- cypherpunks-legacy - lists.cpunks.org

Re: RemailerNet
by Jonathan Rochkind 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Part of our disagreement/misunderstanding might be in differing conceptions of the form the remailer net should take. > There should be two anonymous IDs, one for sending, one for > receiving. You seem to be talking about a Julf-style anon system, where the system knows who you really are. If the system is corrupt, if Julf were an NSA agent, then the entire system is compromised and useless. I like the cypherpunks remailer concept better, where each link in the chain only knows the next link in the chain, and security is achieved by multiple links. If several of the links are actually NSA agents, your security is reduced, but not compromised completely. If you've got a chain of, say 10 links, even if 7 of them are evil NSA agents, you still can probably retain your anonymity. Return addresses are accomplished by encrypted "resend-to:" blocks. It seems much preferable to have a system where it isn't neccesary to trust any one net entity completely, as it is in a Julf-style anon-ID system. [Of course one could use a combination of both in communications too, but I wouldn't feel safe unless my anonimity was safe even if the Finish FBI raided Julf's site.] When looked at with this goal in mind, I think maybe the newsgroup as a method of passing remailer net information makes a bit more sense. I don't think the possibility of the newsgroup being spoofed is actually fatal to the system. Let's examine ways in which it could be attacked: 1) The Enemy could introduce completely made-up "i'm here" messages, pointing to non-existent remailers. This doesn't harm anything at all when combined with a "ping"ing of remailer sites, as I've suggested. (One idea would be just to periodically mail all your remailers with the resend-to: being yourself, to make sure they exist, and are forwarding mail at least some of the time). 2) The Enemy could announce his own Evil-remailers to the net. These remailers would in fact exist, but would do evil things designed to compromise the net. What could they do? They could publicize all messages they get. Again, as long as you have 3 or 4 non-evil remailers in your chain, this doesn't really compromise your anonymity. You can decrease the risk further by only using remailers whose announced keys were signed by a trusted source. The evil-remailer could also just drop all communications in the bit bucket. This doesn't compromise security, but does make the remailer net unusable. By periodically pinging the remailer sites as I've suggested above, this risk can be minimized. If you've pinged the site 25 times, and all 25 times the remailer has forwarded your ping back to you, then odds are that it isn't dropping any messages in the bitbucket. (remember, the evil-remailer can't tell the difference between your ping a a normal remailer message, if done correctly.) 3) The Enemy could intercept announcement messages from good remailers, and replace their public key with his own. He could then intercept all mail to this good remailer, and read it, and forward it on, or drop it in the bitbucket. Using web-of-trust for signed remailer keys should help minimize this risk. 4) Denial of service: The enemy could intercept the announcement messages, and keep them from getting to the newsgroup. This doesn't compromise the security of the net at all, but is annoying. I can't think of any way to avoid this risk, but I think it might be acceptable, because it doesn't actually compromise any security, and would be fairly dificult for the enemy to do for long without being detected. 5) The enemy could intercept announcement messages from good remailers, and replace both the public key and address with his own. This is really just a combination of several of the previous attacks, nothing new.

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Re: Physical Meet: Feb. 21 (fwd)
by Jim Choate 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Forwarded message: > Date: Tue, 27 Jan 1998 11:28:34 -0600 > From: "Troy A. Bollinger" <troy(a)austin.ibm.com> > Subject: Re: Physical Meet: Feb. 21 > Quoting Jim Choate (ravage(a)ssz.com) > > > > Ok, looks like the magic day is Saturday Feb. 21, 1998 from 6-7pm. > > > > So, now all we need is a place... > > > > Flipnotics worked last time. > > I'd like to suggest that everyone bring a printout of their PGP > fingerprint so we can sign each other's keys. I think I can make this one. I don't have any interest in signing or being signed however, thanks for the offer. ____________________________________________________________________ | | | 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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A Helpful Tip for Impatient Souls
by Tommy the Tourist 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Those wishing perhaps the ultimate in Cypherpunks ease-of-use and greatest peace of mind, may find it useful to simply delete everything that does NOT come from one of the following email addresses: tcmay(a)netcom.com frissell(a)panix.com sandfort(a)crl.com Additionally, you'll probably want to let through posts from Hal Finney, Eric Hughes, and Bruce Schneier, but I forgot their addresses off-hand and am much too lazy to look them up. :) If you're using the "ELM" mailer, you can do this by creating a file called filter-rules in your .elm directory, containing the following text (more or less): if (from contains "sandfort") then save "~/cypher" if (from contains "frissell") then save "~/cypher" if (from contains "tcmay") then save "~/cypher" if (to contains "cypherpunks") then delete Add additional addresses as needed, but be careful of excessive alliteration. ------------ To respond to the sender of this message, send mail to remailer(a)soda.berkeley.edu, starting your message with the following 8 lines: :: Response-Key: the-clipper-key ====Encrypted-Sender-Begin==== MI@```&]^&2?(E<U9BPG1]W7L;=*KH_R`E[:HLL5(1[#C?F1F@+XOR[*O4;Q* M5#7=J!((PXPB/`Z?E75=RY`'42E\')B98SJ<!]_D6):*2C`'_S7T,&Y7VY1R :GOR712QF!VS=527/-L\@>E6`)=?D_W1Y'5P` ====Encrypted-Sender-End====

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latency
by merriman＠metronet.com 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

Looks like we had a little latency of our own on the list the last couple of days. Anyone know what happened? Dave Merriman -----BEGIN PGP PUBLIC KEY BLOCK----- Version: 2.6 mQCNAi3uZ2MAAAEEALWQtxX77SZSaFls6cVbPp+fZS4MNyKK3ZFYQo0qWyj+0tMq YgRTPRJRaCQixo63RttknogfPp514qdVMZw5iPeOXmD+RxrmTTwlbGqA7QUiG1x5 LG2Zims5zk4U6/rt8hwLh0/8E4lIb9r5d31qc8L1A9Twk/cmN8VrTvyYOzAZAAUR tClEYXZpZCBLLiBNZXJyaW1hbiA8bWVycmltYW5AbWV0cm9uZXQuY29tPokAlQIF EC3uaE3Fa078mDswGQEBbI8D/0FiwDcbfeNyDVJ+7EIWHjIxVkIGu+ArYUEllR3G SBHVZ9Vh7n8bNXeNHMnG5cZ23TLMVvweyhxFS+cDi+I7omeDNr6x65z500LxfUvL K5bSuSiBVkTp2z+/iojY/662JwKHzEEunuJ4CO8Yhxy11CdeszEX7DpXzRxLL92r EmO2 =4ZfP -----END PGP PUBLIC KEY BLOCK----- Finger merriman(a)metronet.com for PGP2.6ui/RIPEM public keys/fingerprints.

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Re: RemailerNet
by jdd＠aiki.demon.co.uk 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

In message <199408051528.LAA18523(a)cs.oberlin.edu> Jonathan Rochkind writes: > You seem to be talking about a Julf-style anon system, where the system > knows who you really are. If the system is corrupt, if Julf were an > NSA agent, then the entire system is compromised and useless. If you are using unmodified Internet hardware and TCP/IP as the underlying transport system, then your point of entry into a remailer network definitely knows which machine is originating a message and the point of exit definitely knows where it is going. If your transport system is the email system, the same holds true because email runs on top of TCP/IP. While fiddling with email headers may make you feel secure, it gives you no protection. It is a large project (say 30,000 lines of code, some of it at the kernel level) to build a remailer network which does not use SMTP and TCP/IP. >From the scale of efforts that you are talking about, I assume that you do not intend to do this. So the remailer gateways know the source and destination addresses, they know your electronic identity. This may or may not lead them to your physical identity. That can be concealed fairly easily, especially in large institutions with poor control over their network resources. But this has nothing to do with our discussion now. > I like the cypherpunks remailer concept better, where each link in the chain > only knows the next link in the chain, and security is achieved by > multiple links. If several of the links are actually NSA agents, your security > is reduced, but not compromised completely. If you've got a chain of, say > 10 links, even if 7 of them are evil NSA agents, you still can probably retain > your anonymity. Return addresses are accomplished by encrypted > "resend-to:" blocks. It seems much preferable to have a system where it > isn't neccesary to trust any one net entity completely, as it is in a > Julf-style anon-ID system. [Of course one could use a combination of both > in communications too, but I wouldn't feel safe unless my anonimity was > safe even if the Finish FBI raided Julf's site.] Promiscuity leads to infection. Each contact with a new RemailerNet gateway increases the probability of your being compromised. If you modify the proposed RemailerNet to allow reposting at gateways, you have all of the benefits of the system described above, without the risks. Reposted messages would be encrypted with the far gateway's public key. The near gateway would then have no idea of the ultimate destination of the message. In a well designed system, the far gateway would also not know the identity of the sender. > When looked at with this goal in mind, I think maybe the newsgroup as a method > of passing remailer net information makes a bit more sense. > > I don't think the possibility of the newsgroup being spoofed is actually > fatal to the system. Let's examine ways in which it could be attacked: > > 1) The Enemy could introduce completely made-up "i'm here" messages, pointing > to non-existent remailers. ... > 2) The Enemy could announce his own Evil-remailers to the net. These remailers > would in fact exist, but would do evil things designed to compromise the net... > 3) The Enemy could intercept announcement messages from good remailers, and > replace their public key with his own. ...He could then intercept all mail to this > good remailer, and read it, and forward it on, or drop it in the bitbucket. > 4) Denial of service: The enemy could intercept the announcement messages, and > keep them from getting to the newsgroup. ... > 5) The enemy could intercept announcement messages from good remailers, and > replace both the public key and address with his own. This is really just a > combination of several of the previous attacks, nothing new. In the early to mid 1950s the FBI set out to penetrate Communist Party USA cells. At some point, when the fear of the Red Menace began to recede, people began to talk. The communists said, "you could always tell who were the FBI agents. They were the ones who paid their dues." The FBI was actually providing most of the funds for CPUSA. If anyone cared enough, what they would do is (a) put up enough remailers so that they were, say, a steady 80% of those announcing in the alt.x group; (b) provide a good, reliable service nearly all of the time; and (c) drive the other 20% out of business with a steady disinformation campaign (rumors, complaints, etc) and other more aggressive tactics. The FBI types running (a) and (b) would be well funded and they would be the sort of steady, unimaginative people who run small businesses well. The CIA field agents masterminding (c) would be very well funded network freaks, some of them ex-hackers. They could operate outside the USA and pay little or no attention to US laws. Pity the poor 20% in the face of such attacks. Any traffic sent through this remailer network would have only a tiny chance of getting through without being compromised. If you picked 5 remailers, the chances of all being non-FBI would be about .2^5, 3 in 10,000. The other 9,997 messages would be copied immediately to Langley. The proposed RemailerNet could be attacked in much the same way. But if the network were widely distributed so that gateways were in different legal jurisdictions and different countries, and if most of the people involved knew one another, it would be more difficult to compromise it. -- Jim Dixon

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Re: Remailer ideas
by jdd＠aiki.demon.co.uk 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

In message <9408051709.AA14763(a)ah.com> Eric Hughes writes: > Jim Dixon analogizes between the Internet and remailer networks. The > analogy has some merit, but yet breaks down badly with the very first > point: > > * all packets should be acknowledged > > This is not the way the Internet works. There are some problems with vocabulary here and some conceptual problems. The objective is a system which is highly reliable and resistant to traffic analysis. If you have three messages in, one 10 bytes long, one 1000 bytes long, and one 1,000,000 bytes long, and you send them out to three different destinations, it does not take genius to see which is which, no matter what order they are dispatched in. But if you send them out as packets, each say 4096 bytes long, with all packets acknowledged, and the routing of the packets is random, and noise has been introduced ... traffic analysis is very difficult. TCP/IP is designed to work in an environment which is unreliable but also unhostile. The sliding window algorithm and acknowledgement at the message level is suitable for that environment. TCP/IP has been optimized for speed. [stuff omitted] > Further, in email, there's currently no notion of a connection. The internal functioning of RemailerNet is not the same as the functioning of the email system. All RemailerNet communications are reliable. Packets are acknowledged and the acknowledgement includes a hash of the packet contents, so that the packet cannot be tampered with. Acknowledgements will in general take different routes from packets. > * users should communicate with trusted gateways > > This point is only half true, because the analogy only subsumes one > kind of trust. For remailers there is both trust in delivery and > trust in silence, the destruction of the message and information about > it. 'Trust in silence' is a good term. This can be enhanced in a number of ways. If you are corresponding with someone you know, you encrypt your messages. If you are corresponding with a stranger, you encrypt your message with the public key of a far gateway; then post it to the far gateway through a near gateway. The near gateway knows who is sending, but cannot read the message and does not know the destination. The far gateway decrypts the message before delivering it, so it knows the message and the destination, but not the sender. If you are sufficiently paranoid, you put your message inside yet another envelope, mailing it through the near gateway to a far gateway, which posts it on to another gateway, which finally posts it to its destination. Remailer gateways should be spread very wide geographically if the network is to be secure. If you are very concerned about anonymity, bounce a message through gateways in, say, the USA, Finland, Russia, and Ireland. If your concerns are about your employer, say, the probability of his getting at four different gateways in four different jurisdictions simultaneously is vanishingly small. If your concerns are about governmental authorities, they are not that much higher. -- Jim Dixon

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Re: Remailer ideas (Was: Re: Latency vs. Reordering)
by jdd＠aiki.demon.co.uk 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

In message <199408061404.KAA02300(a)cs.oberlin.edu> Spencer Mullen writes: > Jim Dixon writes: > > >Commercial remailers would probably be very concerned with legal > >issues, both criminal (pornography, etc) and non-criminal (copyright > >violations). > > It would seem that remailers shouldn't be anymore accountable for > passing on illicit pornography than the postal services are today. I really do not want to try to argue the legal issues here; I am not a lawyer and claim no expertise. At a practical level, if you were running, let us say, an Internet Service Provider (ISP) and offered remailer services, you would in time attract the business of people who used your services for various unlawful purposes. You could not stop this without going through everyone's private mail. This would itself probably be illegal and certainly would lose you business. I understand that Playboy magazine spends lots of money pursuing people for copyright violations, and that criminal charges have been filed by the authorities in Tennessee or Arkansas against someone in California who sent them pornographic materials over a telephone line. The Post Office has what is called in the UK "crown immunity" against such prosecutions. So do "common carriers" in the USA. They are given special legal status. I do not know, but I believe that the telephone companies are legally common carriers. As a remailer gateway operator, you would probably have to argue things out in court, which could be very expensive. In the case of criminal charges, you would have to expect to lose your equipment for some time, and perhaps your freedom. I suspect that legally the key step would be to never store messages for any period of time. It would be prudent to erase them as soon as their receipt was verified. This would also save disk space, and it would be in line with the 'trust in silence' ethic. I would do this and then publicize the fact that I did so widely. This would discourage public prosecutors, who really don't like to do futile things. And I would incorporate the gateway and make sure it wasn't worth a great deal. This would discourage civil suits; clients get very irritated when they win the lawsuit and find that after all their legal expenses the target has filed for bankruptcy. -- Jim Dixon

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What are Appropriate Topics?
by Blanc Weber 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

From: Timothy C. May "As for pure crypto being discussed on the list, there's a fair amount of that. I've posted my share of explanations of zero knowledge proof systems, dining cryptographers protocols, complexity theory, etc. I'm not saying this to defend myself, per se, but to note that these topics produced almost no discussion, almost no interest. Make of this what you will." I would say some reasons for the silence are that: . those who have read your comments have not thought extremely much about these themselves, so are not ready to add anything at the time. . your treatment of the subject matter was thorough enough that others don't feel the need to add further to your points. . you presented some deep thoughts that require time to digest & process. . the ideas you have about future events may have no present means to carry them out, good as they may be, and the way from point A to point B is not yet possible to achieve, as no practical method or system could yet be constructed. "* what happens to tax collection in an era of unbreakable cyphers? * how will the state react?" I would add: how will the general population react, when their security blanket is rendered ineffective? (* crypto anarchy issues from the perspective of the other side) * what's really holding back the spread of digital cash? What is the status of the work on this? I would like to keep up with its progress, if there are sources for the information. (besides The Economist) * where do we go from here? [Who's 'we', Kimosabe? :>) ] Where was anyone planning to go? There isn't anywhere else to go, physically, so it's necessary to resolve the problem of interacting in the same place at the same time with opposing methodologies. How does that work? (You aren't going to be invisible all the time, nor to everyone.) "..."Cypherpunks write code" is just one manifestation of the idea that we can actually change the world through the technological development of privacy-enhancing systems..." And privacy-enhancement isn't the *only* thing which will change the world, is it? There are other forces of cause-effect and influence which determine people's reactions to each other and to the problems of living. It lies within the broader subject of 'control': self-control, self-determination, as managed by the individual. This is where the controversy occurs - whether any or only some individuals shall be "permitted" to excercise it, and to what tolerable degree, and who shall be the "authority" that makes that decision. Much as some on the list would wish otherwise, "privacy-enhancement" goes in the direction of favoring the individual above the group, and this is difficult for some people to live with. I have seen some of Tim's ideas for future possibilities in terms of things which could come to pass or could be achieved, but I realized that I have not seen anything from him to indicate any projects which he is actually working on to bring these about. You do communicate a lot of information & ideas and do much work of explaining & clarifying fuzzy areas, which is excellent & valuable, but it still waits for others to put together the actual parts & pieces of things, if they are to be brought into actual existence as functional systems which can be employed and which can affect future conditions. "For want of a horseshoe, the war was lost." I would like to read more on what you have to say about this, as you are the pre-eminent poster on the list who likes to digress into abstract discussion. Blanc

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Re: Voluntary Governments?
by Blanc Weber 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

From: Hal What does it mean to speak of a government in cyberspace? It is the government in physical space I fear. Its agents carry physical guns which shoot real bullets. ................................................................ Good point. What does it mean to speak of governance (or 'govenment') at all? Questions I would seek to have the answers to, in making decisions about government per se: . Who or what is to be governed? . What is inimical/destructive and to be regulated/prevented, or what is sacred which is to be upheld? . How will anyone come to know the difference? What difference does it really make (to anyone in the real world)? . Who is to do all the work of preventing or upholding (how do they qualify for the job)? . What is to be done about non-conformists to the rules (without contradicting the rules?) . When did you realize that you were an absolute authority on the subject? Blanc

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Cyphers Out There?
by an114＠vox.hacktic.nl 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

:: Encrypted: PGP -----BEGIN PGP MESSAGE----- Version: 2.6 hEwCTL2DNtw2i0EBAf4joQKrL2wlyfeRCIHGKaIlSnDhfNdSJ3+MPylu1fix0TIr E//Iw3Z9H2rdbVkJ4gyMQrE7kZzpquyys5ia4031pgAAAjb/CvnS8B2ZX0gpx+dh 8+7dS7i0vbwOePbd/6RIMaemyQhc98npIqQqWodr7z4a+hPp9PyBw5tVPa9N29CF 5b/X50eaeK9vuUVAp1qAB247LsqmQ+nWlFtVXlcy2M3AqZFG0KwvGCg1FLcrSIKj 4gEbp+qD42cetTBe3HFY45Xie1tcEVrTblpibIKZ41NgKcGdRJ8s+ivv/tKu+bDh pftPmiJjqIM1hpOtDqAQvlocP/j4RmxrZFCkdtmczAOKPhG0F6B4tmW/GKY7Kfdk 7vfhrMF6+8sAQSXLSp8xSCpjSGT/RsZKRNOLFK8E6QGCk5MToV5FBtCUd7sVSY7H t+GEsVT4KgLq1jdGGwrsegB99K4ttQ0rYxPn5xQUgUNt6ekOK3v2mfUHQbuY2rdf OTN+RHGRiFI8oplVYVUQGo0q/Ghl7P56TSxVZTHTrxRbFDc/xcnflQHsrVHS/9KC xxP3xuZTrCJaXrZEi8xZ2h/gyQB7xT7VdNvFm4KpFapkt9UP510+4YmyN06SSMq7 zSX4lmcihnf1FGt0A3Q5KOjUjzXz4V4xD9BYtC2Tg+Bp+QtVfJTVhSJ8u8tGs0cB LMSHkj5H2RocbhMhpnmm5Lqnwp+UgUWbH2cVNnx51DbAlOt1NrwetjXs75YZbtfw JBgLj2AOfAi5txky+4xZx/S2uSyrwe0OSFTsBXoSonSSRMjkBPjJ/H0d1XU715oN RSxlTlFIlS8GnUlaiq+eYhHp3sbZILS57A== =YwyP -----END PGP MESSAGE----- -------------------------------------------------------------------------- To find out more about the anon service, send mail to help(a)vox.hacktic.nl Please report any problems, inappropriate use etc. to admin(a)vox.hacktic.nl Direct replies to the sender of this message are -not- anonymised <YuK>

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