Re: CeBIT: Federal German Ministry of Economics Forces E-mail Encryption
http://www.cebit.de/top-21508.html?druckeboot=1news_article_id=350archiv=1 CeBIT: Federal German Ministry of Economics Forces E-mail Encryption At the CeBIT the Federal German Ministry of Economics distributes for free the mail encryption program GnuPP 1.1 complete with manual. The mail roboter Adele shall provide a lead-in to the issue by practising the krypto mail communication together with the user. Just for your information: the German government manufactured 50,000 of those GnuPP CDs right from the start. Quite a number, I think. Cheers, Stefan. --- Dipl.-Inform. Stefan Kelm Security Consultant Secorvo Security Consulting GmbH Albert-Nestler-Strasse 9, D-76131 Karlsruhe Tel. +49 721 6105-461, Fax +49 721 6105-455 E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED], http://www.secorvo.de --- PGP Fingerprint 87AE E858 CCBC C3A2 E633 D139 B0D9 212B - The Cryptography Mailing List Unsubscribe by sending unsubscribe cryptography to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[Announce] Announcing a GnuPG plugin for Mozilla (Enigmail)
--- begin forwarded text Status: U To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] From: Werner Koch [EMAIL PROTECTED] Organisation: g10 Code GmbH Lines: 21 User-Agent: Gnus/5.090006 (Oort Gnus v0.06) Emacs/20.7 (i386-debian-linux-gnu) Subject: [Announce] Announcing a GnuPG plugin for Mozilla (Enigmail) Sender: [EMAIL PROTECTED] List-Help: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]?subject=help List-Post: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] List-Subscribe: http://lists.gnupg.org/mailman/listinfo/gnupg-devel, mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]?subject=subscribe List-Id: GnuPG development gnupg-devel.gnupg.org List-Archive: http://lists.gnupg.org/pipermail/gnupg-devel/ Date: Thu, 21 Mar 2002 11:24:01 +0100 From: R. Saravanan [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: Wed, 20 Mar 2002 12:50:51 -0700 Enigmail, a GnuPG plugin for Mozilla which has been under development for some time, has now reached a state of practical usability with the Mozilla 0.9.9 release. It allows you to send or receive encrypted mail using the Mozilla mailer and GPG. Enigmail is open source and dually licensed under GPL/MPL. You can download and install the software from the website http://enigmail.mozdev.org Enigmail is cross-platform like Mozilla, although binaries are supplied only for the Win32 and Linux-x86 platforms on the website.At the moment there is no version of Enigmail available for Netscape 6.2 or earlier, which are based on much older versions of Mozilla.There will be a version available for the next Netscape release, which is expected to be based on Mozilla 1.0. You may post enigmail-specific comments to the Enigmail newsgroup/mailing list at mozdev.org ___ Gnupg-announce mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.gnupg.org/mailman/listinfo/gnupg-announce ___ Gnupg-devel mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.gnupg.org/mailman/listinfo/gnupg-devel --- end forwarded text -- - R. A. Hettinga mailto: [EMAIL PROTECTED] The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation http://www.ibuc.com/ 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA ... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity, [predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to experience. -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire' - The Cryptography Mailing List Unsubscribe by sending unsubscribe cryptography to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Secure peripheral cards
At 7:21 PM -0500 on 3/20/02, Roop Mukherjee wrote: I am searching for some citable references about secure peripheral cards. Contrary to what I had imagined when I had started searching, I found very little. I am looking to see what are the peripherals that have cryptographic capabilities and what are thier capabilities? The Embassy (www.wave.com) thing seems like a single secure system in itself, which can run programs and do everything from secure boot to secure IO. So I imagine that all of this stuff will not be put in the peripherals. Also in the same vein US patent 6,314,409 talk of a secure system but in more abstract terms. Intel's audio players and sigmatels auddio _decoders_ (can be a comeplte device or a peripheral according to the brochure) seems to calim Microsoft's DRM compatibility. I would appreciate some better references. I think you should talk to NCipher about this stuff. As far as I can tell, Nicko's hardware development people have the best handle on secure boxes to store keys in, cryptographic accelerator peripherals, and so on. They're very smart, very creative, and have a giant-killer attitude, which is handy in a market dominated by very big companies who mostly do other things besides crypto for a living. No financial interest in NCipher, I've always been impressed with Nicko van Someren, Ian Harvey, and their associates. http://www.ncipher.com/ Cheers, RAH -- - R. A. Hettinga mailto: [EMAIL PROTECTED] The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation http://www.ibuc.com/ 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA ... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity, [predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to experience. -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire' - The Cryptography Mailing List Unsubscribe by sending unsubscribe cryptography to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[SIMSOFT] Identity Card Delusions
--- begin forwarded text Status: U From: Simson Garfinkel [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [SIMSOFT] Identity Card Delusions Sender: [EMAIL PROTECTED] List-Help: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]?subject=help List-Post: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] List-Subscribe: http://www.simson.net/mailman/listinfo/simsoft, mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]?subject=subscribe List-Id: Stories and Articles by Simson Garfinkel simsoft.nitroba.com List-Archive: http://www.simson.net/pipermail/simsoft/ Date: Thu, 21 Mar 2002 10:01:55 -0500 http://www.technologyreview.com/articles/garfinkel0402.asphttp://www.technologyreview.com/articles/garfinkel0402.asp Identity Card Delusions Related Links http://www.technologyreview.com/articles/garfinkel0402.aspIdentity Card Delusions http://www.technologyreview.com/articles/prototype50102.aspFit to Print http://www.technologyreview.com/articles/prototype21201.aspDNA ID http://www.technologyreview.com/articles/stikeman1201.aspRecognizing the Enemy http://www.technologyreview.com/articles/visualize1101.aspFace Recognition http://www.technologyreview.com/articles/amato0901.aspBig Brother Logs On http://www.technologyreview.com/articles/prototype40701.aspVoice ID http://www.technologyreview.com/articles/prototype81101.aspMagic Fingers http://www.aamva.org/American Association of Motor Vehicle Administrators The Net Effect By Simson Garfinkel April 2002 Illustration by Tavis Coburn Mandatory national ID cards might cut down on underage drinking, but they wouldn't have stopped Richard Reid. http://techreview.adbureau.net/adclick/CID=fffcfffcfffc/acc_random=95718/SITE=TRV.COM/AREA=TEL/PAGEID=95718/AAMSZ=300X250 More than 200 million Americans carry drivers licenses with them every day. The small plastic cards denote the holders right to operate a motor vehicle. But that rather understates things. Today, all manner of business establishments, from banks to airlines to bars, will deny you service if you do not show them your drivers license. In other words, drivers licenses have become the de facto identity cards of the United States. Now the American Association of Motor Vehicle Administrators, a kind of trade organization for the state motor vehicle registries, wants to make things official. This past January the association asked Congress for $100 million to link all of the state motor vehicle databases into a single national system, overhaul licensing procedures and phase in a new generation of high-tech cards. If this proposal goes through, drivers licenses issued in two years will almost certainly be high-tech, biometric-endowed cards for the absolute identification of the cardholder. And this is just the beginning. Less than two weeks after the motor vehicle announcement, the U.S. Department of Transportation announced that it was moving full speed ahead with plans to create a nationwide trusted-traveler cardanother biometrics-based national identification card. But instead of granting permission to drive, the proposed trusted-traveler card will allow the holder to breeze through security checkpoints at airports without being detained by lengthy interviews and intrusive searches. It has long since been a cliché to say that September 11 changed everything, but one thing that has certainly changed since that fateful day is Americas receptivity to the idea of a national identity card. Eight months ago, such cards would have been unthinkable, the first step toward an Orwellian surveillance society. But priorities have shifted. Many of those who once steadfastly opposed the ID card now see it as an unfortunate but necessary measure to protect homeland security. America is being sold an empty promise. The proposals for new biometrics-based identity cards will certainly let the states buy shiny new computer systems and deploy ominous Big Brother-style networks, and the cards will speed the passage of frequent travelers through the airports, but they wont significantly improve the security of Americans. Indeed, had these systems been in place on September 11, they would not have prevented al-Qaedas deadly hijackings. The push to turn the drivers license into a national identity card is coming not from the federal government but from the states. Motor vehicle administrators and police alike want to stamp out the scourge of fake out-of-state drivers licenseswhat many college students call their drinking cards. But replacing todays patchwork of different-looking drivers licenses with a single nationwide standard thats all but impossible to forge will also confer many advantages for law enforcement agencies, because bogus out-of-state drivers licenses are used by crooks engaged in identity fraud, people who keep driving despite their suspended in-state drivers licenses and other assorted hoodlums. The states are also eagerly looking at biometrics as a powerful tool for verifying identity, preventing fraud and enlisting the
Re: crypto question
Question. Is it possible to have code that contains a private encryption key safely? As a practical matter, yes and no. Practically no, because any way you hide the encryption key could be reverse engineered. Practically yes, because if you work at it you can make the key hard enough to reverse engineer that it is sufficient for your threat model. This problem is the same problem as copy protection, digital rights management, or protecting mobile agents from the computers they run on. They all boil down to the same challenge; you want to put some data on a computer you don't control but then restrict what can be done with that data. The digital rights management folks try to restrict the program that uses the data; region-locked DVD players, digital music software that obeys copyright restrictions (SDMI, etc), or the latest idea, having an encrypted channel all the way to your speakers and monitor which are secure tamper-proof devices. All of these schemes are defeatable, but can be made quite difficult. The mobile agent community has come up with some clever ideas on the problem, but nothing that's a practical solution yet. The version here is you want to run a program on a remote untrusted computer and you want to prevent your computation from being subverted or stolen. It's very hard, and my intuition was it'd be impossible, but in fact there are some interesting thoeretical results that show it is possible, at least in some limited domains. I haven't followed this research recently, but here are some good papers from a few years ago: Towards Mobile Cryptography (1998) Tomas Sander, Christian F. Tschudin http://citeseer.nj.nec.com/167218.html We present techniques how to achieve non--interactive computing with encrypted programs in certain cases and give a complete solution for this problem in important instances. Protecting Mobile Agents Against Malicious Hosts Tomas Sander, Christian F. Tschudin http://citeseer.nj.nec.com/329367.html - The Cryptography Mailing List Unsubscribe by sending unsubscribe cryptography to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Secure peripheral cards
On Thu, Mar 21, 2002 at 10:02:20AM -0500, R. A. Hettinga wrote: At 7:21 PM -0500 on 3/20/02, Roop Mukherjee wrote: I am searching for some citable references about secure peripheral cards. Contrary to what I had imagined when I had started searching, I found very little. I am looking to see what are the peripherals that have cryptographic capabilities and what are thier capabilities? The Embassy (www.wave.com) thing seems like a single secure system in itself, which can run programs and do everything from secure boot to secure IO. So I imagine that all of this stuff will not be put in the peripherals. Also in the same vein US patent 6,314,409 talk of a secure system but in more abstract terms. Intel's audio players and sigmatels auddio _decoders_ (can be a comeplte device or a peripheral according to the brochure) seems to calim Microsoft's DRM compatibility. I would appreciate some better references. I think you should talk to NCipher about this stuff. As far as I can tell, Nicko's hardware development people have the best handle on secure boxes to store keys in, cryptographic accelerator peripherals, and so on. I'm not sure NCipher gear is the #1 for acceleration, I think they're probably more focussed and used for secure key management. For example they quote [1] an nForce can do up to 400 new SSL connections per second. So that's CRT RSA, not sure if 1024 bit or 512 bit (it does say up to). openSSL on a PIII-633Mhz can do 265 512 bit CRT RSA per second, or 50 1024 bit CRT RSA per second. So wether it will even speed up current entry-level systems depends on the correct interpretation of the product sheet. And the economics of course depends on how expensive they are relative to general purpose CPUs, plus the added complexity of using embedded hardware and drivers and getting to play with your web server. General purpose CPUs are _really_ fast and cheap right now. But for the application at hand -- secure key-management, perhaps an NCipher card is ok -- I haven't compared feature sets so can't really comment. Adam [1] http://www.ncipher.com/products/rscs/datasheets/nFast.pdf - The Cryptography Mailing List Unsubscribe by sending unsubscribe cryptography to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: crypto question
At 8:52 PM -0800 3/20/02, Mike Brodhead wrote: The usual good solution is to make a human type in a secret. Of course, the downside is that the appropriate human must be present for the system to come up properly. It's not clear to me what having the human present accomplishes. While the power was out, the node computer could have been tampered with, e.g. a key logger attached. In some situations, the system must be able to boot into a working state. That way, even if somebody accidentally trips the power-- I've had this happen on production boxen --the system outage lasts only as long as the boot time. If a particular human (or one of a small number of secret holders) must be involved, then the outage could be measured in hours rather than minutes. Who said you were allowed to lose power and stay secure? Laptops are pretty cheap and come with multi-hour batteries. There should be enough physical security around the node to prevent someone from tripping power. One approach might be to surround a remote node with enough sensors so that it can detect an unauthorized attempt to physically approach it. Web cams are pretty cheap. Several cameras and/or mirrors would be required to get 4Pi coverage. Software could detect frame to frame changes that indicated an intrusion. The machine would be kept in a secure closet or cabinet. The the machine would be set up in what ever location by a trusted person or team and would remain conscious from then on. Entry would be authorized via an authenticated link. Any unauthorized entry would result in the node destroying it's secrets. It would then have to be replaced. Don't forget that Availability is also an important aspect of security. It all depends on your threat model. The approach I outlined offers very high availability. Arnold Reinhold - The Cryptography Mailing List Unsubscribe by sending unsubscribe cryptography to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: crypto question
At 08:52 PM 3/20/2002 -0800, Mike Brodhead wrote: The usual good solution is to make a human type in a secret. Of course, the downside is that the appropriate human must be present for the system to come up properly. Yes, of course, that is why I wrote: The usual bad solution is to store it in a secret place, or encrypted with a key kept elsewhere (source, secret file, LDAP, etc.) as most operations don't want to wait for a human to type something. As long as folks understand that they can't really have security, then it is just an engineering tradeoff. Several folks also wrote about using a SBO approach: 1) You are trying to distribute an obfuscated binary which encrypts/decrypts using a secret key, with the goal that the key resist reverse engineering. The usual application for this is DRM, but you can also use this to do public-key encryption from any symmetric algorithm (obfuscate the encryption function!). To me, Security By Obscurity is known to be too weak to use, and Security By Obfuscation is isomorphic to SBObscurity. Consider the obfuscation with a strong cipher. Then all you have to do is manage the keys. One guiding principal of strong cryptography is that the algorithm, and source code is well known. The key is what is unknown. Other approaches tend to approach snake oil The problem with the DRM model is not that the crypto won't work, it will if the keys are managed. But I've not seen anyone willing to work hard enough to manage the key distribution and local key management to make it real. None of this addresses the problem that you want to do trusted operations on a user's PC that is inherently untrustable. For some applications, eyewash such as smartcards provide the needed level of appearence of security. If that fits your case, fine. And Carl Ellison has a great patent for a software-only smartcard, it was transfered to CyberCash, and I assume transfered to Verisign. It proves that anything you want to do with a smartcard you can do with software in a client/server model. Pretty cool. Pat Pat Farrell [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.pfarrell.com - The Cryptography Mailing List Unsubscribe by sending unsubscribe cryptography to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Finding Pay Dirt in Scannable Driver's Licenses
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/03/21/technology/circuits/21DRIV.html?todaysheadlines=pagewanted=printposition=top March 21, 2002 Finding Pay Dirt in Scannable Driver's Licenses By JENNIFER 8. LEE OSTON -- ABOUT 10,000 people a week go to The Rack, a bar in Boston favored by sports stars, including members of the New England Patriots. One by one, they hand over their driver's licenses to a doorman, who swipes them through a sleek black machine. If a license is valid and its holder is over 21, a red light blinks and the patron is waved through. But most of the customers are not aware that it also pulls up the name, address, birth date and other personal details from a data strip on the back of the license. Even height, eye color and sometimes Social Security number are registered. You swipe the license, and all of a sudden someone's whole life as we know it pops up in front of you, said Paul Barclay, the bar's owner. It's almost voyeuristic. Mr. Barclay bought the machine to keep out underage drinkers who use fake ID's. But he soon found that he could build a database of personal information, providing an intimate perspective on his clientele that can be useful in marketing. It's not just an ID check, he said. It's a tool. Now, for any given night or hour, he can break down his clientele by sex, age, ZIP code or other characteristics. If he wanted to, he could find out how many blond women named Karen over 5 feet 2 inches came in over a weekend, or how many of his customers have the middle initial M. More practically, he can build mailing lists based on all that data - and keep track of who comes back. Bar codes and other tracking mechanisms have become one of the most powerful forces in automating and analyzing product inventory and sales over the last three decades. Now, in a trend that alarms privacy advocates, the approach is being applied to people through the simple driver's license, carried by more than 90 percent of American adults. Already, about 40 states issue driver's licenses with bar codes or magnetic stripes that carry standardized data, and most of the others plan to issue them within the next few years. Scanners that can read the licenses are slowly proliferating across the country. So far the machines have been most popular with bars and convenience stores, which use them to thwart underage purchasers of alcohol and cigarettes. In response to the terrorist attacks last year, scanners are now also being installed as security devices in airports, hospitals and government buildings. Many other businesses - drugstores and other stores, car- rental agencies and casinos among them - are expressing interest in the technology. The devices have already proved useful for law enforcement. Police departments have called bars to see if certain names and Social Security numbers show up on their customer lists. The electronic trails created by scanning driver's licenses are raising concerns among privacy advocates. Standards and scanning, they say, are a dangerous combination that essentially creates a de facto national identity card or internal passport that can be registered in many databases. Function creep is a primary rule of databases and identifiers, said Barry Steinhardt, associate director of the American Civil Liberties Union, citing how the Social Security number, originally meant for old-age benefits, has become a universal identifier for financial and other transactions. History teaches us that even if protections are incorporated in the first place, they don't stay in place for long. But companies that market the scanning technology argue that it poses no threat to privacy. It's the same information as the front of the license, said Frank Mandelbaum, chairman and chief executive of Intelli- Check, a manufacturer of license-scanning equipment based in Woodbury, N.Y. If I were to go into a bar and they had a photocopier, they could photocopy the license or they could write it down. They are not giving us any information that violates privacy. Machine-readable driver's licenses have been introduced over the last decade under standards set by the American Association of Motor Vehicle Administrators, an umbrella group of state officials. Under current standards, the magnetic stripe and bar codes essentially contain the same information that is on the front of the driver's licenses. In addition to name, address and birth date, the machine-readable data includes physical attributes like sex, height, weight, hair color, eye color and whether corrective lenses are required. Some states that put the driver's Social Security number on the license also store it on the data strip. The scanning systems present a challenge to efforts by state and federal governments to limit the amount of information that can be released by departments of motor vehicles. In 1994, Congress passed the Driver's Privacy Protection Act, largely in response to the murder of Rebecca Schaeffer, an actress who
Text of Sen. Hollings' revised SSSCA, now called the CBDTPA
Wired News article on the CBDTPA: http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,51245,00.html The bill, called the Consumer Broadband and Digital Television Promotion Act (CBDTPA), prohibits the sale or distribution of nearly any kind of electronic device -- unless that device includes copy-protection standards to be set by the federal government. The text of the Consumer Broadband and Digital Television Promotion Act (CBDTPA) is available here: http://www.politechbot.com/docs/cbdtpa/ Here's Sen. Fritz Hollings' (D-SC) statement and press release: http://www.politechbot.com/docs/cbdtpa/hollings.cbdtpa.release.032102.html Statements from supporters and opponents: http://www.politechbot.com/docs/cbdtpa/mpaa.cbdtpa.release.032102.html http://www.politechbot.com/docs/cbdtpa/riaa.cbdtpa.release.032102.html http://www.politechbot.com/docs/cbdtpa/bsa.cspp.iti.release.032102.html Archive on SSSCA (now, of course, called the CBDTPA): http://www.politechbot.com/cgi-bin/politech.cgi?name=sssca -Declan - The Cryptography Mailing List Unsubscribe by sending unsubscribe cryptography to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
RE: crypto question
Many thanks on all the pointers and interest. Although I was planning on sneaking around making more progress before letting the cat out the bag, I guess it is time to expose it for some open criticism. This is just a plan so far, no code yet. Although until the ability to safely split encryption code across nodes, it will have to have a central (or group of trusted) servers, rather than fully distributed. You will probably all point out many obvious pit-falls, if you do please also offer suggestions ;) I have thought of several ways of getting the job done, but I am sure there are better. Apologies to those I emailed a blank file to, I managed to wipe a significant amount of work, and have replaced it with something really tacked together. If I am stepping to hard on any patents, or too close to any other 'business model' etc... A polite nudge is much better than a law suit. Thanks. http://pktp.sourceforge.net has a description of how I imagine it working. I hope that explains exactly why I was making my enquiry. Again many thanks for the many pointers. cya,Andrew... This e-mail and any attachment is for authorised use by the intended recipient(s) only. It may contain proprietary material, confidential information and/or be subject to legal privilege. It should not be copied, disclosed to, retained or used by, any other party. If you are not an intended recipient then please promptly delete this e-mail and any attachment and all copies and inform the sender. Thank you. - The Cryptography Mailing List Unsubscribe by sending unsubscribe cryptography to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
