- cypherpunks-legacy - lists.cpunks.org

Crypto-history
by CHRISTOPHER JAY LEONARD 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Crypto-history buffs, Apropos the recent discussion of the Bletchley Park and NSA exhibits of WWII rotor-type cipher machines on sci.crypt, there is an excellent article by Glenn Zorpette (of IEEE Spectrum) in the Summer 1994 issue of American Heritage of Invention and Technology, Volume 10/Number 1. This is a Forbes publication that is put out by their American Heritage Magazine group. The title of the article is "The Edison of Secret Codes" and it is about Edward Hugh Hebern who contributed much to the development of rotor-type cipher machines from 1912 until after WWII. It features quotes from David Kahn (The Codebreakers) and some terrific photos of early cryptographic equipment, as well as a nice description of the design/function of the machines and vulnerabilities to cryptanalysis by the Army's William Friedman in the 1920's. There lawsuit by Hebern against patent infringement by the government serves as an an eerie premonition of the Inslaw case. There is a sidebar regarding the National Cryptologic Museum. Last but not least it features this marvelous stanza of an ode to Hebern's crypto machine, an equally fitting a description of public key systems (e.g. PGP). Marvelous invention comes out of the West Triumph of patience, long years without rest Solved problem of ages, deeper than thought A code of perfection, a wonder is wrought. I got my copy directly from someone who works for American Heritage, so I can't vouch for it's availabilty on the news stands. Share and Enjoy :-) cjl

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Plee For Help
by r6788＠hopi.dtcc.edu 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hello Fellow Cypherpunks, I need help compiling PGP on DG/UX Release 5.4R3.00 AViiON.. There is no target in the makefile that really fits the system here. I have consulted the sysadm here and he told me to try adding #defines into the source, like #define BSD_SOURCE #define BSD_FLAVOR #define SVR4_SOURCE #define BSD_TTY_FLAVOR I don't want to fudge up the executable, and this isn't working. Someone mentioned to me that i could try make portable. That did not work either. I have gotten it to compile an executable, but only after giving me several errors. I have a little knowledge of c, so i don't need a complete hand holding. If someone would extend a helping hand, i'd appreciate it. On a side note, i have gotten the sysadm here to agree to install PGP2.5, should i be able to compile it and i let him know i did it! He won't install 2.3a. ;<.. I'm using one of the crippled executables to sign this message. Thanks in advance, Joseph R. Rach. r6788(a)hopi.dtcc.edu CIS Student and U.S. Private Citizen. =-=PGP key available thru fingerd.=-= O yeah, almost forgot; Yes, we do have gcc... -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.5 iQCVAgUBLdxpAHIt7G0u7ofRAQFN4gQAt+Kym1RRnbJdpTO6+CygDTX9ssw21u5r Qm/7GFlRVUhvumFtWNspAaTM3g/8mGm8gc7Z/fReVNZv5hBeBpShv31a8lO0N4Bt nJFLRq28BVA8tHTj5ysn2QwfGjgvP+5fuj7DP09H1gNs5EtyDQCPAu1aDm29JA5O 6zG6GCmPUSU= =kbJs -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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Sternlight and damages
by perry＠imsi.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Sternlight claims people are violating copyright laws by posting his private email. I will point out that although this may be true, he would have to show damages to him in order to collect anything. From what I know, his financial position is not such that he can afford to pay lawyers for frivolous lawsuits. I suspect he can't do a thing. Feel free to tell him so. Perry

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Sternlight, period.
by Bill Garland 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

I don't know about the rest of you, but there is more than enough Sternlight shit on t.p.crypto and a.s.pgp for my taste. At least on newsgroups I can use Kill files, but cypherpunks is mail. Cypherpunks write code. Sternlight is not code. Cryptography is all economics. Sternlight is not economical. Time is the stuff life is made of. Sternlight is a waste of time. Those of you who want to read t.p.crypto, please do. If it is relative to cypherpunks, okay, crosspost or cc, but with so bloody much mail, I'd rather not have my time wasted by Sternlight stuff. At least with Extropians mail, I could do a ::exclude, but here we are defenseless, and the noise level is already high enough what with Detweiller on the way into manic phase again, even if only tmp'orarily...any chance Cypherpunks will ever get this? Just grumbling... have a nice weekend... Hey, it's finally spring here! Our first long weekend and traditional start of summer - Victoria Day. "It's the twenty-fourth of May And I've got to get away..." -Buddy Wassiname and the Other Fellow ObCrypto: Thanks for the explanations of D-H key exchange. /----------------------------------------------------------------------\ | I am an Extropian. | Macronic Systems, Inc. offers Ideas for Sale ! | | BEST: DO_IT_SO ! | Go for it : Pledge a Digital US Dollar now. | | CryptoAnarchist. | Send PGP key for more information. | | Cypherpunk. | Get in on the ground floor. Invest Now. Trust me! | | Owner : MSInc., |---------------------------------------------------| | HEx, INFO_Banque | Day Job : Bill Garland = bill(a)kean.ucs.mun.ca | \__________________________________o o_________________________________/

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Re: Sternlight, Period.
by Bill Garland 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Many thanks to Cypherpunks who told me how to filter mail on Unix. I will have to learn unix sooner or later, I guess... I am on VMS here, and I guess I could have my c/p mail gatewayed if I wanted to, and then use the news reader. Or recently our system manager installed Pine, so maybe I could use that. Still, I could read t.p.crypto too, when I want to, if I want to. I hope to get a unix machine to play with very soon, with its own Internet address - even if it's only a 286 box with linux. We may also get an alpha box sometime this year, and it may run unix or open-vms. I'll have more control over these machines than I do over our vax cluster. My own news feed and mail address - I will then be able to (1) run a remailer and (2) run a reputation market (3) do some digital cash experiments (4) gateway mail wherever and whenever I want and (5) set up ftp site/www/home page stuff, start using secure mosaic, and (6) write some code. Meanwhile, since I do have a MicroVax at my disposal, - and I should know the answer to this - can I run PGP on VMS? I don't want to rely on a timesharing machine to hold my INFO_Banque keys, for example, but to do some other stuff. Are all the cypherpunk remailers unix scripts? Our connection to the outside world was recently upgraded to T1 from 56K, so there is room for more traffic and I wouldn't mind running a remailer. However, in the longer term I will get my own commercial site on the telephone company's brand new fiber optic cable to the mainland - it will no doubt be better than T1. /----------------------------------------------------------------------\ | I am an Extropian. | Macronic Systems, Inc. offers Ideas for Sale ! | | BEST: DO_IT_SO ! | Go for it : Pledge a Digital US Dollar now. | | CryptoAnarchist. | Send PGP key for more information. | | Cypherpunk. | Get in on the ground floor. Invest Now. Trust me! | | Owner : MSInc., |---------------------------------------------------| | HEx, INFO_Banque | Day Job : Bill Garland = bill(a)kean.ucs.mun.ca | \__________________________________o o_________________________________/

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Re: D-H key exchange - how does it work?
by Hal 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

The problem with "strong" primes, primes for which (p-1)/2 is prime, is that they are hard to find. It takes hours and hours of searching to find a 1024 bit strong prime on a workstation. Granted, you don't need to change very often perhaps, but some people would like to change every day. They may need a dedicated prime-searching machine to do that. (The best way I know to find strong primes is to find a prime q and then check 2q+1 for primality. Finding 1024 bit primes takes a long time, and the chances that 2q+1 is prime is very low.) It's much easier to find a "strongish" prime, one for which (p-1)/k is prime, where k is on the order of 100 or so. Take your prime q in the above and try kq+1 for k=2,4,6,.... This only takes a few minutes after you find q. The question is, how good are strongish primes? What fraction of elements of the group will have short periods, given that p-1 has a pretty small number of prime factors? Also, given a strong or strongish prime, are the chances that g^x has a small period good enough that it makes sense to check for that case? Any event whose chances are smaller than your computer making a mistake is generally not worth checking for. Hal

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Lady ada's Key
by VACCINIA＠UNCVX1.OIT.UNC.EDU 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

From: IN%"anonymous(a)extropia.wimsey.com" 5-MAY-1994 22:31:20.18 To: IN%"cypherpunks(a)toad.com" CC: Subj: Return-path: <owner-cypherpunks(a)toad.com> Received: from relay2.UU.NET by UNCVX1.OIT.UNC.EDU (PMDF V4.3-7 #6908) id <01HBZVPDJ1SG0005GD(a)UNCVX1.OIT.UNC.EDU>; Thu, 5 May 1994 22:31:10 EDT Received: from toad.com by relay2.UU.NET with SMTP (5.61/UUNET-internet-primary) id AAwoqr08382; Thu, 5 May 94 22:25:45 -0400 Received: by toad.com id AA29828; Thu, 5 May 94 19:22:41 PDT Received: from wolfe.wimsey.com by toad.com id AA29820; Thu, 5 May 94 19:22:36 PDT Received: by wolfe.wimsey.com (Smail3.1.28.1) id m0pzFYZ-0002PqC; Thu, 5 May 94 19:22 PDT Received: by xtropia id AA16656 (5.65c/IDA-1.4.4 for cypherpunks(a)toad.com) ; Thu, 5 May 1994 19:10:43 -0700 Date: Thu, 05 May 1994 19:10:43 -0700 From: anonymous(a)extropia.wimsey.com Sender: owner-cypherpunks(a)toad.com To: cypherpunks(a)toad.com Message-id: <199405060210.AA16656@xtropia> Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT Remailed-By: remail(a)extropia.wimsey.com Precedence: bulk Comments: This message was anonymously remailed. Do not reply to the address in the From: line, unless you wish to report a problem. Thank you. Ah, the problems of anonymity. In order to prevent impersonation, I'm passing my public key to the list. Future messages from me will be signed with this key. -Lady Ada -----BEGIN PGP PUBLIC KEY BLOCK----- Version: 2.3a mQCNAi2rMQAAAAEEALehNDQG2UpPhFLspypt6dPLFjSB1wnwFW9p8cEftZ+ga/ZU 06mywff21ODSYily2NMwOpw+mxSkxiOTJDdjJ3kenRW4qwpvmBGs96AK+0yv2DDh R3ff9cpOlIu3tUcJhmdTcSj+MXlkYwJwhJoA9o4uCFXahN5W1KXNQdJx1hMZAAUR tBZMYWR5IEFkYSA8bm93aGVyZUBhbGw+ =K9ps -----END PGP PUBLIC KEY BLOCK-----

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RSA's "Sink Clipper" poster
by snyderra＠dunx1.ocs.drexel.edu 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Got home today, and found a poster tube attached to my doorknob. Inside I found a poster from RSADSI ("Because some things are better left unread.") with the picture of a ship going down and the words "Sink Clipper!" on it. It's not a bad poster, saying how Clipper "allows government to eavesdrop on the communications of criminals, suspects, and unfortunately, law-abiding citizens alike," and lists what you can do to stop it. (Boycott, write Washington, and, of course, buy only real RSA products :-) ) It's a pretty good poster. I believe I got it because I inquired of their various products and PEM services a while back. I don't know what their policy is, but I don't suppose it'd hurt to mail info(a)rsa.com and ask. Bob -- Bob Snyder N2KGO MIME, RIPEM mail accepted snyderra(a)dunx1.ocs.drexel.edu finger for RIPEM public key When cryptography is outlawed, bayl bhgynjf jvyy unir cevinpl.

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Re: FAQ: Where to get PGP latest version
by wcs＠anchor.ho.att.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Mike Johnson's list of where to get PGP has teh following: > Platforms | Released | Version | Notes & restrictions > | by | | Other restrictions may apply. >-------------------------------------------------------------------------- > Dos & Unix | MIT | 2.5 | Uses RSAREF 2.0. Not for use in any > | | BETA | application that you get paid for. > | | | Patents licensed for personal use only. > | | | Not for export from the USA or Canada. >-------------------------------------------------------------------------- The export situation is far better than that, actually. There used to be *two* reasons you couldn't export RSAREF. One was that the U.S. Government threatens people who do export crypto, though they have to catch you to enforce it. The other was that the RSAREF license documents said you couldn't export it or use it outside the US/Canada, which means you'd be violating their copyright if you used it in, say, Europe, where US copyrights are enforceable. The current RSAREF license, however, does not forbid export or use outside the US/Canada - it only says that it ay be subject to export laws and recommends consulting a lawyer if you want to export it. This means that, if a copy were to find its way out of the US, it would be perfectly legal to use it within the other terms of the license, which would make it possible to do things like, say, compile it along with a PGP-2.5-bones library. (The alternative approach would be to get someone to rewrite it from scratch outside the US, and make sure it was a good clone.) While I don't have enough lawyers, guns, and money to go exporting it myself, I must say I'd be *shocked* to find it appearing on, say, ftp.funet.fi in the near future :-) Bill Stewart

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Re: D-H key exchange - how does it work?
by wcs＠anchor.ho.att.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Eric Hughes, replying to somebody, says: > It takes hours and hours of searching to find > a 1024 bit strong prime on a workstation. Granted, you don't need to change > very often perhaps, but some people would like to change every day. > If they really want to change that often, they can buy a dedicated > machine. There's no good cryptographic reason to change that often, > if the modulus is large enough. In addition, changing the modulus can > have unpleasant effects on traffic analysis, if not done properly. For basic PGP mail, there's no need to change keys that often. There are other applications, though, that tend to want new keypairs on each transaction, and looking for strong primes would make them much more annoying, if strong primes matter with the current factoring algorithms... Bill

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