- cypherpunks-legacy - lists.cpunks.org

Re: Breaking DES
by smb＠research.att.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

My understanding of how an exhaustive search on the key space can be used to break DES is that for every key, K, D(K,Cipher) is applied until the output matches something legible. Say that some random string, to be thrown out, is added to the beginning of the plain text, and that DES is applied in cbc mode, then how could such an attack work? My point, I don't see how DES can be broken if the initial block is a grabage block, and cipher block chaining is used. Please enlighten me (gently). The decryption equation for CBC mode is P[n] <- D(C[n]) ^ C[n-1] In other words, decrypt the current ciphertext block, and XOR with the previous ciphertext block. Note carefully: the previous ciphertext block. That implies that you can start at any point in the string and do your decryption. You don't have to know the plaintext of the previous block to proceed, which is what you're implying. The property of CBC mode is related to its error propagation character- istics, which are important in some environment. Suppose that ciphertext block C[n] is garbled, either by a bird sitting on a phone line or by hostile action. That will garble two blocks of output: P[n] and P[n+1]. (Derivation is left as an exercise for the reader.) But P[n+2] will be decrypted properly, since it depends on P[n+1] and P[n+2]. (N.B. I'm deliberately ignoring insertion/deletion errors. If those are a concern, use CFB mode.) In accordance with my usual habits, I'll cite an excellent reference on how to use cipher systems, and what the properties of the different encryption modes are: @book{daviesprice, author = {Donald W. Davies and Wyn L. Price}, edition = {second}, publisher = {John Wiley \& Sons}, title = {Security for Computer Networks}, year = {1989} } Bruce Schneier's excellent book ``APPLIED CRYPTOGRAPHY: PROTOCOLS, ALGORITHMS, AND SOURCE CODE IN C'' is due out next month; it covers this, too. (I'll forbear to cite my own book till it's nearer completion...)

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Virtual Cash
by dwomack＠runner.utsa.edu 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

>One reason they haven't caught on is that there *isn't* a model. There >is software (cypherpunks write code! :-) to implement banks and >exchange coins (the tacky tokens themselves) but noone (as far as I've >seen) has come up with an "economic model" within which they could use >them. (In spite of perry's objections, the economic discussions *are* >relevant here... many readers seem to not understand the complexities >of money systems, without which *using* e-cash won't be practical, so >we need some major cross-breeding here.) But, don't we have a good model? Pre 1929, didn't most banks issue their own version of US currency, backed by their own reserves? If an easily usable program existed to generate the tokens (please, in decimal units, not in farthings, shillings, and binary!) any issuer could distribute them. Assuming the token signature couldn't be forged, each issuers "reputation" would determine the fair market price of a token. Thus, 1,000,000 Rubles = $550 (US); The market has determined that the Russians don't have a strong financial reputation. In the cypher world, someone who issued tokens and redeemed them for pure gold at 100 tokens per oz. would quickly have a very strong rep., while those who turned out billions of the things backed by nothing wouldn't have much of a rep. Merchants might (or might not!) accept tokens from an unknown source, or from a known weak source. This could even lead to "central clearing houses", who would issue tokens under their own name in behalf of others, based on a balance of good funds (i.e., gold, silver, US Dollars, or whatever). They might charge a fee for such services... of course, in an unregulated environment, there would be risks of fraud. If I might suggest, the key is widely ported, inexpensive, easy to use software to generate the tokens. Let people start to mint, distribute, buy, sell, and redeem the things. A market (with market values) will develop....just as it does in countries that wind up using cigarettes for currency. Would it not be possible to have a program that 1. Accepts a strong password 1.a Accepts an identity and address 2. Accepts a denomination preference 3. Accepts a quantity preference then 4. Generates tokens with a signature as in PGP or, when tokens are received, 1. Shows the issuer id and address 2. Shows denomination and quantity of each 3. Verifies signatures 4. Stores tokens (perhaps with no way to extract or duplicate them?) 5. Displays storage by category, denomination, issuer, and so forth 6. Can DESTROY tokens (i.e., take them off the market) and, perhaps most importantly, there has to be a way to prevent copied tokens from being distributed without restriction. (i.e., Sandy sends Dave 5 of his tokens. Dave, being unethical, copies the 5 tokens and sends the same 5 tokens to everyone on the C.Punks list. Now Sandy has *_hundreds_* of people with the same counterfeit tokens! It would be as if anyone with a copier could counterfeit US currency) Can a program prevent such behavior? Has this already been done with Magic Money? Or is the program still waiting to be written? Regards, Dave

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WE'RE UNDER ATTACK
by gtoal＠an-teallach.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

In article <9309180534.AA27719(a)longs.lance.colostate.edu> you write: >We must try to determine whose rules we are playing by. Is this a >customs investigation? Treasury Dept.? The situation with NSA is that >they don't really ever act directly, they always go through some other >henchmen to do the dirty work. This smells like them. But the case of >the NSA convening a grand jury does not appear to have a historical >precedent. What's going on here? Here's my guess: the NSA isn't actually behind this - it was just unfortunate that Grady was getting up their nose at the time. Let's imagine someone who is an arse-licking toady and wants to keep in well with the government. Let's suppose he's the sort of person who, to paint the personality type, would go around hassling ftp site managers getting them to remove pgp. Then imagine that the cheeky bastards promoting pgp taunt him by offering it loudly from sites outside the US and there's nothing he can do about it. What does this person do now? Has a quiet word with his friends in the US Customs (you never know, he might have some connection with the government and exporting, for all we can imagine...) and points out as a loyal concerned citizen that a cryptographic munition has been illegally exported. He maybe even forwards them some postings by Grady saying that he was planning to publish these programs (and Grady is well known to publish his Moby Words through the Austin Code Works - anyone who gets Byte can tell you that...) If such a drittsekk came to the US Customs with such a story, I think they'd be duty bound to investigate it; *especially* when all they'll have heard until now is this persons highly one-sided view of the matter. Now, *I* can't imagine for a minute that any of our cypherpunks or sci.crypt readers would do such a thing, but then I always do tend to overestimate the common sense of the net.educated public... G

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RE: Does your software?
by agermain＠cmp.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

I have unsubscribed from this mailing list. Please remove my name from your personal address lists. Thanks. ahg3 ---------- From: Peter Wayner[SMTP:pcw@access.digex.net] Sent: Tuesday, October 24, 1995 2:33 PM To: Dr. Frederick B. Cohen Cc: cypherpunks Subject: Re: Does your software? >My get-only server is available in source form, is 80 lines long and >thus easily understood, has been shown to meet security properties, is >now in the process of being mathematically proven to meet those >properties, and is published in a refereed journal which can be used to >confirm its contents in detail. Hence, I do provide secure distribution >through purely physical means. > Uh, proofs only go so far. There was one Cornell CS professor who was a real devotee of "proving" your programs correct. He even published one of his proofs in a "refereed" journal. Big whoop. It still had an error. Proofs can help identify flaws, but they can never rule out all flaws. That's why their name is so bogus. I wouldn't be surprised if you could prove that the Finger daemon, which is sort of like a really low-level GET-ONLY HTTP server, is also safe. In fact, your math proving ability could probably even prove the pre-Robert Morris finger daemon is safe and secure. If programmers don't think of preventing finger requests longer that 512 bytes then why should the head-in-the-clouds program provers? - Peter >-- >-> See: Info-Sec Heaven at URL http://all.net >Management Analytics - 216-686-0090 - PO Box 1480, Hudson, OH 44236 P.S. "FC" is your log in and "FC is found inscribed in the writings of the Unabomber. Coincidence? on't speak officially, were to be torn apart and the ulterior motives speculated upon, I'd either shut up on this list or get off it completely. (Recall that we had Marc Andreessen on this list last December--for whatever reasons, and there are likely several, he left. I recall many attacks on his company. He perhaps figured "What the hell do I need this for?") Legitimate, scientific analysis is commendable. The brute force attack on Netscape was great, and even better was the random seed attack. But many of the attacks are less solid: "How can you people at Digital Datawhack produce such crap? The assumptions you make in the Flogisticon module are disgusting, another example of security through obscenity." (What I think this piling on is likely to accomplish is to push company list subscribers here to just shut up. They see that the more is said by folks from Netscape, as the best current example, the more fireworks and insults ensue. The less that is said the better. This is not a good situation.) I'm not arguing for "niceness," just that some of the edge be taken off the attacks. The "bounties" that are being offered in press releases have the danger of inviting premature announcement of results. And of discouraging companies from actively participating in this list and discussing what might be done to improve security. Just my views. No doubt some will think I'm a shill for some company. --Tim May Views here are not the views of my Internet Service Provider or Government. ---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---- 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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Black Cryptoanarchy (KKK, monopolies, contract killings)
by John Young 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Responding to msg by doug(a)OpenMind.com (Doug Cutrell) on Fri, 9 Sep 12:36 PM: Your critique has elicited some of the best responses I've seen here. There is still, indeed, the task of proving that cryptoanarchy is not itself a play for power by those who write and master its cryptographic code. But better to test that in the public arena rather remain hidden and protected like the state secrecy of governmental cryptography. The state will probably fiercely oppose it, not least by stigmatizing cryptoanarchy and impugning its motives by exaggeration and distortion. (It is worth recalling that classical black anarchy, the secret, lethal version as distinguished from open black flag type, is used by despots to justify their ruthless measures. Black anarchists, as agents of despots, mingle with avowed flag-wavers to spy and provoke acts that lead to repressive crackdowns. Black anarchists never announce themselves as such but may freely admit to being "anarchistic" as a wild-eyed subterfuge. Inept provocations sometimes reveal them but the most able are never detected.) I may be helpful to read one writer's view of how cryptoanarchy may be lumped with and targeted like other stigmatized groups whose attributes it may claim: Quotes are from: "Stigma, Notes on the Management of Spoiled Identity", Erving Goffman, Simon and Schuster, 1963. pp. 143-45: DEVIATIONS AND DEVIANCE One such deviation is important here, the kind presented by individuals who are seen as declining voluntarily and openly to accept the social place accorded them, and who act irregularly and somewhat rebelliously in connection with our basic institutions -- the family, the age-grade system, the stereotyped role-division between the sexes, legitimate full-time employment involving maintenance of a single governmentally ratified personal identity, and segregation by class and race. These are the "disaffiliates." Those who take this stand on their own and by themselves might be called eccentrics or "characters." Those whose activity is collective and focused within some building or place (and often upon a special activity) may be called cultists. Those who come together into a sub-community or milieu may be called "social deviants", and their corporate life a deviant community. They constitute a special type, but only one type, of deviator. If there is to be a field of inquiry called "deviance," it is social deviants as here defined that would presumably constitute its core. Prostitutes, drug addicts, delinquents, criminals, jazz musicians, bohemians, gypsies, carnival workers, hobos, winos, show people, full time gamblers, beach dwellers, homosexuals, and the urban unrepentant poor -- these would be included. These are the folk who are considered to be engaged in some kind of collective denial of the social order. They are perceived as failing to use available opportunity for advancement in the various approved runways of society; they show open disrespect for their betters; they lack piety; they represent failures in the motivational schemes of society. Once the core of social deviancy is established, one can proceed to peripheral instances: community-based political radicals who not only vote in a divergent way but spend more time with those of their own kind than is politically necessary; the traveling rich who are not geared into the executive's work week, and spend their time drifting from one summering place to another; expatriates, employed or not, who routinely wander at least a few steps from the PX and the American Express; the ethnic assimilation backsliders who are reared in the two worlds of the parent society and the society of their parents, and resolutely turn away from the conventional routes of mobility open to them, overlaying their public school socialization with what many normals will see as a grotesque costume of religious orthodoxy; the metropolitan unmarried and merely married who disavail themselves of an opportunity to raise a family, and instead support a vague society that is in rebellion, albeit mild and short-lived, against the family system In almost all of these cases, some show of disaffiliation is made, as is also true of eccentrics and cultists, providing in this way a thin line that can be drawn between all of them and deviators on the other side, namely, the quietly disaffiliated--hobbyists who become so devoted to their avocation that only a husk remains for civil attachments, as in the case of some ardent stamp collectors, club tennis players, and sports car buffs. Social deviants, as defined, flaunt their refusal to accept their place and are temporarily tolerated in this gestural rebellion, providing it is restricted within the ecological boundaries of their community. Like ethnic and racial ghettos, these communities constitute a haven of self-defense and a place where the individual deviator can openly take the line that he is at least as good as anyone else. But in addition, social deviants often feel that they are not merely equal to but better than normals, and that the life they lead is better than that lived by the persons they would otherwise be. Social deviants also provide models of being for restless normals, obtaining not only sympathy but also recruits. (Cultists acquire converts too, of course, but the focus is on programs of action not styles of life.) The wise can become fellow-travelers. p. 25: STIGMA AND SOCIAL IDENTlTY Often those with a particular stigma sponsor a publication of some kind [list cypherpunks?] which gives voice to shared feelings, consolidating and stabilizing for the reader his sense of the realness of "his" group and his attachment to it. Here the ideology of the members is formulated -- their complaints, their aspirations, their politics. The names of well-known friends and enemies of the "group" are cited, along with information to confirm the goodness or the badness of these people. Success stories are printed, tales of heroes of assimilation who have penetrated new areas of normal acceptance. Atrocity tales are recorded, recent and historic, of extreme mistreatment by normals. Exemplary moral tales are provided in biographical and autobiographical form illustrating a desirable code of conduct for the stigmatized. The publication also serves as a forum for presenting some division of opinion as to how the situation of the stigmatized person ought best to be handled. Should the individual's failing require special equipment [crypto?], it is here advertised and reviewed. The readership of these publications provides a market for books and pamphlets which present a similar line. It is important to stress that, in America at least, no matter how small and how badly off a particular stigmatized category is, the viewpoint of its members is likely to be given public presentation of some kind. It can thus be said that Americans who are stigmatized tend to live in a literarily-defined world, however uncultured they might be. If they don't read books on the situation of persons like themselves, they at least read magazines and see movies; and where they don't do these, then they listen to local, vocal associates. An intellectually worked-up version of their point of view is thus available to most stigmatized persons End quotes

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RE: Netscape the Big Win
by Patrick J. LoPresti 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- >>>>> "pfarrell" == Pat Farrell <pfarrell(a)netcom.com> writes: pfarrell> Why are all-in-one programs so preferable to using the pfarrell> windowing capabilities that are built into every X-window, pfarrell> Mac or Windows system? pfarrell> Why not use the best mail client, another best webcrawler, pfarrell> and yet another news reader? The problem is that existing operating environments do not, in general, provide good facilities for the kind of tight integration you really want. Besides, there is nothing wrong with a monolithic application, as long as it provides a sufficiently rich extension language. Take Emacs, for example. Emacs is a monolithic application, but I use different Lisp packages to read news, handle mail, and develop software. (I occasionally even just edit text.) Moreover, I have co-authored a Lisp package to hook PGP functions into *every* Emacs mail and news package, without ever talking to the authors of those packages. In general, any package can be written to seamlessly integrate with any other. In addition, all of these packages work without modification on every variant of Unix, on VMS, on Windows NT, and sometimes even on DOS. I can write in beautiful (and safe) Lisp, and let the Emacs maintainers worry about the idiosynchracies of each operating system. The problem with Netscape currently is that all of their packages are *built in* by Netscape Communications. That is why they have no mail handler, and why their news reader sucks, and why it is impossible for any of us to fix these things or add a PGP front end. Java looks somewhat promising; with it, perhaps Netscape can become a platform-independent system for writing packages to manipulate and display hypertext. It would be like an Emacs for hypertext, but with a crufty extension syntax and no source code. And a user base 1000 times as large... pfarrell> Microsoft has been preaching the use of OLE and component pfarrell> programs as its development vision for 2+ years, Macs have pfarrell> been popular for ten years, why is the trend still towards pfarrell> adding every possible bell and whistle to single programs? These approaches suffer for two reasons. First, it's a pain to incorporate the same basic display code into every package. Second, it's a pain to rewrite the same basic display code for every window system. (Especially when "every window system" means Microsoft, Macintosh, and X.) Other subsystems than display have similar problems (networking comes to mind), but I think display is the major pain in the groin. What Netscape could do is provide the engine for hypertext display, with a sufficiently rich and simple extension language that it would be easy to write new modules. Someone would probably write a decent news reader. Someone else would write a mail handling package. Someone else would write a PGP interface. And so on. Netscape would need to provide other functions across platforms, like TCP sockets, but that isn't impossible: Emacs has done all of this (save graphical display) for over a decade. Gosh, we might find ourselves using 1980 technology by the year 2000. I don't know enough about Netscape's plans for using Java to know whether any of this is likely to happen. I'm not even sure I want to see it happen. But it would be interesting. Cheers. -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.2 Comment: Processed by Mailcrypt 3.3beta, an Emacs/PGP interface iQCVAwUBMA6aLHr7ES8bepftAQEIVgP9G8p4lV1+Uc+6cpLZW4hMF+k7CYYp2Jp6 xh0qZXW0Sd7STPn+sP/fGPvErauGTlDiyIoW5bTJ9srITtFN8U1Yr7QollQZPqUa 5Rhbu7LjFTmixpdo0wiDTuUiRObnoE4Pj+/27EiamEqG160TjGiHDyCodh/eyFWS 8+R/yT5RCPw= =pja4 -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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Re: AIDS testing and privacy
by doug＠OpenMind.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Tim May writes on the subject of racist hiring practices: >(It's also part of Libertarianism 101 that such a company would not >likely do well in this day and age. Before you cite America's racist >past, read up on who it was that enforced segregation. Hint: not the >corporations. Ditto for South Africa (the "other" RSA), where the >Apartheid Laws came into being because companies were looking to hire >blacks and coloreds to fill job position, and the whites didn't like >that much.) I'm not sure I buy this argument... who is it that "enforces" discrimination based on sexual orientation, today? If sexual orientation is a matter of status, rather than choice, then this form of discrimination is analogous to racism. Would you suggest that employers that refuse to hire homosexuals are simply bowing to the pressures of society at large? Unlike Apartheid, there are no laws that *enforce* discrimination based on sexual orientation (at least in the USA). In a fundamental situation of conflict between two entities, I agree that "anything goes", in the spirit of voluntary interactions between two entities. In the case of a conflict between a small number of large, powerful entities (corporate employers) and a vast number of small, powerless entities (the employment pool), I don't see how you can argue that this vast horde should not team up and utilize whatever means to achieve an advantage over the few in power. Today and in the future, "power" may reside increasingly in economic positioning. Thus, the power of the many individuals vs. the power of the few corporate entities may derive largely from their collective voice in the social conventions of society at large, which ultimately derives power from the tax base of the society at large. As long as these social conventions (and the tax base that empowers them) is in place, I see nothing wrong with the "voluntary interaction between individuals" which consists of banding together to pass, and enforce, laws in favor of the goals of these individuals. This is the basis of democracy. Along a similar vein, Blanc Weber writes: >... just remember in the real world no one is required >to be kind. If some hospital or company makes a decision to >deny service for whatever reason they justify to themselves, >it's their call as long as they are not owned by the State. In the real world, the voting public is not required to be kind to the hospital or the company, either. If a large political block can put into place structures (laws and enforcement) which effectively provide coercion against such denials of service, this is fair play as well. Doug ___________________________________________________________________ Doug Cutrell General Partner doug(a)OpenMind.com Open Mind, Santa Cruz ===================================================================

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No Subject
by Anonymous 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

On Wed, 27 Apr 94 08:45:30 EDT, perry(a)bacon.imsi.com (Perry E. Metzger) writes - > "Mycotronics. We make fascism affordable." Perry, While I agree with your sentiment, it's "Mykotronx." - spooge

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RE: State of PGP dll?; Encrypted session projects
by Pat Farrell 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

sdw(a)lig.net (Stephen D. Williams) writes: > What is the state of the Windows/.dll PGP libraries? > Does anyone have a usable version yet? I helped David get a compiled version of a .DLL, but it was way too raw to use. Specifically, all we did was make a DLL of all of the code, exporting all of the subroutines. A usefull .DLL would only publish the "important" ones, and leave the internals hidden. The selection of which routines need to be classified as "important" is a bunch of work. Additionally, I expect that some of the routines would really be better off with a wrapper that made less of their internals visible. All quite doable, but a non-trivial effort. I know I'm too busy to attack it. > For Windows: twnsck12.zip, which is simple, is GNU, and has source and > by writing a relatively simple windows serial terminal emulator and > using Comt ($15 or 25 shareware) to convert it to a telnet client. > Both of these could be modified fairly easily. There are sources to a simple terminal emulator in the MSVC samples directory. Changing it to use sockets wouldn't be all that hard. Last time I looked, comt didn't work under NT, and so I stopped looking at it. There are also terminal emulators in the code in at least two books, Monk's Windows Programmer's Guide to Serial Communications, and Nelson's Serial Communications, a C++ developers's Guide. Since I'd much rather write C++ than C, I prefer Nelson's. I use ewan as a terminal emulator, got it from cica or wustl, I forget which. Dunno if sources are availavle. > Does anyone have better ideas? Any suggestions on login/key > exchange sequence? SKey would work if you are talking to a unix box that you can get the admin to change. Pat Pat Farrell Grad Student pfarrell(a)cs.gmu.edu Department of Computer Science George Mason University, Fairfax, VA Public key availble via finger #include <standard.disclaimer>

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Where is text of wiretap bill
by James A. Donald 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Did the wiretap bill, as passed, contain those magic words: "or other legal authority"? Where can I get the text of the wiretap bill? --------------------------------------------------------------------- | We have the right to defend ourselves | http://www.jim.com/jamesd/ and our property, because of the kind | of animals that we are. True law | James A. Donald derives from this right, not from the | arbitrary power of the state. | jamesd(a)echeque.com

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