- cypherpunks-legacy - lists.cpunks.org

Adapting PGP to other languages
by Deranged Mutant 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

On 17 Jul 96 at 18:10, anonymous-remailer(a)shell.port wrote: > Does anyone know how to tanslate PGP into Burmese? The PGP sources have a language tool in the 'contrib' directory for translating the language files. Being fluent in 'Burmese' or whatever language you want to translate it to is helpful. Rob --- No-frills sig. Befriend my mail filter by sending a message with the subject "send help" Key-ID: 5D3F2E99 1996/04/22 wlkngowl(a)unix.asb.com (root@magneto) AB1F4831 1993/05/10 Deranged Mutant <wlkngowl(a)unix.asb.com> Send a message with the subject "send pgp-key" for a copy of my key.

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ABC News on internet telephony
by Clay Olbon II 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

There was a pretty long piece on the evening news on using the internet for long distance and how much money can be saved. Even had several demos of intercontinental phone calls. The disappointing aspect was they didn't mention PGPfone (although if they had, I'm sure child pornographers and terrorists would have been mentioned as well :-) Clay *************************************************************************** Clay Olbon II * Clay.Olbon(a)dynetics.com Systems Engineer * PGP262 public key on web page Dynetics, Inc. * http://www.msen.com/~olbon/olbon.html ***************************************************************** TANSTAAFL

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Re: SecureDrive(IDEA), Realdeal and plaintext attack
by Jean-Francois Avon 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Cc: cypherpunks(a)toad.com galactus(a)stack.urc.tue.nl Iolo Davidson<iolo(a)mist.demon.co.uk> On 18 Jul 96 at 4:19, Edgar Swank wrote: > JFA wrote: > > Question: > > > > Since realdeal overwrite everything with 0s, and that theses > > zeroed sectors are encrypted later with IDEA, will that give an > > attacker an edge? The attacker will likely know that there are > > large disk areas that contains 0s. > > > > Any comments? > Yes. Each sector encrypted by SecureDrive also incorporates a "salt" > value derived from the sector address and (usually random) volume > serial. So encrypted zeroed sectors will be different from each other > and (without the IDEA key) cannot be distinguished from sectors > containing data. IDEA is reputed to be resistant against known plaintext attacks. But I did not read about wether or not it is resistant to several-plaintexts (?choosen plaintext) attack. If the sectors were not salted, each zeroed sectors would translate in an identical way on the encrypted disk. So, there would be only one cyphertext-plaintext pair repeated over many empty sectors. If you salt the encryptor, there are many different cyphertexts corresponding to one single plaintext. Can the salt be figured out by an attacker? If yes, would the many-cyphertext to single-ultimate-plaintext could give an edge to an attacker? In that case, it would be effectively better to not wipe a drive with zeroes. The problem is, realdeal cannot be turned selectively for only one drive while not wiping the other one. Thanks for your reply. JFA DePompadour, Societe d'Importation Ltee; Limoges porcelain, silverware and crystal JFA Technologies, R&D consultants: physicists, technologists and engineers. PGP keys at: http://w3.citenet.net/users/jf_avon ID# C58ADD0D : 529645E8205A8A5E F87CC86FAEFEF891

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Re: Making encoding out of an authentication cipher
by Deranged Mutant 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

On 17 Jul 96 at 19:36, EVERHART(a)Arisia.GCE.Com wrote: > Had an interesting thought, maybe worth passing on for commentary. > > (...since "authentication" ciphers are considered "harmless" by > those interested in spying on your info...) > > Suppose you have a secure hash function H(msg) that delivers a random [..] There's a section in Schneier's Applied Cryptography about using hash algorithms for ciphers. There are several ways of doing this, although some are stronger than others. One you adapt the hash algorithm to a cipher, it's a cipher, not a hash algorithm, and is regulated. Rob --- No-frills sig. Befriend my mail filter by sending a message with the subject "send help" Key-ID: 5D3F2E99 1996/04/22 wlkngowl(a)unix.asb.com (root@magneto) AB1F4831 1993/05/10 Deranged Mutant <wlkngowl(a)unix.asb.com> Send a message with the subject "send pgp-key" for a copy of my key.

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Re: Opiated file systems
by tcmay＠got.net 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 8:05 AM 7/18/96, jim bell wrote: >It has long occurred to me, considering the size and low power of the >typical 3.5" hard drive compared with the size of the typical house or >apartment, that it might be an interesting project to remotely connect such >a (hidden) drive to your computer using a reasonably surreptious link that >is difficult to trace. Say, an IR optical link, a single bare (unjacketed) >optical fiber, a LAN with hidden nodes, or a similar system. Maybe an >inductive pickup. In any raid, they'll have to decide what to take, and >chances are very good that they won't find every hidden item. I think the druggies call this a "rat line": two apartments next to each other, with the humans living in one and the drugs stored in the other. The drugs are gotten through a hole in the wall. (Hey, I'm not saying it works, or that it stops raids, prosecutions, convictions, etc. Just noting the existence.) Any multi-unit apartment can do this already, with data. The hard disk can be upstairs and two units away, connected with Ethernet (as many apartment buildings out here in California already are), or whatever. Any raid on Unit 3B, for example, finds that no files are stored locally. A separate investigation and/or search warrant for whereever the files actually are stored would be of course problematic and/or delayed. (Friends of mine have worked on "remote storage" ideas for exactly such applications. Clearly there are many options: storage in other local sites, storage in offshore sites, encrypted storage, even storage by a "priest" functionary ("Son, I am ready to receive your digitally transmitted confession.").) Lots of possibilities. For various reasons, few have been pursued. (Mostly because, I think, there have been relatively few raids on data, and when there have been raids, there were usually other HUMINT-type factors involved. E.g., few child porn rings are going to be broken only on the basis of seized disks. As this situation changes, expect more "data archival" services to evolve.) --Tim May Boycott "Big Brother Inside" software! We got computers, we're tapping phone lines, we know that that ain't allowed. ---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---- Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, tcmay(a)got.net 408-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA | knowledge, reputations, information markets, Licensed Ontologist | black markets, collapse of governments. "National borders aren't even speed bumps on the information superhighway."

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Encrypted files in terror case
by Joe Thomas 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Excerpts from a N.Y. Times News Service piece available at http://www.nando.net/newsroom/ntn/info/071896/info12_18308.html : NEW YORK (Jul 18, 1996 02:00 a.m. EDT) -- In the seven weeks since the trial of Ramzi Ahmed Yousef began, the case, charging a plot to blow American jumbo jets out of the sky, has come to hinge on one off-white laptop computer. [Most of the story, dealing with the defense contention that Philipine police altered files on the laptop, deleted.] Several witnesses reported that some computer files were in code, part of which the police could not decipher. Last week, after the jury adjourned for lunch, Duffy [the judge in the case] prodded the defense to point out that encoding files was not unusual and that some software programs offer such an option. "I don't want the jury to think that encryption is something that only bad guys do," Duffy said.

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Re: ANNOUNCEMENT: PGPfone Beta 7 Now Available for Download
by Robin Powell 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

>>>>> In article <1.5.4.32.19960718150222.0030bf9c(a)giasdl01.vsnl.net.in>, Arun Mehta <amehta(a)giasdl01.vsnl.net.in> writes: > In response to my question about how I might use PGPfone without my ISP knowing, > At 10:52 16/07/96 -0400, Robin Powell wrote: >> >> Hmm... This looks like a _really_ good place for stego. Granted, you >> might get a significant slow down, but it might be worth it depending >> on your needs. > Wouldn't that be very, very slow? It would suffice if I could > have the ISP think that the packets were for irc, or something > else they allow... I actually wasn't reffering to your particular situation so much as a general comment. Having a game of nettrek with encrypted voice in the unused packets would be _very_ secure, I should think... -Robin

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RE: Cypherpunks and Toad.com
by nobody＠zifi.genetics.utah.edu 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

root@HellSpawn wrote: >I'd like to put the words > >Cypherpunks(a)toad.com > >On a tee-shirt. Is cypherpunks, toad.com, or the combination thereof >copyrighted or trademarked or otherwise limited for use? Not that I know of, and you are of course free to do anything you want, but I urge you to leave off the "@toad.com" to prevent clueless subscription requests/noise. There are a number of cpunk tshirts already, one of which contains TCM's sigfile, so the word is likely not copyrighted???

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NSA response to key length report
by Matt Blaze 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

July 18, 1996 There is currently being circulated, to members of Congress and possibly elsewhere, a four page document entitled ``Brute-Force Cryptanalytic Attacks'' that calls into question some of the conclusions of the ``Minimum Key Lengths for Symmetric Ciphers'' white paper [1]. The document bears no author or organization attribution, but we are told that it originated from NSA. The NSA document argues that ``physical realities'' make parallel key search much more expensive and time consuming than our white paper estimated. However, the NSA document appears to have been written from the perspective of general parallel processing or cryptanalysis rather than exhaustive key search per se. It ignores several elementary principles of parallel processing that apply specifically to exhaustive key search machines of the type that our white paper considered. In particular, NSA argues that interconnections, heat dissipation, input/output bandwidth, and interprocessor communication make it difficult to ``scale up'' a key search machine by dividing the task among a large number of small components. While these factors do limit the scalability of more general purpose multiprocessor computers (such as those made by Cray), they do not apply at all to specialized exhaustive key search machines. The NSA argument ignores the most fundamental feature of brute-force key search: the processors performing the search have no need to communicate with other components of the system while they perform their share of the search, and therefore the system has no need for any of the global interconnections that limit scaling. Indeed, there is no reason that all the components of a parallel search machine must be located even within the same city, let alone the same computer housing. We note that one of our co-authors (Eric Thompson, of Access Data, Inc.) designs and builds medium-scale FPGA-based key search machines with exactly this loosely-coupled structure, and regularly uses them to recover keys for clients that include the FBI. The NSA document also calls into question our cost estimates for ASIC components, suggesting that ASIC chips of this type cost NSA approximately $1000.00 each. However, our $10.00 per chip estimate is based on an actual price quote from a commercial chip fabrication vendor for a moderate-size order for an exhaustive search ASIC designed in 1993 by Michael Wiener [2]. Perhaps NSA could reduce its own costs by changing vendors. Finally, the NSA report offers estimates of the time required to perform exhaustive search using a Cray model T3D supercomputer. This is a curious choice, for as our report notes, general-purpose supercomputers of this type make poor (and uneconomical) key search engines. However, even the artificially low performance results for this machine should give little comfort to the users of 56 bit keys. According to NSA, 56 bit keys can be searched on such a machine in less than 453 days. ``Moore's law'' predicts that it will not be long before relatively inexpensive general-purpose computers offer similar computational capability. /s/ Matt Blaze Whitfield Diffie References: [1] Blaze, M., Diffie, W., Rivest, R., Schneier, B., Shimomura, T., Thompson, E., and Wiener, M. ``Minimum Key Lengths for Symmetric Key Ciphers for Commercial Security.'' January 1996. Available from ftp://ftp.research.att.com/dist/mab/keylength.txt [2] Wiener, M. ``Exhaustive DES Key Search.'' Presented at Crypto-93, Santa Barbara, CA. August 1993. ========================================================================= [Transcription of document circulated to various members of congress and others in June, 1996, apparently by NSA] BRUTE-FORCE CRYPTANALYTIC ATTACKS Two published theoretical estimates of cost versus time to perform brute-force hardware attacks on selected cryptography key lengths differ between themselves and differ significantly from what we find when we buy or build computers to carry out such attacks. The differences lie in assumptions made in the theoretical estimates, which are not fully spelled out by the authors, and in scaling up hypothesized small machines to ever larger ones without accounting for physical realities. The factors not accounted for are: o R&D costs for the first machine, typically on the order of $10 million. o As more and more chips are added to a machine, two effects occur: o Interconnections increase and increase running time; o Heat from the chips eventually limit [sic] the size of a machine. o Memory costs are not included. o When get [sic] to the very fast processing speed estimates, machines can become Input/Output bound; so [sic] it cannot achieve the estimated speed. o Assuming every algorithm can be tested in same amount of time and key length is the only difference. Table 1 are [sic] the average time estimates made for a given cost done by Michael Wiener of Bell Norther Research in 1995. These are published in Bruce Schneier's Applied Cryptography book. Note that these are average times, one-half of the total exhaust time. Table 2 are [sic] the estimates for total exhaust times using Field Programmmable Gate Arrays (FPGA) and Application Specific ICs (ASICs) done for the Business Software Alliance by Blaze, Diffie, Rivest, Schneier, Shimomura, Thompson, and Wiener in 1996. In addition to the above factors not accounted for they have assumed ASICs cost as low as $10. We find ASICs more typically cost $1000 and their capabilities can vary considerably depending upon the specific task. Table 3 are out estimates based on our experience with a Cray T3D supercomputer with 1024 nodes. This machine costs $30 million. [Tables 1, 2, and 3 not transcribed here.]

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Re: Responding to Pre-dawn Unannounced Ninja Raids
by law＠Samoa.org 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

I prefer to keep a large jar of marbles available in the entry room, aoupled with a hard floor, it makes it a bit tricky for an entry team towork properly.. You can probably check out your local crack house for tips on preventing forced entry..there seems to be a constant race between LEO entry tactics and what the drug dealer do to defend themselves.. I might also suggest that you check out Bo Gritz'z SPIKE phase 8 video tape http://www.bogritz.com/products8.html "Perhaps one of most exciting phases and controversial. In Phase 8 you learn Close Quarters Combat (CQC). You'll learn how to identify friend or foe so that you don't shoot a friend. You'll also learn how to clear a room safely and identify a terrorist and hostage." SPIKE 8 also has a good section on room defense. but then who am I to talk. bob's lawyer Vinnie Moscaritolo ------------------ "friends come and friends go..but enemies accumulate." http://www.vmeng.com/vinnie/ Fingerprint: 4FA3298150E404F2782501876EA2146A

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