At 06:17 PM 5/10/97 -0400, Black Unicorn wrote:
Yes. One of the major stumbling blocks I have run into is a lack of code which really is refined and reviewed enough to serve the purposes I need it to serve.
The reason for the lack of "refined and reviewed" code is simple. Writing such code is difficult and time consuming. Anybody on this list capable of writing it probably has a 10+ hours daytime job. It is often hard to donate the effort required into producing either a freeware system or a system that has a shaky business model at best. Yes, the original code for type I remailers was written in a few days. Their security is accordingly low, interfaces were almost non-existent. The type of software you seem to be interested in requires more than just a single individual dedicating a few evenings to it. It requires entire software development teams. That takes the development out of the realm of guerilla programming and into commercial efforts. As PGP, Inc. can attest, making money of strong crypto can be hard. That further limits the number of players willing to dedicate time to such an effort.
FC97 did a lot to make some more obscure things obvious, and familiarize the players with each other, but the details are often hard to come by. Many of the applications out there are painfully behind in interface areas forcing developers to use complicated "toolkits" which often lack the basics we need. Finding an analogy to easily explain even the basics to a customer is very difficult unless the front end jibes with the attempt.
While I would have to agree that FC'97 was a very worthwhile event from the human networking perspective, I am confused by your claim that the "toolkits" lack the basics you need. I assume you are talking about routines in crypto libraries here. What routines do you need that aren't in the crypto libs available? I am not claiming that crypto libs have all the routines one might possibly need, but I would be surprised if they didn't have the routines you need. Perhaps it would help if you would explain what you are looking for. Furthermore, crypto libraries are not meant to address interface design. The interface design is up to the application developer.
Perhaps it's time for some stego interfaces to remailers.
Somehow I doubt they will be developed anytime soon. Only a very small fraction of remailer users wants to hide the fact that they are using remailers and not also hide the fact that they are using crypto at all. If you only want to hide remailer use, but not crypto use, a Pipe-net like system should suit you fine.
Most of what concerns me is the need to keep keylengths "obscenely large" because what is obscene today may not be so obscene after 5 years of chilled crypto development.
I agree keylengths are an issue. An even larger issue are the properties of ciphers. We don't know that breaking RSA is as difficult as factoring. We just hope it is. And we definitely don't know that factoring can not be done in polynomial time. Not to mention that we don't even know if P != NP.
Given the success (or lack thereof) of my call to arms before, I'm not sure I'll be anxious to repeat it soon. (The largest keylength of any widely used cipher of which I am aware remains at 128.
Not wanting to split hairs, but 3DES is 168 bits. But it is about twice as strong as DES, so the effective keylength does not exceed 128 bits. Still, there is good reason why so few of the many ciphers out there are actually being used for the high security applications. No cipher has been as thoroughly analyzed as DES. And while 3DES is often called slow (which is irrelevant unless you have to encrypt large amounts of data), it is generally considered secure. If you need better than 3DES, you want larger keylength while retaining the security of using a well analyzed cipher. I am not aware of any such cipher today. Perhaps that's why it is used so little. :-)
There still is no effective PipeNet, no real mainstream "stealth crypto." No significant work on detering traffic analysis or denial of service with the exception of the below).
I disagree. Just because Cypherpunks have not announced the releases of a finished product, tremendous progress has been made this year alone. And we have found new allies, such as the Onion Router team from Navy Research Lab and the CROWDS team from AT&T. Sure, their systems are far from perfect and require further development. Which is why several Cypherpunks, myself included, have been busy getting the teams up to speed, teaching them about attack methods, explaining to them why certain attacks they discounted as unlikely are actually easy to pull off, and generally advising these non-CP subscribers with very CP projects about modifications that must be made to the software before it will see widespread deployment. Understand that NRL has three scientists working on Onion Routers a significant part of their time. With full funding. This is the kind of commitment it takes to make the more advanced systems a reality. A volunteer effort is considerably less likely to be able to come up with the resources for the many projects that need design and implementation. Other Cypherpunks have been busy working on advanced systems, but this stuff takes time. Writing a crypto library is comparatively easy. If your DES code gives the right results for a given IV, the code works. Taking that DES code and some RSA code and turning it into an Onion Router is a whole different challenge. And any mistakes you make are far less obvious. [...]
An online bank is useless if it can be blocked by a few keystrokes.
No offense, but Adam's "Eternity" system doesn't come close to Ross Anderson's original design. It is a fun weekend hack, but calling it the Eternity Service is a very unfortunate choice of words. It isn't any more Ross Anderson's Eternity Service than type I remailers are Chaumian mixes.
(But that's what secure INMARSAT phones are for too)
And how do you feed the base station? I believe the solution to permanent servers is more likely to come from the IETF's mobile IP efforts (again a project that far exceeds what a few Cypherpunks can do) and from anonymous server designs such as recently proposed by the usual suspects and others who wish to remain anonymous. [...]
C'punks should wish to provide clandestine crypto services for the entire population. Laws which may or may not pass in the United States should bore c'punks, because they should realize that legislation is irrelevent because the genie is already out of the bottle. Unfortunately, I don't think the genie is all the way out of the bottle.
Clandestine anything, almost by definition, will never reach the entire population, but only those that are willing to go out and seek it. [If it was openly available, it wouldn't be clandestine.] PGP became as popular as it did because it could be used with zero investment by any two parties, requiring only minimum connectivity. Truly secure net anonymizers will need, at least at the backbone level, multiple dedicated machines with fat 24/7 Internet connections in multiple jurisdictions. That's a significant investment. Such sites are not going to become a reality out of the goodness of somebody's heart. Even in the unlikely event that somebody has the time to write all the code for free. -- Lucky Green <mailto:shamrock@netcom.com> PGP encrypted mail preferred "I do believe that where there is a choice only between cowardice and violence, I would advise violence." Mahatma Gandhi