- cypherpunks-legacy - lists.cpunks.org

clipper pin-compatible chip
by rarachel＠prism.poly.edu 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Here's an idea right out of the Intel-Cyrix-AMD wars. Once the clipper chips are common place, perhaps we could get some company to build IDEA chips that are pin compatible with the clipper chip itself, and perhaps even some switching socket where if you're calling a device and want to use the clipper chip (due to compatibility reasons of course) you activate the clipper chip socket. If not, you flip the switch the other way, and activate the IDEA chip. All we need are pinout, timing/signal specs and a few cypherpunks who are/were EE majors. :-) The chip switching mechanism itself is no big deal. In the worse case we could adopt an Atari/Nintendo type solution where you have a socket for a plug in cartridge which contains the encryption chip of your choice. You then call up your friend and tell him to use his IDEA cart and you do the same. Or RSA, or anything you like. If we could convince hardware manufactures to include chip sockets, this won't be an issue any longer. Which would Joe Bloe using a celular phone prefer? The clipper chip when he knows any spook can listen to him, or a third party IDEA chip which is quite secure? The IDEA cartridge could have some rotary switches with numbers on them to set for a 128 bit key. Sort of like the push button SCSI device ID selectors on external cases. Perhaps the cartridge might even have a touch tone like keypad for typing in a pass phrase.... etc. This could be done quite cheaply. Hell, you could probably just use a 68000 a ROM and a say 64K of RAM and not need a special IDEA chip.

2 1

Re: REMAIL: Cover traffic
by jim＠bilbo.suite.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

jdblair writes: > Jim Miller writes, > > > All inbound messages to a remailer from a non-remailer > > address would be considered a "use" of that remailer. A > > remailer would maintain a list of the addresses of > > "users" and would occasionally send bogus messages to a > > randomly selected entry from its user list. Inclusion > > into the list would be automatic. The list would be a > > large, but fixed sized FIFO, with old entries dropping > > off the end automatically. > > > > > > However, there would be a record of addresses which > anonymous mail had been sent to- probably not a good idea. > Julf's anonymizer has such a record, but I thought part of > the idea of the cypherpunk remailers was to eliminate > these records. > I assume the bad guys can generate their own record of remailer usage. The record could include the addresses used to send messages to remailers and the addresses receiving messages from remailers. They can record when a message enters the system from the outside, and they can record when a message leaves the system. Given they can know all this by just monitoring the remailer system, then there is no reason why the remailers can't also use some of this information. Besides, the "user list" maintained by a remailer only needs to contain the non-remailer addresses used to send messages to the remailer. It does not need to contain any time information or information about the messages passing through the remailer. It also doesn't need to contain destination addresses. Jim_Miller(a)suite.com P.S. After sending my previous message I realized the proposed mechanism still doesn't help Hal Finney's degenerate case where there is only one sender and one receiver, but I've come to believe it is not necessary to solve for that case.

1 0

Re: REMAIL: Cover traffic
by rarachel＠prism.poly.edu 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Why can't the remailers themselves send encrypted mail to each other totally masking the incoming messages? Each remailer can have a public/private key associated with every other remailer on the network, with full pgp type signatures to prove they came from a remailer and not a spook or nym? Each remailer has a fingerable public key. When remailer x sends a message to remailer y, it encrypts it with y's public key after fingering y, and also signs the message. Y could also be a paranoid remailer, and if it doesn't know X, it could tell it to go stick its message up its SCSI port. :-) All these ideas along with trash junk mail being sent every few minutes could work. Even better, have each remailer send a specific number of messages to each of the other remailers on the network. These messages would be bogus messages, however, there would be a fixed number of them. If a real nym message arrives, it is sent to the next mailer up the chain, as part of the n (n-1 now) that are bogus. That way a spook couldn't tell where a message was going since he couldn't count the number of messages going out of the mailer. Also if a target remailer has n real messages to be sent to, any messages over that assigned packet size of messages get spooled for the next round of bogus mail. This way each remailer will send exactly n messages to every other remailer on the net every specified period of time. What kind of analysis can be done with this sort of scheme?

1 0

Re: Remailers: The Next Generation
by wcs＠anchor.ho.att.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Phil Karn suggests we look at anonymous forwarders for IP as well as mail. It's an interesting idea - Eric Hughes and Matt Blaze have recently talked about "packet laundering" at Bay Area Cypherpunks meetings, and there's been some work done on multi-stage laundering with cutouts in the middle so it really stays anonymous. Some issues include how to pay for it (digicash is one obvious approach), how to set up rendevous, and the usual datagram-vs-circuit problems of how long to maintain an association between addresses at the forwarder. On the other hand, while the Internet is rapidly absorbing email, there are lots of email systems that are *not* IP-based, such as uucp-over-dialup, Fidonet, X.400-over-OSI, and commercial mail systems that may forward to and from the internet but run their own backbones, which help make remailers harder to trace. There's also the hybrid issue, where you tunnel IP across whatever transport medium is available - there are some people doing this over telnet, and it would be a convenient way to do things like get IP service from a flat-rate dialup access provider without paying $2/hour for SLIP, etc. Bill # Bill Stewart NCR Corp, 6870 Koll Center Parkway, Pleasanton CA, 94566 # Voice/Beeper 510-224-7043, Phone 510-484-6204 # email bill.stewart(a)pleasantonca.ncr.com billstewart(a)attmail.com # ViaCrypt PGP Key IDs 384/C2AFCD 1024/9D6465

2 1

4th ammendment and Cryptography
by Roy Franz 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Hello all, I am considering writing a research paper on how the constitution will hold up in light of rapidly changing technology and the use of it. The main issue I plan on addressing is the right to privacy. My concern is that I will not be able to find enough "scholaly works" that address this issue. I know that opinions abound, but I am in need of citeable sources. Any ideas? Has much been published on this issue? Thanks, Roy ----------------------------------------------------------- Roy B. Franz rbfranz(a)ucdavis.edu Software Engineer Viewgraphics, Inc

2 1

Re: Randomness of a bit string
by doug＠netcom.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Tim May said: >I stand by my point that no number or sequence can be proved to be random. To expand a bit on Perry's arguments, the bottom line of all this research is that a claim regarding randomness can only be made *relative* to a particular system for specifying algorithms. In that sense, Tim's statement can be regarded to be correct, iff one assumes that a context (an algorithmic specification system) is not given. That is a huge qualifier, though, and not one to be taken for granted. A trivial example of this: pick some constant bitstring of length 32 or less. Call it K. Now look at the class of algorithms specifiable by the C code fragment printf("%x", K) --- i.e. print K as a hexadecimal number. Relative to that particular set of (one) algorithms, that value of K is trivially nonrandom, in the sense that the probability of of finding that bitstring produced by that class of algorithm is precisely 1. Next consider a program that computes an output by multiplying some input by two. The probability that the output will be K, given any possible (but unknown) input, is exactly zero if K happens to be odd. If K is not odd, then the probability depends on the distribution (randomness) of the inputs. Proceeding in this fashion, it becomes increasingly clear that the randomness of the output of an algorithm can only be measured relative to the properties of the class of algorithms being considered. Randomness in isolation is meaningless. The best sources of intuition regarding randomness usually derive from systems which shift the burden into an existing intuition on a slightly different subject. For instance, flipping a coin can be regarded as a random process in an intuitive sense, but only because it appeals to existing intuitions about equiprobablistic outcomes. Therefore one sees confused appeals to intuition about randomness, probability, entropy, or related ideas, in cryptography, quantum mechanics, information theory, statistical mechanics, philosophy (in regard to free will versus determinism versus randomness), etc, etc, but given Chaitin/Kolmogorov/et al, no intuition from any such subject should be taken at face value. There's more, but I'll pause to allow flames. :-) Doug

2 1

Comments on violence
by Carl Ellison 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

I don't know if legalization would prevent the violence at this point. It would probably reduce street crime but I'm concerned that our population is getting adicted to the thrill of violence (movies, TV news, video games, ...) and it might take a kind of drug treatment program for the whole nation to do anything about it. My second, bigger concern is that the government is using this violence as an excuse to attempt to remove our rights. The one I'm most concerned about is the right to privacy in communications through cryptography (since I'm a computer system architect and cryptologist). We have always had the right to invent and use our own strong cryptography (for the whole 4000 year history of cryptography) and yet the administration (no doubt prompted by the NSA) is now trying to claim a right to read all private messages [cf., the "Clipper" proposal], citing violence (drug dealers, snuff movies, etc.) as the need, without establishing a link -- just using the reference as a scare tactic to get voter adrenalin flowing so that they'll feel pro-law-enforcement. This is a major conflict between government and civil rights, coming to a head as we speak. A spotlight on this attempt by you would be appreciated. Thank you. Carl Ellison Sr. Technical Consultant Stratus Computer Corp. / ISIS Distributed Systems

1 0

Re: NSA museum now open, if you can find it
by Dave Hart 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

---------- | From: Hal <netmail!hfinney(a)shell.portal.com> | | That museum sounds fascinating. I got to visit the NSA's so-called | "Friendship Annex" once on business. This is not at Fort Meade itself, | but a few miles away, to keep the impure and unclean away from the holy | temple itself. | | Whoever named this place had quite a sense of irony; [...] As documented in _The Puzzle Palace_, the name derives from Friendship International Airport, now known as Baltimore-Washington International Airport. The Annex buildings are at the end of one of the runways. Dave Hart davehart(a)microsoft.com Not a Microsoft spokesperson

1 0

Re: REMAIL: Cover traffic
by jim＠bilbo.suite.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Arsen Ray Arachelian writes: > ...Even better, have each remailer send a specific > number of messages to each of the other remailers on the > network. These messages would be bogus messages, > however, there would be a fixed number of them. > > If a real nym message arrives, it is sent to the next mailer > up the chain, as part of the n (n-1 now) that are bogus. That > way a spook couldn't tell where a message was going since > he couldn't count the number of messages going out of the > mailer. > > Also if a target remailer has n real messages to be sent to, > any messages over that assigned packet size of messages > get spooled for the next round of bogus mail. This way each > remailer will send exactly n messages to every other > remailer on the net every specified period of time. > I like this idea. It seems to use fewer CPU resources than having a remailer route a bogus message through a random set of other remailers and back to itself. If I understand the encrypted remailer scheme correctly, the "route through random set" mechanism requires a remailer to enclose a bogus message in a set of nested digital envelopes (one for each remailer in the random remailer set). The "round-robin send to peers" mechanism only requires the remailer to create one envelope per bogus message. I also like the idea because it seems easier to analyse, and therefore easier to describe/formalize the properties of the system as a whole. Jim_Miller(a)suite.com

1 0

Re: IP rerouters (was Re: Remailers: The Next Generation)
by jerry＠terminus.dell.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

In article <2hunvn$71u(a)uudell.us.dell.com> you write: >From: Matthew J Ghio <mg5n+(a)andrew.cmu.edu> >Subject: IP rerouters (was Re: Remailers: The Next Generation) >In-Reply-To: <199401230709.XAA26564(a)servo.qualcomm.com> >References: <199401230709.XAA26564(a)servo.qualcomm.com> > >Phil Karn <karn(a)qualcomm.com> wrote: >> While you guys are thinking about where to take this stuff at the >> application level, how about giving some thought to how you >> might do it at the IP level? >> >Well, it would make tracing FTP difficult, altho, at least intially, >some FTP maintainers might try to block known IP rerouters. Of course, >if such rerouters became commonplace, it would eliminate that problem. ... >Does anyone how much it costs to get a continuous 56K internet >connection? What about a T1? How easy is it to get and set up? Yes anonymous IP would quickly get block by control freak sys admins. Costs for internet connections vary, but plan to spend about 20K/year. Plus about 10K in startup costs, plus equipment costs. Depending on a lot of factors prices can vary up to 50%. Unless you are on the internet it is very hard to get connected. Most of the companies that sell internet access do business through email. -- Jeremy Porter ----------------- Systems Enginneering ---- Dell Computer Corp. --- jerry(a)terminus.us.dell.com -------- ------------------------------------------------------------ Support your Second Amendment rights to encryption technology.

1 0