- cypherpunks-legacy@lists.ogf.org

Re: Crypto constitution
by jordan＠imsi.com 21 May '93

21 May '93

I think I was able to cryptoanalyze the last few messages (steganography is *so* cool!), but it looks like some of the line noise from my modem messed up the codebook. Can someone tell me if that was "gender-inspecific pronoun" or "gather prolific dingdong" in the second exchange? /jordan

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Huffman and Crypto
by fnerd＠smds.com 21 May '93

21 May '93

Sorry if these questions have been answered in posts I recently deleted, but... 1) Instead of modifying Huffman coding, isn't it more sensible to just use arithmetic coding, which is more efficient anyway, and doesn't use fixed bit patterns? 2) I would assume there's a branch of cryptography devoted to studying the protections or lack thereof, afforded by compression schemes, both by themselves and in addition to other types of cryptography. I would guess that Huffman and LZ-family codes have been studied a lot...right?? But also more general studies of the weakness of (even secret) compression algorithms as crypto methods? I mean, compression methods would tend to use methods (like table lookup) that simpler cyphers have used for a long time, only without having been designed with crypto expertise...right?? 3) Does anyone know of an easy-to-get-sources, easy-to-use arithmetic coding compression program? quote me -fnerd

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[esr@snark.thyrsus.com: CLIPPER: Published version of my rant]
by tribble＠memex.com 21 May '93

21 May '93

This is the version of my post that went to RISKS 14.64. It was edited by me to remove assertions which might expose the RISKS digest to libel action. Permission to redistribute this version as you see fit is explicitly granted. Please do *not* redistribute the old version. ------------------------------- CUT HERE ------------------------------------- From: esr(a)snark.thyrsus.com (Eric S. Raymond) To: risks(a)csl.sri.com Subject: Re: Clipper (Rotenberg, RISKS-14.62) In <CMM.0.90.1.737688970.risks(a)chiron.csl.sri.com> Marc Rotenberg wrote: > Denning has to be kidding. The comments on the proposed DSS were uniformly > critical. Both Marty Hellman and Ron Rivest questioned the desirability of > the proposed standard. Mr. Rotenberg, as a public figure operating in the political arena, has to exercise a certain diplomatic restraint in responding to Ms. Denning's claims. I am, thankfully, under no such requirement. As a long-time RISKS reader and contributor, I observe that that this is not the first time that Ms. Denning has apparently operated as a mouthpiece for the NSA's anti-privacy party line on DES and related issues. I believe Ms. Denning's remarks must be understood as part of a continuing propaganda campaign to marginalize and demonize advocates of electronic privacy rights. Other facets of this campaign have attempted to link privacy advocates to terrorists and drug dealers by suggesting that only criminals need fear wiretapping. These are serious charges. I make them because, in the wake of the Clipper proposal, I do not believe civil libertarians can afford any longer to assume that their opponents are persons of good will with whom they can simply debate minor differences of institutional means in a collegial way. It's time for someone to say, in public and on this list, what I know many of us have been thinking. The future is *now*. Electronic privacy issues are no longer a parlor game for futurologists; they are the focus of a critical political struggle, *and the opponents of privacy are fighting their war with all the tools of force, deception, and propaganda they can command*. The histories of the DES, the FBI wiretap proposal, and now the Clipper proposal must be considered against a wider background of abuses including the Steve Jackson case, "Operation Longarm", and the routine tapping of U.S. domestic telecommunications by NSA interception stations located outside the geographic borders of the United States. These form a continuing pattern of attempts by agencies of the U.S. government to pre-empt efforts to extend First and Fourth Amendment privacy protections to the new electronic media. In each case, the attempt was made to present civil libertarians with a fait accompli, invoking "national security" (or the nastiness of "kiddie porn") to justify legislative, judicial and practical precedents prejudicial against electronic privacy rights. While I would not go so far as to claim that these efforts are masterminded by a unitary conspiracy, I believe that the interlocking groups of spies, bureaucrats and lawmen who have originated them recognize each other as cooperating fellow-travellers in much the same way as opposing groups like the EFF, CPSR and the Cypherpunks do. Their implicit agenda is to make the new electronic communications media transparent to government surveillance and (eventually) pliant to government control. One of the traits of this culture of control is the belief that manipulative lying and dissemblage can be justified for a `higher good'. I believe that Ms. Denning's disingenuous claim that the DSS "is now considered to be just as strong as RSA" is no mere technical misapprehension. I believe it is propaganda aimed at making objectors non-persons in the debate. I cannot know whether Ms. Denning actually believes this claim, but it reminds me all too strongly of the classic "Big Lie" technique. It is important for us to recognize that the propaganda lie is not an aberration, but a routine tool of the authoritarian mindset. And the authoritarian mindset is, ultimately, what we are confronting here --- the mindset that regards the fighting of elastically-defined `crime' as more important than privacy, that presumes guilt until innocence is proven, that demands for government a license to override any individual's natural rights at political whim. We cannot trust representatives of an institutional culture that was *constructed* to deal in information control, lies, secrecy, paranoia and deception to tell us the truth. We cannot accept the authoritarians' unverified assurances that the sealed interior of the Clipper chip contains no `trapdoor' enabling the NSA to eavesdrop at will. We cannot trust the authoritarians' assertions that they have no intention of outlawing cryptographic technologies potentially more secure than the Clipper chip. We cannot believe the authoritarians' claims that `independent' key registries will prevent abuse of decryption keys by government and/or corrupt individuals. We cannot --- we *must not* --- cede control of encryption technology to the authoritarians. To do so would betray our children and their descendants, who will work and *live* in cyberspace to an extent we can barely imagine. We cannot any longer afford the luxury of treating the authoritarians as honest dealers with whom compromise is morally advisable, or even possible. Whatever their own valuation of themselves, the thinly-veiled power grab represented by the Clipper proposal reveals a desire to institutionalize means which a free society, wishing to remain free, *cannot tolerate*. Big Brother must be stopped *here*. *Now.* While it is still possible. -- Eric S. Raymond <esr(a)snark.thyrsus.com> ------------------------------- CUT HERE -------------------------------------

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WER #79
by Mr. Noise 21 May '93

21 May '93

Having received my copy of the latest Whole Earth Review yesterday, I expected to see a pile of messages about the article by Kevin Kelly on "Cypherpunks, E-Money, & Technologies of Disconnection"...but maybe, like me, you've all been too busy to read the article all the way through. Anyway, I thought those of you who don't subscribe would appreciate a mention of the article so you could run right out & buy the mag. There's also some good sci-fi stuff (they give it some kind of fancy name, you know WER...) by Kelly & Brian Eno. & the cover is by R. Crumb! Well, anyway, it seems Mr. Kelly has spent some time talking to list member (guru?) Tim May, Phil Zimmerman, & a bunch of other cypherpunk folk, so how about some reactions to the article from those he talked to? ...& is it me, or is the WER/WELL/cypherpunks/Wired/EFF/etc. crowd starting to get just a *little* inbred? (In a nice way, of course...) I feel as though Kelly, Sterling, Brand, Levy, et al. are my best buddies & I don't think we've ever exchanged e-mail (well, once or twice maybe), they just keep popping up everywhere I turn. Heck, I may even have to write R.U.Sirius into my will, he feels like such an old pal...

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hello, all
by esr＠snark.thyrsus.com 21 May '93

21 May '93

I've just joined the list. I did so because I'm mad as hell about the Clipper proposal (some of you may have seen my incendiary post to RISKS on the topic). Some of you know me. Others have probably seen my work, which includes (among much else) major packages in Emacs 19, a moderately popular netnews suite, the /dev/speaker driver for PC-clones, and editing the Jargon File. I want to know what I can do to help block the Feds from `surveilling' everybody and to spread crypto-anarchy. I'm not up to speed on technical cryptography yet (though I know a lot about the pre-computer kind, Vigenere ciphers and such) but I'm chasing references and hope to be soon. There may be other ways I can contribute. Besides being a skilled hacker, I'm also good with English. I have a lot of experience at maintaining successful FAQs (I'm handling six now, including the monthly three-part buyer's guide for ISA UNIX software and hardware). If the cypherpunks FAQ is still in preparation, I can probably be of substantial help with it. -- Eric S. Raymond <esr(a)snark.thyrsus.com>

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Re: TEMPEST and other "neat stuff"
by wcs＠anchor.ho.att.com 20 May '93

20 May '93

Paul Ferguson, fergp(a)sytex.com, posts excerpts from an article on TEMPEST. With all due respect :-), the article is largely nonsense. > 8<------ Snip, Snip ------[ edited ]------ > (c) 1990 Christopher J. Selin cjs(a)cwru.cwru.edu cjs(a)cwru.bitnet > Eavesdropping On the Electromagnetic Emanations of Digital Equipment: > The Laws of Canada England and the United States > This document is a rough draft. The Legal Sections are overviews. > ..... > In the United States it is illegal for an > individual to take effective counter-measures against > TEMPEST surveillance. This leads to the conundrum that it > is legal for individuals and the government to invade the > privacy of others but illegal for individuals to take steps > to protect their privacy. This is distinctly not the case. You can take any countermeasures you want. The precise standards are classified (some SECRET, some CONFIDENTIAL COMSEC), so you can't find out how good the government's abilities to eavesdrop are, or precisely what level of protection the government thinks is necessary to protect classified information, or how good the NSA thinks the Russians are, but as long as you're not using classified information as your sources, you can do anything you want. (If you're not protecting yourself *enough*, the FCC will get on your case, but over-protection is fine.) > 2. TEMPEST is an acronym for Transient Electromagnetic Pulse > Emanation Standard. TEMPEST isn't particularly about transients or electromagnetic pulses, it's about overall electromagnetic emissions. Electromagnetic Pulses are the big fast spikes you get from nuclear explosions (or similar slower spikes from lightning, etc.) and the techniques you use for protection against EMP don't solve your TEMPEST problems, and vice versa, though both kinds of protection are some help for the other. In my previous incarnation as a Tool of the Military-Industrial Complex, I never saw TEMPEST expanded as an acronym in any of the documents I read. > TEMPEST is a defensive standard; a device which > conforms to this standard is referred to as TEMPEST Certified. More specifically, a device that's been tested by an NSA-approved testing lab and has all the paperwork blessed by the NSA is TEMPEST-certified. The NSA puts out an "Evaluated Products List" (the name changes every couple of years) which has approved TEMPEST hardware, NCSC-Orange-Book rated operating systems, etc. > The United States government refuses to release details > regarding TEMPEST and continues an organized effort to censor the > dissemination of information about it. For example the NSA > succeeded in shutting down a Wang Laboratories presentation on > TEMPEST Certified equipment by classifying the contents of the > speech and threatening to prosecute the speaker with revealing > classified information. [cite coming]. The Wang Labs people probably had access to the classified documents - if you have them, you're responsible for not giving out classified information, and material derived from classified information might deserve classification. But that's not the same as saying it's "born classified", which is how nuclear weapons design information is treated (no comments on the legality of that approach...) Now, it may be that the NSA are overzealous in presuming the classified nature of the material in the presentation before hearing it; I don't know the details of the case, but access to classified material legitimately affects your ability to discuss its contents in public. > 3. This Note will not discuses how TEMPEST relates to the > Warrant Requirement under the United States Constitution. > Nor will it discuss the Constitutional exclusion of foreign nationals > from the Warrant Requirement. (*My* copy of the Constitution doesn't say that foreign nationals are excluded from "the people" who have specific rights to due process, and the 14th Amendment clearly requires at least the States not to deprive *any* person of life, liberty, or property without due process, and not to deny equal protection to anyone within its jurisdiction, as well as not abridging privileges or immunities of U.S. citizens. Somehow the recent governments haven't felt that applies to them or something...) In the case of the Crippler Chip, however, you knew it had a built-in wiretap when you bought it, which changes some of the reasonable expectations about privacy a bit. Bill Stewart

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Large Scale Implementation of PGP
by James Still 20 May '93

20 May '93

> Does anyone have any experience/advice w/ this tpye of large scale > implementation of PGP? I know the need to encrypt most of the messages > will be small, but I think it is important to get these people so > familar w/ encryption, they won't be scared and will defend it when > the need arises. Bravo! Widespread use of PGP now is analogous to Ben Franklin's pre- revolutionary attempts at setting up and popularizing a post office. People are interested, but aren't ready to take the initiative and accept "new" ideas. If I might put in a selfish plug, get ahold of PGPSHEL2.ZIP at the soda.berkeley.edu site and give it to co-workers and "Windows types" (you all know who those newcomers are :-) ) who are vaguely interested in secure communications. I've discovered that non-DOS folks will let PGP sit on their hard drives for months without exploring it, but once they use PGPShell, begin taking an active interest in what PGP is and does. With all the discussion about what the difference is between Usenet and BBS's, this is probably an important difference as well. BBS users are still enamored with the *concept* of public key encryption, while the more experienced Usenet users take it for granted. They know there's something going on "up there" but aren't too sure what all this PGP talk is all about. The BBS users are an excellent place to "spread the word" about encryption and shouldn't be ignored. With their help encryption will be as normal and every day as the post office is today.

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strong encryption as virus protection
by baumbach＠atmel.com 20 May '93

20 May '93

Hello all, It seems that an easely available (legal) software verification system needs to be made. If one were widely used, virus worries of people could be channeled into a demand for strong encryption. Tell people that the Crippler Chip might prevent this from ever happening. Peter Baumbach baumbach(a)atmel.com

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DE encryption method
by meyer 20 May '93

20 May '93

The Dolphin Encryption Process The encryption process is a symmetric block cipher, where the block is any size from 1 byte to about 16K. The encryption key consists of a string of from 10 to 60 ASCII characters. The key is converted into six seed numbers using the MD5 message digest algorithm. These numbers are used to seed several pseudo-random-number generators (PRNGs). The key is also used to randomize other elements of the system. During encryption a series of extended and encrypted derivatives of the key are used to scramble the plaintext. The resulting ciphertext is further combined with a portion of the adjacent plaintext (in a way that depends on the key). The enciphered block is then expanded by the random addition of random bytes. Finally the enciphered block is shuffled in a way depending on the key. The explanation of the encryption process has the following sections: (a)PRNGs used (b)Key input (c)General initialization (d)Block initialization (e)Block encryption (a) PRNGs used The process employs two kinds of PRNG: (i) Multiplicative congruential This kind of PRNG is described in D. Knuth, The Art of Computer Programming, Volume 2, pp. 9-20, and in S. Park and K. Miller, "Random Number Generators: Good Ones are Hard to Find", Communications of the ACM, Vol. 31 No. 10 (October 1988), pp. 1192-1201. Three multiplicative PRNGs are used in the encryption process. (ii) Additive This kind of PRNG is described in D. Knuth, The Art of Computer Programming, Volume 2, pp. 27-31, and in S. Kirkpatrick and E. Stoll, "A Very Fast Shift-Register Sequence Random Number Generator", Journal of Computational Physics, 40 (1981), pp. 517-526. Five additive PRNGs are used in the encryption process. (b) Key input The process makes use of a user-input key and six seed numbers which are derived from that key. The user may enter any string of typeable characters. All lower case characters are converted to upper case, and all characters except the following 68 are eliminated: ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ 0123456789`~!@#$%^&*()_+|-=\[]{};':",./<>? The resulting string is called the input key. The input key must consist of at least ten characters and at most sixty, and it must contain at least six different characters. If not then it is rejected. (c) General initialization Once an acceptable input key has been entered, there are two operations that are performed using this key before any actual data encryption occurs. (i) Six seed numbers in the range 4,000,000 through 1,431,655,765 are generated from the input key using the MD5 message digest algorithm. (ii) The three multiplicative PRNGs are used in different ways in the encryption process. Based on the key the particular ways in which they are to be used are determined at this stage. (d) Block initialization The block size must be specified. For each block the encipherment process occurs as follows: (i) The block is assigned a number in the range 0 - 65,535. (ii) The three multiplicative PRNGs are initialized using three of the seed numbers and the block number. (iii) A set of five additive PRNGs is randomly chosen from a set of thirty. They are initialized using five of the seed numbers, the block number and numbers generated by the multiplicative PRNGs. (iv) A sub-block length is randomly selected using one of the multiplicative PRNGs. Its value depends on the key, but lies in the range 30 through 180. (e) Block encryption Block encryption consists of three processes: scrambling, interpolation and shuffling. (i) Scrambling Scrambling involves two parallel encipherment processes: (1) A series of character strings are generated from the input key. The length of each string is at least 250 and at most 500 bytes and is chosen so as not to be divisible by the previously mentioned sub-block length; otherwise the length of the string is random. Each byte in this string is derived from a combination of a byte randomly selected from the input key and a value returned by one of the additive PRNGs. As each string is generated its MD5 message digest is also generated. The block is divided into a set of non-overlapping variable-length sub-blocks corresponding to the lengths of the strings thus generated. Each byte in each sub-block is modified by combination with a byte in the string, a byte in the MD5 message digest of the current string and a value obtained by using one of the PRNGs. (2) In the second, concurrent, process the block is divided into fixed-length non-overlapping sub-blocks which have the previously mentioned sub-block length. The bytes in each ciphertext sub-block are combined with some or all of the bytes in the corresponding plaintext sub-block in a manner involving the use of one of the PRNGs. (ii) Interpolation Meaningless bytes are now interpolated among the bytes of the ciphertext. This is done in a random way using one of the PRNGs and so that these interpolated random bytes can be eliminated during decipherment. This step generally increases the size of the block by 2% to 10%. (iii) Shuffling The bytes are then permuted (or in other words, shuffled) randomly by a process that again uses one of the PRNGs and the input key, and which is reversible if and only if the key is known. The completes the encipherment of the data block. This process may be performed on each block of data making up any larger block, such as a disk file.

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Reply to queries concerning DE
by meyer 20 May '93

20 May '93

>From: Stanton McCandlish <anton(a)hydra.unm.edu> >Subject: Dolphin Encrypt >To: cypherpunks(a)toad.com >Date: Wed, 19 May 93 6:39:04 MDT > >> The recipient captures the entire message as, say, G.ENC, then runs: >> >> DE D G.ENC G.DEC /t >> >> (Of course, she has to know the encryption key.) Dolphin Encrypt >> skips over P1 to get at C2 and writes G.DEC containing P2. Voila! > >My question is, how does the recipient get the key, >and how do they (she, whatever) know to use that long de command? >What would happen if they didn't, just get gibberish? 1. I'm sure Stanton is aware (though perhaps there are some people who are not) that there were cryptosystems in existence before PGP, and before public key cryptography was invented. DES is an example. Such cryptosystems (in contrast to PGP) are called "symmetric key" systems since the key used to encrypt is the same as the key used to decrypt. This being so, there is the problem of how to get the key to the person decrypting the received ciphertext. (This is as true for DES as for any other symmetric key system.) There are ways, more or less secure. A secure way is to use PGP to transmit the encrypted key. If your only encryption need is transmitting encrypted email then PGP may be all you need. If you want to encrypt lots of 1MB database files, either to keep around or to transmit, then a faster encryption process is needed. 2. They know how to use "that long de command" (actually I think it's quite short) because they've RTFM or had it explained to them, just as for PGP. 3. If they didn't use it they'd just have a block of what looks like uuencoded stuff in the middle of the received message. If they put a wrapper around it and uudecoded they'd get *real* gibberish. >From: Eric Hughes <hughes(a)soda.berkeley.edu> >To: cypherpunks(a)toad.com >Subject: Mixing ciphertext and plaintext > >>If you wish to mix plaintext and ciphertext in an email message then >>you can use Dolphin Encrypt. > >What cryptosystem does Dolphin Encrypt use? Is the algorithm >published somewhere? > >Eric The encryption process was developed and refined, with no input from any government agency, during the last few years. A general description of it is given in the manual that comes with Dolphin Encrypt. I shall post this description in the following message. Comments are welcome. Although this description is quite detailed, it is not sufficient to work through the process with pencil and paper, since it is too complex. The complete details can only be understood from a study of the C source code, which is provided with the Dolphin Encryption Library, a C library usable by programmers to add encryption capabilities to application programs. More details available by snailmail; requests by email or to 512-479-9208. (We finally had our cute executive secretary record the message; sounds better now - and, no, she doesn't throw the Selectric typewriter ribbons in the trash. In fact, we feed *all* our cast-off confidential data to the hogs out back. Best security method we've ever used, though the dobermans are pretty good too.) -- Peter Meyer P.S. Info going out by snailmail to all who requested it.

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