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CDR: Re: why should it be trusted?
by Kerry L. Bonin 17 Oct '00

17 Oct '00

At 08:24 AM 10/17/00 -0700, Ray Dillinger wrote: > > >On Tue, 17 Oct 2000, Kerry L. Bonin wrote: > >>Extrapolate capabilities from the EFF DES crack project and you are >>somewhat closer (1536 ASIC w/ 24 cores/ASIC yielded 4.52 days/crack of 56 >>bit keyspace), then take into consideration the advantages of using more >>sophisticated semiconductor processes (ECL 15 years ago, GaAs on Sapphire >>today) and the higher clock rates that go with that (40MHz to well > 1GHz), >>and rerun your numbers. Instead of a small cabinet, fill floors of >>buildings with these machines, and you have realtime cracking farms. > >You have realtime cracking farms for *some* ciphers. I have always >figured it this way: > >They get two orders of magnitude for being "ahead of the curve" > in knowledge and technique. >They get five orders of magnitude of speed for custom hardware. >They get seven orders of magnitude for massively parallel hardware. > >That totals 14 orders of magnitude (and I think that's generous). > >So use keys that are six bytes longer than a "reasonable" opponent >could crack. problem solved. 2048-bit RSA is still way out of >their league. Unless their approach to factoring is radically different. I've seen some extremely clever ideas leak into the non-classified press, like holographic systems for realtime off-aspect optical pattern matching for targeting systems. Simple tricks that reduce the theoritical n-GFLOPS/MIPS of computing time to a few clocks. Factoring is such a fundamental operation, I can't accept that the NFS is the optimal attack. >>As for my own comments, I wrote layout and design tools used on these NSA >>custom chips in the mid 80's, certified for use with the "NSA Standard Cell >>Library" by their chip designers (they were just one of the customers of >>the CAD/CAM/CAE software I worked on back then...) > >Interesting. I thought that was the sort of thing that you could >tell the people who'd done it because they were the ones who weren't >allowed to talk about it. Under some circumstances, I guess they aren't. In my case, my employment NDA was conventional and very simple, and we regularily used our certification as a marketing point with defense contractors. In this case, I don't mind mentioning what I did, I just make sure I'm careful not to say more than we used in marketing. This doesn't violate anything I signed.

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by Michael Arevalos 17 Oct '00

17 Oct '00

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CDR: Re: Protecting Our Children
by Peter Capelli/Raleigh/Contr/IBM 17 Oct '00

17 Oct '00

Here is a link to the text: http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/D?c106:1:./temp/~c106Eno3vf:: Thanks! -p "Those who would give up essential liberty for temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety" - Benjamin Franklin, 1759 Mac Norton <mnorton(a)cavern.uark.edu>@cyberpass.net on 10/16/2000 08:48:24 PM Please respond to Mac Norton <mnorton(a)cavern.uark.edu> Sent by: owner-cypherpunks(a)cyberpass.net

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CDR: another judge farts: anonymous speech
by David Honig 17 Oct '00

17 Oct '00

Anonymous Net Posting Not Protected http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/business/AP-Internet-Defamation.html By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS Filed at 4:29 p.m. ET MIAMI (AP) -- In a ruling that challenges online anonymity, a Florida appeals court declared Monday that Internet service providers must divulge the identities of people who post defamatory messages on the Internet. Critics of the ruling say it could have a chilling effect on free expression in Internet chat rooms. The ruling comes against the efforts of the American Civil Liberties Union to protect the identity of eight individuals who posted anonymous missives on a Yahoo! financial chat room about Erik Hvide, the former CEO of Hvide Marine Inc. Hvide alleges that personal attacks against him also caused damage to the company's image. Hvide's attorney Bruce Fischman hailed the ruling, saying it would force Internet users to ``think a bit before they speak.'' The ACLU had wanted the court first to rule on whether Hyde had actually been defamed before identifying the defendants, named in court papers only as John Doe. If there was no showing of defamation, the ACLU reasoned, the critics should remain anonymous. However, on Thursday, the court dissolved a stay freezing subpoenas for the records of Yahoo! Inc. and America Online Inc., whose service was used by one of the defendants in the defamation case. Lauren Gelman, public policy director with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, is concerned that other courts could follow the lead of the 3rd District Court of Appeals in approving subpoenas. ``This kind of speech happens all the time in all kinds of chat rooms,'' Gelman said. ``We don't want to see these subpoenas become regularly used to cause people to self-censor themselves.'' Both Internet companies took a back seat in the lawsuit, saying they would do whatever the judges said. Lyrissa Lidsky, who argued the case on behalf of the ACLU, called the decision a surprise and a setback. Nevertheless, she said, ``It's not a defeat for all the other John Does in the pipeline'' fighting Internet-related subpoenas because the court did not explain its legal reasoning. An appeal is being explored. ``The court had the potential to set an important precedent about the right to speak anonymously on the Internet,'' Lidsky said. ``The courts are eventually going to have to come to grips with this issue and decide how broad free speech rights are in cyberspace.'' The issue is largely untested in the nation's courts. A Virginia federal judge sided with a government subpoena request in a criminal case, but civil suits in California and Virginia have not settled the subpoena questions involving anonymous Internet users.

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CDR: RE: Vanessa Lynch, still whining (an impressive feat)
by Declan McCullagh 17 Oct '00

17 Oct '00

If you're not already removed from the list, you should look at the message headers and find the Sender: line. Take that domain name (ssz.com or cyberpass.net or algebra.com or something) and send mail with "help" in the body to majordomo(a)thatdomainname.com. Or you could find the original message you received when you signed up, which is probably easier. -Declan At 11:55 10/17/2000 -0400, Vanessa Lynch wrote: >Hi Yes it is me again and I won't stop until someone can stop being >rude...The first emai I sent was very polite and a simple request to be >taken off. The response I received was very rude and thats why I responded >the way I did. My apologies if you are having a bad day or feel personally >attacked by my responses, however I recieve numerous emails unsolicted and >solicted and when I request to be taken off its never a problem. This list >is the only one that has responded in this manner. > >I hope you have a wonderful rest of the day and realize that this was not >about you ... I just wanted off the list. > >Thanks so much! > >-----Original Message----- >From: declan(a)cluebot.com [mailto:declan@cluebot.com]On Behalf Of Declan >McCullagh >Sent: Tuesday, October 17, 2000 12:09 PM >To: vlynch(a)predictit.com >Cc: Cypherpunks Mailing List >Subject: Vanessa Lynch, still whining (an impressive feat) > > >Ah, Vanessa, it's you again. > >You've been clogging cypherpunks with drivel for days now, in an >apparent failure to understand the most basic mechanisms of mailing >lists, let alone any glimmering of netiquette. You've been rude and >obnoxious, threatening to report the cypherpunks list to the >authorities, whoever they are. > >A typical message: "i did NOT subscribe to this crap so u take me off >or im reporting site!!!!!!" > >I apologize, of course -- for being overly polite. > >Let me be more blunt this time: Bugger off. Stop whining, stop >frothing, and take your threats elsewhere. > >-Declan > > >At 11:37 10/17/2000 -0400, Vanessa Lynch wrote: > >Below is an email I received when requesting to be unsubscribed from a >specific list - It look like someone from your organization has sent the >latest email - please do whatever it takes to ensure I do not receive any >futher emails. Whoever this person is in dire of an ego check! I simply >requested to be taken off a list - no need for the organization/person to >take it personally & act like so childish. > >Thank you for your help! > > >-----Original Message----- >From: declan >Sent: Monday, October 16, 2000 10:33 PM >To: Jim Choate >Cc: vlynch(a)predictit.com; cypherpunks(a)cyberpass.net >Subject: Re: CDR: RE: take me off ur list thank you! > > >Allow me to be more uncharacteristically succinct (it's been a long day): > >Ms. Lynch, get a clue. Stop frothing. Until then, spare us the venting. > >Yours truly, >A friend

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CDR: Re: why should it be trusted?
by Kerry L. Bonin 17 Oct '00

17 Oct '00

At 09:27 PM 10/16/00 -0700, Tim May wrote: >At 8:50 PM -0700 10/16/00, Nathan Saper wrote: [snip] >Recall that your precise words were: > >"IMHO, the NSA has enough expertise and technology to crack just about >any cipher out there." > >This is a claim about _ciphers_, a claim often made by the clueless. >("Any cipher can be broken...," "The NSA has more than enough >computer power...," are the most common variants.) And yet ciphers are a significant target of the NSA. Sure, they devote significant resources to exploiting weaknesses in key management, but ciphers are a primary target. Many people who discuss the capabilities of the NSA do not use proper methodology in extrapolating their technical capabilities. General purpose computers and supercomputers are not well suited to attacking ciphers - custom silicon is the best means. Extrapolate capabilities from the EFF DES crack project and you are somewhat closer (1536 ASIC w/ 24 cores/ASIC yielded 4.52 days/crack of 56 bit keyspace), then take into consideration the advantages of using more sophisticated semiconductor processes (ECL 15 years ago, GaAs on Sapphire today) and the higher clock rates that go with that (40MHz to well > 1GHz), and rerun your numbers. Instead of a small cabinet, fill floors of buildings with these machines, and you have realtime cracking farms. It should be noted that increasing the keyspace isn't a magic protection implying the heat entropy of the universe prevents a crack - the NSA has been playing with Feistel networks since before most cryptographers even knew about DA, not to mention the possibilities of many other unknown weaknesses in Feistel networks being known to the NSA. As for my own comments, I wrote layout and design tools used on these NSA custom chips in the mid 80's, certified for use with the "NSA Standard Cell Library" by their chip designers (they were just one of the customers of the CAD/CAM/CAE software I worked on back then...) I don't think its unreasonable to extrapolate that a sufficiently high priority message can be cracked by the NSA in near realtime, regardless of the cipher strength used, without significant knowledge of the nature of the plaintext. I'd imagine most attacks focus on key management, but anyone serious about the game will have obscene numbers of gates chewing on ciphertext. Kerry L. Bonin (speaking for self, insert lawyer joke here...) Sr. Engineer, Security/Cryptography, Cisco Systems. VScape lead architect - Adaptive secure clustering for multiuser VR.

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CDR: RE: Re: why should it be trusted?
by Fisher Mark 17 Oct '00

17 Oct '00

Kerry L. Bonin writes: > Most people who have worked with military crypto systems do, off the > record. The difference between what is public and what has > been developed > with decades of unlimited resources is staggering. How many > cryptographers > or discrete math experts work in the public domain? Now how > many work for > the NSA? That's how many orders of magnitude? And how many orders of > magnitude difference in budgets, ect., even with bureaucratic > and civil > service overhead. IMHO you haven't done much budgeting or defense work. I worked on a project secret enough that I still can't mention the name of the project (although the name itself is unclassified -- my association with the project was classified, however). Budgeting is still a factor in defense work. Your messages start to sound like the crypto that Tom Clancy uses in his novels, crypto that always annoys me because it is so fake. I agree that the NSA may have a few tricks up its sleeve on top of some pretty powerful specialized cracking hardware, but we are talking about needing heavy wizardry to do real-time cipher cracking, not just some parlor tricks that drop the work factor by 1000 or so. For the NSA to generally do what you propose, they would need some exponential-time methods, methods that would drop the work factor by 10^78 (or something like that). It is just a whole lot easier to do a black-bag job on a North Korean embassy (for example) than to directly attack their crypto. That is why defense companies do background checks, that is why some areas of military facilities are guarded by soldiers with guns, and that is why the NSA tried to conceal all evidence of their existence for a while. Crypto is just one part of a unified security policy -- sometimes not a very important part at that. ==================================================== Mark Leighton Fisher Thomson Consumer Electronics fisherm(a)tce.com Indianapolis, IN, USA "Display some adaptability." -- Doug Shaftoe, _Cryptonomicon_

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CDR: Important Membership Information
by announce＠inbox.nytimes.com 17 Oct '00

17 Oct '00

Dear cryptopunk0, Welcome to NYTimes.com! We are delighted that you have decided to become a member of our community. As a member you now have complete access to the Web's premier source for news and information -- free of charge. NYTimes.com not only provides you with in-depth coverage of events happening around the world but also with a wealth of additional features and services. The site is updated regularly throughout the day by New York Times reporters and editors to give you greater insight into events unfolding throughout the day. No matter what the hour, you can look to NYTimes.com for the most trustworthy coverage available and unique perspective you won't find anywhere else. Please feel free to explore the other areas of NYTimes.com. Here are some starting points you may find useful: ** Get NYTimes.com headlines e-mailed directly to you. Choose from the day's top stories, breaking news alerts and your favorite sections: http://email.nytimes.com/email/email.jsp?welcome ** Search and retrieve articles from The New York Times Archives back to 1996. Searches and summaries of articles are free, but there is a small fee for full text. http://archives.nytimes.com/archives?welcome ** Explore the Help Wanted and other classified listings on the Web: http://classifieds.nytimes.com/hw?welcome ** Get a free photo screensaver from The New York Times Photo Archives Choose from Vintage New York, Classic Sports, Americana and more: http://www.nytimes.com/partners/screensaver/index.html?welcome ** Search our archive of 50,000 book reviews, listen to author interviews or sign-up for an exclusive weekly newsletter from our Books Editor: http://www.nytimes.com/books/home?welcome Thank you again for becoming a member. We hope that you will make a point of visiting the site often. Sincerely, Rich Meislin, Editor in Chief New York Times Digital P.S. Your opinions are important to us. Share your thoughts about the site with us by sending an e-mail to feedback(a)nytimes.com ************************************************************* Your account information is listed below for future reference: Your Member ID is cryptopunk0 You selected your password at registration. Your e-mail address is cypherpunks(a)cyberpass.net If you did not authorize this registration, someone has mistakenly registered using your e-mail address. We regret the inconvenience; please see http://www.nytimes.com/subscribe/help/cancel.html for instructions.

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CDR: A helpful ruling on "anonymity"
by Tim May 17 Oct '00

17 Oct '00

This is a helpful ruling. No kidding. No spoof. --fair use excerpt begins-0- Monday October 16 4:29 PM ET Anonymous Net Posting Not Protected By CATHERINE WILSON, AP Business Writer MIAMI (AP) - In a ruling that challenges online anonymity, a Florida appeals court declared Monday that Internet service providers must divulge the identities of people who post defamatory messages on the Internet. Critics of the ruling say it could have a chilling effect on free expression in Internet chat rooms. .... Lauren Gelman, public policy director with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, is concerned that other courts could follow the lead of the 3rd District Court of Appeals in approving subpoenas. ``This kind of speech happens all the time in all kinds of chat rooms,'' Gelman said. ``We don't want to see these subpoenas become regularly used to cause people to self-censor themselves.'' ``The court had the potential to set an important precedent about the right to speak anonymously on the Internet,'' Lidsky said. ``The courts are eventually going to have to come to grips with this issue and decide how broad free speech rights are in cyberspace.'' --end excerpt-- Lidsky doesn't get it. There is no "right to speak anonymously on the Internet" (or anywhere else). If Alice observes Bob make a comment, and Alice chooses to speak about her observations, or is required by a court to speak about her observations, Bob cannot assert some "right to anonymity." Now, had the court said that all words must be traceable, must be signed, and so on, then this would be a different kettle of fish. But they didn't. The court just said, in this case, that the usual process of discovery and production of evidence is not trumped by some claim of a "right to anonymity." No surprises there. This is helpful because it pushed anonymity back into the technological arena, where it belongs. --Tim May -- ---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---- Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, ComSec 3DES: 831-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA | knowledge, reputations, information markets, "Cyphernomicon" | black markets, collapse of governments.

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CDR: Think cash
by Marcel Popescu 17 Oct '00

17 Oct '00

An interesting idea has surfaced on the freenet-chat list: is it possible to build a program that creates some sort of a puzzle, whose answer the generating computer knows (and can verify), but which can only be answered by a human being, not by a computer? [Additional requirement: it should be easy for the human to answer the puzzle.] My proposal was to randomly create an image, which should be 1) easily recognizable by a human (say the image of a pet), but 2) complex enough so that no known algorithm could "reverse-engineer" this. [You need a randomly-generated image because otherwise one could build a large database of all the possible images and the correct answers.] Background information would also be very useful - see http://www.digitalblasphemy.com/userg/images/969403123.shtml - it's easy for a human being to identify the animal in the picture, but (AFAIK) impossible to write a program to do the same thing. Ideas? Mark --- All inventions or works of authorship original to me, herein and past, are placed irrevocably in the public domain, and may be used or modified for any purpose, without permission, attribution, or notification.

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