- cypherpunks-legacy - lists.cpunks.org

potential new IETF WG on anonymous IPSec (fwd from rah@shipwright.com)
by Eugen Leitl 09 Sep '04

09 Sep '04

----- Forwarded message from "R. A. Hettinga" <rah(a)shipwright.com> -----

1 0

Re: Savvis dropping major spammers (cypherpunk sighting.)
by Tyler Durden 08 Sep '04

08 Sep '04

I see Savvis has a sales office in a Building I used to work in here in NYC. They also seem to be be somewhat deadbeat-ish with respect to paying some of their bills, so I bet they need that Spam revenue. That exec probably needed that revenue in order to qualify for some absurd bonus. -TD >From: "J.A. Terranson" <measl(a)mfn.org> >To: Bill Stewart <bill.stewart(a)pobox.com> >CC: cypherpunks(a)al-qaeda.net >Subject: Re: Savvis dropping major spammers (cypherpunk sighting.) >Date: Wed, 8 Sep 2004 18:45:52 -0500 (CDT) > >On Wed, 8 Sep 2004, Bill Stewart wrote: > > > http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/3634572.stm > > > > John Young and John Gilmore aren't the only cypherpunks > > in the news lately. J. Alif Terranson was in a BBC article > > about getting the company to agree to drop the > > hundred or so major spammers who've been using their network. > > > > Some of them are former C&W customers, some are new, > > and they've been estimated to be about $2M/month business for Savvis, > > so this is a non-trivial step for Savvis. > > On the other hand, Savvis risked getting its whole network blacklisted > > by the major spam anti-spam groups if it didn't do something. > > > > We'll see if they follow through. > >The actual memos are at http://www.savvis.info > >Other articles (mostly with greater detail) include: > >http://www.nwfusion.com/edge/news/2004/0908leakmemos.html >http://www.computerworld.com/managementtopics/outsourcing/isptelecom/story/… >01,95769,00.html >http://arstechnica.com/news/posts/20040908-4168.html >http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/3634572.stm >http://techdirt.com/articles/20040908/103247.shtml >http://ads.osdn.com/?ad_id=4985&alloc_id=10663&site_id=1&request_id=1806376 > >-- >Yours, > >J.A. Terranson >sysadmin(a)mfn.org >0xBD4A95BF > > "...justice is a duty towards those whom you love and those whom you do > not. And people's rights will not be harmed if the opponent speaks out > about them." Osama Bin Laden > - - - > > "There aught to be limits to freedom!" George Bush > - - - > >Which one scares you more? _________________________________________________________________ On the road to retirement? Check out MSN Life Events for advice on how to get there! http://lifeevents.msn.com/category.aspx?cid=Retirement

2 1

RE: Gilmore case...Who can make laws?
by Tyler Durden 08 Sep '04

08 Sep '04

Hum. Another wrinkle in this thing occurred to me here, though I'm sure various Cypherpunks will (rightly) declare me naive. This describes the "Government" as creating secret laws. But, theoretically, only the congress and the Senate can create new laws, correct? The Executive branch has never been empowered to create laws, and I'm thinking these travel laws did not go through congress or the senate. So not only are these laws secret, they emanate from a body that is not empowered to make laws within the US. Is there a precedent, or perhaps because the "War on Terror" must be waged everywhere, the Commander in Chief can claim the right to make new domestic laws as a function of his wartime leadership. -TD >From: "J.A. Terranson" <measl(a)mfn.org> >To: "cypherpunks(a)al-qaeda.net" <cypherpunks(a)al-qaeda.net> >Subject: Gilmore case: CNN >Date: Tue, 7 Sep 2004 06:50:16 -0500 (CDT) > >http://www.cnn.com/2004/LAW/09/06/airline.id.ap/index.html > > >Government wants ID arguments secret >Monday, September 6, 2004 Posted: 4:07 PM EDT (2007 GMT) > > >SAN FRANCISCO, California (AP) -- The U.S. Department of Justice has asked >an appellate court to keep its arguments secret for a case in which >privacy advocate John Gilmore is challenging federal requirements to show >identification before boarding an airplane. > >A federal statute and other regulations "prohibit the disclosure of >sensitive security information, and that is precisely what is alleged to >be at issue here," the government said in court papers filed Friday with >the U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. Disclosing the restricted >information "would be detrimental to the security of transportation," the >government wrote. > >Attorneys for Gilmore, a 49-year-old San Francisco resident who co-founded >the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a civil liberties group, said they >don't buy the government's argument and that its latest request raises >only more questions. > >"We're dealing with the government's review of a secret law that now they >want a secret judicial review for," one of Gilmore's attorneys, James >Harrison, said in a phone interview Sunday. "This administration's use of >a secret law is more dangerous to the security of the nation than any >external threat." > >Gilmore first sued the government and several airlines in July 2002 after >airline agents refused to let him board planes in San Francisco and >Oakland without first showing an ID or submitting to a more intense >search. He claimed in his lawsuit the ID requirement was vague and >ineffective and violated his constitutional protections against illegal >searches and seizures. > >A U.S. District Court judge earlier this year dismissed his claims against >the airlines, but said his challenge to the government belonged in a >federal appellate court. > >Now in his appellate case, Gilmore maintains the federal government has >yet to disclose the regulations behind the ID requirement to which he was >subjected. > >"How are people supposed to follow laws if they don't know what they are?" >Harrison said. > >The government contends its court arguments should be sealed from public >view and heard before a judge outside the presence of Gilmore and his >attorneys. The government, however, said it would plan to file another >redacted public version of its arguments. > >A date for a hearing on the matter has not yet been set. _________________________________________________________________ Is your PC infected? Get a FREE online computer virus scan from McAfee. Security. http://clinic.mcafee.com/clinic/ibuy/campaign.asp?cid=3963

5 6

potential new IETF WG on anonymous IPSec
by R. A. Hettinga 08 Sep '04

08 Sep '04

--- begin forwarded text

1 0

Seth Schoen's Hard to Verify Signatures
by hal＠finney.org 08 Sep '04

08 Sep '04

Seth Schoen of the EFF proposed an interesting cryptographic primitive called a "hard to verify signature" in his blog at http://vitanuova.loyalty.org/weblog/nb.cgi/view/vitanuova/2004/09/02 . The idea is to have a signature which is fast to make but slow to verify, with the verification speed under the signer's control. He proposes that this could be useful with trusted computing to discourage certain objectionable applications. The method Seth describes is to include a random value in the signature but not to include it in the message. He shows a sample signature with 3 decimal digits hidden. The only way to verify it is to try all possibilities for the random values. By controlling how much data is hidden in this way, the signer can control how long it will take to verify the signature. This idea is nice and simple, but one disadvantage is that it is probabilistic. It works on average, but occasionally someone might choose an n digit value which happens to be low (assuming the values are chosen at random). Then they don't get as much protection. They could fix this by eliminating too-low values, but then verifiers might exploit that by doing low values last in their testing. Another problem is that this method is inherently parallelizable, so that someone with N computers could solve it N times faster, by having each computer test a subset of the values. An alternative is based on the paper, "Time-lock puzzles and timed release Crypto", by Rivest, Shamir and Wagner, from 1996, http://theory.lcs.mit.edu/~rivest/RivestShamirWagner-timelock.pdf or .ps. They are looking more at the problem of encrypting data such that it can be decrypted only after a chosen amount of computing time, but many of their techniques are applicable to signatures. The first solution they consider is essentially the same as Seth's, doing an encryption where n bits of the encryption key are unknown, and letting people search for the decryption key. They identify the problems I noted above (which I stole from their paper). They also point out BTW that this concept was used by Ralph Merkle in his paper which basically foreshadowed the invention of public key cryptography. Merkle had to fight for years to get his paper published, otherwise he would be known as the father of the field rather than just a pioneer or co-inventor. The next method they describe can be put into signature terms as follows. Choose the number of modular squarings, t, that you want the verifier to have to perform. Suppose you choose t = 1 billion. Now you will sign your value using an RSA key whose exponent e = 2^t + 1. (You also need to make sure that this value is relatively prime to p-1 and q-1, but that is easily arranged, for example by letting p and q be strong primes.) The way you sign, even using such a large e, is to compute phi = (p-1)*(q-1) and to compute e' = e mod phi, which can be done using about 30 squarings of 2 mod phi. You then compute the secret exponent d as the multiplicative inverse mod phi of e', in the standard way that is done for RSA keys. Using this method you can sign about as quickly as for regular RSA keys. However, the verifier has a much harder problem. He does not know phi, hence cannot reduce e. To verify, he has to raise the signature to the e power as in any RSA signature, which for the exponent I described will require t = 1 billion modular squaring operations. This will be a slow process, and the signer can control it by changing the size of t, without changing his own work factor materially. The authors also point out that modular squaring is an intrinsically sequential process which cannot benefit from applying multiple computers. So the only speed variations relevant will be those between individual computers. Another idea I had for a use of hard to verify signatures would be if you published something anonymously but did not want to be known as the author of it until far in the future, perhaps after your death. Then you could create a HTV signature on it, perhaps not identifying the key, just the signature value. Only in the future when computing power is cheap would it be possible to try verifying the signature under different keys and see which one worked. Hal Finney

2 1

Re: Seth Schoen's Hard to Verify Signatures
by John Kelsey 08 Sep '04

08 Sep '04

>From: "\"Hal Finney\"" <hal(a)finney.org> >Sent: Sep 8, 2004 2:48 PM >To: cypherpunks(a)al-qaeda.net >Subject: Seth Schoen's Hard to Verify Signatures >The method Seth describes is to include a random value in the signature >but not to include it in the message. He shows a sample signature >with 3 decimal digits hidden. The only way to verify it is to try all >possibilities for the random values. By controlling how much data is >hidden in this way, the signer can control how long it will take to >verify the signature. I've seen this described in a paper by Abadi, Lomas & Needham as an alternative to a high iteration count for password hashing. >Hal Finney --John Kelsey

1 0

FSTC Issues Call for Participation for Two New Projects
by Jim Salters 08 Sep '04

08 Sep '04

1 0

FSTC Issues Call for Participation for Two New Projects
by Jim Salters 08 Sep '04

08 Sep '04

1 0

Re: Seth Schoen's Hard to Verify Signatures
by Major Variola (ret) 08 Sep '04

08 Sep '04

At 11:48 AM 9/8/04 -0700, Hal Finney wrote: >Seth Schoen of the EFF proposed an interesting cryptographic primitive >called a "hard to verify signature" in his blog at >http://vitanuova.loyalty.org/weblog/nb.cgi/view/vitanuova/2004/09/02 . >The idea is to have a signature which is fast to make but slow to verify, >with the verification speed under the signer's control. He proposes >that this could be useful with trusted computing to discourage certain >objectionable applications. > >The method Seth describes is to include a random value in the signature >but not to include it in the message. He shows a sample signature >with 3 decimal digits hidden. The only way to verify it is to try all >possibilities for the random values. By controlling how much data is >hidden in this way, the signer can control how long it will take to >verify the signature. This could be called a "salt-free" algorithm :-) Basically its like the problem that a salted-password cracker has to solve when the salt has to be guessed. As far as a modexp() solution, I suggest this, which is as far as I can tell different from what you reference: In an RSA cryptosystem the public exponent is typically low, often 3 or 65537 (for efficiency reasons only a few bits are set; the other constraint is that your message, raised to that power, wraps in your modulus, which makes 65537 a little better). The private exponent is big. Therefore, traditional encryption is "fast", and decryption is slow; the reverse is that signing is slow, verifying a signature is fast. This can be used to achieve Seth's required "fast to make, slow to verify". To achieve the required "user-controllable", the user gets to set the number of bits in the modulus. One might have to use extraordinarily long moduli (making 4Kbits look puny), depending on the time-scale of "slow" and "fast", but so what, primes are free :-) and might even be re-used. If this passes group-muster pass it on..

2 1

FASTER THAN BROADBAND and FREE!...without Any Cost Ever !!!
by Margaret Maroney 08 Sep '04

08 Sep '04

FASTER THAN BROADBAND and FREE! Greetings! My Name Is Margaret; I thought this might be something you might like to check out. I think it's something we could all use. ********************************************************** FASTER THAN BROADBAND and FREE! JUICE is the solution for millions of Internet users who are frustrated by having a slow Internet connection and is the ONLY real alternative to Broadband. JUICE offers a revolutionary and unique internet service to anyone who wants to experience it, world wide and for FREE. JUICE is 4 times quicker than broadband and 40 times faster than dial-up however, the best thing is it's totally FREE and available via any telephone line worldwide. It is revolutionising the way millions of people are connecting to the Internet. It is unique and takes 1 minute to install and is very easy to use. No more Internet bills or call charges, ever again. All you need is a telephone line to get JUICE broadband for FREE. Don't compare this service with any other similar sounding one. JUICE offers revolutionary, unique service that does not reduce the quality of the pages you surf whilst giving you a blistering 2MB (2000kbps) connection for FREE. This is better than broadband. It's faster and cheaper than broadband and it's totally 100% FREE. If you are currently paying for ADSL/Broadband or for call charges via dial-up then JUICE is definitely for you. You can cancel your existing broadband connection and use JUICE without paying the standard monthly rental or call charges on dial-up. JUICE is the only FREE for all service. That's right you don't have to pay for broadband any longer! It's FREE. Upgrade your existing slower ADSL/Broadband or dial-up to a blistering 2MB for FREE and keep your existing email address. If you would like to give away JUICE broadband and earn either £27GBP,$48USD, $64AUSD, 39Euro or $74NZD per client, click below. If you think you have read enough and are interested in going to the website and seeing all that is mentioned here and more, & checking it all out just send me an email with *MORE INFORMATION* in the subject line. My Email: onewhocares65(a)netscape.net This offer is open to Internet users world wide. Wherever you live, you can now get a JUICE broadband connection without paying for it. All you need is a telephone line. No wires. No engineers. No need to alter your PC and No CHARGES! JUICE is a software download which utilises a unique 23 patent approved compression technology that increases your existing Internet connection speed to way past faster than broadband. State-of-the-art data compression, byte stream and ultimate data burst technology now guarantees every Internet user an unbelievable lightening connection speed of 2MB. It'll SAVE YOU money. It takes 25 seconds to join and a moment to connect. JUICE is: Easy to install and very simple to use Available anywhere in the world Works with your existing ISP A software download so there is NO need for new hardware FOUR times the speed of normal broadband Compatible with any type of phone line. Works with any PC or MAC of the lowest specification believable Compatible with old 9,600kbps modems upwards to the most modern. Guaranteed to provide a minimum of 2MB and that's SUPER FAST Coming very soon worldwide......... If you would like more information please send me an email with *MORE INFORMATION* in the subject line. My Email: onewhocares65(a)netscape.net Thank You, Margaret E Maroney ************************************************************************ Please note that due to huge demand for FASTER than broadband, you may experience difficulties with the website. If you do find our server either slow or not responding please try again. If you think you have received this offer in error then please accept our apologies.

1 0