Cryptography-Digest Digest #206, Volume #11 Sun, 27 Feb 00 00:13:01 EST
Contents:
Re: Go after all and any CIA and NSA and FBI officers, controllers, (Marc
Jaworowicz)
Re: The former CIA directors are just playing roles .. they are involved (Marc
Jaworowicz)
Re: code still unbroken (Guy Macon)
Re: e-payment suggestion (Guy Macon)
Re: Funniest thing I've seen in ages - RSA.COM hacked :) (Guy Macon)
Re: Passwords secure against dictionary attacks? (Guy Macon)
Re: Passwords secure against dictionary attacks? (Guy Macon)
Re: Passwords secure against dictionary attacks? (Guy Macon)
Re: Passwords secure against dictionary attacks? (Walter Roberson)
Re: CRC-16 Reverse Algorithm ? ("Marty")
Re: NSA Linux and the GPL (David A. Wagner)
blowfish and questions..??? (arni)
Re: ECHELON BOMBSHELL: NSA ACCUSED OF SPYING ON US POLITICIANS (Dave Hazelwood)
Re: CRC-16 Reverse Algorithm ? (David A. Wagner)
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
From: Marc Jaworowicz <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Crossposted-To:
alt.politics.org.cia,soc.culture.russian,soc.culture.soviet,soc.culture.europe,soc.culture.nordic,soc.culture.italian,soc.culture.israel,soc.culture.china,alt.security
Subject: Re: Go after all and any CIA and NSA and FBI officers, controllers,
Date: Sat, 26 Feb 2000 21:28:55 -0500
What are you, nuts? You think that you can chase and go up against such a
network? Besides, this is not something that you really understand. While I
admit that there are some "less than honorable" activities afoot amongst these
agencies, the overall aim is that the desires of "democratic-less" agencies are
either ignored or extinguished. Do you disagree with this?
"Markku J. Saarelainen" wrote:
> Go after all and any CIA and NSA and FBI officers, controllers, handlers and
> their agents and destroy their networks completely.
>
> There are massive human networks operating in all regions of the world and
> in Europe these US Intelligence Community driven establishments are stealing
> the economic and business information from European businesses to decrease
> the European competitiveness.
>
> Best regards,
>
> Markku
>
> "Markku J. Saarelainen" wrote:
>
> > Basically, I was within the program and system of the US Intelligence
> > Community that was spying on other businesses and individuals. The US
> > National Security Strategy is heavily based on economical performance
> > and objectives and US government steals any information in the
> > categories of special intelligence topics to protect the US National
> > Security Strategy or this is how they call it. Many counter intelligence
> > activities are just offensive intelligence programs geared toward
> > acquiring the information of other businesses, their operations and
> > business intelligence. This is the mindset of the US National Security
> > Council and Advisors and the tope of the CIA/ NSA. FBI is just
> > protecting these programs and actually are violating also all kinds of
> > laws and regulations. So when these politicians are talking about
> > "potential espionage or spying", they are just implementing the US
> > covert action to protect the intelligence system and try to maintain
> > some good relations with some so called "friendly nations". The US
> > Intelligence Community is operating in trade organizations, commercial
> > enterprises, standards bodies and so on (see some examples from my
> > postings where I have been - and especially good luck with your
> > operations here in Coopers, Ramos and Lee - Miami ). In addition, many
> > internet businesses and operators such as few mailing list runners such
> > as ISO 9000 are within their system. I have specific experiences of this
> > that I have posted in 1999 on the USENET (Some of my message such as TL
> > 9000 were not distributed although they were discussing relevant issues
> > and were based on factual statements - basically I had changed the
> > direction of my thinking and my postings were immediately rejected) Many
> > U.S. people operating in international business in the US are under
> > cover and providing the business information from these businesses to
> > the US intelligence services operating within the US and globally too
> > for the U.S. companies. This is their ways of maintaining "economic
> > leadership and competitiveness". If I would be the CEO of any
> > international company, I would initiate the complete polygraph testing
> > of all and any U.S. people working in my company.
> >
> > And then I read these stories that are just describing covert actions to
> > protect the US Intelligence Community.
> >
> > " ....... evel playing field in big international contracts.�
> >
> > " European Suspicions
> > European furor centers around a massive eavesdropping
> > and information sharing system run by the United
> > States,
> > Britain, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, which is
> > believed to intercept as many as 3 billion phone, fax
> > and
> > e-mail transmissions worldwide every day (see
> > interactive
> > and video, above).
> > "
> >
> > http://abcnews.go.com/sections/world/DailyNews/echelon000224.html
------------------------------
From: Marc Jaworowicz <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Crossposted-To:
alt.politics.org.cia,soc.culture.russian,soc.culture.soviet,soc.culture.europe,soc.culture.nordic,soc.culture.italian,soc.culture.french,soc.culture.spain,alt.security
Subject: Re: The former CIA directors are just playing roles .. they are involved
Date: Sat, 26 Feb 2000 21:37:34 -0500
You are such a good propagandist, why don't yuu leave Finland and move to
Russia, or some other place where such crap is tolerated such as Iraq?
"Markku J. Saarelainen" wrote:
> The CIA and NSA have been spying and have records and databases of most
> business communications that are relevant to the U.S. National Security
> Strategy as it pertains to the economic performance and objectives. All
> business, technology and other aspects of the economy are their targets
> and the US people as I have learnt just go to some nations and acquire
> the information with collaboration of their agents who are betraying
> their nations for the economical performance of the USA. I know one
> person in Seattle who has contacts to some Finnish people working for HP
> and these people are just acquiring specific eonomical data and
> information. These names shall be made public. All U.S. high-tech
> companies operating in other regions are one way or another covers for
> the U.S. Intelligence Community. There are networks in these commercial
> enterprises.
>
> And the former CIA Director James Woosley is just an actor ..
>
> "
> But
> former CIA Director James Woolsey and a current U.S.
> official say such information probably was used only in
>
> certain instance
>
> "
------------------------------
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Guy Macon)
Subject: Re: code still unbroken
Date: 26 Feb 2000 22:03:54 EST
Chuck Davis wrote:
> Most of the correspondence I get from cryptanalysis folk about the code I
> devised at discovervancouver.com sneers at its triviality. I still harbor a
> belief that SOMEONE out there will crack it, and win the prize ... which
> goes up one cent a minute, and is now well over $3,000.
That little thing? cracked it in six hours. Now I am waiting for the
prize to increase to my chosen target point. Talk to you later!!!
------------------------------
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Guy Macon)
Subject: Re: e-payment suggestion
Date: 26 Feb 2000 22:07:55 EST
In article <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Dr.Gunter
Abend) wrote:
>
>Mike Rosing wrote:
>
>> Check out http://www.zero-knowledge.com/
>> You'll find out more about secure money transfers than you
>> want to know.
>
>Thank you for this link -- I already looked at this site earlier.
>
>The complicated, challenging problem of *anonymous* e-cash is,
>of course, very interesting -- but, I merely had the question,
>why personalized payments still are that risky. I dislike to
>transmit my credit card number to any possible payee. Most
>payments connected with the internet are not safe enough.
>If I'd buy some second-hand equipment, some software, anything
>in the order of 50$ or less, I need not trust the partner that
>much as to give him my credit card number!
Do you, by any chance, let some poorly paid waitress take
your card away for a few moments when you are dining out?
------------------------------
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Guy Macon)
Crossposted-To: comp.security.pgp.discuss,alt.security.pgp
Subject: Re: Funniest thing I've seen in ages - RSA.COM hacked :)
Date: 26 Feb 2000 22:11:29 EST
More yuks from the company that wants to be my security provider...
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------------------------------
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Guy Macon)
Crossposted-To: comp.security.misc,alt.security.pgp
Subject: Re: Passwords secure against dictionary attacks?
Date: 26 Feb 2000 22:26:26 EST
In article <892m7u$hou$[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, [EMAIL PROTECTED]
(Jens Haug) wrote:
>We try to crack our users' passwords every now an then. Once the
>cracker program found out one consisting of two greek words which
>make no sense together. :-0
>Don't use *any* word in *any* language!
My current passphrase (which I use only with ciphersaber
[ http://ciphersaber.gurus.com ] has 54 total characters,
four punctuation characters, three high order ASCII characters,
four numbers, and about 50% short english words. My basic
scheme was to combine several true random 8 and 16 character
passwords that I had to memorize for various high security
projects and string them together with an easy to remember
nonsense phrase.
I highly suggest passphrases, and if you have any old
passwords that you can't forget, include them in the phrase.
------------------------------
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Guy Macon)
Crossposted-To: comp.security.misc,alt.security.pgp
Subject: Re: Passwords secure against dictionary attacks?
Date: 26 Feb 2000 22:32:25 EST
In article <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, [EMAIL PROTECTED] (JimD)
wrote:
>
>How about ten English words with different punctuation symbols
>as word separators?
>
Way too hard to remember. Eleven or twelve english words with no
punctuation symbol as the word separator would be easier to remember
and would still be resistant to any concievable passphrase guessing
attack in the forseeable future.
------------------------------
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Guy Macon)
Crossposted-To: comp.security.misc,alt.security.pgp
Subject: Re: Passwords secure against dictionary attacks?
Date: 26 Feb 2000 22:40:44 EST
In article <Nfjt4.165$[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, [EMAIL PROTECTED]
(Matt Baney) wrote:
>
>What if the space between words was removed and another character inserted at
>regular intervals. For example
> crypto life green dog loud music
>becomes
> cryp)toli)fe gree1ndog loud2musi2c
>or maybe
> cry9pto9lif9e gre!end@og lou(dmu(sic
>or maybe
> cr-yp-to-li-fe gr1ee2nd3og lo(ud)mu(si)c
>
>
>Seems like it's still susceptible to brute force but a pure dictionary attack
>wouldn't get this would it?
>
The trick to designing dictionary based attacking programs is to write
code that modifies the dictionary in commonly used ways (shift the hands
while touch typing, replace portions of words according to common misspells
or hackish, eevveerryy lleetteerr ttwwiiccee, rEVERSED cAPITALIZATION,
put-ting in hy-phens ev-er-y-where, etc, etc. You are betting on chosing
a scheme that the attacker doesn't guess. Better to just add more words
and to use an easy to remember nonsense phrase.
------------------------------
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Walter Roberson)
Crossposted-To: comp.security.misc,alt.security.pgp
Subject: Re: Passwords secure against dictionary attacks?
Date: 27 Feb 2000 03:44:54 GMT
In article <8996ah$qho$[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
:Alun Jones <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in <8911el$[EMAIL PROTECTED]>:
:>I might point out that one of the most common password hashes (at least as
:>of a few years ago) encrypts only based on the first eight characters of
:>your password.
:WHAAAAAAAAAAAAT?!!
:You've *got* to be kidding!
:Any decent encryption software would have *no* problem with hashing the
:*entire* password. The word "snakeoil" springs to mind wrt anything less...
:(Unless I misunderstood your post, of course!)
Note that we are talking most *common*, not *best*. The most *common*
password hash these days is probably the Unix-style crypt(3) function.
It is a modified DES encryption built to be one-way. What is encrypted
is a binary 0; the key used is 56 bits, derived as the low order 7
bits of each of the first 8 characters of the password.
------------------------------
Reply-To: "Marty" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
From: "Marty" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: CRC-16 Reverse Algorithm ?
Date: Sat, 26 Feb 2000 20:41:34 -0800
Doug Stell <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message
news:[EMAIL PROTECTED]...
> On Fri, 25 Feb 2000 21:33:19 GMT, Anne & Lynn Wheeler
> <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> >
> >one of the interesting things in CRC16 chips in the '70s where
> >computer boxes using it for bit error detection and RF modem boxes
> >using the same chip for eliminating runs of zeros. There was strange
> >situation in some <college campus> RF/broadband systems which were
> >getting undected transmission errors because of unfortunate
> >interaction of using the same CRC16 recursively.
>
> CRCs that are initialized to all zeros (CRC-16 is one of these) can
> not detect the addition or deletion of leading zeros. Likewise, CRCs
> that are initialized to all ones can not not detect the addition or
> deletion of leading ones. That's why some CRCs initialize to some
> known, fixed value that is neither all ones nor all zeros.
>
> doug
>
Inserted and/or deleted ones at the start of a ones initialized CRC are
indeed detected.
It's also a good idea to negate the CRC at the end for detecting appended
zeros.
-Marty
------------------------------
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (David A. Wagner)
Subject: Re: NSA Linux and the GPL
Date: 26 Feb 2000 20:18:18 -0800
In article <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>,
Douglas A. Gwyn <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> "John E. Kuslich" wrote:
> > How can this guy get away with activities that would have landed
> > the rest of us in jail for a long time?
>
> I suspect it is too difficult to show that his actions amounted
> to *theft* of government secrets, since it seems reasonable to
> argue that he was merely conducting his normal job with the
> material he had in his home. Do we know what safeguards he had
> in place? (One would think that as DCI, he must have had full-time
> bodyguards at the very least.)
One would think so, but apparently not.
See the CIA Inspector General's report.
http://www.fas.org/irp/cia/product/ig_deutch.html
It's definitely worth reading, if you're interested in this.
Here's a rough paraphrase of the some of the most interesting points:
Previous DCI's indeed were guarded by full-time live-in bodyguards,
but Deutch declined, because he preferred his privacy. There was no
around-the-clock guard on his house or his computers holding classified
secrets; the PCMCIA cards and hard drives holding classified information
were not stored in the secure safes provided for that purpose when
noone was around; a domestic worker was regularly permitted unattended
access to the residence while the Deutch's were gone and the home left
unguarded; and investigators say that house security was weak enough
that the classified information (including Top Secret/Codeword material)
was vulnerable to hostile exploitation.
Another notable tidbit from that report: At work, Deutch secretly used
computers rated only for unclassified material to prepare some of his
most sensitive, classified reports (exactly the opposite of what good
security practices would demand), out of concern that CIA officials might
monitor his classified computer at night and see the sensitive reports.
(Understandable, in a Panopticon culture, although surely not the outcome
security officers would have desired. Investigators even found a virus
and classified material together on the same unclassified machine in
Deutch's office, eek.) It seems to me there is an important human-factors
lesson here!
The report also left me with the strong impression that Deutch may have
tried to cover up his mistakes after the fact. (It never says that in so
many words, but reading between the lines, I can't escape seeing support
for such a theory.) For instance, after Deutch was required to turn in
the PCMCIA cards that he allegedly used to improperly store classified
information at his home, investigators found that the contents had been
deleted just days before Deutch was required to turn them in (at a time
when they were in Deutch's personal possession, and soon after it became
clear that he would have to turn them over). Investigators were able
to restore some of the deleted files, and found TS/Codeword information.
I don't know anything about anything, but that sounds serious, doesn't it?
Much of the evidence relevant to the investigation has since been
destroyed.
Go read the IG's report for yourself, and form your own opinions.
The above is just an attempt at a summary, and may well contain mistakes.
------------------------------
From: arni <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: blowfish and questions..???
Date: Sun, 27 Feb 2000 05:03:32 GMT
Hi,
I have a two programs, one written using Eric young's "c" libbf and the
other using the cryptix api.
They are very simple programs...both use the same mode (CBC) using the
same key and same iv!! Now I try to encrypt the string using bot the
apis separately...
Now for each version separately I can encrypt and decrypt and this
works...but when I look at the encrypted versions of the same word using
the same key and the same mod and the same cipher, blowfish I notice
that the generated binary string are different....!!
Am I missing some thing here?? I am kind of novice to the world of crypt
prog...Pls help
Thx,
Arni
------------------------------
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Dave Hazelwood)
Subject: Re: ECHELON BOMBSHELL: NSA ACCUSED OF SPYING ON US POLITICIANS
Date: Sun, 27 Feb 2000 05:03:55 GMT
Mok-Kong Shen <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>Dave Hazelwood wrote:
>>
>
>> Everywhere in the world, everyday, peoples phone calls, emails and
>> faxes are monitored by Echelon, a secret government
>> surveillance network. Former spy Mike Frost cracks Echelon wide open,
>> in an interview with Steve Kroft on CBS' 60 MINUTES.
>
>I read in today's newspaper here that the CBS interview revealed
>that the former British prime minister let two of her ministers
>be 'heared' through Echelon in Canada (not in GB for legal reasons).
>One sees that this wonderful apparatus is indeed extremely valuable
>in all kinds of contexts.
>
>What the public requires is, I think, encryption of ALL communications,
>whether in text, voice or image. The algorithms need not be
>extremely strong, just sufficiently strong will be good enough.
>For, if the agencies try to decrypt a very huge volume of intercepts
>(assuming everything traversing the internet is encrypted), they
>would find that the job is infeasible, for there isn't enough computing
>resources to do that (if the encryption algorithms are not too
>trivial to crack and there is a wide spectrum of different
>algorithms -- needing to be identified before analysis).
>
>M. K. Shen
>-----------------------
>http://home.t-online.de/home/mok-kong.shen
I agree with you. I have said this for a long time. Perhaps they can
decrypt any message but they can never begin to decrypt them all.
------------------------------
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (David A. Wagner)
Subject: Re: CRC-16 Reverse Algorithm ?
Date: 26 Feb 2000 20:28:25 -0800
In article <#txNt0Ng$GA.262@cpmsnbbsa03>, Marty <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Inserted and/or deleted ones at the start of a ones initialized CRC are
> indeed detected.
Did you mean "not detected"? I thought Doug Stell got it right.
Surely I'm missing something. We know that, when the CRC uses an
primitive polynomial, the all-ones state 111..1 goes to 11..10
after clocking it once [*]. In other words, if initialize the CRC
to all-ones and feed in a zero bit, we get the new state 11..10.
But now we can imagine initializing it to the all-ones state and
feeding in a one bit; this complements the feedback tap, and so
where a zero was previously fed in, now a one will be fed in, and
thus the new state will be 11..11, always.
Consequently, if the CRC is initialized to the all-ones state, we
can insert as many one bits at the start of the message as we like,
and it won't affect the final result.
(It may be easier to see this by symmetry: a corresponding property
holds for the all-zeros state and prepending zero bits; and everything
is linear, so you can just complement everything in sight and by
symmetry the property will still hold.)
Where did I go wrong? What am I missing? I'm confused.
[*] Proof: Obvious. Treat it as a free-running LFSR. There are only
two states it can go to, i.e., 11..11 and 11..10. If it goes to
the former, then we have a cycle of length, so the LFSR isn't
full-period, and thus the polynomial can't be primitive, contradiction.
When you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains must be true,
and so surely 111..1 -> 11..10.
------------------------------
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