- cypherpunks-legacy - lists.cpunks.org

Re: the rest of the key
by Graham Toal 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

> I was just wondering.... If the NSA could get it's hands on half >(40) of any particular clipper key, wouldn't that just leave 2^40 >to compute? Even with brute force, it's trivial even next to DES. "half" is a a random number which is XOR'd with 80 bits. Both halves look random. The XOR of the two halves is not. Oh yes, and the guy who is asking the spooks about the technical stuff - be sure to find out where this 80-bit random number comes from and where it goes when it's been used... Anyone who knows the split-pattern only needs to subvert *one* of the escrow agencies. G

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Re: Very funny, Polyanna :-( [namespace pollution]
by gtoal＠an-teallach.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

:Isn't this really just a special case of the more general problem of :deciding which keys on a public key ring you're willing to trust? :Perhaps your mailer script should automatically encrypt only when a :keyid is found with a signature trail that you trust. No, that's a totally separate problem. What I'm worried about is some comedian publishing a public key for addresses like "alt.security.pgp(a)cs.utexas.edu" or any of the common mailing gateways, and suddenly people using auto-encrypting mail programs find that no-one can read their posts. It kind of throws a spanner in the works for completely transparent pgp shells. :I do see a signature for that key from Miron Cuperman. Perhaps :you'd want to modify your trust parameters for him... That's not the point; someday soon people will be using mailers that auto-pgp without them even realising it. I don't want to have to hassle those people with interactive questions about whether they trust someone, or force them to maintain personal lists of bad addresses. Whatever solution we can find will have to involve active support from the keyservers I suspect. thoth@netcom - I hope you're listening to this! There's a definite problem of a denial-of-service attack here that the current scheme makes hard to avoid. Hence why I called it 'namespace pollution' in the subject line. G

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Even more unix holy war. Was "Clinton freezes U.S. assets .."
by jamesd＠com.informix.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Todd Masco wrote: > Do you have any sort of life whatsoever, James? [....] > is a total waste of your time, > esp. if you believe people will read the spew. > > I've simply never heard of anybody caring. If you don't care then why are you flaming me, instead of deleting all the posts which I have clearly labeled as being what they are. As to why it is vast and voluminous pile of shit, the answer is because unix is a vast and voluminous, and I was flamed for failing to to give examples of how unix is user hostile. Any report on the defects of unix is necessarily lengthy. I would send off a letter, and get back to work, then immediately unix would bite me again, and I would jump in and send off another letter. The letters kept coming because unix kept biting me. If I had been working on my PC, which refrains from wantonly destroying files and presents the most used options near the top of menus, etc, I would have peaceably ignored this whole silly issue. Indeed I would not have been able to think of a single concrete example of unix user hostility. --------------------------------------------------------------------- | We have the right to defend ourselves | http://www.catalog.com/jamesd/ and our property, because of the kind | of animals that we are. True law | James A. Donald derives from this right, not from the | arbitrary power of the omnipotent state. | jamesd(a)netcom.com

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Quantum Physics
by W. Kinney 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Jim Choate is making a lot of strange statements, but I'm picking this one: > First off, EM fields are NOT QM. Sure they are, in Quantum Electrodynamics, which is the quantum-mechanical theory of electromagnetism. > They do have some characteristics which > 'bleed' over form the Quark level. Quarks have nothing whatsoever to do with electromagnetic fields, except that they carry charge. >Also since EM fields are made of > hardons [sic ;-)] No. Protons and neutrons are hadrons. Hadron comes from the (Greek?) word for "heavy", lepton from "light". The distinction you're trying to make here is that matter fields are _fermions_, with spins an integral multiple of 1/2, and gauge fields (like photons) are bosons, with integral spin. Both hadrons and leptons are fermions. >and not leptons (which an electron is) may blow a hole in this > approach since leptons do not follow the same sort of charge conservation > rules as hadrons. Charge conservation applies to everybody. Hadrons, leptons, everybody. Even your mother. Perhaps you're thinking of the fact that bosons and fermions obey different spin-statistics rules. > > As to infinite precision and its non-presence....Beeep....wrong answer... > > Electrons change state in zero time, this implies at least some form o f > infinite precision (otherwise how does the system know the difference between > zero and some small-o value?). I suspect this is another error based on > the implied (and incorrect) implication in this line of discussion that > hadrons and leptons use the same rules. What? Not that this is the appropriate list for particle physics, but this kind of semi-mystical expounding on how quantum mechanics forces you to rethink all the rules is better science fiction than science. QM _does_ include some spooky things, but by and large they are subtle and limited -- for instance, the "faster than light communication" implied by spin-polarization measurements cannot be used to transmit information. It's a purely statistical effect, and it does _not_ violate relativity. Nothing I've ever heard of in QM invalidates assumptions one might make about computability or the properties Turing machines. Stuff like Roger Penrose comes up with in _The Emperor's New Mind_ is speculation, and he clearly labeled it as such in his book. Don't take it too seriously. -- Will

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Anti-Clipper leaflet at government expo
by System Operator 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

This is a few days late, but in a going through the stack of items I picked up at the FOSE show in Washington, DC, last week, I found a 3 inch by 5 inch yellow flyer with the following message: ----------------------------------------------------------------------- STOP THE CLIPPER CHIP! For more info Before it's too late: [ fist with two lightning bolts ] CYBER RIGHTS NOW! Electronic Frontier Foundation - membership(a)eff.org Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility - cpsr.info(a)cpsr.org WIRED's infobot - infobot(a)wired.com "get help" in msg body Read the April 1994 issue of WIRED Concerned Cyberdykes for Electronic Freedom Not associated with WIRED, EFF, or CPSR ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Someone was busy with a copy machine. The FOSE show was a particularly good choice -- the vast majority of attendees were government employees, presumably the ones most likely to be using Clipper. Dan -- system(a)decode.UUCP (System Operator) Cryptography, Security, Privacy BBS +1 410 730 6734 Data/FAX

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Even more unix holy war. Was "Clinton freezes U.S. assets .."
by jamesd＠com.informix.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

And did I mention that "make" used to treat a tab as semanticly different from a space, so that a tab with an invisible space in front of it would result in the makefile failing. Oh yes, I did mention that. Well I guess I will mention it again. --------------------------------------------------------------------- | We have the right to defend ourselves | http://www.catalog.com/jamesd/ and our property, because of the kind | of animals that we are. True law | James A. Donald derives from this right, not from the | arbitrary power of the omnipotent state. | jamesd(a)netcom.com

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Re: Quantum Physics
by W. Kinney 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

I write, with head firmly implanted in a posterior orifice: >No. Protons and neutrons are hadrons. Hadron comes from the (Greek?) word >for "heavy", lepton from "light". The distinction you're trying to make "Baryon" comes from the Greek for "heavy". "Hadron" is a blanket term covering both baryons (like protons and neutrons), and mesons. Now back to your regularly scheduled cryptography. -- Will

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Re: Crypto and new computing strategies
by Peter Wayner 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Analog computers have very different behaviors than digital computers. I believe that it is possible to find the longest path in a graph merely by building a string model of it which takes O(n) time. This is rusty. Some guys have also build an analog machine that can solve 3SAT problems in linear time. They surmise, though, that the machine must be built with precision that is exponential in the number of terms. I.e. it won't work. I would assume that any QM machines will _not_ be exclusively digital. This is the easiest programming model, but someone may come up with a better one. -Peter

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Re: Crypto and new computing strategies
by Jim choate 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

> > Jim Choate wroate: > >The problem w/ the whole N - NP approach is that is assumes that the QM > >model behaves as we would expect it to, it doesn't. I think this is one of > >those assumptions that are better left un-made. I have worked w/ enough QM > >projects throug UT and Discovery Hall (Dr. Turner and Dr. Prigogine) that > >I am not comfortable assuming the QM world even cares about the N or NP > >issues we are debating. > > What effects at the quantum level lead you to this conclusion? Have you > noticed non-linear increases in computational power or other similar > occurrences? > > -- > Best regards, > > Curtis D. Frye - Job Search Underway!!! > cfrye(a)ciis.mitre.org or cfrye(a)mason1.gmu.edu > "Here today, gone ?????" > > > The whole problem w/ QM is that it is not, by its very nature, linear. Every logical thought pattern you have needs to basicly be thrown away when you deal with this real of physics. Consider an electron emitter that throws them out 180 degrees out. Because of the conservation of spin rules the electrons must have opposite spins. However, when they are emitted you can't tell what their individual spins are. However, when you measure one the other INSTANTLY orients to the other value (ie +/- 1). This change happens faster than light (there is no way a electron can emit a photon before you measure it unless it can somehow jump into the future and know a priori when you measure it. Very nasty problem w/ no explanation at this point. You can propose Tachyons and other exotic particles but detecting them because of their lower limit velocity (ie they must always travel faster than light) keeps us from measuring them. The point I am making is that the logical rules you use don't apply down here.

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Re: Crypto and new computing strategies
by Jim choate 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

> > You wrote: > > >The point I am making is that the logical rules you use don't apply down here. > > I believe I see what you mean - your argument is that there's no way to > know whether or not there will be a dramatic increase in computational > ability through QM, whether it be through brute force or "smarter" quantum > techniques. What comes to mind immediately is a quantum-oriented genetic > decryption algorithm running on a QM computer. If this algorithm could > sense and maintain memory of subtle c-text differences, it could make > optimizing choices toward eventual decryption. > > I guess my confusion came from the notion that "well, you're only examining > one part of the state space at any given instant, so what's the big deal so > long as we increase key length to compensate" ? Under QM, it seems that > leaps, somewhat akin to human "intuition", could occur. > > I hope I'm closer to understanding your point. > > -- > Best regards, > > Curtis D. Frye - Job Search Underway!!! > cfrye(a)ciis.mitre.org or cfrye(a)mason1.gmu.edu > "Here today, gone ?????" > > > That sums up pretty nicely. Another aspect that I was getting at is that this is new and using the old rules to handle new technology has always been proven wrong historicaly. And I figure it is a cinch that Big Brother won't tell us ahead of time if we are wrong. Take care.

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