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Re: [Politech] A close look at John Kerry's *real* tech agenda [ip]
by Bill Stewart 03 Aug '04

03 Aug '04

At 08:35 AM 8/2/2004, Declan wrote: >http://news.com.com/2010-1028-5291476.html John Kerry is not our friend on this issue. If you've read Alexander Cockburn's article on Kerry's Vietnam record, he's not good on peace issues either. On the other hand, he's not Bush. While he and Edwards both like PATRIOT, he's not as aggressive about it as Bush, and while he did murder people in Vietnam, he was doing it retail-level, while Bush does it wholesale. It's definitely a lesser-of-two-evils game, and it's more like Cthulhu vs. Hastur rather than Cthulhu vs. Bambi or even Godzilla. Fortunately, here in California, Bush looks like he's way behind, so it's safe to vote Libertarian (or Green, or Naderite, or other parties), but nationwide it's "Go, Hastur! Hastur! Hastur! aaarghff..." Meanwhile, Tom Ridge has raised the National Fearmongering Level from "wolf wolf wolf" to "wolf wolf wolf wolf" for NYC, DC, and NJ.

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On what the NSA does with its tech
by Major Variola (ret) 02 Aug '04

02 Aug '04

At 02:39 PM 8/2/04 -0400, John Kelsey wrote: >This is silly. They have black budgets, but not infinite ones. Given their budget (whatever it is), they want to buy the most processing bang for their buck. Yes. They can't break a 128 bit key. That's obvious. ("if all the atoms in the universe were computers..." goes the argument). What they can do is implement an advanced dictionary search that includes the kind of mnemonic tricks and regexps that folks typically use when coming up with "tough" passphrases. Cracking Italian anarchist PGP-equipt PDAs in their possession, things like that. If your keys are random 128, no dice (no pun intended). But if your keys are deterministically derived from something in your head, they can blaze. As well as the SIGINT stuff that takes a lot of DSP cycles. But agreed, and worth repeating, long keys can't be exhaustively searched, if they are truly random. As for WEP, GSM, etc cracking, voice recognition, etc, well, that is suitcase sized / real time stuff for them, if they want it. I imagine that the social network panopticon --eg who'se ever called whom-- might take some serious exabyte datacrunching too, something the bioinformaticists would envy. I don't think I overestimate the adversary when I suggest that he has plenty of uses for fast hardware, and that his hardware can be more than a decade faster thanks to cost being less of a concern, even if his transistors are no smaller/faster than TMSC's or IBM's. ----- I had never met a mathematician before. He had a good sense of humor, but no matter what you said to him, he was unimpressed. -Knuth

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Re: Giesecke & Devrient
by Major Variola (ret) 02 Aug '04

02 Aug '04

At 05:17 PM 8/2/04 +0200, Eugen Leitl wrote: >Assuming I generate a key on a RSA smart card made by G&D, what kind of >prestige >track do these people have? > >They seem to be pretty secretive, that's not a good sign. FWIW: They make the SIMs for T-Mobile (ie Deutsche Telecom AG) so they are part of the telco world which is a fully 0wn3d subsidiary of the Beast.

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Re: Al-Q targeting NY corporations...ah well.
by Major Variola (ret) 02 Aug '04

02 Aug '04

At 09:53 PM 8/1/04 -0400, Tyler Durden wrote: >the following statements are officially* fairly cypherpunkinsh: >* Fuck you Variola...I just had a couple of dark Spatens ON TAP. I therefore >declare that any Cypherpunk is officially authorized to make an official >Cypherpunk statement, particularly if it a) Gets them some poontang Wouldn't that be cypherpinkish, then? Ok, Tyler, you're our official spokesman. We'll be sure to give your name when getting the no lawyers no charges no rights no shit treatment... ----- A few more Halliburton well loggers missing and we'll have enough for a crude urchin initiator... ------ "Can you hear me now?" -UBL

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RE: On how the NSA can be generations ahead
by Major Variola (ret) 02 Aug '04

02 Aug '04

At 05:23 PM 8/1/04 -0400, Tyler Durden wrote: > >No, the NSA is probably generations ahead in some areas, but their fabs >aren't much better than what's available commercially. Yes, upon consideration I agreed, re critical dimensions. That's why I brought up uneconomically sized chips, and the tech of thinned wafers. The point being (yes, if you can cool them) that small = fast. 1 foot per nanosecond, remember? And some of the neato-analog stuff one can do does *better* with big honkin' micron sized features, albeit on exotic materials, and the large-area/thinned argument still holds. ---- M. Atta: an army of one.

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Re: Email tapping by ISPs, forwarder addresses, and crypto proxies
by John Kelsey 02 Aug '04

02 Aug '04

-----Original Message----- From: "Major Variola (ret)" <mv(a)cdc.gov> Sent: Jul 30, 2004 10:25 PM To: "cypherpunks(a)al-qaeda.net" <cypherpunks(a)al-qaeda.net> Subject: Re: Email tapping by ISPs, forwarder addresses, and crypto proxies The "profitably" part is a non-issue when you have black budgets, ie $400 toilet seats. This is silly. They have black budgets, but not infinite ones. Given their budget (whatever it is), they want to buy the most processing bang for their buck. I doubt they can do that substantially better than anyone else. I'd expect them to be really clever at finding tricks to optimize keysearch of various kinds, but not to have better microprocessor technology than the rest of the world. Bottom line: they're not ahead in tech, but they can make things that private-co engineeers only dream of. DesCrack is a suitcase, get it? So, then they can break 3-key 3DES with moderate numbers of texts as soon as they can build 2^{56} such suitcases, right? And power them, and get rid of their waste heat.... I'll let you speculate on AESCrack :-) Do the math, and you'll see how implausible 128-bit keysearch is. Maybe there are better attacks on AES (the algebraic stuff doesn't seem to have gone anywhere, but it still might), but if keysearch is all we have to worry about, and nontrivial quantum computers remain impractical to build, then 128-bit keys are as secure as we're ever likely to need, and 256-bit keys more or less eliminate keysearch of any kind from the list of things we need ever worry about again. --John

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Giesecke & Devrient
by Eugen Leitl 02 Aug '04

02 Aug '04

Assuming I generate a key on a RSA smart card made by G&D, what kind of prestige track do these people have? They seem to be pretty secretive, that's not a good sign. -- Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07078, 11.61144 http://www.leitl.org 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE http://moleculardevices.org http://nanomachines.net [demime 1.01d removed an attachment of type application/pgp-signature]

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Anonymizer outsourcing customer data?
by Anonymous via the Cypherpunks Tonga Remailer 02 Aug '04

02 Aug '04

Recently I received the Anonymizer "PrivacyShield Alert", as an Anonymizer user, and was distressed to note that it appears Anonymizer has now outsourced its mail and marketing infrastructure. Partial headers from new mail system:

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Prosecutors See Potential Break In Terrorism-Financing Probe
by R. A. Hettinga 02 Aug '04

02 Aug '04

<http://online.wsj.com/article_print/0,,SB109139743763779889,00.html> The Wall Street Journal August 2, 2004 WORLD NEWS Prosecutors See Potential Break In Terrorism-Financing Probe By GLENN R. SIMPSON Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL August 2, 2004; Page A4 WASHINGTON -- Federal prosecutors investigating terrorism financing said they hope to unravel the murky finances of some major fundamentalist groups, after winning cooperation from a key fund-raiser for Islamic causes in the U.S., Europe and the Middle East. Lawyers for the fund-raiser -- prominent Muslim activist Abdurahman Alamoudi -- said the Justice Department's belief that he has information on Islamist terror networks is a fantasy. Mr. Alamoudi on Friday pleaded guilty to tax and immigration fraud and violating terrorism sanctions on Libya, in a bargain with prosecutors. (See related article1.) "There is not a shred of evidence" linking Mr. Alamoudi to Islamist terror groups, his lawyer Stanley Cohen told reporters outside the courthouse in Alexandria, Va., where Mr. Alamoudi confessed. While Mr. Alamoudi admits to involvement in a plot to kill the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia, "none of that involves Hamas, Al Qaeda or jihad," Mr. Cohen said. The government takes a very different view. "Alamoudi was a major player in the financial support of terrorism," said Paul McNulty, U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia. "Mr. Alamoudi's decision to cooperate with the government will help us gain additional insight into terrorist activities," added Gary Bald, assistant director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation's counterterrorism division. The contradictory statements suggest the government's "cooperation agreement" with Mr. Alamoudi is likely to be severely tested in coming weeks and months. While Mr. Alamoudi and his lawyer Mr. Cohen have seemed almost eager to give up his Libyan financial backers including Col. Muammar Gadhafi, the Libyan leader, it appears the Libyans aren't who the government really wants. The charges to which Mr. Alamoudi confessed do little to help build a case against Libya, which is in a diplomatic rapprochement with the U.S. after agreeing several months ago to give up its weapons of mass destruction. On the other hand, prosecutors do see Mr. Alamoudi as a central figure in their sprawling, multipronged investigation into fundamentalist fund-raising in Northern Virginia. Mr. Alamoudi, who was born in Eritrea, has little ideological loyalty to the Libyan regime, whose origins are secular, socialist and nationalist. His background is deeply Islamist and rooted in the Muslim Brotherhood, a militant fundamentalist society founded in Egypt that seeks world government under the Quran whose leaders often provide ideological justification for terrorism. Mr. Cohen is well known to federal prosecutors for his pro-Palestinian rhetoric and a client list that includes many Hamas and Al Qaeda figures. Still, Mr. Cohen doesn't deny the plain language of Mr. Alamoudi's deal. "He will provide honest and complete and candid cooperation," he promised. In several court filings, prosecutors have disclosed numerous links between Mr. Alamoudi and alleged terrorists and their supporters, including top Hamas leaders and some alleged supporters of al Qaeda. In addition, Mr. Alamoudi admitted in court that two prominent Saudi dissidents in London were key figures in the plot to kill Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah that was broken up last fall. The government has a good deal of leverage to get what it wants. Mr. Alamoudi won't be sentenced until Oct. 15, and while he faces as many as 23 years in prison, a good word from prosecutors could net him far less. Moreover, since he pleaded guilty to an immigration charge, his wife's status as a U.S. citizen is at the mercy of the government. -- ----------------- 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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[IP] Bulk of 2004's virus infections pinned on one man (fwd from dave@farber.net)
by Eugen Leitl 02 Aug '04

02 Aug '04

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

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