding. You only need a few hundred km, or at most a few thousand km, of tether. Cheap. There are two types, landing takeup and hypersonic takeup. They work a bit like this (here goes a try at some ascii art...) [] orbiting mass--> \ \ rotating tether \ \ <-\ space -------------------- atmosphere ________________________ earth (on this scale a space elevator cable would be roughly six feet long) The tether, whose centre of gravity is in a fairly low orbit, dips it's end into the earth's atmosphere every so often. Hypersonic takeup tethers catch a 'plane flying at hypersonic speeds in the upper atmosphere, and landing takeup tethers reach the surface. The energy/momentum is replaced by sending current through the tether as it passes through the Earth's magnetic field. Hypersonic takeup tethers are better studied, even the rendezvous techniques apparently work, and can use fishing line except for the short length that enters the upper atmosphere (it would melt). They use a mesh-like tether structure to avoid catastrophic damage from meteorites etc (a patented, but IMO obvious, idea). Landing tethers sort of cast the line a bit ahead, like a fisherman; it hits the ground, is tied on to the spaceship (good knots!) and then the line and the spaceship are dragged up. No-one really has studied them much (except me, and I'm not telling yet), but the strength (and length) of line needed is _much_ (order of mag+) less than a space elevator. And you don't need a hypersonic 'plane. You can also fling things away from the tether when they're going away from the Earth. Can get any (reasonable) speed you like. -- Peter Fairbrother

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Re: Putting the "NSA Data Overwrite Standard" Legend to Death... (fwd)
by pgut001＠cs.auckland.ac.nz 05 Feb '03

05 Feb '03

Thomas Shaddack <shaddack(a)ns.arachne.cz> writes: >Second, where did the number 7 really come from? >From the OSI 7-layer model, which took it from the fact that the number 7 is sacred to a certain tribe in Borneo (see "The Elements of Networking Style", by Mike Padlipsky). Peter.

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Re: Tiny whiskers make huge memory storage
by Dave Emery 05 Feb '03

05 Feb '03

On Tue, Feb 04, 2003 at 09:10:39AM -0500, Sunder wrote: > > My question is what's a reasonable order of magnitude of overwriting data > now, assuming you're not trying to hide data from, say the NSA. > This raises a question I've long had. ARE there actual systems for reading overwritten disk data in existance out there ? Are they in daily use or merely laboratory curiosities ? I know, of course, that there are companies that supply disk recovery services, but as far as I have ever heard they mostly work with non overwritten data on disks that have bad electronics, bad motors, bad head actuators, damaged formating, bad servo tracks, bad heads, damaged surfaces and so forth. The most I have ever heard of being routinely done is reading data off a platter with a special external head positioned by special mechanics and servo systems. And of course most of what data recovery companies do is work with disks with corrupt filesystems but largely or entirely intact information content on the platters. This includes partially erased filesystems and file systems with key information blocks that cannot be reliably read or that have been overwritten by garbage. None of this involves reading the ghosts of previous data in sectors that have been overwritten once or multiple times. So what is the actual threat ? Are there any papers describing practical production systems and proven techniques for retrieving overwritten data ? How good are they - what BERs are obtainable for what percentage of data ? Clearly a cryptographer legitimately worries about being able to infer that a particular bit a of key has a slightly greater than 50% chance of being a 1 or 0, but for most users retrieving email or documents with even one or two corrupt characters in them per page may not be very interesting even if it is possible. And good lawyer should be able to plant doubt in the minds of a jury if the data is really garbled, even if it seems incriminating. So it would seem that for most normal recovery purposes (business data recovery and evidence) any multi-layer ghost data recovery would have to be pretty good to be worth investing in. The NSA/CIA, however might be interested in anything at all under some circumstances - without those limitations. So how real is the threat - what does it cost to have it done and how expensive is the gear ? Who actually has working setups in use ? And how many layers down can they really read ? And with what BER ? -- Dave Emery N1PRE, die(a)die.com DIE Consulting, Weston, Mass. PGP fingerprint = 2047/4D7B08D1 DE 6E E1 CC 1F 1D 96 E2 5D 27 BD B0 24 88 C3 18

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Re: Duh, transport
by Harmon Seaver 04 Feb '03

04 Feb '03

On Wed, Feb 05, 2003 at 01:56:22AM +0000, Peter Fairbrother wrote: > > Railways: > Euro railways are better than US - but in at least the UK there is > "compulsory purchase", when they grab your land and pay you very little for > it, in order to build them. And too much government is involved. Yeah, the same with highways (and airports, for that matter) here. The WI DOT is the states biggest boondogle, with prisons second. -- Harmon Seaver CyberShamanix http://www.cybershamanix.com

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