- cypherpunks-legacy - lists.cpunks.org

RE: Overwelmed with Stupidity...
by Jean-Paul Kroepfli 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Shaun Clark[jacquard(a)teleport.com] wrote 27 juillet 1996 09:18 >For instance what the heck is a TRS-80, DES, or even GAK? TRS-80: A venerable microcomputer, twenty years ago (Tandy Radio Shack, I believe with 80 columns); many experiences begin with this one (and Altair (some years before) or Apple II). DES: Data Encryption Standard, a (also venerable) cryptography algorithm, it has a too short key (56 bits effective) but a good design. Recycled, with TripleDES (or 3DES), in a three pass function. GAK: Government Access to Key, his private key must be deposited (mandatory or pushed voluntary) to a public or private (registered) agency. The Law Enforcement Agencies (and intelligence agencies, but sh!) have access to the key with a court order (nobody is smiling). Jean-Paul ~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~- Jean-Paul et Micheline Kroepfli (our son: Nicolas and daughter: Celine) eMail: JeanPaul.Kroepfli(a)utopia.fnet.fr Also Compuserve and MSNetwork Phone: +33 81 55 52 59 (F) PostMail: F-25640 Breconchaux (France) or: +41 21 843 27 36 (CH) or: CP 138, CH-1337 Vallorbe Fax: +33 81 55 52 62 (Switzerland) Zephyr(r) : InterNet Communication and Commerce, Security and Cryptography consulting PGP Fingerprint : 19 FB 67 EA 20 70 53 89 AF B2 5C 7F 02 1F CA 8F "The InterNet is the most open standard since air for breathing"

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COL_oss
by jya＠pipeline.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

7-27-96. FiTi: "Colossus faces rebirth into a world of dispute." The man behind the resurrection of Colossus is Tony Sale, a computer expert and former MI5 operative who once worked for Peter Wright of "Spycatcher" fame. Its reconstruction, now in its final weeks, is not merely an act of homage to the mathematical supermen of Bletchley who hastened the Allied victory over the Nazis. Neither is it just a triumph over the official secrecy in which the machine was cloaked until a few years ago. It is a working demonstration of Sale's contention that Colossus was the world's first computer. So sophisticated was the machine intelligence at Bletchley Park that the very existence of Colossus was not revealed until 1970, according to Tony Sale. After the war the government ordered 10 Colossi to be broken up -- some say as part of an intelligence deal with the Americans. Gripped by a desire to assert the claims of Colossus, the former MI5 man asked GCHQ to reinstate his security clearance so he could work on the project. The parts could be found in any British telephone exchange up to the 1970s. Yet it took until 1992 to get all the electronics declassified. Only last November was Sale allowed to demonstrate the machine's ability to break the Lorenz wheel settings. Even today members of the public are forbidden to operate Colossus: some of its codebreaking algorithms are still, it seems, a secret. ----- http://jya.com/coloss.txt (15 kb) COL_oss

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Re: The Four Horsemen Go to the Olympics!
by Alan Olsen 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 03:22 AM 7/28/96 -0700, Timothy C. May wrote: >By the way, the airline solution is not too difficult to visualize: > >1. Eliminate checked baggage, or at least require those with checked >baggage to deposit it enough hours in advance to be inspected and to pay >any surcharges for this inspection. (I try to only have carry-on baggage, >and this seems to be a major trend.) > >2. Let the market decide. Airlines could announce their baggage inspection >policy, and customers could decide on the tradeoffs between increased >inspections and higher costs, and greater confidence in security. > >I think I'll repost my "Soft Targets" piece of a few weeks ago, in the >light of TWA 800 and this morning's bomb in Atlanta. Actually, if I wanted to blow up the Portland airport, all I would do is set up a mortar up on the hills overlooking the airport. The entire airport is pretty visible from those hills. There is no way to completely eliminate terrorism. And since the imposition of order tends to promote the escalation of disorder, I expect it to only get worse... And the only people to "win" will be the control freaks. --- Alan Olsen -- alano(a)teleport.com -- Contract Web Design & Instruction `finger -l alano(a)teleport.com` for PGP 2.6.2 key http://www.teleport.com/~alano/ "We had to destroy the Internet in order to save it." - Sen. Exon "Microsoft -- Nothing but NT promises."

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WaPo on Crypto-Genie Terrorism
by jya＠pipeline.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

The Washington Post, July 27, 1996, p. A22. Speaking in Code on the Internet ... [Editorial] The decibel level has been rising in the argument over how much control the federal government should have over the export of encryption technology. The Senate Commerce Committee held hearings Thursday on a proposal dubbed Pro-CODE (Promotion of Commerce On-line in the Digital Era) that would lift current restrictions on exporting encryption software above a certain level of complexity. The move is opposed strongly by law enforcement and national security authorities, who fear the consequences to their tracking of terrorism or crime if uncrackable cryptography becomes the global standard. But encryption software -- which scrambles a person's computer messages so no one can read them without a key -- also is thought by many in the computer industry to be the missing piece that's preventing customers from a full-scale move to the Internet for banking and other confidential transactions, rather than, as now, worrying about the security of their data. They also see it as a market in which the United States maintains a comfortable lead, one that is threatened if domestic encryption makers can't sell their products elsewhere. The makers argue that foreign encryption software will rush in to fill the gap, doing nothing about the uncrackability problem -- indeed, making it worse. The administration in turn is pursuing a wider international agreement to maintain controls on cryptology export by all the industrialized nations and has been putting pressure on its colleagues in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, which will rule on the matter in a Paris meeting in September. Administration officials, including FBI chief Louis Freeh, have been pushing for an alternative policy of "voluntary key escrow" -- encryption makers would deposit a key to the code with a neutral third body before exporting the products and could then have access to the codes only by court order, as happens now with wiretapping. Mr. Freeh, testifying at Thursday's hearing in favor of an optional key escrow plan, noted that the point is not to prevent all copies of uncrackable code from going abroad -- that's clearly impossible -- but to prevent such high-level code from becoming the international standard, with architecture and transmission channels all unreadable to world authorities. To software companies and Internet users who have been clamoring for the right to encrypt as securely as possible, Mr. Freeh and others argue, "the genie is not yet out of the bottle" on "robust," meaning uncrackable, encryption. It's far from obvious to anyone that an optional escrow plan really can prevent the growth of inaccessible transmissions by international terrorists or criminals. Encryption, if widely used, could conceivably ease some privacy problems concerning who gets to see personal and financial data on individuals -- though such data usually are vulnerable to being dug out of storage rather than intercepted in transmission. But neither is it clear that the encryption enthusiasts' desire for free development should take precedence over the tracking of terrorism. At the very least, Congress should be exceedingly cautious about getting out ahead of administration concerns on controls that, once lifted, are hardly reversible. -----

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Re: Olympic bombing
by Wayne H. Allen 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 17:41 96.07.27 +0200, Mike van der Merwe wrote: >I can just see the FBI screaming "we need weaker encryption to combat >terrosism on US soil" with nasty effects -- it seems all to many people, >lawmakers included, will be only to happy to sacrifice their privacy that >the FBI can better combat these terrorist acts (which could *of course* >could been prevented had only the FBI been able to read their encrypted >mail...) > >Somehow I got the feeling watching CNN that the FBI was given a shitload >of ammo. Call me cynical but the Reichstag fire comes to mind... The phrase "Get a life" comes to mind. Wayne H.Allen whallen(a)capitalnet.com Pgp key at www.capitalnet.com/~whallen

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Re: The Four Horsemen Go to the Olympics!
by Nathan Syfrig 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 11:15 PM 7/26/96 -0700, Alan Olsen <alano(a)teleport.com> wrote: >Well, there was an explosion at the Olympics... It may have been a bomb or >it may have been a transformer. >Expect this to be used as fuel as to why every one in America must be under >constant survelance by the Government. >The Four Horsemen are now an Olympic Event! And here's your suspect (from anonymous): I AM NOT GOING TO TOLERATE EXISTENCE OF A MEDIUM FOR CRIMINAL HACKERS AND MUNITIONS SMUGGLERS. I WILL COMPLAIN TO THE FBI IMMEDIATELY SO THAT THEY CAN TRACK YOU DOWN AND CLOSE THIS LIST. Now all you have to do is match this sentence structure with the 911 tape. Maybe there's a correlation between an electronic fingerprint and fingerprints on the phone booth. This is very worrysome, as it truly is a "world stage" event that could really serve to galvanize various governments into uniting against strong non-escrowed crypto. Hey, it will look good for the international PR, never mind the fact that not everybody will be so 'diligent' in registering their keys and/or use the "approved" crypto. And of course, this country just purchased another IBM computer for "nuclear simulation". Gee, I wonder what else that power might be used for? (but then again, it's from IBM, purveyor of the Olympics computer services) Nathan (standard not-my-emplyers-views disclaimer)

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Re: Twenty Bank Robbers -- Game theory:) [Classic Answer]
by Robert A. Rosenberg 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 9:09 -0500 7/25/96, Igor Chudov wrote: >Here's a puzzle for our game theorists. > >Twenty cypherpunks robbed a bank. They took 20 million bucks. Here's >how they plan to split the money: they stay in line, and the first guy >suggests how to split the money. Then they vote on his suggestion. If >50% or more vote for his proposal, his suggestion is adopted. > >Otherwise they kill the first robber and now it is the turn of guy #2 >to make another splitting proposal. Same voting rules apply. > >The question is, what will be the outcome? How will they split the >money, how many robbers will be dead, and so on? > >igor This is a variant on the normal distribution problem/game where you have a number of homogeneous/identical items that are either too numerous to distribute by the "one for you and one for me" method or are not equivalent to each other. The "goal" is to have a method of distributing so that each person feels that they got "their fair share". The classic solution is to have #1 divide the items into 20 piles (any of which he is willing to take as his share). Then number #2 is offered the choice of accepting #1's distribution or rearranging the distribution until he is happy to accept any of them. This accept/rearrange process goes on until #19 has made his decision. Then #20 is allowed to select any one pile as his share. The "choose a pile" option then goes back up the line (to #19, #18, etc) with each taking one of the remaining piles until it gets to whoever was before the person who did the last rearrangement. This person then has the option of doing a new rearrangement or approving the current distribution. After he does a rearrangement or approves the distribution, the option keeps going up the line until it gets to #1 (who selects a pile). You then keep going down [and up] the line until there are only two piles and the last approver/rearranger gets the last pile after the choice of piles is made by the other person. This is "fair" since at all times the person who is making a pile selection has already approved the distribution (or at the end is offered his choice of the two remaining piles).

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Pie cutting algorithm
by rollo＠artvark.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Tim May said: << ObCrypto Sidebar: The "fair" method for dividing a pie between two people is well-known: "You cut, I choose." This *game theory* result is central to many cryptographic protocols (though it may not always be apparent at first). And the protocol can be extended to 3 parties, and proabably to N. Research is ongoing on this, including Cypherpunk Robin Hanson's work at Caltech. >> I (RS) believe Claude Shannon proposed the following N-person pie-cutting algorithm more than 25 years ago: Persons 1...N are seated around a circular table. A Thing To Be Shared (Call it a "pie") sits in front of P1 (Alice, if you prefer). P1 cuts a slice (a portion satisfactory to her) out of the pie -- the "current slice" -- and offers the whole pie with the current slice to the person P2 (Barbara, if you like) to her left for her consideration. It is possible that P1 is so greedy that she makes the whole pie the current slice. P2 does one of 2 things: A. P2 cuts a smaller slice (a portion satisfactory to her, which becomes the new current slice) out of the old current slice and offers the whole pie with the new current slice to P3. B. P2 passes (being unwilling to settle for a smaller slice of the pie than the current slice), offering the person P3 to her left the whole pie with the current slice for her consideration; P3 does one of 2 things: A. P3 cuts a smaller slice (a portion satisfactory to her, which becomes the new current slice) out of the old current slice and offers the whole pie with the new current slice to P4. B. P3 passes (being unwilling to settle for a smaller slice of the pie than the current slice), offering the person P4 to her left the whole pie with the current slice for her consideration; ... Eventually, someone (Pm, or Morticia) has cut a current slice, and everybody else has passed. At that point Pm gets the piece she cut, leaves the table with it, and (if N > 2) the game proceeds ab initio with N-1 people and the remaining pie. If N = 2 (two people were playing), there's now one person left (Winnie), and she gets the remaining pie. The whole procedure terminates, with everyone satisified, after a finite number of steps. Tim May: as a Licensed Ontologist, do you know who made the wiseassed (but deep) remark "Ontology recapitulates Philology"? or for that matter, "Oncology recapitulates Proctology". Rollo Silver / Amygdala | e-mail: rollo(a)artvark.com 216M N. Pueblo Rd, #107 | Website: http://www.artvark.com/artvark/ Taos, NM 87571 USA | Voice: 505-751-9601; FAX: 505-751-7507

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Re: Fireworks expected, missed at Senate crypto hearing
by Alan Olsen 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 09:44 AM 7/27/96 -0700, Cerridwyn Llewyellyn wrote: > >>>more about terrorists. And Sen. Slate Gorton (R-Wash) jumped on the >>>committee staff for leaning too far *away* from national security interests >>>in their summary of the legislation. >> >>What does that mean? As opposed to what? (Gorton's my Senator, and I'm >>going to give a little feedback to his local office...) > >(If you have Real-Audio capability, you can listen to the hearings at >www.hotwired.com/wiredside) >Basically he expressed his disappointment at the committee for having a >biased view and having minds that were already made up regarding the issue, >and he said he was beginning to lean towards the bill, but the attitude of >the committee just might make him vote against it. >He's my senator too and believe me he got some feedback! =) I would not trust Slade Gordon as far as I can shoot him with a tree shreader. Gordon was the CO-SPONSOR of the CDA. Exon got all the press, but Gordon was just as responsible. (Maybe the netfolk ought to make that fact well known when he comes up for re-election. Hint! Hint!) Where issues of freedom are involved, I doubt if he is on our side. --- Alan Olsen -- alano(a)teleport.com -- Contract Web Design & Instruction `finger -l alano(a)teleport.com` for PGP 2.6.2 key http://www.teleport.com/~alano/ "We had to destroy the Internet in order to save it." - Sen. Exon "Microsoft -- Nothing but NT promises."

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RE: Schelling Points, Rights, and Game Theory--Part II
by blanc 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

From: James A. Donald > Some implications of Tim's view is that all our rights are basically a > transitory agreement between individuals. Tim may or may not believe this, but that is not a consequence of his views. The schelling point theory of rights is substantially equivalent in practice to "We hold these truths to be self evident." ............................................................................. Oh. I thought it was "we hold these truths to be too uneconomical for us to deal with". On a side note, I was thinking some time ago about situations in far off places in Europe where some people are mistreating others in the most horrendous ways (like Bosnia where the males are being beaten, the females are being raped). The news services report to us what is happening and so we know all about it, and we may feel the greatest sympathy for them, but yet be unable to render assistance - sufficient assistance - to be of any real help, from lacking the resources necessary to do what would be required. So here is an example where one would be moved, not to impose one's view of what is right or wrong, but to provide relief to those suffering, based on one's sense of injustice, yet likewise calculate that it would not be feasible to take action, reasoning that the cost would be excessive; too burdensome. .. Blanc

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