- cypherpunks-legacy - lists.cpunks.org

Credentials Without Identity
by tcmay＠got.net 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Rich Graves makes some very good points, but he said something I want to riff on. (And as a measure of how apologetic some folks are getting about discussing anything not on Perry's List of Approved Topics, Rich unfortunately labeled his post "[ID point semi-off-topic]..." In fact, the issue of credentials and identity is NOT off-topic, not even semi-off-topic. It is central to the themes of our list. I urge all to read Chaum's seminal work on "credentials without identity.") At 1:05 AM 11/5/95, Rich Graves wrote: >Proving legal residency requires a combination of two documents, one each >from specified lists. Most commonly a driver's license, green card (which >is actually pink), or birth certificate from list A, and a social >security card from list B. > >Chris Hibbert's SSN FAQ talks a little bit about how this works, and why >it's a Good Thing. Basically, for privacy and security reasons, it is a >very good idea to separate the issues of identity and authorization. > >I don't care how securely you can authenticate who I am -- by PGP, retinal >scan, whatever. I do not want a single digitizable token to be the key to >my identity. Even if that identity cannot be forged (and everything can be >forged), it can be used to track me, by the government, by the Direct >Marketing Association, by the private investigators of certain wacky .... Chris's (or Chris') points are admirable, but getting more and more irrelevant by the day. The notion of unlinking identity and authorization by separate pieces of identification is another form of "security through obscurity." The two forms of credentials can be linked in data bases. Just because one piece of ID has citizenship or voting status and another has other stuff is meaningless, provided the ID forms can be linked. As they can, in multiple ways. The credit tracking agencies can do this trivially, with names, social security numbers, driver's license numbers, addresses, phone numbers, etc. All are pointers into the cloud of numbers that constitutes one's dossier. Happily, Chaum's work on "credentials without identity," based essentially on the kind of "blinding" used in digital cash (with some differences, of course), allows for one to display a credential showing one is old enough to enter a bar or library (in 2005), without revealing a name (which is just another credential). --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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Angel and Javier can't unsubscribe!
by Timothy C. May 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 5:46 PM -0400 12/3/96, Angel Luis Ortiz Ruiz wrote: > > Friend: Thank's for your asnswer but I already do that. The server say >that I'm not in the list but I still reacive the messages. Thankx And then there was another message: At 6:00 PM -0400 12/3/96, Javier Rivera wrote: > Friend: Thank's for your asnswer but I already do that. The >server say that I'm not in the list but I still reacive the messages. >Thankx again! Both seemed to come from "zeen(a)caribe.net". One under the Ruiz name, the other under the Rivera name. And similar messages, both in broken English. I suggest Angel and Javier get together and decide which one of them is the name they or it subscribed under, and use that. Oh, and I have a sneaking suspicion they sent in the increasingly-canonical "unsuscribe" or "unscribe" misspelling. I'm beginning to think that Cypherpunks appeals especially to morons. --Tim May To subscribe to the Cypherpunks mailing list: -send a message to: majordomo(a)toad.com -body message of: subscribe cypherpunks To unsubscribe from the Cypherpunks mailing list: -send a message to: majordomo(a)toad.com -body message of: unsubscribe cypherpunks

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Re: [reply to anonymous] Re: rsaref
by Bill Stewart 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 12:06 AM 12/29/95 +0100, Alex de Joode <usura(a)utopia.hacktic.nl> wrote: >to whom it may concern: > >rsaref20 is available on ftp.hacktic.nl since may 1995 in > > /pub/replay/pub/crypto/LIBS/rsaref20.zip If the RSA folks want to get picky, this may be violating their copyright, which is enforceable in Europe (unlike their patents.) There's also an RSAEURO clone of RSAREF which is available on ftp.ox.ac.uk/pub/crypto, and presumably at many other fine sites. #-- # Thanks; Bill # Bill Stewart, stewarts(a)ix.netcom.com, Pager/Voicemail 1-408-787-1281 # # "The price of liberty is eternal vigilance" used to mean us watching # the government, not the other way around....

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Fortress/Little Bro
by j.hastings6＠genie.geis.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- FORTRESS remailers should be disguised in some way: "DBN announced solemnly that it was everyone's duty to turn in all computers and radios to the authorities for the duration of the Emergency. Not many were impressed by this pronouncement unless you counted laughter. I'd hate to be on the side trying to confiscate everything. That cactus might be a combination photovoltaic cell and radio antenna with green chlorophyll-enriched paint. Or it might just be a cactus. Maybe that flag pole is a hidden shortwave antenna. Should we tear down our own flag? That car engine, vacuum cleaner, hospital centrifuge, or those countless damned white-noise decoys might be unauthorized spread-spectrum radio transmitters. Or not. The bitter end had come, but the Feds wouldnÕt back down..." Another Little Brother problem: "Consumers wanted businesses to 'get it' concerning their preferences, without any effort on their part. But they insisted on absolute individual privacy. A method of scanning the face was devised that could evaluate and report the emotional state of the viewers, without disclosing the identity of any particular viewer, via a blind-audit protocol. This compromise was accepted by most broadcast receiver customers. It was not generally known that the biggest consumer of collective emotional data was the Department of National Security. The data was purchased under a number of marketing research company names, then transmitted directly to DNS in real time, making it the most important tool DNS had for "the manufacturing of consent." A Presidential speech was broadcast, and the sum of the viewer reactions was received. The speech program was adaptive, so statements evoking the most positive response were generated, if they fell within the policy constraints set by the Directorate of the Department." Excerpts from "Revolution Is My Hobby" by me. Kent - j.hastings6(a)genie.geis.com Ham packet AX.25: WA6ZFY @ WB6YMH.#SOCA.CA.USA.NA -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.3 iQCVAgUBLoo7/DQYUX1dU7vxAQHYlQP/Sq2eIcPOFzae5L+IFu/sKLc7ssGAE18T bWuAIOOGVWwhT4GAgnxDnYiJjn2Azt9pCeTLpe4ppPQ88SS3hX9fkg4cNWF3rRd1 gKRn7w7cwBwPZhJuvHEMUno/KFsEizFYFzLSEISp4DETp2TWpkowh65RB/RRGFM+ RMiAR2s2bNw= =VRH0 -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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unsubscribe
by DBS5112＠ibm.MtSAC.edu 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

(mailing to cypherpunks-request(a)toad.com doesn't seem to work)... please unsubscribe me from the list... thanxs

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anonymous mail
by nobody＠pmantis.berkeley.edu 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

There's a jerk that's been mail-bombing me, and I can't do anything because he's root at his site. Would it be ethical to use a remailer to bomb him back? Or maybe I shoudl simply fakemail a message to alt.fan.rush-limbaugh(a)anon.penet.fi with his name and have the contents say something like 'Limbaugh sucks', or post to alt.sex.wanted with the subject 'SWF virgin seeks man for first time'. Any ideas on how to get someone back, or at least make life annoying?

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Notes on key escrow meeting with NSA
by Matt Blaze 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

A group from NSA and FBI met the other day with a group of us at Bell Labs to discuss the key escrow proposal. They were surprisingly forthcoming and open to discussion and debate, and were willing to at least listen to hard questions. They didn't object when asked if we could summarize what we learned to the net. Incidentally, the people at the meeting seemed to base a large part of their understanding of public opinion on Usenet postings. Postings to sci.crypt and talk.politics.crypto seem to actually have an influence on our government. A number of things came out at the meeting that we didn't previously know or that clarified previously released information. What follows is a rough summary; needless to say, nothing here should be taken as gospel, or representing the official positions of anybody. Also, nothing here should be taken as an endorsement of key escrow, clipper, or anything else by the authors; we're just reporting. These notes are based on the collective memory of Steve Bellovin, Matt Blaze, Jack Lacy, and Mike Reiter; there may be errors or misunderstandings. Please forgive the rough style. Note also the use of "~ ~" for 'approximate quotes' (a marvelous Whit Diffie-ism). NSA's stated goals and motives for all this: * DES is at the end of its useful life * Sensitive, unclassified government data needs protection * This should be made available to US Citizens * US business data abroad especially needs protection * The new technology should not preclude law enforcement access They indicated that the thinking was not that criminals would use key escrowed crypto, but that they should not field a system that criminals could easily use against them. The existence of key escrow would deter them from using crypto in the first place. The FBI representative said that they expect to catch "~only the stupid criminals~" through the escrow system. Another stated reason for key escrow is that they do not think that even government-spec crypto devices can be kept physically secure. They do expect enough to be diverted to the black market that they feel they need a response. NSA's emphasis was on the foreign black market... There seems to be a desire to manipulate the market, by having the fixed cost of key escrow cryptography amortized over the government market. Any private sector devices would have to sell a much larger number of units to compete on price. (This was somewhere between an implication and an explicit statement on their part.) When asked about cryptography in software, "~...if you want US government cryptography, you must do it with hardware~". Clipper chips should be available (to product vendors) in June. You can't just buy loose chips - they have to be installed in approved products. Your application interface has to be approved by NIST for you to get your hands on the chips. An interesting point came up about the reverse-engineering resistance of the chips: they are designed to resist reverse engineering the data in the chip without destroying the chip. It is not clear (from the information presented at the meeting) whether the chips are equally resistant to destructive reverse-engineering to learn the skipjack algorithm. They said the algorithm was patented, but they may have been joking. ("~And if that doesn't scare you enough, we'll turn the patent over to PKP.~") The resistance to reverse engineering is not considered absolute by NSA. They do feel that "~it would require the resources of a national laboratory, and anyone with that much money can design their own cryptosystem that's just as strong.~" They repeated several times that there are "~no plans to regulate the use of alternate encryption within the US by US citizens.~" They also indicated they "~weren't naive~" and didn't think that they could if they wanted to. There were 919 authorized wiretaps, and 10,000 pen register monitors, in 1992. They do not have any figures yet on how often cryptography was used to frustrate wiretaps. They do not yet have a production version of the "decoder" box used by law enforcement. Initially, the family key will be split (by the same XOR method) and handled by two different people in the athorized agencies. There is presently only one family key. The specifications of the escrow exploitation mechanism are not yet final, either; they are considering the possibility of having the central site strip off the outer layers of encryption, and only sending the session key back to the decoder box. The escrow authorities will NOT require presentation of a court order prior to releasing the keys. Instead, the agency will fill out a form certifying that they have a legal authorization. This is also backed up with a separate confirmation from the prosecutor's office. The escrow agencies will supply any key requested and will not themselves verify that the keys requested are associated with the particular court order. The NSA did not answer a question as to whether the national security community would obtain keys from the same escrow mechanism for their (legally authorized) intelligence gathering or whether some other mechanism would exist for them to get the keys. The masks for the Clipper/Capstone chip are unclassified (but are protected by trade secret) and the chips can be produced in an unclassified foundry. Part of the programming in the secure vault includes "~installing part of the Skipjack algorithm.~" Later discussion indicated that the part of the algorithm installed in the secure vault are the "S-tables", suggesting that perhaps unprogrammed Clipper chips can be programmed to implement other 80-bit key, 32 round ciphers. The Capstone chip includes an ARM-6 RISC processor that can be used for other things when no cryptographic functions are performed. In particular, it can be used by vendors as their own on-board processor. The I/O to the processor is shut off when a crypto operation is in progress. They passed around a Tessera PCMCIA (type 1) card. These cards contain a Capstone chip and can be used by general purpose PC applications. The cards themselves might not be export controlled. (Unfortunately, they took the sample card back with them...) The card will digitally sign a challenge from the host, so you can't substitute a bogus card. The cards have non-volatile onboard storage for users' secret keys and for the public keys of a certifying authority. They are building a library/API for Tessera, called Catapult, that will provide an interface suitable for many different applications. They have prototype email and ftp applications that already uses it. They intend to eventually give away source code for this library. They responded favorably to the suggestion that they put it up for anonymous ftp. Applications (which can use the library and which the NSA approves for government use) will be responsible for managing the LEAF field. Note that they intend to apply key escrowed Skipjack to other applications, including mail and file encryption. The LEAF would be included in such places as the mail header or the file attributes. This implies that it is possible to omit sending the LEAF -- but the decrypt chip won't work right if it doesn't get one. When asked, they indicated that it might be possible wire up a pair of Clipper/Capstone chips to not transmit the LEAF field, but that the way to do this is "~not obvious from the interface we give you~" and "~you'd have to be careful not to make mistakes~". They gave a lot of attention to obvious ways to get around the LEAF. The unit key is generated via Skipjack itself, from random seeds provided by the two escrow agencies (approximately monthly, though that isn't certain yet). They say they prefer a software generation process because its correct behavior is auditable. Capstone (but not Clipper) could be configured to allow independent loading of the two key halves, in separate facilities. "~It's your money [meaning American taxpayers].~" The LEAF field contains 80 bits for the traffic key, encrypted via the unit key in "~a unique mode <grin>~", 32 bits for the unit id, and a 16 bit checksum of some sort. (We didn't waste our breath asking what the checksum algorithm was.) This is all encrypted under the family key using "~another mode <grin>~". They expressed a great deal of willingness to make any sort of reasonable changes that vendors needed for their products. They are trying *very* hard to get Skipjack and key escrow into lots of products.

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Re: Redlining
by E. Allen Smith 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

From: IN%"mjmiski(a)execpc.com" "Matthew J. Miszewski" 11-DEC-1996 16:21:56.21 >Actually, my assertion was that the basic motivation was racism and >ignorance. My example of student loan default rates should clear that up. >College graduates generally live outside of redlines and yet are regularly >offered credit. And yet default rates on student loans are outrageous (the >government backing of these loans is irrelevant to individual >creditworthiness). That some groups not within redlines have high default rates is not an argument against groups within redlines having high default rates. The market distortion caused by government sponsorship is certainly relevant to whether individuals are offered credit; I would suggest that in many cases the students in question would not be offered credit, as per their high default rates, if it were not for government sponsorship removing the risk from the lender. You have also not bothered to answer the criticisms from Mr. Rackham about why, if the sole motivations were racism and ignorance, people would not be offering the residents of such areas loans; as (he?) pointed out, this would appear to be a particularly attractive move for middle-class blacks, if your assertion was the case. -Allen

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Re: NEWS: Web Security Hole Revealed
by ! Drive 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 11:14 PM 12/11/96 -0500, you wrote: >X-Sender: okeefe(a)olympus.net >Mime-Version: 1.0 >Date: Wed, 11 Dec 1996 19:32:32 -0800 >To: N E W S R E L E A S E <IPS(a)olympus.net> >From: "Steve O'Keefe" <IPS(a)olympus.net> >Subject: NEWS: Web Security Hole Revealed > >BREAKING NEWS >For Release Thursday, December 12, 1996 > >MAJOR WEB SECURITY FLAW REVEALED > >(New York) -- Edward Felten, head of Princeton University's >Safe Internet Programming Team (SIP), today revealed a >major security flaw in the Internet's World Wide Web. >Called "web spoofing," the breach allows any Internet >server to place itself between a user and the rest of the >web. In that middle position, the server may observe, steal >and alter any information passing between the unfortunate >browser and the web. > This is considered *NEW* information?

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Re: ON OFF-TOPIC [NOISE]
by Bill Stewart 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 10:16 PM 9/7/95 -0400, Phill wrote: >>Nope. but the patriots & the cyPHerpunks share a common goal, and belief >>that it is none of the government's business what we think or want to >>share with our computers. >Poor you, the only major political party to come out with a pro crypto statement >is a socialist party. But - wait! Of course you're not a patriot - You're a foreigner! Oh, no! :-) >The problem is currently with the right wing, right wing democrats such as >Clinton and practically all the Republicans. As you later point out, it's really an authoritarian/libertarian issue, (though it's at least nice to hear somebody else who realizes Clinton's no liberal :-); it affects both economic control/freedom issues and freedom of speech issues as well. A lot of the Republicans, mainly the newly elected ones, are less anti-crypto, partly because they're pro-business, and sometimes pro-free-speech, but also because they're not as closely tied in to the authoritarian power structure the way Bush and Clinton have been. >If you want a debate on how to convince the authoritarians then perhaps you will >get some interest. That'll be tough. The military and police can already get good crypto, as can other gov't agencies that want to use it to increase their power. Crypto can also be really effective for National ID cards, but I'd really rather not encourage them to think along those lines at all, even using Chaum techniques. You can use it to hide campaign contributions and bribes, but of course they probably don't want to admit that in public. If everyone in the government were to use key-escrowed phones, folks like Ollie North would probably realize they had to be careful with their communications, but it would at least let gentlemen read each others' mail... Is there something authoritarians want, that we don't mind them having, for which crypto would be an enabling technology? Some of them _might_ be interested in having better encryption for TV channels so that kids can't watch a NotForKids channel (though many of them might rather ban it outright) or so they can easily control whether their kids get to watch MTV even though the V-Chip doesn't have a NoisyKidsMusic bit. Perhaps they'd enjoy having reputation systems available, so they can easily filter out politically incorrect material, or do a thumbs-down on things they disapprove of, or let the Baptists and Catholics and Anti-Baptists all have their own convenient ratings. #--- # Thanks; Bill # Bill Stewart, Freelance Information Architect, stewarts(a)ix.netcom.com # Phone +1-510-247-0664 Pager/Voicemail 1-408-787-1281 #---

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