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MIT Talk on randomness/key management
by Alan (Miburi-san) Wexelblat 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

[I have no more information than is contained in the announcement --AW] > Friday, April 15, 1994 > Refreshments at 1:45pm, Talk at 2:00pm in NE43-518 > >``Regaining Pseudorandomness by Cooperation with Applications to Key > Management'' > by Amir Herzberg, IBM Watson > > ABSTRACT > >Consider a multiparty system where parties may be occasionally >``infected'' by malicious agents, called {\sf viruses.} The viruses >are controlled by an adversary. Once a party is infected the entire >contents of its memory is revealed and possibly modified. After some >time the virus is expelled and the party wishes to regain its >security. Since the leaving virus knows the entire contents of the >infected party's memory, a source of ``fresh'' randomness, >unpredictable by the adversary, seems essential for full recovery >(e.g., for selecting new keys). However, such an ``on-line'' source >of randomness may not be always readily available, or beneficial to use. > >We describe a scheme in which the parties, being given access to >randomness only at the onset of the computation, jointly generate a >sequence of numbers that are pseudorandom from the point of view of >the adversary (a different generated number for the use of each party >at each round). Thus, these pseudorandom numbers can be used just as >``fresh'' randomness in the design of protocols (e.g., for regaining >security). These properties of our scheme hold as long as in each >round there is at least {\em one} non-infected party. > >We describe an important application of our scheme to >practical key-management systems, such as Kerberos and \NetSP. > >Joint with Ran Canetti, Weizmann Institute > >Host: Nancy Lynch

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Re: Pseudonyms and Reputations
by Hal 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Nathan Loofbourrow writes, regarding the on-line game: > > You could impose an annoyance factor on the distribution of initial > resources (a week's wait, perhaps), or on unlikely transfers (you > can't give away the resource except in exchange for some other form of > goods... an Objectivist's paradise, perhaps?) Some kinds of play-by-mail games have had a similar situation, but they have generally not faced the problem in this form because they charge money to enter. This puts a cap on how many entries a person is willing to make. With a large number of participants, controlling two or three players instead of one does not increase the average person's chance of winning enough to make it worthwhile. This does suggest an alternative form of "is-a-person" credentialling, though. Rather than trying to verify identity at a distance, one could simply have a "he paid me $10" credential. You would give these out (probably just one per customer rather than multiple ones) as blinded signatures for anybody who sent you the cash. These could be substitute is-probably-a-person credentials on the theory that most people wouldn't be able to waste a lot of money purchasing a great many of these. OTOH, it's not clear that anyone would be willing to pay this much for a credential unless it had some real, tangible benefit (otherwise it serves as an "I'm a sucker" credential), and if the benefits are great enough perhaps it would be worthwhile to buy multiples. Hal

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Today cryptography, tomorrow ??
by nobody＠shell.portal.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

AP 4/8/94: A federal grand jury indicted an MIT student Thursday on charges he ran a computer bulletin board that allowed people to copy more than $1 million worth of copyrighted software for free. [...] The bulletin board, named Cynosure, allowed people on MIT's computer network to copy business and entertainment software, the indictment said. [...] Internet users also were able to illegally copy the software, Stern said.[..] Many of the Cynosure users hid their identities by using an Internet address in Finland that provided an anonymous forwarding service for the pirated programs, according to the indictment. .... Like to include more but ..uh.. "fair use" and all that .... Wonder how come he didn't encrypt?

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Re: Shot 'Round the World
by snyderra＠dunx1.ocs.drexel.edu 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 6:21 AM 4/9/94 -0700, Jeff Davis wrote: >*** Here's the follow up *** > >To whom it may concern, > >You have been emailed an authentic National Security Agency Employee's >Manual. I as an Electronic Frontier Foundation member, acting purely >on my own initiative, and solely accountable for my actions, have emailed >this information, as well as John Gilmore's FOIA attack on the current >Clipper Chip proposal for key escrowed encryption, to every media source >with an email adress listed in EFF's _Big_Dummies_Guide_to_the_Internet_ >on the entire planet. > >You may authenicate the NSA manual via confirmation by the phone numbers >listed in it. Consider this the shot heard round the world in the >Electronic Revolution. Well, this certainly helped the "cause." If I were a media person recieving this mail, I'd get a good laugh, then hit delete. I don't see anything nifty, wonderful, or unusual in the manual. I've held a Secret clearance doing work as a Defense contractor, and the requirements aren't abnormal. They're stricter, but given that the clearance level is higher and it's in the intelligence community, it's not unusual. I would seriously doubt the manual is of much interest to the media. If you want to help, mail the media about privacy, and what Clipper is going to do to it. This kind of mail just makes the online community look like fanatical crackpots. Bob (I'm an EFF member as well. What does that have to do with your message?) -- Bob Snyder N2KGO MIME, RIPEM mail accepted snyderra(a)dunx1.ocs.drexel.edu finger for RIPEM public key When cryptography is outlawed, bayl bhgynjf jvyy unir cevinpl.

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CPSR petition to oppose Clipper
by Senator Bedfellow 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Does anyone know how many signatures this eventually got? Thanks Ben. ____ Renegade academician. They're a dangerous breed when they go feral. -James P. Blaylock in "Lord Kelvin's Machine"

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'mostly for crypto and stuff'
by bart＠netcom.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

I know c'punks strays, on occasion but hows this: From: nick.konidaris(a)accbbs.com (Nick Konidaris) Newsgroups: sci.crypt Subject: Hydrogen Fuel Cells Date: 3 Apr 94 23:14:00 GMT Distribution: world Organization: Advanced Computer Concepts BBS, New Rochelle, NY 914-654-1981 I know this conference is mostly for cryptography & stuff but I want to know if there is anyone out there who knows about the Hydrogen Fuel Cell. I think that I understand how the Cell works yet, I find that something does not make sense. My basic question is: 1. Is a salt/ion bridge required? 2. If so what crosses the salt bridge? [ie. H2 and O2 protons, electrons, what?] 3. What is the best way to make a working fuel cell? Thanx -Nicholas Konidaris II

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ILF: E-Mail Destination - Black Hole, White House
by Anonymous 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Brought to you by the Information Liberation Front Reproduced without permission from Communications Week Editor's View E-MAIL DESTINATION: BLACK HOLE, WHITE HOUSE Is the Clinton adminisration really an ally of the communications and networking community, or are the politicians only jerking our strings? The answer to this imortant question seems to vary day to day. A few weeks ago I received four elecronic-mail communiques from the White House Office of Media Affairs. This caught my attention for several reasons. First, the administration is not in the habit of communicat- ing with the trade press so I was impressed with this outreach. (Cool move, guys.) Next, the messages were targeted at key journalists using the preferred medium du jour: electronic mail. (Very cool!) Finally, all four messages were dispatched the same day. I was most interested in a message detailing the administration's efforts to communicate over electronic networks. The Clinton administration's Electronc Public Access Project has achieved some important milestones during its first year. According to the project's press release: lt has received over 100,000 E-mail messages to the president and the vice president since it started on June 1, 1993; It established Internet addresses and accepts E-mail from the public; It has electronically processed over 220,000 requests for information since September 1, 1993; 1,600 public documents were published electronically last year; It established forums on America Online, CompuServe, GEnie and MCI Mail. The project plans this year to publish the national budget and other public documents on CD-ROM. It also plans to refine existing electronic com munications techniques via the Internet. I applaud the administration for these innovations. But I also have some reservations. For one, it's looks great on the surface that the administration has set up so many channels for communication. Yet this is the key question: Is anyone really listening? E-mail questions do not get electronic replies from administration officials. Questioners (if they are lucky) get back a letter -- via the U.S. Postal Service. This sounds more like a black hoel than a viable communications process. The president did respond at least once via E-mail -- to a group of fifth-graders in Oxford, Ohio, last spring. At best the opinions of communications and networking experts seem to be ignored; at worst they have been rejected by the president. An example is the president's recent adoption of the socalled "Clipper Chip." This encoding/decoding scheme was devloped by the National Security Agency to assist government agencies to evesdrop on digital communications. Virtually every major computer and communications company, opinion maker, and civil rights group opposes the use of this technology. apparently, however, the president doesn't care what we think. This action has jilted our enthusiasm for the administration's avowed embrace of communications technology. It's beginning to look more like a charade to keep techies playing with their toys instead of a mature partnership in molding our technological future. Send reactions to 542-9851(a)mcimail.com on MCI Mail or the Internet, or by fax, 516-562-5055

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Re: MIT sysop faces piracy charges
by aburt＠nyx10.cs.du.edu 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Or more likely the news media had no clue about the relationship of anonymous mail to anonymous ftp/fsp. Sigh. Andrew

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Re: clipper not end of world
by Dan Day 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

> From: Mikolaj Habryn <dichro(a)tartarus.uwa.edu.au> > Seems to me, if one is talking about videophone type devices, > they are transmitting quite a great deal of info, and stegging in a > message is quite feasible, is it not? You don't even have to do much of a > hardware modification. Do something like having an HF carrier tone in the > background, that anyone listening to it can't detect without the knowing > what they're listenong for. Or insert a microburst transmission - it'll > look like static. In one of his novels, James P. Hogan had a clever way to insert clandestine messages. There was a moon-earth communications link, and the traffic over the link was monitored to make sure no one was giving away secrets from the installation on the moon to a mole on the earth end. The problem was that they were doing the surveillance on the cleaned-up data stream. The transmission protocol had the semi-standard error correction, whereby blocks of data were transmitted, the checksum was calculated and compared, and bad blocks were thrown away followed by a request for a resend. The spies on the moon merely contrived to send the occassional "bad block" which actually contained the message they wanted to piggyback on the datastream. A listening post monitored the raw data stream and extracted those "bad blocks" which had the right data signature, and the hidden messages were stored and decoded. The people checking the received data which passed the error check never saw the message and assumed all was well, since their own communications gear had already editted it out of the data stream.

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Re. FBI & CIA
by Brad Dolan 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

>From: Black Unicorn <unicorn(a)access.digex.net> >Subject: Re: CIA & FBI, a marriage made in ___? >To: 71431.2564(a)CompuServe.COM (Bradley W. Dolan) >Date: Wed, 27 Apr 1994 22:06:25 -0400 (ADT) > >> >> >> Does it concern anybody besides me that the CIA [with a bunch of >> underemployed manpower] is jumping into bed with the FBI [whose >> spokesman recently testified to Congress that they didn't have >> enough manpower to enforce the Crime Bill on us]? > > >Yes it bothers me, but not for the reasons that you think. > >First, be careful about characterizing the change as the CIA >jumping in bed with the FBI. What is really happening is that >the FBI is taking over some of the counterintelligence functions >of the CIA. [...] > >Believe me, the CIA is more upset about it than >you are. They are hardly "jumping into bed" with anyone. Bent over a >chair is more like it. O.K., so it's rape. They're still in bed together. And I don't think I'm going to like the progeny. >The usurpation of CIA's CI functions bothers me because of the doctrinal >distinction, not because it empowers the FBI. Both aspects bother me. Further empowerment of the FBI bothers me more. >> >> Does it make anybody nervous besides me that this is occurring >> at the same time that the 2ond and 4th amendments are being >> dispensed with? While the Clipper chip and digital telephony >> bill are being foisted on us? > >Yes it makes me nervous, but not for the reasons you think. > >See below. > >> Is there a trend here? > >Yes. I'm not sure if my version is close to yours, however. > Opposite side of the same coin, I think. You worry (correctly) that a politicized intelligence/law enforcement establishment won't be very good at intelligence/law enforcement. I worry that it may become good at something else. > >The trend is to use the intelligence and federal law enforcement agencies >for domestic politics. The NSA to promote the economic regulation of the >crypto market. The FBI to further the executive's domestic survell. >technology agenda, and put out the crime fire at home. The CIA to >demonstrate, via a parade of horrors, how bad the problem is, and be the fall >guy for the FBI. [...] >This is a perversion. I discussed this before on the list and in usenet. >Using the NSA as a public relations tool to the degree you see today is >an idea that only the intelli-clueless Clinton would think of. >Intelligence and law enforcement are not the President's personal program >advocates. >It detracts from real business and it destroys the >credibility of the agencies in the eyes of the public. Yes >This makes it hard for real business to be addressed. Yes >I have the greatest respect for the office of the Presidency, however. If I keep an image of Washington or Jefferson firmly fixed in mind, I can maintain just a shred of respect. >-uni- (Dark) bd

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