- cypherpunks-legacy - lists.cpunks.org

gonzo cryptography; how would you improve existing cryptosystems?
by Travis H. 09 Nov '05

09 Nov '05

Hi folks, If one had the ability to create standards over, with reckless disregard for performance, how would you improve their security? Feel free to pick a protocol or system (e.g. gpg or isakmp) and let me know how it is done, and how it should have been done. For example, pgp doesn't hide the key IDs of the addressees. Many systems use hashes that are too small. DSA keys are too small compared to large ElG keys. How would you make a signature with a larger keyspace? Does the protocol wrap encryption in authentication instead of vice-versa? Does ISAKMP do encryption where the input is meant to be secret, instead of the key? Does it use a rinky-dink algorithm, now that much better ones are available? I've got a hankering to re-write something, and I want to know what can be improved the most. PS: There's a paper on cryptanalyzing CFS on my homepage below. I got to successfully use classical cryptanalysis on a relatively modern system! That is a rare joy. CFS really needs a re-write, there's no real good alternatives for cross-platform filesystem encryption to my knowledge. -- http://www.lightconsulting.com/~travis/ -><- "We already have enough fast, insecure systems." -- Schneier & Ferguson GPG fingerprint: 50A1 15C5 A9DE 23B9 ED98 C93E 38E9 204A 94C2 641B

5 6

AW: [smb@cs.columbia.edu: Skype security evaluation]
by Kuehn, Ulrich 09 Nov '05

09 Nov '05

> -----Urspr|ngliche Nachricht----- > Von: owner-cryptography(a)metzdowd.com > [mailto:owner-cryptography@metzdowd.com] Im Auftrag von cyphrpunk > Gesendet: Freitag, 28. Oktober 2005 06:07 > An: cypherpunks(a)jfet.org; cryptography(a)metzdowd.com > Betreff: Re: [smb(a)cs.columbia.edu: Skype security evaluation] > > Wasn't there a rumor last year that Skype didn't do any > encryption padding, it just did a straight exponentiation of > the plaintext? > > Would that be safe, if as the report suggests, the data being > encrypted is 128 random bits (and assuming the encryption > exponent is considerably bigger than 3)? Seems like it's > probably OK. A bit risky perhaps to ride bareback like that > but I don't see anything inherently fatal. > There are results available on this issue: First, a paper by Boneh, Joux, and Nguyen "Why Textbook ElGamal and RSA Encryption are Insecure", showing that you can essentially half the number of bits in the message, i.e. in this case the symmetric key transmitted. Second, it turns out that the tricky part is the implementation of the decryption side, where the straight-forward way -- ignoring the padding with 0s "They are zeroes, aren't they?" -- gives you a system that might be attacked in a chosen plaintext scenario very efficiently, obtaining the symmetric key. See my paper "Side-Channel Attacks on Textbook RSA and ElGamal Encryption" at PKC2003 for details. Hope this answers your question. Ulrich

6 6

[murphy.audie@gmail.com: Re: Hacker strikes through student's router]
by Eugen Leitl 09 Nov '05

09 Nov '05

----- Forwarded message from Audie Murphy <murphy.audie(a)gmail.com> -----

1 0

[dave@farber.net: [IP] National Security Letters]
by Eugen Leitl 09 Nov '05

09 Nov '05

----- Forwarded message from David Farber <dave(a)farber.net> -----

1 0

RSA-640 Factored
by Eric Cordian 09 Nov '05

09 Nov '05

http://mathworld.wolfram.com/news/2005-11-08/rsa-640/ A team at the German Federal Agency for Information Technology Security (BSI) GNFS Reportedly 5 Months on 80 Opterons. Are 1024 bit RSA keys still safe? -- Eric Michael Cordian 0+ O:.T:.O:. Mathematical Munitions Division "Do What Thou Wilt Shall Be The Whole Of The Law"

1 0

RSA-640 Factored
by Eric Cordian 09 Nov '05

09 Nov '05

http://mathworld.wolfram.com/news/2005-11-08/rsa-640/ A team at the German Federal Agency for Information Technology Security (BSI) GNFS Reportedly 5 Months on 80 Opterons. Are 1024 bit RSA keys still safe? -- Eric Michael Cordian 0+ O:.T:.O:. Mathematical Munitions Division "Do What Thou Wilt Shall Be The Whole Of The Law"

1 0

Oops - Official Reveals Budget for U.S. Intelligence
by Bill Stewart 08 Nov '05

08 Nov '05

$44B, up from $26.8 in 1998. It's the usual NYTimes-registration-required article. http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/08/politics/08budget.html November 8, 2005 Official Reveals Budget for U.S. Intelligence By SCOTT SHANE WASHINGTON, Nov. 7 - In an apparent slip, a top American intelligence official has revealed at a public conference what has long been secret: the amount of money the United States spends on its spy agencies. At an intelligence conference in San Antonio last week, Mary Margaret Graham, a 27-year veteran of the Central Intelligence Agency and now the deputy director of national intelligence for collection, said the annual intelligence budget was $44 billion. The number was reported Monday in U.S. News and World Report, whose national security reporter, Kevin Whitelaw, was among the hundreds of people in attendance during Ms. Graham's talk. "I thought, 'I can't believe she said that,' " Mr. Whitelaw said on Monday. "The government has spent so much time and energy arguing that it needs to remain classified." The figure itself comes as no great shock; most news reports in the last couple of years have estimated the budget at $40 billion. But the fact that Ms. Graham would say it in public is a surprise, because the government has repeatedly gone to court to keep the current intelligence budget and even past budgets as far back as the 1940's from being disclosed. Carl Kropf, a spokesman for the office of the director of national intelligence, John D. Negroponte, said Ms. Graham would not comment. Mr. Kropf declined to say whether the figure, which Ms. Graham gave last Monday at an annual conference on intelligence gathered from satellite and other photographs, was accurate, or whether her revelation was accidental. Steven Aftergood, director of the Project on Government Secrecy at the Federation of American Scientists, expressed amused satisfaction that the budget figure had slipped out. "It is ironic," Mr. Aftergood said. "We sued the C.I.A. four times for this kind of information and lost. You can't get it through legal channels." Only for a few past years has the budget been disclosed. After Mr. Aftergood's group first sued for the budget figure under the Freedom of Information Act in 1997, George J. Tenet, then the director of central intelligence, decided to make public that year's budget, $26.6 billion. The next year Mr. Tenet did the same, revealing that the 1998 fiscal year budget was $26.7 billion. But in 1999, Mr. Tenet reversed that policy, and budgets since then have remained classified with the support of the courts. Last year, a federal judge refused to order the C.I.A. to release its budget totals for 1947 to 1970 - except for the 1963 budget, which Mr. Aftergood showed had already been revealed elsewhere. In court and in response to inquiries, intelligence officials have argued that disclosing the total spying budget would create pressure to reveal more spending details, and that such revelations could aid the nation's adversaries. That argument has been rejected by many members of Congress and outside experts, who note that most of the Defense Department budget is published in exhaustive detail without evident harm. The national commission on the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, recommended that both the overall intelligence budget and spending by individual agencies be made public "in order to combat the secrecy and complexity" it found was harming national security. "The taxpayers deserve to know what they're spending for intelligence," said Lee H. Hamilton, the former congressman who was vice chairman of the commission. Even more important, Mr. Hamilton said, public discussion of the total budgets of intelligence agencies would encourage Congress to exercise "robust oversight." The debate over whether the intelligence budget should be secret dates to at least the 1970's, said Loch K. Johnson, an intelligence historian who worked for the Church Committee investigation of the intelligence agencies by the Senate in the mid-1970's. Mr. Johnson said the real reason for secrecy might have less to do with protecting intelligence sources and methods than with protecting the bureaucracy. "Maybe there's a fear that if the American people knew what was being spent on intelligence, they'd be even more upset at intelligence failures," Mr. Johnson said.

1 0

[hardmac@gmail.com: Hacker strikes through student's router]
by Eugen Leitl 08 Nov '05

08 Nov '05

----- Forwarded message from Thomas Hardly <hardmac(a)gmail.com> -----

1 0

is it possible Andy?
by Tory Walker 08 Nov '05

08 Nov '05

ED Drugs proudly presents New christmas prices: Viagra $1.56 Cialis $3.00 Levitra $2.78 Viagra SOFT $1.89 NEW! Cialis SOFT $3.33 NEW! Visit us here: http://manometerd9111j16i4005dvoiddoivvd.antitankal.com/ joss you gulf me, compendia ashamed mindanao indochina . [2

1 0

[Clips] Austrac runs eye over net payments
by R. A. Hettinga 08 Nov '05

08 Nov '05

--- begin forwarded text Delivered-To: clips(a)philodox.com Date: Tue, 8 Nov 2005 12:30:51 -0500 To: Philodox Clips List <clips(a)philodox.com> From: "R. A. Hettinga" <rah(a)shipwright.com> Subject: [Clips] Austrac runs eye over net payments Reply-To: rah(a)philodox.com Sender: clips-bounces(a)philodox.com <http://australianit.news.com.au/common/print/0,7208,17167384%5E15319%5E%5En…> Australian IT Austrac runs eye over net payments Simon Hayes NOVEMBER 08, 2005 PAYMENTS watchdog Austrac will continue to consider whether tighter regulation is needed for the growing internet payment systems sector in light of concerns that criminals could use the gateways to launder money. Austrac director Neil Jensen told Senate Estimates that Austrac would recommend changes to the Financial Transactions Reporting Act if it felt payment systems were being used to evade cash reporting requirements. The Attorney-General's Department is considering broader changes to bring the Act up to the requirements of the Financial Action Task Force. "We will look at payment systems to see what they are and if they are caught by the existing legislation," Mr Jensen said. "If they're not, is this an issue and do we need to refer it to the Attorney-General's Department for a policy decision?" Mr Jensen said Austrac examined each payment system separately to see if it was covered by the reporting requirements in the existing legislation. PayPal, the payment system owned by internet auction giant eBay, reports suspicious transactions to Austrac, but it is not required to report all transactions of $10,000 or more because it does not accept cash and does not operate accounts. "We only monitor the transactions they provide to us, and PayPal is a cash dealer under the legislation," Mr Jensen said. "Because of the way PayPal operates it generally reports only the suspicious transactions." Mr Jensen said Austrac was monitoring the internet payment sector to see if additional legislation was needed. "We have done monitoring of payment systems that may be used across the internet and we will be doing more work on that," he said. "It is part of an ongoing strategic approach to looking at alternative systems that may be eluding, or are not caught by, the current legislation. "If we found something that we believed should be caught by the legislation, we would refer that to the Attorney-General's Department." PayPal managing director Andrew Pipolo said the company had taken additional steps to prevent fraud. "PayPal imposes an internal limit of $US10,000 ($13,600) on transactions in the PayPal system," he said. PayPal had a 0.24 per cent fraud rate, Mr Pipolo said. "Importantly, PayPal is a safe way to pay online and has very few losses because of fraud." Earlier this year Austrac warned that criminals could be operating offshore bank accounts and using credit cards to pay for goods and services in Australia, escaping reporting requirements. -- ----------------- 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' _______________________________________________ Clips mailing list Clips(a)philodox.com http://www.philodox.com/mailman/listinfo/clips --- end forwarded text -- ----------------- 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'

1 0