- cypherpunks-legacy - lists.cpunks.org

Re: Fate of Ecash if RSA is cracked?
by norm＠netcom.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 8:01 AM 6/3/96, Perry E. Metzger wrote: >Dr. Dimitri Vulis writes: .... >> This'll happen, probably sooner than later. > >Why do you assume that? There are plenty of problems that are >provably not solvable in non-exponential time even if P=NP. What makes >you think this one is going to be solved? > >.pm The "Idea Futures" forum has established odds on this. The current odds are currently 60% that a 1024 bit number will be factored by 2010 and 30% that a 512 bit number will be factored by 1997. See <http://if.arc.ab.ca/IF.shtml> for Idea Futures and <http://if.arc.ab.ca/bin/summary> for odds for various questions.

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Re: CWD: "Jacking in from the "One that Got Away" Port
by jim bell 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 10:19 PM 6/3/96 -0500, Declan McCullagh wrote: >(By Brock Meeks / brock(a)well.com / Archived at http://www.cyberwerks.com/) > > > CyberWire Dispatch // Copyright (c) 1996 // > A virtual tactical nuke was hurled into the arcane subculture of > encryption technology Monday when RSA President Jim Bizdos revealed > that his company's Japanese subsidiary had developed a monster chipset > capable of scrambling voice and data real time with a so-called "key > length" of up to 1024 bits. I don't mean to be overly critical, but why not provide for the possibility of longer keys? The RSA key only has to be exchanged and decoded once per call, presumably, which suggests that there shouldn't be a problem to do 2048-bit keys. Admittedly, 1024 bits will be good for many years, but... > That key length stuff is just so much gibberish to those playing > without a scorecard, so let me drill down on it for you. Basically, > the longer the key length, the harder it is for a message to be broken > by "brute force" automated attacks. Current U.S. laws prohibit the > export of any encryption device with a key length longer than 40-bits, > or roughly the equivalent of Captain Crunch decoder ring. For hardcore > math types, I'm told that a 1024-bit key length is 10 to the 296th > power more difficult to break than 40 bits. I sure do wish they'd get things like this a bit more accurate... Oh, well, I suppose it doesn't really matter... Jim Bell jimbell(a)pacifier.com

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Paper about electronic cash and common currencies available
by Robert Hettinga 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

--- begin forwarded text Sender: e$(a)thumper.vmeng.com Reply-To: Wolfgang Roeckelein <wolfgang.roeckelein(a)wiwi.uni-regensburg.de> Mime-Version: 1.0 (NeXT Mail 3.3 v118.2) Precedence: Bulk Date: Tue, 4 Jun 96 11:14:41 +0200 From: Wolfgang Roeckelein <wolfgang.roeckelein(a)wiwi.uni-regensburg.de> To: Multiple recipients of <e$(a)thumper.vmeng.com> Subject: Paper about electronic cash and common currencies available Hello everybody, our paper titled "A Common Currency System for Spontaneous Transactions on Public Networks" is available online under http://www.whu-koblenz.de/~wolfgang/CommonCurrency/ Perhaps somebody might be interested. Thank you for your attention, Wolfgang Roeckelein --- Dipl.-Wirtsch.Inf. Voice: +49 941 943 2998 Wolfgang Roeckelein Fax: +49 941 943 4986 Uni Regensburg E-Mail: roeckelein(a)wi.whu-koblenz.de Universitaetsstr. 31 Wolfgang.Roeckelein(a)wiwi.uni-regensburg.de D-93053 Regensburg (MIME and NeXTmail ok) Germany WWW: http://www.whu-koblenz.de/~wolfgang/ GCM/B d-- s: a- C++ US+++$ UX+++ P+ L E? W++ N++ w-- O-(++) M+ !V PS++ PE Y+ PGP(++) t+ 5? X? R+ tv b++ DI D++ G e+++>++++ h+ r++>% y? (Geek Code V3.x) --- end forwarded text ----------------- Robert Hettinga (rah(a)shipwright.com) e$, 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA "If they could 'just pass a few more laws', we would all be criminals." --Vinnie Moscaritolo The e$ Home Page: http://www.vmeng.com/rah/

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Re: (VTW) BillWatch #48
by Carl Ellison 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

The NRC gets points for putting out a report that will become useful in the months to come. The White House gets an 'F' for their handling of encryption policy. Even in the face of two expert studies on their policy, they continue to stick to a failed, unpopular policy. <<<< I was at the EPIC conference yesterday (6/3) -- where Whit Diffie, BTW, presented the same argument Steven Cherry gave in this BillWatch -- but at the end of the EPIC conference we had Scott Charney of DoJ on a panel about what the OECD is doing (pushing Clipper internationally) and we kept going round with him on the administration's pushing of Clipper (N). [One attendee described this as "forum shopping" -- looking for a friendly place to push Clipper.] There were people battling him over his alleged representation of the USA at the OECD -- claiming he was misrepresenting the country by pushing Clipper. His response was that the Executive is empowered to do all international meetings/negotiations/.... After the meeting ended it hit me what the problem is and I mentioned it to PRZ. We're complaining that the Executive has gone rogue -- is disobeying the will of the people. PRZ likened it to Nixon's war in Cambodia. So, maybe it's nothing new -- just a new playing field for the same old game. - Carl +------------------------------------------------------------------------+ |Carl M. Ellison cme(a)acm.org http://www.clark.net/pub/cme | |PGP: E0414C79B5AF36750217BC1A57386478 & 61E2DE7FCB9D7984E9C8048BA63221A2| | "Officer, officer, arrest that man! He's whistling a dirty song." | +-------------------------------------------- Jean Ellison (aka Mother) -+

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Asendmail v0.5beta
by Ben Holiday 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Okay, so i'm an idiot. :) I ran out the door in such a hurry on friday that I didn't bother to make the asendmail package globally readable. Apologies to everyone who tried to get a copy and got a permission denied. It is now really and truely available from: http://www.infonex.com/~ncognito/asendmail.tar.gz Sorry for the hassles.

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Re: Java
by Clay Olbon II 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Bill Frantz <frantz(a)netcom.com> wrote: >In the long run, I hope to use Java to sell cycles. Java has the advantage >in a cycle market that it is machine independent, and the Just In Time >compilers should make the performance reasonable. > Has anyone written a Java app to implement the Chinese Lottery? Seems like a natural way to do it. A small cash prize might entice lots of folks to let it run in the background... Clay --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Clay Olbon II | Clay.Olbon(a)dynetics.com Systems Engineer | ph: (810) 589-9930 fax 9934 Dynetics, Inc., Ste 302 | http://www.msen.com/~olbon/olbon.html 550 Stephenson Hwy | PGP262 public key: on web page Troy, MI 48083-1109 | pgp print: B97397AD50233C77523FD058BD1BB7C0 TANSTAAFL ---------------------------------------------------------------------------

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Re: Java Crypto API questions
by jim bell 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 11:52 PM 6/3/96 -0700, Lucky Green wrote: >At 16:22 6/3/96, jim bell wrote: > >>A signature is just that: A signature. It doesn't encrypt or decrypt. It >>doesn't even ALLOW the system it's in to encrypt or decrypt, because there >>are numerous encryption programs written that have no need for such a >>signature. If no program existed which _used_ that signature, nobody would >>think twice about exporting it. >> >>The fact is, it is LEGAL to import encryption code into the US. It is LEGAL >>to generate an hash of that code, and it is LEGAL to export that hash. To >>believe otherwise is to broadly expand the scope of export laws far beyond >>what they were intended to mean. > >First, the ITAR are not laws, but regulations. Second, there are many that >believe that applying ITAR to crypto software is already expanding the >scope of the regulations far beyond what they were intended to mean. I agree. Which is why I think any acquiescence by Microsoft on the subject of exportability of signatures is wrong. Let the government press its case, if it wants to try. Don't assist it, even rhetorically. Jim Bell jimbell(a)pacifier.com

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Export what's imported
by jim bell 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Recently, Senator Burns introduced that bill, S.1726, "ProCode." Part of it had to do with changes in the export laws to allow export of things that are currently not allowed. It occurs to me that this bill should be amended to say, explicitly, that any object or software which has ever been imported into the US can be legally exported. (Including multiple copies of software.) It is particularly important that we do this now that the NTT encryption chip set has been announced. Why? Well, first, we CAN easily justify this. The claim for export controls is that they restrict the access of encryption to various of the horsemen, out there. But by definition anything which has ever been imported is already available outside the US, so it'll look rather silly if they try to control somebody from export that came from out of the country. What are the benefits? Maybe it'll destroy the entire crypto-export-regulation system. Domestic software companies can simply set up a practice of buying all their crypto expertise from overseas. If this happened over the long term this would be bad, but it won't because within a couple of years good crypto will be exported by American manufacturers based on foreign designs. Pretty soon the export bans will become meaningless (even more so than they are today) and the pressure to remove the last restrictions will be enormous. Jim Bell jimbell(a)pacifier.com

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Re: FOR WHOM THE BELL TOLLS
by jim bell 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 12:30 PM 6/4/96 -0700, Sandy Sandfort wrote: > Carl Ellison wrote: >>After the meeting ended it hit me what the problem is and I >>mentioned it to PRZ. We're complaining that the Executive >>has gone rogue -- is disobeying the will of the people. >>PRZ likened it to Nixon's war in Cambodia. > > Jim Bell replied: > >>I have a solution to that problem. > >My question for member of this list is: When Bell finally >goes too far and they arrest or shoot him, how can we best >capitalize on his martyrdom? Or in a more negative light, >what damage control will we need to do in that case? >Now I know that barking dogs rarely bite, but Jim may just >fool us and find his cajones. In any event, the sort of >yapping he is doing could itself be considered a crime that >could attract the sort of negative attention he apparently >craves. If there is any doubt that we _need_ a system to rid us of these sleazy politicians: I just saw tonight's PBS McNeil news hour, and they had two politicians on, one of which was promoting a re-emergence of the "Star Wars" missile defense system, which even under optimistic scenarios would cost hundreds of billions of dollars. My solution is simpler and far less expensive: Target any political or military person at any level who is directly or indirectly in control of any offensive missile system (nuclear or otherwise), killing off as many as it takes until they cry "uncle" and destroy all of that hardware. Probable cost of this persuasian? A few hundred million dollars, at most. Who is committing the crime, here? Maybe, someday, you'll start really LISTENING to what I have to say. ObCrypto? Your motivations are quite opaque. Maybe we can turn them into a cryptosystem? Jim Bell jimbell(a)pacifier.com

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No Subject
by owner-cypherpunks＠toad.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

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