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Re: DigiCash Ecash - 2 security topics
by iagoldbe＠calum.csclub.uwaterloo.ca 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

>> > E.g. has there been a DigiCash response to Ian Goldberg's >> > publication of a denial-of-service attack which operates by >> > spending a coin with the same serial number as your victim's >> > coin? >> After discussing things with Ian we came up with several solutions. >> One is encrypting more messages (which we will do in a next revision >> of the protocol), the other is enabling ecash to work over ssl >> servers. You may not see the answer directly in the list, but you >> will see it in the next protocol revision. Actually, my original suggestion was to include 'n' in the value encrypted in the bank's public key. The less we have to _rely_ on ecash-enabled apps having to do their own encryption (like SSL), the better. Of course, extra encryption is OK, too. I wonder if Dave and I will get Digicash's reward for this one... I still haven't seen anything from them (though various individuals keep promising), or from Netscape either, for that matter... [emoticon elided] - Ian "starving grad student (sigh)"

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Re: SS Obergruppenfuhrer Zimmermann (NOT!)
by Peter Trei 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Patiwat Panurach asks: > On Tue, 23 Jan 1996, Duncan Frissell wrote: > > On the whole, the cypherpunks have gotten very favorable press for a group > > who's actions may render government policies irrelevant and possibly the > > governments themselves. > Would you call cypherpunks (as a group and as a philosophy) to be > influential? Do you think governments listen to us much? Are they forced > to listen to us? Any stuff to support this? Please give me your comments. Yes, I would say the actions of the people active on this list have had significant effectst. To give one example: Last summer, 'we' broke 40-bit RC4. Within a week or two, the US government started to discuss making 64-bit escrowed crypto exportable (not acceptable, but it's a change). In the private sector, the opinion in a lot of US firms was 'yeah, 40 bits may be weak, but marketing wants to have a single "secure version" of the product, so we'll sell the 40 bit version domestically and abroad - after all, 40 bits is only theoretically weak - no one's ever broken it." After the highly publicized SSL crack, it suddenly became a *lot* easier for engineers to argue for separate domestic versions with stronger encryption. I personally know of three firms where this occured, and I'm sure there are more. Peter Trei Senior Software Engineer Purveyor Development Team Process Software Corporation http://www.process.com trei(a)process.com

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Re: Crippled Notes export encryption
by tcmay＠got.net 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 9:29 AM 1/24/96, Jeff Weinstein wrote: > I suspect that to get around the US government in this way we >would have to develop the entire product outside of the US. That >would be a very drastic move that is not likely to happen any >time soon. We are going to invest some money and effort into >trying to get the current restrictions lifted first. For what it's worth, this is what I've heard several knowledgeable lawyers say is the case, that merely sending the crypto experts abroad is no solution, that the entire product (or some large fraction of it) must be foreign-originated. The usual issue: That if a foreign-originated product even appears to be a standard (so far, none have been), and includes strong crypto, then the NSA and other agencies will simply change the rules. Thus, if extremely strong crypto from "Netscape-Zurich" starts to have a significant market presense in the U.S., then some law will be passed to restrict it. --Tim May Boycott espionage-enabled 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, Higher Power: 2^756839 - 1 | black markets, collapse of governments. "National borders aren't even speed bumps on the information superhighway."

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"Concryption" Prior Art
by pcw＠access.digex.net 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

I haven't read the supposed Concryption patent so I don't know what the claim structure is. But if they truly claim the right to do encryption and compression simultaneously, then I've got some prior art that should knock out such a broad claim. The paper is "A Redundancy Reducing Cipher" (Cryptologia, May 88). It's not very secure, but it does do some manner of encryption at the same time as compressing a file with a Huffman-like system. The journal is found in many university libraries so it should be easy to produce a solid counterclaim. If anyone has the plaintext to the Concryption patent (5479512), I would like to read it. -Peter

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Rutgers symposium on Copyright and NII 14-15 Feb 96
by Steven C. Perkins 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Please forward as appropriate. Conference Program will be at "http://www.rutgers.edu/RUSLN/copyconf.html" this weekend. Roundtable Conference: Copyright Issues and the National Information Infrastructure Rutgers School of Law - Newark February 14-15, 1996 Rutgers School of Law - Newark is hosting an important conference dealing with major issues presented by the White Paper and electronic distribution of information products. Three roundtable sessions will engage 40-50 leading scholars, lawyers, corporate counsel, and government officials in a day-long discussion and debate of critical law and policy issues. The scheduling of this conference anticipates further policy debates and congressional hearings on pending proposals. It will join leading actors in an in-depth exploration of core issues through an exchange that identifies and addresses a diversity of interests and searches for greater mutual understanding and expansion of areas of agreement. Registration fee: $125 Registration deadline: February 10, 1996 (Walk-in registration permitted beginning at 8:30 AM.) Rutgers School of Law - Newark 15 Washington Street Newark, NJ 07102-3192 Attn: Assistant Dean Margaret C. Bridge For further information, call Assistant Dean Margaret C. Bridge at (201) 648-5094, or send email to Professor David A. Rice at drice(a)world.std.com. ------------------------------------------------------------- **********||||||||||\\\\\\\\\\*//////////||||||||||********** Steven C. Perkins sperkins(a)andromeda.rutgers.edu User Services Coordinator Ackerson Law Library http://www.rutgers.edu/lawschool.html Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, School of Law at Newark http://www.rutgers.edu/RUSLN/rulnindx.html VOX: 201-648-5965 FAX: 201-648-1356 |||||||||||||||\\\\\\\\\\\\\||*||///////////////|||||||||||||||

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Re: Crippled Notes export encryption
by frantz＠netcom.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 10:28 1/24/96 -0800, Lucky Green wrote: >I agree. The reason for enforcing ITAR is to keep good crypto of the >*domestic* market. If ITAR no longer accomplishes that, new laws will be >passed. I think this is likely to be an oversimplification. While there are probably a number of people in e.g. FBI, DEA, DOJ who want to restrict domestic crypto, I suspect there are also a number of people in e.g. NSA who are sincerly interested in using SIGINT to protect the US from foreign threats and want strong domestic crypto as part of that protection. As always, public policy is a compromise between competing interests (INSIDE the beltway). However, the current policy is a holdover from the days when strong crypto was a closely held trade secret. Since this assumption is no longer true, the policy becomes more and more disfunctional every day. ----------------------------------------------------------------- Bill Frantz Periwinkle -- Computer Consulting (408)356-8506 16345 Englewood Ave. frantz(a)netcom.com Los Gatos, CA 95032, USA

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disk randomness
by Donald T. Davis 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

rich salz posted to this list a message i sent him about a portable way to gather disk-noise for a true rng. he also was kind enough to forward a reply to me from the list, because i wasn't subscribed at the time. the reply's author pointed out that my approach is not a practical one, and that NOISE.SYS gathers disk timings and other noise more efficiently, anyway. now that i'm subscribed, i'll answer on my own behalf: i agree that my algorithm isn't practical. in fact, that's why i agreed to rich's request that i let him post my message here. i don't recommend paging-timings to my clients, because it's not a workable approach for production-quality code. memory-paging's only virtue as a noise-source is that it's uniquely portable. i failed to emphasize this, in the message rich forwarded for me. the code needs no device-specific calls, and the only OS-specific call is the gettime() call. even with this virtue, i don't recommend it as a production-quality algorithm, unless the process that needs the rng is already memory-bound. i'm sorry that my original msg was unclear on this point; that's my fault, not rich's. by the way, i think the "interesting work" of mine to which rich referred, is my paper on disk randomness, which appeared in the crypto '94 proceedings. it presents work i did at mit from '88-9, and shows mathematically why disk-timings can contain true entropy: a disk's speed variations come from air turbulence, which now is known mathematically to be unpredictable in the long run. my coauthors were p.r. fenstermacher, a chaos-theory physicist, and r. ihaka, a statistician. -don davis, boston

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Re: NSA says strong crypto to china??
by E. ALLEN SMITH 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

From: IN%"perry(a)piermont.com" 9-JAN-1996 12:05:32.69 Alex Strasheim writes: > If this is true, it's great news. It would mean that the NSA is adopting > both cypherpunk analysis and tactics. Who would have thought? An NSA > remade in Tim May's image. I suspect that the NSA was thinking in our terms long before many of us were aware of cryptography. I actually think that in many cases, their behavior is perfectly rational. Their goals are merely different. If you are in SIGINT, I believe that the possibility of totally losing a valued intelligence tool must heavily weigh on your mind. Of course, they are hardly monolithic, and different groups at the NSA necessarily have different goals. Once SIGINT becomes much harder regardless of their previous attempts to stop it, I suspect that the NSA will become a friend and not an impediment. By that time, of course, the "we have to protect our people" types will be the only ones producing results and getting funding, and the "we have to gather information" types will have long ceased to produce. Thats probably a decade or more off, though. --------------- I suspect that the NSA can basically be divided into four groups: A. Those who are interested in protecting American individual liberties, and are thus (possibly potential) allies. This bunch may have a subgroup of those who already are allies, who have unfortunately been rather unsuccessful (or perhaps we simply haven't seen their successes). B. Those who realize about the potentials for individual liberty from cryptography, but believe that something else about America is more important. For instance, they may believe that the voters in a democracy should be able to institute whatever rules they like. Various left- and right-wing viewpoints are also possible here; the former would include worrying about lost tax dollars because of wanting big government, the latter would include concerns about pornography, etcetera. C. Those who are in the NSA because they want power, and strong cryptography's dissemination would hinder this. This group is likely to be concealed as one of the other groups. D. Those who haven't thought about it, and are simply following orders. I suspect that this is the largest group; while the overall level of intellect at the NSA may be higher than in the average population, the intelligence mindset of "need to know" may be keeping many people from realizing everything the NSA is doing. -Allen

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None
by Mr. Nobody 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

In article <9601241720.AB13251(a)envirolink.org> Daniel Miskell <DMiskell(a)envirolink.org> writes: > Mr. Nobody writes: Dr. Nobody, to you. > >In article <Pine.LNX.3.91.960123192018.1008D-100000(a)zifi.genetics.utah.edu> > >zinc <zinc(a)zifi.genetics.utah.edu> writes: > >> i got this in the mail this morning. here's another blatant case > >> of illegal export. names and exact addresses removed to protect the > >> clueless. > > > >Why exactly did you post this message? I personally don't mind, but > >am just curious. > > Why exactly did YOU post this message? I personally dont mind, but am just > curious. I thought it was pretty clear from my message: curiosity.

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Re: IPSEC == end of firewalls
by Rick Smith 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Discussing firewalls, ses(a)tipper.oit.unc.edu (Simon Spero) writes: >What do you need as well as crypto before you can remove all firewalls? What firewalls do is they allow an independent group of people to track external network access and enforce rules over a large population of hosts. Given that just about any security installed on a workstation can be overcome (inadvertently or consciously) by someone with physical access to it, I doubt firewalls will ever go away entirely. Today's techniques will no doubt evolve and change in varous ways over time. But I'd be surprised if the function went away entirely. Until Netscape came out I suspected that desktop crypto wouldn't make the bigtime soon, simply because there are too many ways to do it wrong. Netscape has demonstrated that doing it wrong is no impediment to deployment. Organizations that want to do crypto well are probably going to concentrate crypto services in a few closely managed hosts to reduce the risk of messing things up. Rick. smith(a)sctc.com secure computing corporation

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