Cryptography-Digest Digest #147, Volume #11 Fri, 18 Feb 00 02:13:01 EST
Contents:
Re: OAP-L3 Encryption Software - Complete Help Files at web site ("Trevor Jackson,
III")
Re: Does the NSA have ALL Possible PGP keys? ("Trevor Jackson, III")
Re: Does the NSA have ALL Possible PGP keys? ("Trevor Jackson, III")
Re: Does the NSA have ALL Possible PGP keys? ("Trevor Jackson, III")
Re: NIST, AES at RSA conference ("Trevor Jackson, III")
Processor speeds. (John)
Re: RSA Speed (Hideo Shimizu)
I stole also the diary and calendar of Markku J. Saarelainen ("William A. Nelson")
Re: Method to break triple-DES ("Scott Fluhrer")
Re: Does the NSA have ALL Possible PGP keys? (W A Collier)
Q: SAC2000? (Hideo Shimizu)
Re: EOF in cipher??? ("Douglas A. Gwyn")
Re: EOF in cipher??? ("Douglas A. Gwyn")
Re: EOF in cipher??? ("Douglas A. Gwyn")
Re: Does the NSA have ALL Possible PGP keys? ("Douglas A. Gwyn")
Re: Question about OTPs ("Douglas A. Gwyn")
Re: NSA Linux and the GPL ("Douglas A. Gwyn")
Re: OAP-L3 Encryption Software - Complete Help Files at web site (Anthony Stephen
Szopa)
Re: Using virtually any cipher as public key system? (John Savard)
Re: NSA Linux and the GPL (John Savard)
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Thu, 17 Feb 2000 22:17:02 -0500
From: "Trevor Jackson, III" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Crossposted-To: talk.politics.crypto,alt.privacy
Subject: Re: OAP-L3 Encryption Software - Complete Help Files at web site
Anthony Stephen Szopa wrote:
> Why are people using OAP-L3 encryption software with no complaints? Because
> they are more than satisfied: that's why.
You are basing a conclusion upon a tautology. The conclusion you have reach is
that the software is good. The basis is the fact that the people using it are
not complaining about it.
This basis is tautological because there are enough alternatives that a person
not "satisfied" with your software would not use it. Thus only people satisfied
with it will use it. The set of people who will use it and also complain about
it is empty. From the emptiness of this set, nothing sensible can be concluded.
I note in passing that this line of argument fits in quite well with the style
of reasoning illustrated on your web site.
Your software is garbage. Deal with it.
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 17 Feb 2000 22:24:47 -0500
From: "Trevor Jackson, III" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Crossposted-To: misc.survivalism
Subject: Re: Does the NSA have ALL Possible PGP keys?
Johnny Bravo wrote:
> On Wed, 16 Feb 2000 12:07:11 -0800, "tiwolf" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
> >Anything is possible given time, money, and talent.
>
> How many times are you going to post this blatant stupidity?
>
> Many things are 100% impossible, finding the biggest number for
> instance. Get this through your head; some problems do not have a
> solution to find.
>
> >Government has nothing to do with it. In this case the government desire
> >to control along with access to money (tax payers), and (through the obscene
> >spending of the taxpayers money) talent.
>
> Make up your mind, does government have something to do with it or not?
> Makes no difference, impossible is just that, impossible. Even with
> infinite time, money and talent. Not even God can tell you what the
> biggest number is.
Ah, but can he create a rock that he cannot lift? (The classic answer is no --
he would not).
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 17 Feb 2000 22:26:39 -0500
From: "Trevor Jackson, III" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Crossposted-To: misc.survivalism
Subject: Re: Does the NSA have ALL Possible PGP keys?
tiwolf wrote:
> Now Johnny who is blatant stupidity, you claim that even God does not know
> what the highest number is. Given that God is created all things in the
> universe, and inspired human creativity and invention, how can you say that
> God does not know what the highest number is. That would be an indication of
> limit and according to the philosophical debate and my religious up bringing
> God is limitless in power and knowledge.
The true issue appears at last. Your upbringing is interfering with your
ability to think. It's a reasonably popular excuse these days.
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 17 Feb 2000 22:32:41 -0500
From: "Trevor Jackson, III" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Crossposted-To: misc.survivalism
Subject: Re: Does the NSA have ALL Possible PGP keys?
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
> > This is a claim distinct from the statement that NSA has "all possible
> > keys". It amounts to the claim that the NSA has or can obtain all keys in
> > use. While this claim cannot be refuted by size-of-the-universe
> > calculations, it still requires substantial support to be credible.
> >
> > To me it looks pretty nekkid.
>
> Well, any basic skilled hacker can get *your* private key plus keyphrase,
> and so probably does the NSA. See my other reply for an explanation why.
>
> It's another question wether the NSA does actively collect anyone's keys
> without the person being a special target. I am not an American and I
> must admit that there's a strange paranoia of US citizens towards their
> own agencies. I have no clue why the people always fear the NSA and not
> equivalent foreign agencies. Seems to have something to do with the
> federal structure and the size of the USA, but this irrational distrust
> against the government is something foreigners have problems to
> understand.
One of the foundations of the comprehension problems foreigners have with US
citizens distrust of their government is that they make the mistaken initial
assumption that the distrust is irrational. It is not. It is a quite rational
response to the fact that the US government is the largest threat to the life,
liberty, and pursuit of happiness of US citizens.
What part of "Government is not reason, government is force." do you not
understand?
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 17 Feb 2000 22:49:21 -0500
From: "Trevor Jackson, III" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: NIST, AES at RSA conference
David Wagner wrote:
> In article <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>,
> John Savard <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> > Without [selecting from a large pool of possible ciphers],
> > the often raised argument that the
> > use of differing ciphers is as strong as the "weakest link" would be a
> > serious and effective objection, in my opinion, but the use of
> > multiple layers of ciphers addresses that objection.
>
> How does it address that objection?
> You're still left with the possibility that the cascade is only as strong
> as the weakest cipher, except now it's even worse than before: now your
> cipher might be as weak as the weakest cipher *in the entire pool*,
> rather than just the weakest of some fixed three ciphers. Increasing
> the pool size increases the chances that you have a very weak cipher
> in the pool, and thus seems to make this "weakest link" problem worse.
> What am I missing?
I believe you have missed the 2-D nature of the proposal, and have applied
the constraint on the "other" axis.
Given that each message is enciphered with a different set of ciphers drawn
from a pool then the universe of messages to be sent can be represented by a
rectangle as high as the cipher cascade/stack and as wide as the set of
messages. The constraint applies to the "height" axis in that the weakest
stack possible as a lower bound that is set by the weakest member of the
sub-pool rather than the weakest member of the whole pool.
Does this help?
------------------------------
Subject: Processor speeds.
From: John <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Date: Thu, 17 Feb 2000 20:06:59 -0800
How many MIPS does a pentium 3 perform? How many does the
fastest super computer perform?
* Sent from RemarQ http://www.remarq.com The Internet's Discussion Network *
The fastest and easiest way to search and participate in Usenet - Free!
------------------------------
From: Hideo Shimizu <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: RSA Speed
Date: Fri, 18 Feb 2000 13:16:00 +0900
Speed comparison of popular crypto algorithms are found at
http://www.eskimo.com/~weidai/benchmarks.html
Erik wrote:
>
> I wrote a program to do RSA with a 1100 bit modulus. I use 65537 for
> the public key exponent, and the private key exponent is, of course,
> near 1100 bits. It works, and encrypting with the public key takes
> about a quarter of a second, but decrypting with the private key takes
> 43 seconds on a 400 MHz Pentium. Does this seem right?
>
> Erik
Hideo Shimizu
TAO, Japan
------------------------------
From: "William A. Nelson" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Crossposted-To: talk.politics.european-union
Subject: I stole also the diary and calendar of Markku J. Saarelainen
Date: Fri, 18 Feb 2000 05:14:09 GMT
I stole also the diary and calendar of Markku J. Saarelainen. This diary
contains detailed entries of his and his family's personal life since
1989. Many entries also refer to specific people in 1980's and 1990's.
Basically, Markku J. Saarelainen was indeed planted by the Soviet
intelligence to Finland in the late 1960's. He seemed keep detailed
records of all activities and processes relevant to his business and
personal life. I did find one article from 1970's in which he, when he
was 9, was interviewed by a newspaper man and in which he described how
good the internationalization is. This article was in a local newspaper
in Finland and I personally found this extremely amazing. It does appear
to me that he was a kind of the record keeper since the early 1980's. In
some diary entries, Markku J. Saarelainen refers to specific people and
the memorable Chernobyl nuclear catastrophe in the USSR. In some
sections of his diaries, he describes specific circumstances and events
in great detail. In 1980's he also seem to refer himself as Make
Macedonian, which is interesting since he was against NATO's bombings in
Yugoslavia in 1999. Just to show an example of his life, these diaries
are going to be posted on the USENET and provided for all embassies
around the world.
Yours,
William A. Nelson
------------------------------
From: "Scott Fluhrer" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Method to break triple-DES
Date: Thu, 17 Feb 2000 21:13:20 -0800
Mickey McInnis <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message
news:88hlt8$m76$[EMAIL PROTECTED]...
> In article <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, Johnny Bravo
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
> |> On Thu, 17 Feb 2000 17:28:31 +0100, "Adam Szewczyk"
> |> <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> |>
> |> >Hello,
> |> >
> |> >I study computer science at the University of Wroclaw (Poland).
Actually I'm
> |> >looking for an implementation of a method to break triple-DES (linear
and
> |> >differential cryptanalysis). If you know where I can find those
informations
> |> >please let me now.
> |>
> |> ROTFLMAO.
> |>
> |> If you ever figure such a thing out, let me know, there are a few
banks
> |> here in the US with entire too much money.
>
> Actually, I've heard that there was a paper published recently showing
> a potentially practical attack on Triple DES that's considerably less
> effort than standard key exhaustion against a 112 bit (2xDES) key.
> It's some sort of meet-in-the middle attack, and was not too many times
> more trials than regular DES by key exhaustion.
>
> If true, and if I recall correctly, it did sound like Triple DES was
> significantly less secure than previously thought.
>
> Unfortunately, I don't have a reference. I think it was in the last year
> or so that I saw it mentioned, probably on this newsgroup.
Is this the attack by Stephen Lucks(sp?)? In the version of the paper
I saw, it took gobs of known plaintext, O(2**90) trial DES encryptions
and an unspecified (large) number of table operations. I have the paper
at work -- if you need any more details, ask.
--
poncho
------------------------------
From: W A Collier <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Crossposted-To: comp.security.pgp,misc.survivalism
Subject: Re: Does the NSA have ALL Possible PGP keys?
Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Fri, 18 Feb 2000 05:20:14 -0700
In article <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, [EMAIL PROTECTED]
says...
> As a follow up to this, there have been occasional mentions in the
> press both throughout the Gulf conflict (not the Desert Storm one but
> the later missile launches...) and during the Nato bombing of Kosovo
> referring to interception and decryption of `bad guy' communications
> by the allies. In some cases specific mention has been made of
> `decryption' ...
>
> [Sorry I can't provide citations right now...]
>
> I'm curious, if PGP and similar widely available freeware and
> commercial packages are so secure why aren't the Iraqis, Serbs, etc
> etc using them?
>
> Of are they using them and we are still cracking them?
They were using what they wre trained on and had paid for: Good used
(compromised) Russian crypto gear from the early 1970's. They spent
their modernization on planes and tanks, not on logistics and commo
(C3I). Consequently, thats where we attacked and crushed them: C3I and
logistics. Aside from that, traffic analysis (somethein that famous
agency is quite good at) combined with Radio DF and satellite and JSTARS
imagery, and adding in decent HUMINT (Special forces and cavaly scout and
Marien Recon forward sections) can paint a very good picture of an enemy,
his forces, their dsiposition and probable intent - without much or any
crypto breaks.
------------------------------
From: Hideo Shimizu <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Q: SAC2000?
Date: Fri, 18 Feb 2000 14:14:25 +0900
Where can I found a information about SAC 2000?
I can't found on old homepage
http://adonis.ee.queensu.ca:8000/sac/
Hideo Shimizu
TAO, Japan
------------------------------
From: "Douglas A. Gwyn" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: EOF in cipher???
Date: Fri, 18 Feb 2000 05:41:32 GMT
lordcow77 wrote:
> According to POSIX,
> fopen("foo","t")
> must be identical to
> fopen("foo","b"),
> so if you're programming on a UNIXy enough system, it shouldn't
> matter how you open the stream as long as you're consistent.
That is an additional constraint beyond the C standard,
imposed for POSIX implementations only. It was obvious
from the original poster's symptoms that there was a real
difference between text and binary streams on his system.
At any rate, it is better to code portably when there is
little or no extra effort required to do so. Even if one
is currently using a POSIX system, he may need to move
the application to a non-POSIX system later, and it is
much nicer to not have lots of portability problems spring
up at that point.
------------------------------
From: "Douglas A. Gwyn" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: EOF in cipher???
Date: Fri, 18 Feb 2000 05:51:16 GMT
"Trevor Jackson, III" wrote:
> Mok-Kong Shen wrote:
> > I am ignorant of what the C standard specifies. Question: Does
> > 'binary' require the file to be multiple of words or just any multiple
> > of bytes will do? Thanks.
> Neither. The elements written to files are characters. Sometimes
> (usually) that means bytes.
Wrong. Bytes are written to binary files, characters to text files.
In C, char (or more usually, unsigned char) is the data type used for
bytes, and wchar_t is the type used for internal representation of
characters (which are in general stored externally as multibyte
sequences). If you limit yourself to ASCII, you can pretend that
char (bytes) is your basic text unit as well. (In fact, that's
what C started out with, before international character sets became
important.)
The basic C standard I/O functions such as getc/putc operate on
bytes, always; when the stream was opened as a text stream, there
is (on many non-POSIX systems) additional mapping between the
program internal data and external data. For example, newline
pseudo-characters are introduced between text records in a fixed-
record format environment, or for MS-DOS, CR,LF pairs are replaced
by a single NL internally, and ^Z might be interpreted as ending
the text stream (which was the cause of this thread). No such
mapping is performed when the file was opened as a binary stream.
If you're reading multibyte characters, you need to either use
the standard I/O functions that automatically convert to/from
wchar_t representation, or parse them from the raw byte stream
yourself (perhaps using standard C functions such as mbtowcs).
------------------------------
From: "Douglas A. Gwyn" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: EOF in cipher???
Date: Fri, 18 Feb 2000 05:54:02 GMT
"Trevor Jackson, III" wrote:
> Runu Knips wrote:
> > EOF works well, because EOF is defined to be -1, while all characters
> > are returned as nonnegative values.
> This is _completely_ off topic. But the last statement is completely
> false. The signedness of characters is implementation defined. Thus on
> some systems characters are signed.
No, first of all you mean char type, not characters.
Secondly, the standard I/O functions such as getc deal with
the data as unsigned char. So long as sizeof(char) < sizeof(int),
which is practically always the case, EOF (-1) can never result
from inputting any data value, even when char is a signed type.
Please stop giving bad C advice!
------------------------------
From: "Douglas A. Gwyn" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Crossposted-To: misc.survivalism
Subject: Re: Does the NSA have ALL Possible PGP keys?
Date: Fri, 18 Feb 2000 06:05:58 GMT
"Trevor Jackson, III" wrote:
> Ah, but can he create a rock that he cannot lift?
Basically, the question is whether a contradiction can exist.
If you take the position that it cannot (which is fundamental
to effective thought), then it is easy to show that there is
a problem with the definition of X as something that has no
restrictions. Non-contradiction *is* a restriction; thus the
conclusion is that X as described must not exist. For some
people, this comes down to choosing between belief in an
all-powerful God versus a non-contradictory universe. (Others
manage to avoid making the choice, in which case they have
implicitly chosen the former.)
------------------------------
From: "Douglas A. Gwyn" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Question about OTPs
Date: Fri, 18 Feb 2000 06:09:55 GMT
Tim Tyler wrote:
> A deterministic compressor is not likely to be capable of producing a
> uniform distribution of cyphertexts - because some messages are sent more
> frequently than others.
That could be taken into account. Any really efficient compression
scheme needs to take into account the statistical properties of the
population from which messages are drawn.
However, truly *perfect* compression would mean not having to
transmit *any* information, since the model would be perfect and
the receiver could obtain the next message by stepping the model
one click. As Shannon explained long ago, information has to do
with surprise. If there is no surprise, the information content
is zero.
------------------------------
From: "Douglas A. Gwyn" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: NSA Linux and the GPL
Date: Fri, 18 Feb 2000 06:11:12 GMT
Adam Durana wrote:
> The bigger question is why is the NSA wasting thier time with Linux?
What makes you think they are? Mighty few computers used by NSA are
running Linux.
------------------------------
From: Anthony Stephen Szopa <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Crossposted-To: talk.politics.crypto,alt.privacy
Subject: Re: OAP-L3 Encryption Software - Complete Help Files at web site
Date: Thu, 17 Feb 2000 22:43:42 -0800
"Trevor Jackson, III" wrote:
>
> Anthony Stephen Szopa wrote:
>
> > Why are people using OAP-L3 encryption software with no complaints? Because
> > they are more than satisfied: that's why.
>
> You are basing a conclusion upon a tautology. The conclusion you have reach is
> that the software is good. The basis is the fact that the people using it are
> not complaining about it.
>
> This basis is tautological because there are enough alternatives that a person
> not "satisfied" with your software would not use it. Thus only people satisfied
> with it will use it. The set of people who will use it and also complain about
> it is empty. From the emptiness of this set, nothing sensible can be concluded.
>
> I note in passing that this line of argument fits in quite well with the style
> of reasoning illustrated on your web site.
>
> Your software is garbage. Deal with it.
The theory and operation of the software is available in the Help
files found at the web site just as they are in the software package.
Convince us. Prove your position. Demonstrate that the software
is "garbage."
It is a very simple theory. No special knowledge is required.
Any person with average intelligence should be able to understand
it. It is not lengthy. And it is clearly expressed with some
repetition for emphasis.
Prove to us your opinions are to be considered seriously.
Considering the theory and operation of the software, prove to us
why it is "garbage."
Otherwise we will just have to consider you unprofessional,
irresponsible, ignorant, and possibly stupid.
This goes for the rest of you superficial critics, also.
AS
------------------------------
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (John Savard)
Subject: Re: Using virtually any cipher as public key system?
Date: Fri, 18 Feb 2000 06:41:45 GMT
On Thu, 17 Feb 2000 10:08:34 -0500, Anton Stiglic <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
wrote, in part:
>That is what I said.... making a distinction between symmetric encryption
>and public key encryption.
What you said was:
>>>A simple way to achieve some kind of public key crypto using symmetric
>>>algorithms
which, in the context of the post to which you were replying implied
you were claiming that what you described was a way to achieve the
properties of public-key encryption by means of using symmetric
algorithms _for the public-key function_. But then you went on to
describe standard Diffie-Hellman key exchange, not some scheme whereby
one could replace Diffie-Hellman, RSA, and all that sort of thing by
some innovative protocol using only symmetric ciphers like DES and
hash functions like SHA-1, which is what the original poster claimed
he had read about somehwere.
There is a distinction between using symmetric algorithms _with_
public-key encryption and using symmetric algorithms _for_ public-key
encryption.
John Savard (teneerf <-)
http://www.ecn.ab.ca/~jsavard/index.html
------------------------------
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (John Savard)
Subject: Re: NSA Linux and the GPL
Date: Fri, 18 Feb 2000 06:48:27 GMT
On Fri, 18 Feb 2000 06:11:12 GMT, "Douglas A. Gwyn" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
wrote, in part:
>What makes you think they are? Mighty few computers used by NSA are
>running Linux.
I'm sure that is true, at present. But there was a news item that the
NSA has commissioned a private firm to modify Linux so that it would
be a secure enough operating system for the NSA to use.
This could simply be a precautionary measure: another recent news item
has SGI wanting to sell off its Cray acquisition. Since the new
Itanium chip has a supercomputer-like architecture (it even has pop
count, but it misses - narrowly - having a bit transpose instruction),
the NSA may be anticipating that a shrinking supercomputer market in
the civilian sector might leave it with no alternative but to rely
upon the generic PC clone, that being the only shape in which computer
power might be economically available in future.
Note that brute-force key search is an application that is easily
parallelizable, even on loosely-coupled architectures, so a switch to
Beowulf-type machines to save money would not be accompanied by a loss
in utility.
John Savard (teneerf <-)
http://www.ecn.ab.ca/~jsavard/index.html
------------------------------
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