- cypherpunks-legacy - lists.cpunks.org

PGP for Linux 1.2.8
by bret＠bjohns.win.net 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Can anyone tell me where a version of PGP 2.62 can be found for Linux? I got one off of ftp.berkeley.edu (pgp262s.zip) and it (or I can not get it) to compile on my system.. Thanks...

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Musings
by don＠cs.byu.edu 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- I noticed Sameer's release had some nice shots at ITAR. Heh. When aiming for outsiders, it might be productive to explain what cpunks do in a I'm- ok-you're-ok sorta way. For example, "the cryptographic research group 'cypherpunks'..." ObHackNetscape: I was thinking last night about the process of verifying that someone had swept the keyspace that they claimed to have swept. (Umm, well, so much for Mozilla, but ya know, next time...) and I wanted to run this idea past Those Who Know[tm]: When doling out a segment of 16M keys, attach results of two randomly chosen garbage decryptions. The bruter has to report back which two keys they are. The overhead would add up, but I don't think it would be significant. Or if a stronger method is needed, provide the MD5 hash of the garbage decryptions. Maybe with a discriminator or something, so you only MD5 a few thousand. Anyway, the idea is that if you have to prove that you swept a big enough chunk to find the two keys, you've proven that you've swept a great portion of the keyspace. Of course, this does nothing to prevent _withholding_ a result. But it does prove that most of the keyspace has been swept; and most likely the search continued even after the two keys are found. This would make it much more possible to give consolation prizes without worrying about false NAKs of big segments. If anyone is still interested in that idea. ObFactoring: Picked up the Quadratic Sieve factoring program from Mathworks. Haven't had a chance to compile it yet, but Bob Silverman told me in email he was willing to make it available to a group such as [The Cryptographic Research Foundation] Cyperpunks. ObHamilton '95: Pulled up my tomorrow's stock pages. Netscape takes a big hit, but not big enough for a foolish thing like that. I hope none of my banks go around setting their safe combinations to 1234 or anything... ;| Don -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.2 iQB1AwUBMF4xO8La+QKZS485AQFQtQL/f9bmpnGT/3FfB2rqnFmMltJEkgY8/Oym Vtkzm6xrlApY7b9b2UhVvPXurHU8DBAZeqj5Yu7VvLsQ+w3YelGEAYfzdhECk2t/ 5NRYi0RkgFkIs+XCuDGVkoSXExT++KsZ =V54e -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- <don(a)cs.byu.edu> fRee cRyPTo! jOin the hUnt or BE tHe PrEY PGP key - http://bert.cs.byu.edu/~don or PubKey servers (0x994b8f39) June 7&14, 1995: 1st amendment repealed. Death threats ALWAYS pgp signed * This user insured by the Smith, Wesson, & Zimmermann insurance company *

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NYT on Netscape Crack
by John Young 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

The New York Times, September 19, 1995, pp. A1, D21. Security Flaw Is Discovered In Software Used in Shopping By John Markoff San Francisco, Sept. 18 -- A serious security flaw has been discovered in Netscape, the most popular software used for computer transactions over the Internet's World Wide Web, threatening to cast a chill over the emerging market for electronic commerce. The flaw, which could enable a knowledgeable criminal to use a computer to break Netscape's security coding system in less than a minute, means that no one using the software can be certain of protecting credit card information, bank account numbers or other types of information that Netscape is supposed to keep private during on-line transactions. The weakness was identified by two first-year graduate students in computer science at the University of California at Berkeley, who published their findings on an Internet mailing list Sunday evening. Although the Netscape Communications Corporation, which produces the software, said today that the flaw could be fixed and that new copies of the software would be distributed as early as next week, Internet experts said the discovery underscored the danger of assuming that any computer security system was safe. "There needs to be much more public auditability in the way these financial security systems are designed and implemented," said Eric Hughes, president of Open Financial Networks, a company in Berkeley that is developing Internet commerce systems. The Netscape software is already used by an estimated eight million people for navigating the World Wide Web portion of the Internet. On the Web, thousands of companies offer text, images, video and audio information, much of it as a way of advertising or directly selling goods and services. Because the Netscape software is not only easy to use but has also been promoted as a secure way of dealing with personal and financial information, it has been seen as the emerging de facto standard for on-line commerce. Already, a diverse group of companies -- including Wells Fargo Bank, MCI Communications, Internet Shopping Network and Virtual Vineyards -- have adopted Netscape as the vehicle for checking bank balances, catalogue shopping or buying wine on line. Although Internet experts agreed with the company's assessment that the flaw could be fixed and that it posed no risk to people who use the World Wide Web only to retrieve nonsensitive data, the security problem's disclosure may represent a public relations setback for Netscape Communications and an inconvenience to millions of people who may feel a need to replace the version of Netscape installed on their computers. Last month the company's shares began public trading and had one of the most successful first days in Wall Street's history, largely on the resounding popularity of the Netscape software. Today, as word of the security flaw circulated only within fairly small circles of Internet users, Netscape's stock closed with a slight loss, down 75 cents, to $52.50, in low Nasdaq trading volume. The company said it would release a repaired version of the software within a week. Users will be able to download it free over the Internet, through the Netscape site on the World Wide Web (http://home.netscape.com) The company had previously announced a next-generation version of Netscape that it said would be more secure than the original, and it said today that it would release this updated version within the next few weeks. But first it will remove the newly disclosed flaw, which is currently in the new version. "The good news and the bad news of the Internet is that when you put something up there, many more people can test it," said Mike Homer, the vice president of marketing at Netscape. "You also give yourself the opportunity of having people point things out which you can fix quickly." The company so far has distributed most copies of its program free over the Internet, under a strategy of making its money from commercial customers who use Netscape to provide services or for other business applications over the World Wide Web. So replacing the copies will not be an expensive undertaking. Instead, for Netscape Communications and for other companies betting their futures on the Internet, the real cost of this disclosure may be in the public's shaken confidence in the ability of computer companies to insure privacy and security for on-line commerce. The weakness in Netscape's security was discovered by Ian Goldberg, 22, and David Wagner, 21, two computer science students who share an office at the university and who also share an interest in the arcane science of cryptography, which is becoming increasingly important for business as companies begin to explore electronic commerce. The two students said they had decided to put the software to a test in an effort to raise public concern about placing too much trust in unproved electronic security systems. Netscape's security is based on a type of coding technology known generically as public key cryptography in which users exchange mathematically generated numbers -- or keys -- to encode or decode information. In such systems, a new key is created for each information exchange, based on a mathematical formula that is combined with numbers supposedly known only to the sender or recipient. The students found that by determining how Netscape's formula generated the number used as a starting point for creating a key, they were able to greatly reduce the potential combinations that would unlock the code. The starting-point number turned out to be based on the time and date of the transaction, combined with several other unique bits of information taken from a user's computer system -- bits of information that an electronic intruder could determine, if he were intent on intercepting a Netscape user's transactions. Knowing how the starting-point number was created greatly reduced the other possible components of the formula -- and the students found they were able to break the code in a matter of seconds using a standard computer work station. Netscape officials said today that they would strengthen the system, by making it significantly harder to determine the random number at the heart of their coding system. They said they would no longer disclose what data would be used to generate the random numbers. The announcement of the flaw was posted Sunday night on a computer network mailing list maintained by an informal group known as Cypherpunks. The group, which is made up of mathematicians, computer experts and privacy advocates, has been campaigning for more effective electronic security systems. The discovery is the second reported security weakness in the Netscape program to be posted on the Cypherpunks list in the last month. In August, Damien Doligez, a student at the Ecole Polytechnique in Paris, used a network of 120 computers, running for eight days, to generate a Netscape secret key. But his was a "brute force" attack, requiring the computers to sample a vast range of numbers before coming up with a key that would break the code. The Berkeley students, in contrast, by identifying a basic flaw in the way Netscape set up its security system, were able to narrowly focus their attack to quickly break the code, with far less computer power. [End]

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Brute Force and Smart Force
by Adam Shostack 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

I think its worth pointing out that instead of taking (arguably) $10,000 worth of computer time to brute force SSL, Goldberg-Wagner's attack exploits a weakness in the system to spend maybe a few dollars to crack it. Clever attacks on cryptosystems like this are the bread and butter of 'practical' cryptanalysis. It might take until slightly after the heat death of the universe to break IDEA or your 2048 bit RSA key, but there exist other attacks, and they are the ones which will be exploited. (Also, as Robert Morris pointed otut, never underestimate the time, money or effort your opponent will put into cryptanalysis. Cypherpunks, collectively, have put a great deal of time, effort, and CPU into proving SSL bogus, and I don't think anyone here made any money doing it.) Perhaps we should refocus our efforts on attacking PGP, to see if there are holes there? (I'm not suggesting there are, but it would be nice to see some code written to extend Crack to phrases, do some more code review, etc.) Adam -- "It is seldom that liberty of any kind is lost all at once." -Hume

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Re: Yet Another "(Fwd) Internet Euro-Clipper"
by tcmay＠got.net 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 12:20 PM 10/2/95, Peter Trei wrote: >For those curious about the latency, I'm posting this at 12:08, on the US >east coast. >How long did it take to reach you? I got it at 09:14, Pacific Daylight Time, so there appears to be no lag. I've generally found that lags are on my end, that my system (got.net currently) is delaying mail from _all_ or _most_ mailing lists. (This was particularly the case last week, when Cypherpunks mail stopped for many hours at a time, then arrived out of sequence when my ISP was (presumably) able to receive the resent mail.) >> Not to pick on Peter Trei, as this happens all the time, whenever a hot >> issue appears. > >Short of implementing some content-sensitive form of CSMA/CD, I don't see >what we >can do (but lowering the list latency would help a lot). Well, the main issue with the "Europe to Ban Crypto" reposts was that several people reposted the same press release over a period of several days, and the case I cited here was where it was posted a week later. I can't see how a latency, even a serious latency of several hours, could cause this to happen. Mostly I think people should try to first of all, _write original stuff_. That is, write their own analyses of things. Their own essays, reactions, etc. Then, secondarily, post pointers to longer stuff. Thirdly, and less to be desired, forward articles. --Tim May ---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---- Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, tcmay(a)got.net 408-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero Corralitos, CA | knowledge, reputations, information markets, Higher Power: 2^756839 | black markets, collapse of governments. "National borders are just speed bumps on the information superhighway."

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Bidzos takes advantage of Netscape hole!
by Chris Claborne 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

The following article has a quote from Bidzos claiming that they offered to review the code but that Netscape declined. Of course the good student is going to have them review it... How about having the Goldberg and Wagner review it for some bucks!!! 2 -- C -- ---------------------------------------------------------- Netscape's Internet Software Contains Flaw That Jeopardizes Security of Data By JARED SANDBERG Staff Reporter of The Wall Street Journal A serious security flaw has been found in Netscape Communications Corp.'s Internet software, jeopardizing sensitive financial data such as credit-card numbers that users pass over the global computer network. The company acknowledged the flaw and said it's issuing a software fix. But as is often the case with Internet security, it may take time for users to adopt the fix, leaving them vulnerable meanwhile. "It's a very big trapdoor," said Dietrich Kappe, a partner with Red Planet L.L.C., an Chicago Internet consulting firm. "You can drive a truck through it. Somebody goofed" at Netscape, he added. The breach presents a problem for Netscape, which produces the most popular software for browsing the World Wide Web, the multimedia portion of the Internet where businesses are setting up electronic storefronts to sell goods and services. Netscape has captured roughly 75% of the "browser" market, reaching roughly eight million people, who use the Netscape product to browse the Web and make credit-card purchases. The breach also underscores the persistent security problems that have plagued the Internet and forestalled electronic commerce. Netscape uses so-called symmetric key cryptography to scramble sensitive data so that they are unreadable by hackers snooping on the network. That key is essentially a mathematical formula so long that it makes it impractical for hackers to crack, even with powerful computers. The formula is generated by a random number that may be determined by the number of electronic-mail messages, for example. Netscape's software chooses a number between one and two-to-the-30th-power -- or roughly one billion. But on Sunday night, two graduate students at the University of California at Berkeley posted a message to the Internet's "Cypherpunks" mailing list, a group of mathematicians and programmers who discuss the science of cryptography. In the electronic missive, they said that the random number that generates the mathematical key was "fairly trivial to guess" and that the key "usually takes less than one minute to find." Rather than try to break the encryption "key," the two graduate students examined the so-called "random number generator" and discovered that the number isn't so random, allowing them to guess the encryption key. It took the two students, Ian Goldberg and David Wagner, two days to identify the vulnerability and write a software program that could guess the encryption key in less than one minute. Netscape's software, said Mr. Goldberg, 22 years old, "is not as good as people thought, which is probably worse than no security" since people have a false sense of security as they enter payment details. "The information we were using to create the key is now a known set of information," said Jeffrey Treuhaft, security product manager for Netscape. "We feel it's important to let our consumers know," he said, adding that the company will post a warning on its own Web site. "It's a serious hole, but it can easily be corrected," said James Bidzos, president of RSA Data Security Inc., which licenses security technology that Netscape incorporates in its system. Netscape said it plans to have a software fix to resolve the problem available for downloading over the Internet by the end of this week. RSA's Mr. Bidzos said his company offered to review Netscape's security when it first introduced its browser, but Netscape declined. "They're asking us to review it this time," he said. A month ago, a student at France's Ecole Polytechnique cracked the same weaker encryption system that U.S. government policy forces Netscape to use in a foreign version of its Navigator software. To break the code, the student used 120 computer workstations and two supercomputers working for eight days to break the so-called 40-bit encryption system, a number that refers to length of the encoding "key," which is used to scramble data. Netscape sells a far stronger version of its software that includes 128-bit key length, but is prevented by the government from distributing it on the Internet. The government fears that such strong encryption could fall into the hands of terrorists who might use it to communicate without fear of being tapped by U.S. security agencies. Security experts, however, noted that the same problem exists with the stronger software. ... __o .. -\<, Chris.Claborne(a)SanDiegoCA.ATTGIS.Com ...(*)/(*). CI$: 76340.2422 http://bordeaux.sandiegoca.attgis.com/ PGP Pub Key fingerprint = A8 FA 55 92 23 20 72 69 52 AB 64 CC C7 D9 4F CA Avail on Pub Key server. PGP-encrypted e-mail welcome!

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FC's Opus
by John Young 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

The NY Times reports in tomorrow's paper that it and The Washington Post are publishing the Unabomber's 35,000-word manifesto as a separate pullout in The Washington Post tomorrow, as advised by AG Reno and FBI Director Freeh.

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NSA and Netscape Crack (Re: NYT on Netscape Crack)
by tcmay＠got.net 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 3:00 AM 9/19/95, John Young wrote: > The New York Times, September 19, 1995, pp. A1, D21. > > > Security Flaw Is Discovered In Software Used in Shopping > > By John Markoff > The discovery is the second reported security weakness in > the Netscape program to be posted on the Cypherpunks list > in the last month. In August, Damien Doligez, a student at Seriously, where's the NSA when you really need 'em? If the "flaws" are being found by our group, as John notes, just what is the NSA doing in the _second_ role it is supposed to have, it's "COMSEC," or communications security, role? (Note: As outlined by Bamford, and others, the Agency has a dual role: penetrating communications it is chartered to penetrate, and helping to secure communications it is chartered to help secure. Traditionally, the penetrating side is called SIGINT or COMINT, and the securing side is called COMSEC. The names may have changed by now.) Personally, I don't actually _want_ them vetting the work of others, but I think this whole series of events with Netscape makes it abundantly clear that the supposed "dual role" of the NSA in both breaking ciphers and in ensuring higher security is a farce. If the NSA had not found the flaws our two Berkeley grad students found, we've grossly overestimated them as a threat. And if they found the flaws but said nothing, what does this say about their claimed COMSEC benefits to American interests? (Granted, not all of us are Americans, but I think you understand my point about the NSA claiming it has a role, then doing nothing concrete, and even being misleading in its plans and programs.) If the NSA _really_ wants to really help secure communications against fraud, eavesdroppers, and foreign intelligence agencies, it can do so by immediately relaxing the restrictions on crypto export. While this may not stop things like weak random number generators, it moves us to an era of "strong" crypto and away from the "toy" crypto the NSA seems to want us to have. I think, however, it's clear by now that they have little interest in helping to secure communications and that weak "toy" systems are their preference. --Tim May ---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---- Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, tcmay(a)got.net 408-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero Corralitos, CA | knowledge, reputations, information markets, Higher Power: 2^756839 | black markets, collapse of governments. "National borders are just speed bumps on the information superhighway."

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Denning and Walker on SKE and International Escrow
by tcmay＠netcom.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Somebody (who can speak up if he wants to) sent me this advance program...looks like deja vu all over again. I've elided all the talks other than those of interest to this debate. > International Cryptography Institute 1994: Global Challenges > > September 22-23, 1994 > Ritz Carlton, Washington, DC > > Presented by > The National Intellectual Property Law Institute > >The International Cryptography Institute will focus on problems and >challenges associated with the use of cryptography within nations and >for international communications. The Institute will address such >questions as: What are the different national policies and regulations >governing cryptography and how might these evolve? What cryptographic >technologies are on the market in different countries, what is being >used, and what is it being used for? What problems is cryptography >causing law enforcement? What are the requirements of businesses and >other organizations? What are the new trends in cryptography and what >will be their impact on society? What efforts are leading toward an >international cryptography framework? The Institute is for government >officials, industry leaders, policy makers and analysts, researchers, >and users of cryptographic technologies. > >8:45-9:00 Opening Remarks >Dorothy E. Denning, Chair of Program >James Chandler, President, National Intellectual Property Law Institute ... >4:00-4:30 >Experiments in International Cryptography and Software Key Escrow >Stephen T. Walker, Trusted Information Systems, Inc. > >4:30-5:00 >International Escrowed Encryption >Dorothy E. Denning, Georgetown University >John Droge, Mykotronx, Inc. ... >11:30-12:00 >World-Wide Availability of Cryptography Products >David Balenson, Trusted Information Systems, Inc. > >12:00-1:30 Lunch with Keynote >Louis J. Freeh, Director, Federal Bureau of Investigation (invited) Actually, all the other papers deal with the same ball of wax...it looks like some serious discussions about "the legitimate needs of law enforcement" and whatnot have *already occurred*. My guess is that key escrow is already part of the New World Order (not to sound like a conspiracy theorist) and that's why the export folks are making comments to software companies about key escrow. One big happy police state. --Tim May -- .......................................................................... Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, tcmay(a)netcom.com | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero 408-688-5409 | knowledge, reputations, information markets, W.A.S.T.E.: Aptos, CA | black markets, collapse of governments. Higher Power: 2^859433 | Public Key: PGP and MailSafe available. "National borders are just speed bumps on the information superhighway."

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Re: Remailer ideas (Was: Re: Latency vs. Reordering)
by Jonathan Rochkind 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

> Yes, that could be done. Problem is that the NSA's remailer(s) would > immediately deliver messages to the destination. Get enough NSA > remailers, and the web wouldn't be trustable. Now, remailers in the > web can and should feel free to randomly forward mail to other > remailers, but it's the sender who should pick the minimum chain > length, and recursively encrypt their own envelopes. Very good point. Still, I wish there was a way for my local software to automatically make this chain based on some sort of knowledge of what remailers are currently up. Ideally, my local software could figure out all this info without manual intervention on my part; it would maintain it's own list of remailers, and keep track of when they go down. I'm not sure it's possible to set up a system like this, but it would be enormously helpful. One naive solution would be for remailers to have a "ping" function. I could send a remailer a "ping" message, and it would just bounce some acknowledgement back. More likely, my software could do this periodically, and keep track of which remailers are down, or non existent, and not use those. The problem here is that an eavesdropper could get knowledge of which remailers I am planning on using, which could help traffic analysis enormously. The "ping" function could support anon encryption block, so that I can ping a remailer through several other remailers anonymously. This is an improvement, but the traffic generated by lots of people periodically doing this is going to be enormous. As it is in any implementation of this sort. [If you wanted to, you could make the remailers "ping" now by yourslef, just have a message resent to yourself. But we can't all do this automatically often, simply because of the traffic it woudl generate. I think.] The next idea I had involves a usenet newsgroup. Bear in mind I don't really know how this sort of thing works, so tell me when I've said something nit-witted. Anyhow, there could be an alt.remailer.net newsgroup. All participating remailers would post an "i'm here" message on it periodically, say once every 24 hours. This message would include the remailers public key as well. My local software could scan this newsgroup. If a remailer hadn't posted a "i'm here" message in 30 hours or so, my local software wouldn't include it in any chains. If it's been several weeks, my local software will drop it from my database of remailer's altogether. If a "i'm here" from a previously unknown remailer is found, my software adds it to the database. Or, if I'm worried about abuse, I only add it to the database if it's public key is singed by someone I trust. Okay, now everyone try to rip this plan apart. :) I'm sure I haven't arrived at the idea solution, but there's got to be some way to create a remailer-net that will allow my local software to generate long remailer chains to remailers that are all still existent (now, if one of the remailers included in my 6 remailer chain goes down, it's a major pain to figure out which one it was, and why my mail never arrived there), all automatically. Until we can arrive at such a system, remailers are never going to be really useful to a large number of people; it's just too generate secure remaielr ^?chains that are trustable.

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