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Re: Question: OTP
by paul＠fatmans.demon.co.uk 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

> This whole thing seems crazier each time I think about it. > basically my question is: given that he picks his key securly does he have > an OTP if the plaintext is shorter than the key? > Bob Yes, if he were just to modular add the key to the plaintext (or XOR them) he would have an OTP if AND ONLY IF the key were real random, however, he doesn`t do this, he uses the key to seed an array or linear congruential generators, which have been cryptanalysed to hell and back. Basically, ALWAYS, and I mean ALWAYS dismiss anyone trying to sell an OTP, they are totally impractical, he`s just using technobabble to get around the fact that his system is actually a stream cipher and is of no value because it has been broken within days of being announced. Datacomms Technologies web authoring and data security Paul Bradley, Paul(a)fatmans.demon.co.uk Paul(a)crypto.uk.eu.org, Paul(a)cryptography.uk.eu.org Http://www.cryptography.home.ml.org/ Email for PGP public key, ID: 5BBFAEB1 "Don`t forget to mount a scratch monkey"

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Re: Q.E.D. reply to petty MESSger (fwd)
by paul＠fatmans.demon.co.uk 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

> > IPG Sales writes: > > [approx. 300 lines of ramblings deleted] > > Mister, if we printed out your last message on fluffy paper and folded > it together a number of times, then maybe we would end up with something > that a poor woman would call a one-time pad. Period. Clap clap whistle clap....... Aha, wit still survives on the cypherpunks list!!!! Truly inspired. Datacomms Technologies web authoring and data security Paul Bradley, Paul(a)fatmans.demon.co.uk Paul(a)crypto.uk.eu.org, Paul(a)cryptography.uk.eu.org Http://www.cryptography.home.ml.org/ Email for PGP public key, ID: 5BBFAEB1 "Don`t forget to mount a scratch monkey"

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Re: Don't ask why, thank you.
by C. H. Lim 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Well said ! Users please take note about abuse of system.

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Reno at FCBA
by John Young 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Communications Daily, October 19, 1996 U.S. Attorney Gen. Janet Reno offered to "set the record straight" at FCBA lunch Thurs... U.S. Attorney Gen. Janet Reno offered to "set the record straight" at FCBA lunch Thurs. on why controversial issues of encryption and digital wiretapping "deserve support" of communications industry. She said law enforcement community agrees that encryption is "critical" to citizens who want to protect sensitive data but "our ability to protect life and property is threatened" if people use encryption that can't be accessed by law enforcement officials: "The only solution is encryption that allows data recovery." She said it's "important to understand" that digital wiretapping "doesn't expand the government's ability to conduct electronic surveillance." ----- If any citizen has access to a full transcript of the AG's talk, please post here or send it to us by fax to 212-799-4003.

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Re: Prof Shamir arrested
by Jim Byrd 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 02:56 PM 10/21/96 +0100, Tom Womack <thomas.womack(a)merton.oxford.ac.uk> wrote: > >A few column inches in the British Independent had Prof Avi Shamir (who I >guess is the S in RSA) arrested in Israel, on (I believe) suspicion of >involvement in a substantial fraud. The S in RSA is Adi Shamir. Do you know if this is the same person? Do you have any more details?

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Chinese internal internet
by E. Allen Smith 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

I seem to recall someone predicting that China and other such countries would set up an internal net with strict controls. Good prediction... I wouldn't be surprised to see Cuba recruited to it, for instance, although North Korea doesn't appear likely (too insular). -Allen > ______________________________________________________________________ > Centura > ______________________________________________________________________ > China's Xinhua launches business computer network > __________________________________________________________________________ > Copyright © 1996 Nando.net > Copyright © 1996 Reuter Information Service > BEIJING (Oct 21, 1996 10:25 a.m. EDT) - A China-wide computer network > launched by a subsidiary of the official news agency Xinhua on Monday > will take Chinese businesses online and supply them with news and > economic information, company officials said. > The China Wide Web (CWW) created by China Internet Corp would provide > Chinese customers with online services in their own language and would > give overseas subscribers a window on to the Chinese business world, > company chairman Ma Yunsheng said. I've about concluded that we'll see a Web dominated by two languages - English and Japanese. It's very hard for native speakers of Indo-European languages to learn Japanese, it's very hard for native speakers of Japanese to learn English, and no other such language has a prosperous-enough home country to work. Such internal nets may alter this, however... [...] > In January, Xinhua was appointed the government regulator for foreign > suppliers of economic information in China, a role that some analysts > say clashes with its involvement in enterprises that supply financial > and business data. [...] > Unlike the open-access Internet, CWW was modelled on internal company > networks or "intranets," Edelson said. > "There will be a lot of real-time information available," he said. "I > think there's going to be very fast growth from a zero start." > China Internet would enjoy free use of Xinhua's communications network > and already had access agreements with the powerful Minstry of Posts > and Telecommunications, he said. > Ma said domestic economic information would also be available through > Xinhua news services and databases. He declined to say how many > clients were expected to subscribe. Heavily edited domestic economic information... > The Internet is viewed by some Chinese officials as a haven for > pornography and political dissent but CWW would likely be a > politically correct alternative. > "CWW should reflect Chinese culture," technology officer Wong said, > without giving details. Ah, yes, the old claim of cultural difference to try to justify censorship. So Nazi Germany was due to a cultural difference? ****** MESSAGE DAMAGED IN TRANSIT ******

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Re: Paper on Network Security
by Ryan Russell/SYBASE 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

See! And you all said us Mormons had no crypto relevence :) I missed the pointer to the article/paper...I wanna see what my church's involvement is.. Anyone got it handy? Ryan ---------- Previous Message ---------- To: jya cc: cypherpunks From: declan @ eff.org (Declan McCullagh) @ smtp Date: 10/21/96 06:44:56 AM Subject: Re: Paper on Network Security On Sun, 20 Oct 1996, John Young wrote: > We posted news* a few days ago of a white paper by the > OURS organization on network security. We have put it at: Thanks, John. The members are interesting. -Declan *** MEMBER ORGANIZATIONS Bellcore Cedars-Sinai Health Systems Chase Manhattan Bank Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints Compaq Computer Corporation CoreStates Financial Corporation Data Securities International, Inc. Digital Equipment Corporation EDS Corporation Educational Testing Service EXXON Company USA IBM Corporation IDX Corporation Intel Corporation Learning Tree International Levi Strauss & Co. Massachusetts Institute of Technology Merrill Lynch, Inc. Microsoft Corporation Motorola, Inc. New York Life Insurance Company Novell, Inc. Oracle Corporation Pacific Gas and Electric Company Phillips Petroleum Princeton University Security Dynamics, Inc. Societe Generale Software AG of N.A., Inc. SunTrust Service Corporation Sybase, Inc. Synopsys, Inc. Texaco, Inc. The Open Group Washington National Insurance Co. Ziff-Davis Publishing Company Information Protection Task Force Participants American Express Bellcore Chase Manhattan Bank Data Securities International, Inc. Digital Equipment Corporation IBM Corporation ICL, Inc. Levi Strauss & Co. Mergent International, Inc. Merrill Lynch, Inc. Motorola, Inc. Novell, Inc. Pacific Gas and Electric Company Phillips Petroleum Security Dynamics, Inc. SunTrust Service Corporation Trusted Info Union Camp Corporation

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improving cpunk S/N via grouplens/filtering
by Vladimir Z. Nuri 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

an interesting new field called "collaborative filtering" seems to have strong potential in helping separate signal-to-noise, and might be of interest to some cpunks here as a pet project. Brad Miller is working on his PhD. in this area and put together a nice system inside many news readers that allows people to read/ratings articles and track their ratings. the system uses the heuristic that people who agree or disagree consistently on ratings on particular messages in the past will tend to do so in the future, and it uses this to extrapolate ratings on messages a person has not yet rated. essentially he has all the technical stuff down and mostly just needs trial users. it wouldn't be hard to plug it all into the cpunk list to see how well it works. its the most promising route I know of at the moment, for solving an extremely difficult problem that pervades cyberspace. however, B.M. has been working on the project for a long time and at least from my perspective it doesn't seem to have reached "critical mass" yet, which surprises me. anyway, the URL http://www.cs.umn.edu/Research/GroupLens/grouplens.html is anyone here familiar with this project? what do you think about how effective it is?

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Re: Prof Shamir arrested
by John Young 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 03:00 PM 10/21/96 -0400, Jim Byrd wrote: >At 02:56 PM 10/21/96 +0100, Tom Womack <thomas.womack(a)merton.oxford.ac.uk> >wrote: >> >>A few column inches in the British Independent had Prof Avi Shamir (who I >>guess is the S in RSA) arrested in Israel, on (I believe) suspicion of >>involvement in a substantial fraud. > >The S in RSA is Adi Shamir. Do you know if this is the same person? Do you >have any more details? Since we posted the item below to c'punks this morning, I see that WSJ and Financial Times have stories on the News Datacom tax fraud raid. Perhaps Shamir has not been actually arrested, maybe only implicated. Anyone in Jerusalem know more? ---------- In a coincidence with the Biham/Shamir smart card attack, AP reports October 20 on an Israeli raid of News Datacom Research for $150 million tax fraud, allegedly because locally developed crypto products were smuggled out of the country. News Datacom develops and markets encryption systems for pay-TV based on Shamir's work, and he is a part-owner. Recall that Markoff's story on DFA cited Bahim's experience with pirate-TV and smart-card tampering. Financial Times ran stories last May about the company's financial derring-do, which we've placed with the AP report at: http://jya.com/keylok.txt We've also put the Biham/Shamir DFA post and NYT article at: http://jya.com/dfa.htm

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Re: Prof Shamir arrested
by jim bell 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 02:56 PM 10/21/96 +0100, Tom Womack wrote: > >A few column inches in the British Independent had Prof Avi Shamir (who I >guess is the S in RSA) arrested in Israel, on (I believe) suspicion of >involvement in a substantial fraud. We should carefully note the use of the word "fraud" in this message, and presumably it's how the news story will describe the situation. Notice that the authors of the idea, "Binding Cryptography," repeatedly like to use the term "fraud" to describe sending bits with other than the prescribed pattern which shows that the key has been appropriately GAK'd. Further recall that the so-called "Bit Tax" idea, the one most recently proposed by that Belgian (?) Luc Soete, would apparently require that any data transmitter keep account of any data it sends, in order to collect some sort of tax, and thus any mistake in the count (either as a result of misinterpretation of the rules, or a disk crash, or a power surge, etc) would presumably turn a minor error into "tax fraud," or maybe they'll call it "bit fraud." My opinion was and is that one of the worst aspects of that bit tax idea was that it would automatically result in essentially everybody becoming unavoidably guilty of this "bit fraud", which from the name would presumably be criminalized. Further, unlike taxing the profits of the ISP or a gross tax on revenue which was analogous to a sales tax (neither of which had anything to do with the actual data being transmitted) a "bit fraud" situation would presumably be used to justify wiretapping, ostensibly just to count bits, but in reality would allow content monitoring as well. And since the ISP would be under the gun for such a charge, presumably the government could extort cooperation from him, particularly encouraging him to violate the terms of the agreement he may have previously signed with his customers and divulge information without a warrant. Isn't it interesting, however, that the term "fraud" can be misused to make what was previously not a crime into a crime? Don't you wonder why the authors of that "Binding Cryptography" idea don't explain why a person would agree to some kind of GAK'd encryption standard which would (given the repeated use of the word "fraud") leave him open to what could become criminal charges some day? After all, the term fraud implies that somebody is being misled, and seriously misled at that. However, most owners of equipment which is used to carry data on the Internet have only limited and marginal interest in the content of that data, and certainly would have no reason (absent some arm-twisting by government) to monitor and check the keys of the data it transmits. If I owned equipment which transmitted Internet data, I wouldn't consider myself "defrauded" if some data went over that circuit which didn't have the correct-GAK data included. Against whom, then, is this "fraud" against? There's an old saying: "When the only tool you have is a hammer, you treat all problems as though they are nails." Well, governments and its apologists and minions seem to think that the main tool they have is being able to declare something to be "fraud" and punish it accordingly, and naturally they're anxious to convert all problems to "fraud" problems. That's why Luc Soete wants a bit tax, and I think that's why our Dutch friends keep talking about fraud in their government-friendly GAK system. And I won't be surprised if Avi Shamir is yet another victim of the "fraudification" of cryptography. I wonder if Professor Shamir will now be receptive to a cryptographic solution to a political/governmental problem? Jim Bell jimbell(a)pacifier.com

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