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Re: alt.anonymous.messages considered harmful
by loki＠obscura.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

I will feed alt.anonymous.messages to ANYONE who asks. I will accept a feed of that one group from any news server which is used by a remailer. -Lance At 1:13 PM 11/2/95, Futplex wrote: >Name Withheld by Request writes: >[re: problems with the Usenet newsgroup model of pseud/anonymous message pools] >> Denial of service attacks could be made somewhat less feasible by >> making the pool accessible as a mailing list and via http. > >Mailing lists of course suffer the problem of strictly limited participation. >The web approach might work better, in some future with better privacy- >protecting infrastructure in place. Specifically, if HTTP transactions with >a popular web server were routinely encrypted, then all reasonably long >visits to that site would act as cover traffic for a message pool on that >server. As a bonus, you could have a spiffy form on the web page that >searches the pool for you. > >In any event, the server could log your exploration. This returns us to the >issue of strongly anonymous web proxies. (And we could imagine >countermeasures, like daemons that search for randomly selected pseudonym tags >to muddy the waters. As Tim might say, lots of issues.) > >Also, the mention of "as a mailing list _and_ via http" is significant. Making >the pool available in multiple forms seems to be an unconditional benefit. > >-Futplex <futplex(a)pseudonym.com> ---------------------------------------------------------- Lance Cottrell loki(a)obscura.com PGP 2.6 key available by finger or server. Mixmaster, the next generation remailer, is now available! http://obscura.com/~loki/Welcome.html or FTP to obscura.com "Love is a snowmobile racing across the tundra. Suddenly it flips over, pinning you underneath. At night the ice weasels come." --Nietzsche ----------------------------------------------------------

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Version 2 Elliptic Curve Crypto
by Mike Rosing 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Howdy, I blew it the first time, but the correct elliptic.2.tar now sits on ftp.csua.berkeley.edu/pub/cypherpunks/ciphers. This version is twice as fast as eliptic.tar. A newer version of the elliptic.2.doc is being fixed right now, the only difference with what is posted is a correct reference to the CRYPTO '95 article on polynomial basis inversion. Enjoy. For a compiled version on Sun or under Borland C++ contact Steve Albrecht (eh(a)mcs.com) He is in the process of setting up macros to get this to compile under just about any unix system. He's also fixed quite a few bugs and is cleaning up a bunch of uninitialized data structures that I didn't notice. Last I heard it was working, so if you want to play on a specific platform, contact Steve directly. Hilarie Orman from U. Arizona (one of the authors of the CRYPTO '95 paper) thinks that calling elliptic curves "strong crypto" may be over selling it. I'm not enough of a mathematician to know how to argue, but it seems to me that almost perfect random output is about as close to strong crypto as one could get. Security thru obscurity doesn't work, elliptic curves are obscure and so far not studied to the same extent as RSA or DES. However, I'll make the claim that elliptic curves are "strong crypto" until proven otherwise. Along those lines, does any one have a classic text to encrypt for a plaintext/ciphertext challenge? I'll put something together and post it in the next few weeks. I'll use the symmetric encryption subroutine. If there is any interest, should I put out a public key challenge as well? Note, I ain't rich, so only token prizes (like $50 ecash and $50 real for each challenge). The point is to check if this is credable crypto, that's all. E-mail replies to cryptech(a)mcs.com. Thanks for reading this! Patience, persistence, truth, Dr. mike

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Re: Planetary rovers, SETI and other musings, was Re: update.356 (fwd)
by Jim Choate 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Forwarded message: > Date: Wed, 28 Jan 1998 10:44:57 -0800 > From: Steve Schear <schear(a)lvdi.net> > Subject: Re: Planetary rovers, SETI and other musings, was Re: update.356 > (fwd) > >The state is determined *at the time of collapse*. Once the collapse occurs > >the synchronization is no longer present and subsequent events can indeed > >alter the polarization of one particle without altering the other. Simply > >bouncing that photon via refraction off a surface can alter the > >polarization. > > If that is the case, I still don't understand why and out-of-band signal is > required. If the sender collapses the wave function shortly before the > signal reaches the intended receiver its unlikely to have changed > polarization again. What do you mean 'shortly before', the collapse is instantaneous. There ain't no time to send anything. The channle can carry one bit of data, the collapse has occured (1) or it hasn't (0). It isn't like a modem, CD, or other comm channels where you have a bandwidth and can piggy back signals for synchronization by using parts of that bandwidth. ____________________________________________________________________ | | | The most powerful passion in life is not love or hate, | | but the desire to edit somebody elses words. | | | | Sign in Ed Barsis' office | | | | _____ The Armadillo Group | | ,::////;::-. Austin, Tx. USA | | /:'///// ``::>/|/ http://www.ssz.com/ | | .', |||| `/( e\ | | -====~~mm-'`-```-mm --'- Jim Choate | | ravage(a)ssz.com | | 512-451-7087 | |____________________________________________________________________|

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Re: Sources of randomness
by Peter Monta 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Perry Metzger writes: > > [ radioactive vs. other ] > > I didn't contend that its inferior. I contended that its difficult to > distinguish from sources of electronic interference and is easy to get > wrong. Point taken; it sounds like I misread your post a bit. Certainly it's better to have a robust implementation than a delicate one, but let me argue how hard it might be to get electronic sources wrong. > ... > Someone can gimmick a zener diode or get it "wrong" a lot more easily > than they can get a radation event wrong. But how wrong is wrong? Unless the design is catastrophically bad, a zener source is going to give you zener noise plus some slight admixture of interference. Say the designer is extremely careless and there's deterministic interference 20 dB down. I don't see how even that matters cryptographically---the resulting loss in entropy will be millibits per sample. Perhaps there ought to be a couple of standard random-bit-source implementations, say at the CMOS-standard-cell and board-subsystem levels, that are widely vetted and trusted (and used!). But it's mostly a solved problem, seems to me. A radioactive source might be okay at the board level (though probably costlier than its electronic counterpart), but it'd be a pain to integrate, and it might disturb the rest of the chip. (I'd like to have a get_random_bit instruction as part of a microprocessor, for example.) Also if you want a high rate of random bits, you need many decay events, whereas for electronic sources the corresponding bandwidth is free---Johnson and shot noise are flat to 1 THz or so. Interestingly enough, zener diodes and particle detectors are a lot alike. Zeners, if they're avalanching, already have some internal gain; each electron crossing the junction gets so hot it knocks off other electrons, and there's a chain reaction. Particle detectors take the ion trail in a suitable environment and make a nice big pulse out of it with a similar chain-reacton effect (though the fancier kind will give you the actual amount of charge). Cheers, Peter Monta pmonta(a)qualcomm.com Qualcomm, Inc./Globalstar

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Re: FBI Wants to Wiretap One of Every 100 Phones in Urban Areas
by Bill Stewart 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 12:03 AM 11/3/95, clark.matthews(a)paranet.org wrote: >Thanks for this item! Two little excerpts jump out at me. They follow: >> Last year, federal and state courts authorized 1,154 wiretaps, of which 48 >> percent .... >> "People are starting to say that seems awfully high," Dempsey said, noting that >> the overall level of such surveillance activity is now a total of 20,000 >> to 25,000 intercepts nationwide over an entire year. >So what is it? 1,154 wiretaps? Or 20,000? Perhaps that's 1154 wiretap victims, with an average of 20 intercepts each? In a separate article, Clark posted estimates that ranged from 500K - 1.5M people could be wiretapped, depending on how many people are in the 1%/.5%/.25% zones. It's worse than that - if they're tapping the average victim for (say) 3 months, that's 4 times as many victims.... And just how many cops do they plan to hire to watch all these phones? Computers can help some, especially for data, but who's going to read it all, even after the fancy pattern recognition systems pick out the possible good stuff. >FBI Director Louis Freeh testified under oath to 1,157. The FBI was asked >for the data to support those numbers. The FBI refused to release them >until the year 2002. [....] >One last thing. >What's so special about the year 2002? Statute of limitations? :-) #--- # 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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EPR, Bell, and FTL Bandwidth
by Eric Cordian 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Steve Schear writes" > Why aren't the coding techniques commonly used in telecom and disk > data encoding adequate to both synchonize and convey data? Think of the classical case. I bake two fortune cookies, one with "FOO" written on the slip of paper inside, and the other reading "BAR." I then put them in a box and shake it for quite a while, until the final state has chaotic dependence upon initial conditions, and cannot be predicted. I then keep one fortune cookie, and mail the other one to Lucky Green in Tonga. Someday in the future, I open my cookie, and instantly know what Lucky will see when he opens his. In doing so, I have created a "instantaneous" correlation between two things separated by a vast distance, which were in an identical state of ambiguity prior to one of them being examined. I am sure we will agree that there was no genuine faster-then-light communication of information in this case. In quantum mechanics, pairs of observables may have the property that both of them may not be known precisely for a physical system. The Heisenberg Uncertainty principle states this for position and momentum. Similar relationships exist for energy and time, polarization or angular momentum measured with respect to different axes, and various other things. In addition, measuring a physical system for one such variable always changes its wavefunction into one for which the value of that variable is precisely specified, and the value of the other "non-commuting" variable is not. You can see this easily with three polarizing filters. If you shine a light through two of them at right angles to each other, it will be completely blocked. But it you insert third filter at a 45 degree angle, some light will get through. This is because light whose polarization is known to be vertical or horizontal is in a mixed state with respect to its polarization rotated 45 degrees. It is therefore tempting to think that perhaps the miracle of quantum mechanics could be employed in our fortune cookie experiment for the transmission of information. I generate many pairs of cookies, with random but identical polarization, keeping one of each pair for myself, and sending the other to Lucky. I then encode a stream of bits by measuring the polarization of 100 cookies, vertically if I wish to transmit a "0", and at a 45 degree angle if I choose to transmit a "1". I then know Lucky's corresponding cookie to be in an exact state with respect to one of these observables, and in a mixed state with respect to the other, and if Lucky measures the vertical polarization of his groups of cookies, there should be a correlation between his results and mine which can only be explained by non-local communication of my choice, on the fly, of which way I measured the polarization, to his apparatus. Now here we have good news and bad news. The good news is that when we do such an experiment, precisely enough to know for sure that there is a spacelike separation between the two measurement events, we do indeed see the correlation predicted by quantum mechanics. The bad news is that either end of the experiment, by itself, cannot see this correlation without knowing what results were obtained by the person at the other end. The correlation is between both ends. There is no experiment that can be done by either end alone which will turn out differently depending upon what the guy at the opposite end is doing. Thus, while such experiments involve non-local communication between two locations separated by a spacelike distance, such communication is obvious only to someone able to see what is going on in both places at once, but not to either isolated experimenter. Hence, the non-local collapse of quantum mechanical wavefunctions cannot be employed for the transmission of information. A similar argument applies to quantum teleporation, in which the value of some measurable variable is transferred from a dynamical system to one of two particles in correlated but unknown quantum states, causing the particle's twin to take on an identical value. Again, a person able to view both systems can see that non-local communication has taken place, but there is nothing either end can do by itself to learn what has transpired at the other end. This is because the correlation which proves non-local communication is present only in combined data from both ends of the experiment, but not in data from either end alone. -- Eric Michael Cordian 0+ O:.T:.O:. Mathematical Munitions Division "Do What Thou Wilt Shall Be The Whole Of The Law"

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Re: FBI seeks huge wiretapping system
by Bill Stewart 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

At 12:09 PM 11/2/95 -0500, Phill Hallam wrote: >On telephone tapping the statement was made that they do not allow >unauthorized taps and that technology was making wildcat taps by >local officials harder. Which makes sense. At least for the moment, wildcat taps have become much easier, since radio-tapping cellular phones is straightforward. >It is a fair point that just because technology has changed the >nature of the game it should not mean that wiretaps cease to be >possible. Back before telephones, you could steam open someone's mail if they sent it by the government post, but it was a lot harder if they sent it by private messengers, and they could always send it in some pre-arranged code. And you could always hang out under the eaves of their houses listening for conversations, but they could always check for themselves or talk while walking down the street. It's a fair point that just because technology has made it easier for eavesdroppers and mail-snoops today doesn't mean that private conversations should cease to be possible, or that we shouldn't be able to use technology to preserve the security of our papers and effects. >What is very odd however is the FBI request for $500 million. This is >a somewhat large quantity of money to say the least. The telephone >switches are programmable these days, it should be possible to >provide tapping at substantially less cost. $500 million is a drop in the bucket; they're talking about wedging themselves into multiple places in the telephone system, taking up to 1 percent of the capacity (without compensation as near as I can tell), and they want the ability to do all this without the inconvenience of going out to telephone wire offices where somebody might ask to see a warrant. >Mind you the Federal government is not known for tight cost control. Indeed :-) >The NSA reconned that a DES cracker would cost substantially more than >$1 million because the system costs would be much higher than the component costs. .... > Anyway the NSA price estimate was "two or more orders of magnitude more in cost" Wiener's design was about two orders of magnitude cheaper than Wayner's and the DEC guy's designs, which were in turn far cheaper than any previous. But it's a believable design, and could probably be done within a factor of two-three of his cost predictions; "system costs" need to include things like wiretapping equipment to steal and record the data to be cracked, and government employees to operate it, and bureaucrats and politicians to tell them what to do and who to target, and lots of real estate for them all. But to reach two or more orders of magnitude cost increase, I'd think you'd need a far bigger collection of cracking machines that Wiener's - perhaps to crack a few hundred keys per day. Interesting comments on banks' use of DES for authentication rather than privacy.... of course, if the government wants to tap banks' conversations, it can generally just demand that the banks tell them the information, at least for US-based and other cooperative banks. >If the NSA want a cheap DES cracker they have my number. I'll take 5% >ot the difference between the actual cost and $100 million (their >estimate of cost) as my fee. As Rodney Dangerfield said "Well to start with, you gotta throw in 10% for graft and corruption." #--- # 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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FBI Wants to Wiretap One of Every 100 Phones in Urban Areas
by Lee 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

FBI Wants to Wiretap One of Every 100 Phones in Urban Areas By MATT YANCEY Associated Press Writer WASHINGTON (AP) - The FBI wants the capability to simultaneously tap one of every 100 phone and data transmission lines in major urban centers, but a top Justice Department official said there are no plans to expand the existing number of wiretaps. As part of its effort to deal with a new breed of computer-savvy criminals adept at using new telecommunications technologies, the FBI said it wants phone companies to initially set aside 0.5 percent, or one of every 200 lines, for law enforcement use in high-crime urban areas. But it added it also wants the ability to rapidly expand that capability to one of every 100 lines if the need arises. The disclosure was made in a little-noticed announcement in the Federal Register. Despite the notice, Deputy Attorney General Jamie Gorelick said today, "There is no intention to expand the number of wiretaps or the extent of wiretapping .. . I don't think the American people should be worried about that." Last year, federal and state courts authorized 1,154 wiretaps, of which 48 percent were sought by federal agents. Increases in recent years have mostly come in drug trafficking cases. Gorelick acknowledged: "As we've gotten more aggressive in the drug war, as organized gang activity has been an increased focus for us, we've seen a slight increase." The FBI proposal, unveiled on three pages of the thick daily compendium of federal regulations and other government activities for Oct. 16, had been long anticipated since the passage last year of the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act. "The entire purpose of the digital telephony legislation was to leave law enforcement in the same position it is now with respect to wiretaps: That is, to ensure that emerging digital technology would not defeat current lawful wiretaps," Gorelick said, noting that court approval would still be required for any wiretap. "There appears to be some misunderstanding or miscommunication as to the implications of what is contained in that notice." But experts familiar with the law did not expect the FBI's reach into the world new fiber optic cables, digital switches and high-speed modems for transmitting business transactions as well as voices to be so sweeping. "The level of capacity that the FBI is proposing here would come as a surprise to many who supported the legislation," said James X. Dempsey, deputy director of the Center for National Security Studies, a group that monitors government surveillance activities. While the federal notice does not specify which cities would be targeted, Dempsey said New York is likely to be one of them. Assuming there are 2 million separate phone and data transmission lines there, that means the FBI wants the ability to tap 20,000 of them simultaneously, he said. "People are starting to say that seems awfully high," Dempsey said, noting that the overall level of such surveillance activity is now a total of 20,000 to 25,000 intercepts nationwide over an entire year. The FBI said in its official notice that its capability needs were based on "an historical baseline of electronic surveillance activity" after surveying federal, state and local courts, prosecutors and police agencies. It did not offer a further explanation, but during hearings over the past four years leading to passage of the 1994 law, FBI and other officials cited the growing incidence of computer-based crimes. The law was intended to remove what law enforcement officials have considered a major impediment - the growing obsolescence of the copper phone wire - in probing drug trafficking, organized crime, terrorism, kidnaping and sophisticated new types of white-collar crime. "Without this bill ... we would have been completely prevented in a very short time from carrying out any court-approved wiretapping," FBI Director Louis Freeh said at the time. While law enforcement officers will still have to get court approval for any wiretaps they install, the technological measures authorized by the law would remove the objections of some judges. Copper telephone lines were relatively easy to tap because they carried only one conversation. But digital switches and fiber optics now in growing use often carry hundreds of conversations or data transmissions at the same time, making it difficult to isolate a single phone line. The law authorized $500 million for the government to pay the phone companies their cost in installing the necessary technology, but none of the money has been appropriated. And with increased criticism focused on the FBI for its role in the 1993 Branch Davidian siege in Waco, Texas, and the 1992 deadly standoff against white separatist Randy Weaver in Ruby Ridge, Idaho, there is no assurance Congress will be forthcoming with the money. Legislation sent by President Clinton to Congress seeking greater wiretap authority in the wake of the April bombing of the federal building in Oklahoma City is languishing in congressional committees and is given little prospect of being passed this year. http://www.trib.com/NEWS/HEAD/FBI.html

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ICE Summary
by cmckie＠ccs.carleton.ca 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Summary of the the 2nd International Cryptogrpahy Experiment (ICE) Workshop, Shape Technical Centre, The Hague, Sept.18-19, 1995 http://www.tis.com/crypto/ice/summary.html

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800_ape
by John Young 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

11-5-95. NYPaper Sunday Magazine: "Making Microsoft Safe For Capitalism. How do you restrain an 800-pound gorilla?" Cover story. By James Gleick. If the software giant has its way, it will soon be in a position to collect a charge for every airline ticket you buy, every credit card purchase you make, every fax you send, every picture you download, every Web site you visit. It's time to draw the line. But where? 'Anything not a direct lie or clearly illegal is O.K. to do if it advances Microsoft's tribal cause,' Mitchell Kapor says. 'This licenses the worst sort of manipulations, lies, tortured self-justification and so on.' 800_ape (Long)

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