Re: e voting (receipts, votebuying, brinworld)

2003-11-25 Thread Tim May
On Nov 24, 2003, at 8:26 PM, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:

In a message dated 11/24/2003 11:12:38 PM Eastern Standard Time,
[EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
I expect there may be some good solutions to this issue, but I haven't
yet seen them discussed here or on other fora I run across.



What part of I expect there may be was unclear to you?

--Tim May

The whole of the Bill [of Rights] is a declaration of the right of the
people at large or considered as individuals... It establishes some
rights of the individual as unalienable and which consequently, no
majority has a right to deprive them of. -- Albert Gallatin of the New 
York Historical Society, October 7, 1789



Re: e voting (receipts, votebuying, brinworld)

2003-11-25 Thread Freematt357
In a message dated 11/24/2003 11:12:38 PM Eastern Standard Time, 
[EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:

 I expect there may be some good solutions to this issue, but I haven't 
 yet seen them discussed here or on other fora I run across.

Like what?

Regards,  Matt-



RE: e voting (receipts, votebuying, brinworld)

2003-11-25 Thread Bill Frantz
At 2:30 PM -0800 11/24/03, Major Variola (ret) wrote:
At 01:04 PM 11/24/03 -0500, Trei, Peter wrote:
Thats not how it works. The idea is that you make your choices on
the machine, and when you lock them in, two things happen: They
are electronically recorded in the device for the normal count, and
also, a paper receipt is printed. The voter checks the receipt to
see if it accurately records his choices, and then is required to
put it in a ballot box retained at the polling site.

If there's a need for a recount, the paper receipts can be checked.

I imagine a well designed system might show the paper receipt through
a window, but not let it be handled, to prevent serial fraud.

Vinny the Votebuyer pays you if you send a picture of your
face adjacent to the committed receipt, even if you can't touch it.
[more deleted]

It depends on what happens to the receipt when you say commit.  It could
automatically go into the ballot box without delay, so you can't take such
a photo.

I expect that Vinny is already doing this with video of the touch screen
verification screen and the voter pressing OK, but he hasn't make me an
offer yet.  I expect he gets better value for his money with TV ads, and
last minute hit mailers.

Cheers - Bill


-
Bill Frantz| There's nothing so clear as a | Periwinkle
(408)356-8506  | vague idea you haven't written | 16345 Englewood Ave
www.pwpconsult.com | down yet. -- Dean Tribble | Los Gatos, CA 95032



Re: Freedomphone

2003-11-25 Thread Bill Stewart
At 05:45 PM 11/20/2003 -0800, Bill Frantz wrote:
At 4:40 PM -0800 11/20/03, Ralf-P. Weinmann wrote:
... There should be a means to cache credentials after an initial
trust relationship between communicating parties has been established.
Cache entries would be a way for someone who obtains the phone to be able
to trace your contacts.  (So would a in-phone address book.)  Automatic
authentication also might make it easier to spoof the phone's owner.
If you've got an in-phone address book, might as well
let the user cache some randomly-generated password string with it.
That doesn't protect you against someone stealing the phone,
but it means you've got an authentic connection to your co-conspirator's
stolen phone rather than to somebody else's phone.
If your threat model assumes that they can trick your phone into
doing things, you're already toast anyway.
If you're worried that Interpol will subpoena your phone
and show that the Alice and Bob passwords in your phone
correspond to Alice the Narc and Bob, your prisoner's-dilemma
ex-co-conspirator who's busy ratting you out,
they can probably do the same thing just from the phone numbers
(IP or otherwise.)


RE: [Asrg] Re: [Politech] Congress finally poised to vote on anti -spam bill [sp]

2003-11-25 Thread Bill Stewart
At 04:20 PM 11/21/2003 -0800, Hallam-Baker, Phillip wrote:
We need to consider the technical workings of the do-not-spam list and the
requirements that we would like the FTC to meet.
.. [reasonable goals] ...  [hashed-form lists instead of plaintext]...
5) Allow domain name owners to list their domains.
6) Provide for authentication of listing requests
Especially for domains, it's important to do some validation,
though in the absence of widely-deployed DNSSEC, it's hard to do automatically.
Perhaps 3-way-handshake email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] or
the whois administrative contact address.
(This also has the side-effect of requiring people to actually use their
postmaster addresses, at least for fifteen minutes or so :-)
And while hashing has the obvious risk of dictionary attacks,
it'll at least cut back on some of the abuses,
especially if the list is dynamic and the spamware vendors who
do the dictionary attacks want to charge lots of money for it.
Also, the scale's a lot more annoying searching a million obvious names
on each of 20 million domains with a hash that takes a second per hit,
though Moore's Law will obviously erode the hash time.
Obviously spammers will target popular mail systems first.
However, there are two special email address forms that complicate this a bit
- tagged addresses - [EMAIL PROTECTED]
There are several different syntaxes for this - plusses, dashes, etc.,
and either you just ignore the problem
(let the user register  however many tagged addresses they want),
or else you special-case the rules so that bulk-emailers
who want to send mail to a plus-tagged address also must
check the untagged version.
- per-user subdomains - [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Technically this is no different than any other per-domain blocking,
but administratively it's different, because there's no whois record
and there might not be a postmaster address.
There's a scalability problem that has to be solved,
which is how to prevent a DOS-by-signing-up-too-many-addresses attack.
An example would be a Turing test image on a web page
(which has the downside of preventing automated signups,
as well as annoying blind people), or else requiring a
hashcash puzzle that takes ten times as long as the list's hash function.


Re: e voting (receipts, votebuying, brinworld)

2003-11-25 Thread Morlock Elloi
 You might check out David Chaum's latest solution at
 http://www.vreceipt.com/, there are more details in the whitepaper:
 http://www.vreceipt.com/article.pdf

That is irrelevant. Whatever the solution is it must be understandable and
verifiable by the Standard high school dropout. Also, the trace must be
mechanical in nature and readable sans computers, as there is no reason to
trust anything that goes through gates for which one hasn't verifed masks, when
stakes are high.



=
end
(of original message)

Y-a*h*o-o (yes, they scan for this) spam follows:

__
Do you Yahoo!?
Free Pop-Up Blocker - Get it now
http://companion.yahoo.com/



Appeals court OKs no-knock warrant as perfectly appropriate

2003-11-25 Thread Declan McCullagh
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. ROBERT JUNIOR WARDRICK, 
Defendant-Appellant.

No. 02-4494

UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE FOURTH CIRCUIT

September 24, 2003, Argued
November 20, 2003, Decided
OUTCOME: Defendant's convictions and sentence were affirmed.



As Judge Widener has recently recognized, the knock and announce 
requirement serves three purposes: (1) protecting the safety of occupants 
of a dwelling and the police by reducing violence; (2) preventing the 
destruction of property; and (3) protecting the privacy of occupants. 
United States v. Dunnock, 295 F.3d 431, 434 (4th Cir. 2002) (quoting Bonner 
v. Anderson, 81 F.3d 472, 475 (4th Cir. 1996)).

We have recognized that, HN6[]under appropriate exigent circumstances, 
strict compliance with the knock and announce requirement may be excused. 
United States v. Grogins, 163 F.3d 795, 797 (4th Cir. 1998) (holding 
no-knock entry justified where officers had reasonable suspicion that 
entering drug stash house would be dangerous and drug dealer frequenting 
house could not be found elsewhere). When the authorities have a 
reasonable suspicion that knocking and announcing their presence ...would 
be dangerous or futile, or that it would inhibit the effective 
investigation of []crime by, for example, allowing the destruction of the 
evidence, an entry without knocking [*13]  is justified. Richards, 520 
U.S. at 394; see also United States v. Ramirez, 523 U.S. 65, 140 L. Ed. 2d 
191, 118 S. Ct. 992 (1998) (upholding no-knock entry where suspect had 
violent past, access to weapons, and vowed not to do federal time).

In this situation, the state court judge made a specific determination that 
the circumstances explained in the Overfield Affidavit justified the 
issuance of a no-knock search warrant. As the Overfield Affidavit recounts, 
Wardrick had a violent criminal history, including a battery conviction 
stemming from resisting arrest. Moreover, the affidavit suggested that 
Wardrick, a convicted felon, illegally possessed firearms. Indeed, Wardrick 
had threatened, in the presence of Det. Overfield, that he always carried a 
loaded gun and that he never missed. Lastly, Det. Overfield reasonably 
believed that Wardrick would be present when the warrant was executed. As 
the Overfield Affidavit reflects, several records indicated that 1808 
Division Street was Wardrick's primary residence, and two automobiles 
registered in his name had been parked outside the residence only days 
before the search warrant was secured.

Based on [*14]  our review of the Overfield Affidavit, we agree with the 
district court that it was reasonable for Det. Overfield and the state 
court to believe that execution of the search warrant would be dangerous. 
See Ker v. California, 374 U.S. 23, 40-41 n. 12, 10 L. Ed. 2d 726, 83 S. 
Ct. 1623 (1963) HN7[](determining lawfulness of entry depends on what the 
officers had reason to believe at the time of their entry) (emphasis in 
original). In such circumstances, the issuance of the no-knock search 
warrant was justified, and the district court did not err in declining to 
suppress the evidence on this basis.



RE: [Asrg] Re: [Politech] Congress finally poised to vote on anti -spam bill [sp]

2003-11-25 Thread Hallam-Baker, Phillip
 Especially for domains, it's important to do some validation,
 though in the absence of widely-deployed DNSSEC, it's hard to 
 do automatically.

DNSSEC is not happening, blame Randy Bush and the IESG for 
refusing the working group consensus and imposing their own
idea that cannot be deployed. An experimental protocol that 
increases the volume of data in the .com zone by an order of 
magnitude (read Gbs of data) is simply unacceptable.


We do not need DNSSEC, we just need a notice in the DNS.
It would be a relatively easy task to walk the .com zone
and dump out a list of all the zones which contain a 
'do not spam' TXT property record.

This has the secondary advantage that it is not necessary 
to actualy consult the list, the authoritative information 
is in DNS.


 There's a scalability problem that has to be solved,
 which is how to prevent a DOS-by-signing-up-too-many-addresses attack.

I do not expect that to be a problem, that would be a
problem for the contractor. Limit the number of direct
registrations from a particular IP address within a given
time interval.

It is likely to result in the cost of the system being 
considerably more than the cost of a couple of mid range
servers and some software. This is not a new phenomena.


Phill



Re: e voting (receipts, votebuying, brinworld)

2003-11-25 Thread Bill Frantz
At 8:04 PM -0800 11/24/03, Tim May wrote:
I expect there may be some good solutions to this issue, but I haven't
yet seen them discussed here or on other fora I run across. And since
encouraging the democrats has never been a priority for me, I haven't
spent much time worrying about how to improve democratic elections.

You might check out David Chaum's latest solution at
http://www.vreceipt.com/, there are more details in the whitepaper:
http://www.vreceipt.com/article.pdf

Cheers - Bill


-
Bill Frantz| There's nothing so clear as a | Periwinkle
(408)356-8506  | vague idea you haven't written | 16345 Englewood Ave
www.pwpconsult.com | down yet. -- Dean Tribble | Los Gatos, CA 95032



Re: e voting (receipts, votebuying, brinworld)

2003-11-25 Thread Tim May
On Nov 24, 2003, at 3:52 PM, Bill Frantz wrote:

At 2:30 PM -0800 11/24/03, Major Variola (ret) wrote:
At 01:04 PM 11/24/03 -0500, Trei, Peter wrote:
Thats not how it works. The idea is that you make your choices on
the machine, and when you lock them in, two things happen: They
are electronically recorded in the device for the normal count, and
also, a paper receipt is printed. The voter checks the receipt to
see if it accurately records his choices, and then is required to
put it in a ballot box retained at the polling site.
If there's a need for a recount, the paper receipts can be checked.

I imagine a well designed system might show the paper receipt through
a window, but not let it be handled, to prevent serial fraud.
Vinny the Votebuyer pays you if you send a picture of your
face adjacent to the committed receipt, even if you can't touch it.
[more deleted]

It depends on what happens to the receipt when you say commit.  It 
could
automatically go into the ballot box without delay, so you can't take 
such
a photo.
If it goes in without any delay, without any chance for Suzie the 
Sheeple to examine it, then why bother at all? Simply issue an 
assurance to Suzie that her ballot was duly copied to an adjacent 
memory store or counting box.

When she says Then why did you people even bother?, just shrug and 
say They told us to do it.

As Major Variola said a few messages ago, as soon as human eyes can see 
it, machines and cameras and cellphones and eavesdroppers and Vinnie 
the Votebuyer can see it.

I expect there may be some good solutions to this issue, but I haven't 
yet seen them discussed here or on other fora I run across. And since 
encouraging the democrats has never been a priority for me, I haven't 
spent much time worrying about how to improve democratic elections.

And since a person should be completely free to sell his or her vote, 
99% of the measures to stop vote-buying are bogus on general 
principles.

--Tim May
--Tim May, Occupied America
They that give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary 
safety deserve neither liberty nor safety. -- Benjamin Franklin, 1759.



polygonal sequences

2003-11-25 Thread Nomen Nescio
Hello

 I was trying to find some old references I used to have concerning an idea men tioned 
in sci.crypt way back.

 It was Phil Zimmermann I think who mentioned something about a possibly new idea for 
a new public key scheme. He called it The cryptographic uses of polygonal sequences 
and is found here I think: 
http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=12044%40ncar.ucar.eduoe=UTF-8output=gplain

thanks



Re: Appeals court OKs no-knock warrant as perfectly appropriate

2003-11-25 Thread Steve Schear
We have recognized that, HN6[]under appropriate exigent circumstances, 
strict compliance with the knock and announce requirement may be excused. 
United States v. Grogins, 163 F.3d 795, 797 (4th Cir. 1998) (holding 
no-knock entry justified where officers had reasonable suspicion that 
entering drug stash house would be dangerous and drug dealer frequenting 
house could not be found elsewhere). When the authorities have a 
reasonable suspicion that knocking and announcing their presence ...would 
be dangerous or futile, or that it would inhibit the effective 
investigation of []crime by, for example, allowing the destruction of the 
evidence, an entry without knocking [*13]  is justified. Richards, 520 
U.S. at 394; see also United States v. Ramirez, 523 U.S. 65, 140 L. Ed. 2d 
191, 118 S. Ct. 992 (1998) (upholding no-knock entry where suspect had 
violent past, access to weapons, and vowed not to do federal time).
So, how does a non-criminal citizen protect themselves against armed home 
invaders who break down their front door or crash through a window to gain 
entry?  Are citizens liable for injuries and deaths to law enforcement 
personnel who use such unannounced methods (esp. in the early morning hours)?

I know that there have been cases which determined that its illegal to use 
an indiscriminate weapon (e.g., a shotgun tied to a door) to deter such 
entries, but what about a discriminate, automated, weapon system?  By 
coupling night vision optics and a video pickup, image recognition 
software, a robotic gimbal and an semi-automatic firearm, such a system 
could discriminate forced entry situations from more normal entry means, 
target intruders and initiate deterrence. What then?

steve 



RE: e voting (receipts, votebuying, brinworld)

2003-11-25 Thread Sunder
Um, last I checked, phone cameras have really shitty resolution, usually
less than 320x200.  Even so, you'd need MUCH higher resolution, say
3-5Mpixels to be able to read text on a printout in a picture.

Add focus and aiming issues, and this just won't work unless you carry a
good camera into the booth with you.

--Kaos-Keraunos-Kybernetos---
 + ^ + :25Kliters anthrax, 38K liters botulinum toxin, 500 tons of   /|\
  \|/  :sarin, mustard and VX gas, mobile bio-weapons labs, nukular /\|/\
--*--:weapons.. Reasons for war on Iraq - GWB 2003-01-28 speech.  \/|\/
  /|\  :Found to date: 0.  Cost of war: $800,000,000,000 USD.\|/
 + v + :   The look on Sadam's face - priceless!   
[EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.sunder.net 

On Mon, 24 Nov 2003, Major Variola (ret) wrote:

 Vinny the Votebuyer pays you if you send a picture of your
 face adjacent to the committed receipt, even if you can't touch it.
 Since the voting booth is private, no one can see you do this,
 even if it were made illegal.  (And since phones can store images,
 jamming the transmission at the booth doesn't work.)
 
 You send your picture from the cellphone that took it, along with a
 paypal
 account number as a text message.



Re: e voting (receipts, votebuying, brinworld)

2003-11-25 Thread Tim May
On Nov 25, 2003, at 9:56 AM, Sunder wrote:

Um, last I checked, phone cameras have really shitty resolution,  
usually
less than 320x200.  Even so, you'd need MUCH higher resolution, say
3-5Mpixels to be able to read text on a printout in a picture.

Add focus and aiming issues, and this just won't work unless you carry  
a
good camera into the booth with you.



1. Vinnie the Votebuyer knows the _layout_ of the ballot. He only needs  
to see that the correct box is punched/marked. Or that the screen  
version has been checked.

Pretty easy to see that Bush has been marked instead of Gore.

(For a conventional ballot. For a printed receipt is likely in the  
extreme that the text will be large, at least for the results.)

2. I don't know about cellphone cameras, but my 1996-vintage one  
megapixel camera has more than enough resolution, even at the not so  
great setting (about 360 x 500) to pick up text very well. (I used it  
to snap photos of some things with labels attached, for insurance  
reasons.)

3. If Vinnie is serious about this votebuying (I'm not even slightly  
convinced this would happen nationally, for obvious logistical and who  
cares? reasons, plus the inability of Palm Beach Jews to punch a  
conventional ballot, let alone work a digital camera and send the  
images to Vinnie), he can provide a camera he knows will do the job.

Google shows that as of May 2003 the high-end cellphone cameras use  
CCDs with 640 x 480. This will become the baseline within a short time,  
certainly long before any of the receipt electronic voting systems  
are widely deployed.

(e.g., this article at  
http://www.what-cellphone.com/articles/200305/ 
200305_Easy_Snapping.php)

But the resolution of today's very inexpensive digital cameras, and  
probably those in today's cellphone cameras, is more than enough to  
handle a ballot or reasonable-font receipt.

--Tim May



RE: e voting (receipts, votebuying, brinworld)

2003-11-25 Thread Trei, Peter
Tim May [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:


On Nov 25, 2003, at 9:56 AM, Sunder wrote:
 Um, last I checked, phone cameras have really shitty resolution,  
 usually
 less than 320x200.  Even so, you'd need MUCH higher resolution, say
 3-5Mpixels to be able to read text on a printout in a picture.

 Add focus and aiming issues, and this just won't work unless you carry  
 a
 good camera into the booth with you.

1. Vinnie the Votebuyer knows the _layout_ of the ballot. He only needs  
to see that the correct box is punched/marked. Or that the screen  
version has been checked.

I realize you big city types (yes, Tim, Corralitos is big compared to my
little burg) have full scale voting booths with curtains (I used the big
mechanical machines when I lived in Manhatten), but out here in the sticks,
the 'voting booth' is a little standing desk affair with 18 inch privacy 
shields on 3 sides. If someone tried to take a photo of their ballot in one
of those it would be instantly obvious. 

All I want is a system which is not more easily screwed around with then
paper ballots. Have some imagination - you could, for example, set things
up so the voter, and only the voter, can see the screen and/or paper receipt
while voting, but still make it impossible to use a camera without being
detected.

Peter



Re: [Mac_crypto] MacOS X (Panther) FileVault

2003-11-25 Thread Kevin Elliott
At 19:01 -0500  on  11/15/03, R. A. Hettinga wrote:
--- begin forwarded text

Status:  U
Date: Sat, 15 Nov 2003 13:03:33 +0100
From: Ralf-P. Weinmann [EMAIL PROTECTED]
To: Nicko van Someren [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED], R. A. Hettinga [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Re: [Mac_crypto] MacOS X (Panther) FileVault
On Thu, Nov 13, 2003 at 01:15:03PM +, Nicko van Someren wrote:
 This is basically correct.  FileVault uses an auto-mounting version of
 the encrypted disk image facility that was in 10.2, tweaked to allow
 the image to be opened even before your main key chain is available
 (since the key chain is stored inside your home directory).  The
 standard encrypted image format uses a random key stored on your key
 chain, which is itself encrypted with a salted and hashed copy of the
 keychain pass phrase, which defaults to your login password.  My
 suspicion is that for the FileVault there is some other key chain file
 in the system folder which stores the key for decrypting your home
 directory disk image and that the pass phrase for that is just your
 login password.
A... So FileVault actually is just a marketing term for the encrypted
disk images! Thanks for the explanation! I just hope my login password can
be longer than 8 characters then.
Yes/no.  When your not logged in your home folder is stored as an 
encrypted DiskImage.  In addition part of enabling FileVault was a 
complete rework of how login authentication was handled, part of 
which included removing the 8 char limitation.  For the record, apple 
has always allowed passwords longer than 8 char, prior to 10.3, 
however, only the first 8 char were used to log you in, though the 
other characters were used to unlock your keychain.

  File Vault will automatically expand or contract the disk image at
  certain points. It creates a new image, copies everything over, and
  deletes the old image.
 Yup, it essentially does an hdiutil compact command when you log out.
Do you know whether the source code to hdiutil and hdid respectively its
10.3 kernel equivalent is available? I can't seem to find it in the
Darwin 7.0 public source.
No they are not.  Apple considers DiskImages to be a proprietary 
competitive advantage.

  I don't know what mode of AES-128 it uses.

 I believe that it uses counter mode, since it's efficient when doing
 random access to the encrypted data.
Of course counter mode would be ideally suited for this application. The
question is whether the people at Apple implementing this feature knew this :)
It is a virtual certainty that Apple used Security.framework which 
includes a variety of algorithms (including AES) and secure/peer 
reviewed operation modes.  I believe the security framework is open 
source, and in fact based on a broader standard (CDSA).  If you'd 
like to know for certain I'd suggest you email [EMAIL PROTECTED] and/or 
file a bug report at bugreporter.apple.com (requires free 
registration) on the documentation.
--
__
Arguing with an engineer is like wrestling with a pig in mud.
After a while, you realize the pig is enjoying it.
__
Kevin Elliott   mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
ICQ#23758827   AIM ID: teargo
iChatAV: [EMAIL PROTECTED]  (video chat available)
__



Re: Appeals court OKs no-knock warrant as perfectly appropriate

2003-11-25 Thread Freematt357
In a message dated 11/25/2003 1:23:08 PM Eastern Standard Time, 
[EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:

 I know that there have been cases which determined that its illegal to use 
 an indiscriminate weapon (e.g., a shotgun tied to a door) to deter such 
 entries, but what about a discriminate, automated, weapon system?  By 
 coupling night vision optics and a video pickup, image recognition 
 software, a robotic gimbal and an semi-automatic firearm, such a system 
 could discriminate forced entry situations from more normal entry means, 
 target intruders and initiate deterrence. What then?
 

In the 1996 release of the film, The People vs. Larry Flynt, there is a 
scene where a warrant is served on Flynt's home. His bedroom typified the 
ultimate safe room where the agents serving the warrant couldn't get in until the 
room was opened from the inside.  Obviously everyone doesn't have the money 
that Flynt has in order to effectively harden ones house, but you can cheaply and 
rather effectively improve your haunts to allow more warning.

The system you describe would in most jurisdiction still be considered 
illegal and premeditative.  You're better off with passive measures.

Regards,  Matt-



Fwd: Bedazzled Log-in Method Whitepaper

2003-11-25 Thread Steve Schear
Bedazzled Log-in Method Whitepaper

Author: George Hara
(http://www.filematrix.xnet.ro/ideas/whitepapers/login.htm)
Introduction

Using strings of characters as passwords has always been a security issue
because they are hard to remember and can be stolen by key-loggers or
screen-text harvesters. It will still be an issue for personal computers,
but there is another method available for authentication over the Internet
(where are the highest security concerns). This method involves no special
technologies, but simply a new vision on how to bring existing technologies
together. The method is easier to use than text passwords, but it requires,
from the users, the protection of their personal computers (where they need
text-password log-in and encryption), just as they do now.
The Bedazzled log-in method uses a (public) user name / ID (for example,
the user's email address) and a number of images, called password images,
for authentication. The images have to be generated (by the authentication
service) during the creation of the account for which the authentication
will be later required. Each image is a small, PNG compressed, bulk of
pixels with random colors. The PNG compression is used because a true-color
image is compressed without losses, with a very high rate. In the case of
random images this doesn't help, but, as you'll read below, in the User
images section, this is the best format.
Each image should contain something like 50 * 50 true-color pixels (24
bits). This means that the total number of combinations of such a random
image is 24 ^ (50 * 50), that is over 10 ^ 3450. Basically, a particular
case is unbreakable through brute force search.
Authentication
--
The authentication is the classic method: the user is identified by his user
name, and then he is authenticated by comparing all images specified in the
log-in form, with the images stored on the computer which makes the
authentication. If all images are *identical*, and put in the same order (im
age 1 as password 1, image 2 as password 2...), the user is authenticated.
If they are not identical, the user is rejected.
Implementation
---
To make the Bedazzled log-in method easy to use, the password images must
be saved on the user's computer, preferably in encrypted files (see file
encryption under WindowsXP, or PGP encrypted drives).
Since the Bedazzled log-in method is supposed to be used over Internet, it
is necessary for the user to be able to drag-and-drop each image onto the
browser, in the log-in form. This way, the log-in form has access to the
password images, and can download them to the authentication server when the
user clicks the Log-in button.
As you can see, the method is very eay to use, but in order to make it even
easier, the log-in form should display a small file browser which should be
used to navigate to the password images (they should all be in the same
directory, for easy user access). The log-in form should save a cookie on
the user's computer in order to automatically open the file browser at the
same location, the next time the user attempts to authenticate himslef.
User images

There is no need for the images to be random. The user could choose his own
images when he creates an authentication account, being only limited to a
specific file size (like 20 KB / image). He could simply take some images
from his computer and resize them to fit the size limit; the images should
be compressed without loss (preferably in a PNG format), just in case they
are lost but the original bigger images still exist and can be resized again
with the same algorithm (to generate the same password image).
Another method requires a small program which takes a string of characters
typed by the user, and converts them through a hash algorithm into an
apparently random image. This method makes it possible to recreate the
password images if the user remembers the string of characters, without the
need of storing any information.
TEMPEST protection
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First of all, since the user doesn't need to type anything and the password
images don't need to be displayed, the passwords are protected from TEMPEST
atacks. However, the user may need to navigate through his pictures and
choose the correct password images for each log-in form. This would create a
potential security breach.
The Bedazzled log-in method has intrinsic TEMPEST protection to this kind
of breach because when a monitor displays an image, the colors of each pixel
is not displayed exactly as indicated by the bits that make the picture.
Each monitor has its own way of displaying the image. Besides, users always
alter the image by chaging various parameters of the monitor's image:
brightness, contrast, color balance, color temperature, gamma.
On the other end of the TEMPEST technology, the reader takes a snapshot of
the image displayed by the monitor. This is like making a scan of a print of
a digital image. Though the