Cryptography-Digest Digest #871, Volume #13 Mon, 12 Mar 01 06:13:01 EST
Contents:
__Cut and Paste C codes = hardware! (kctang)
Re: An extremely difficult (possibly original) cryptogram (John Savard)
Re: OverWrite: best wipe software? (Benjamin Goldberg)
Re: FIPS 140-2 PRG (Benjamin Goldberg)
AIS (Soeren Gammelmark)
Re: OverWrite: best wipe software? (Anthony Stephen Szopa)
Popularity of AES (Mok-Kong Shen)
Re: OverWrite: best wipe software? (Mok-Kong Shen)
Re: Tempest Systems (Frank Gerlach)
Re: Encryption software (Benjamin Goldberg)
Re: OverWrite: best wipe software? (Anthony Stephen Szopa)
Re: OverWrite: best wipe software? (Benjamin Goldberg)
Re: Tempest Systems (Frank Gerlach)
Re: ideas of D.Chaum about digital cash and whether tax offices are (Doc.Cypher)
Re: Potential of machine translation techniques? (Joe H. Acker)
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
From: kctang <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: __Cut and Paste C codes = hardware!
Date: Mon, 12 Mar 2001 15:17:51 +0800
Dear all,
Cut and Paste C codes = hardware!
===================================
http://www.jrs.com/legac.htm
http://www.frontierd.com/art.htm
http://www.cleveldesign.com/products/index.html
RSA processor, DEA processor, ECC processor, . . . .
Thanks a LOT, kctang
------------------------------
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (John Savard)
Crossposted-To: rec.puzzles
Subject: Re: An extremely difficult (possibly original) cryptogram
Date: Mon, 12 Mar 2001 07:25:13 GMT
On Sun, 11 Mar 2001 22:00:49 -0500, "Ashish Kasturia"
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote, in part:
>why is that?
Basically because they serve no purpose.
It is one thing to have a puzzle presented: such as "here is a message
in monalphabetic substitution", or "here is a message in Playfair", or
"here is a message in simple columnar transposition". People enjoy
solving puzzles, so if someone does the work of composing one, that is
appreciated.
Also, if one has developed a new cipher, a *description* of that new
cipher could be of interest; people could look at that description,
comment on it, and point out any flaws.
But a message in an unknown and undescribed cipher?
Ciphers exist which are like DES - *much* too strong and complicated
for a single message to be attacked as a puzzle. If someone claims to
have a cipher strong enough for real use, even if that cipher is
considerably weaker than DES, trying to break it would involve an
_immense_ amount of work that wouldn't get anywhere.
When the cipher is not known, an even greater chunk of that work is
wasted.
It is, of course, quite likely that people who disregard the
conventions to present their cipher in this way also do not have a
strong cipher, and so some people in search of challenging puzzles may
indeed give it a go.
John Savard
http://home.ecn.ab.ca/~jsavard/crypto.htm
------------------------------
From: Benjamin Goldberg <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Crossposted-To: alt.hacker
Subject: Re: OverWrite: best wipe software?
Date: Mon, 12 Mar 2001 08:04:05 GMT
Anthony Stephen Szopa wrote:
[snip]
> In addition to the prior instructions here are the new
> recommendations and facilities. What have I forgotten?
>
> "NOTE: For best results this program should be used only with
> Windows OSs and there should be no other programs running while this
> program is running. Maximum security from using this software
> results when overwriting files that are stored on 1.44MB floppy disks.
> Therefore, your most sensitive files should be written directly to
> 1.44MB floppy disks if you must be as absolutely sure as possible
> that this data is as nearly impossible as possible to recover once
> overwritten using this software. SCSI hard drives are not
> recommended. Nor are compressed drives. I use this software to
> overwrite files on my own IDE hard drives.
Bwahahahahaha! Now that you finally figured out that there's no way,
using purely portable code (the stdio library), to do what you
originally wanted to do with hdds, you added a disclaimer limiting your
software's usage to only those cases in which it works, id est, the ones
where we don't need your software anyway.
If I've got data on a floppy, and I want it securely erased, I copy the
stuff I want to save to a new floppy, and burn the old one. Floppies
are cheap. The cost of buying new floppies is lower than the security
risk of downloading binaries from your website.
--
The difference between theory and practice is that in theory, theory and
practice are identical, but in practice, they are not.
------------------------------
From: Benjamin Goldberg <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: FIPS 140-2 PRG
Date: Mon, 12 Mar 2001 08:11:06 GMT
Yoad Lustig wrote:
>
> I've recently implemented the test (FIPS 140-2) and run it on the
> first three files from marsglia's random CD. I got considerably more
> failures then the expected 0.0001 (time 5 tests).
>
> Does anyone know whether there is a mistake in the document? or there
> is an implementation of the test I can use as reference to check my
> code?
>
> thanks in advance
> yoad
>
> [EMAIL PROTECTED]
The Marsaglia data on the CD is flawed due to it's either having been
written in dos ascii mode, or transfered via ftp from unix to dos in
ascii mode. The effect of this is that every \n is preceded by a \r
(but not all \rs are followed by \ns... those are the 'real' \rs). If
you run a filter on it so that any \r\n sequence is replaced with just a
\n, and THEN run your tests, the problem should be fixed.
--
The difference between theory and practice is that in theory, theory and
practice are identical, but in practice, they are not.
------------------------------
From: Soeren Gammelmark <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: AIS
Date: Mon, 12 Mar 2001 09:16:21 +0100
Hi
I've heard about an algorithm called AIS (I think). Does anyone have any
links to how it works?
Thanks
S=F8ren
------------------------------
From: Anthony Stephen Szopa <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Crossposted-To: alt.hacker
Subject: Re: OverWrite: best wipe software?
Date: Mon, 12 Mar 2001 00:26:56 -0800
Tom St Denis wrote:
>
> "Anthony Stephen Szopa" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message
> news:[EMAIL PROTECTED]...
> > Tell us now why OverWrite will not work.
>
> Reply to my reply of your OP.
>
> Tom
Are you referring to your sarcastic ridiculing reply to my original
post.
I don't think such deserves a response.
------------------------------
From: Mok-Kong Shen <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Popularity of AES
Date: Mon, 12 Mar 2001 09:33:29 +0100
A superficial look at the core specification of MeT
(mobile electronic transactions) released on 21 Feb shows
that the list of supported crypto algorithms consists of
RC5, DES, 3DES and IDEA. Does anyone know why AES is not
on the list? Thanks.
M. K. Shen
------------------------------
From: Mok-Kong Shen <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Crossposted-To: alt.hacker
Subject: Re: OverWrite: best wipe software?
Date: Mon, 12 Mar 2001 09:57:36 +0100
Benjamin Goldberg wrote:
>
[snip]
> If I've got data on a floppy, and I want it securely erased, I copy the
> stuff I want to save to a new floppy, and burn the old one. Floppies
> are cheap. The cost of buying new floppies is lower than the security
> risk of downloading binaries from your website.
Removable media, since they are now all quite cheap, should
be physically destroyed for preventing recovery. For hard
disk drives there are firms specialized in recovering deleted
data. According to posts in the group long back, overwriting
a couple of times isn't secure. I remember also reading a
newspaper article saying that a firm succeeded to recover
most of the informations stored on hard drives of a lab
that were demaged by fire.
M. K. Shen
------------------------------
From: Frank Gerlach <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Tempest Systems
Date: Mon, 12 Mar 2001 10:01:52 +0100
Steve Portly wrote:
> You would think that an adversary could distinguish the location of a noise
> generator from the true location to be monitored given sufficient time
> discrimination.
A directional antenna is always a good idea, but is in most cases not
really necessary. Even, if you include a jammer right into the PC and
its screen, it will be possible to do a lot of signal processing tricks.
And even, if you synchronize the jammer with the PCs clocks, the jamming
signal will just be added linearly. Imagine a RC4-cipher without modular
adding (ie XOR). Could easily be broken if the message would contain a
lot of repetitions of the same string. The same is for one-time pads,
btw. Their strength rests greatly on modular adding of the key stream.
Unfortunately, I have not yet heard about some kind of "modular-adding
mu-metal"
------------------------------
From: Benjamin Goldberg <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Encryption software
Date: Mon, 12 Mar 2001 09:05:17 GMT
Paul Crowley wrote:
>
> Benjamin Goldberg <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
> > Well, yeah. Noone is likely to do any better than the PGP system
> > any time soon. They might, however, do better in terms of ciphers.
> > The PGP system can, with little difficulty, be made to use whatever
> > cipher you want. That's why noone intelligent says, X is better
> > than pgp. They might say, Y is better than AES, and Z is better
> > than RSA or ECC.
>
> I agree in principle, but just to pick a nit: it might make sense to
> say "S/MIME is worse than PGP" or "Pegwit is better than PGP", if
> you're comparing standards. Or "GPG is better than PGP" if you're
> comparing implementations of of a standard. You're right to say that
> statements like "AES is better than PGP" are "not even wrong".
>
> "SSL is better than PGP" is also "not even wrong", but "For this
> purpose, SSL is better than PGP" or "In this regard, PGP is better
> than SSL" might make sense.
Yes, absolutely. Your nitpick is exactly what I meant. Umm, do you
actually think that pegwit is better than pgp? j/c.
--
The difference between theory and practice is that in theory, theory and
practice are identical, but in practice, they are not.
------------------------------
From: Anthony Stephen Szopa <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Crossposted-To: alt.hacker
Subject: Re: OverWrite: best wipe software?
Date: Mon, 12 Mar 2001 01:06:17 -0800
Benjamin Goldberg wrote:
>
> Anthony Stephen Szopa wrote:
> [snip]
> > In addition to the prior instructions here are the new
> > recommendations and facilities. What have I forgotten?
> >
> > "NOTE: For best results this program should be used only with
> > Windows OSs and there should be no other programs running while this
> > program is running. Maximum security from using this software
> > results when overwriting files that are stored on 1.44MB floppy disks.
> > Therefore, your most sensitive files should be written directly to
> > 1.44MB floppy disks if you must be as absolutely sure as possible
> > that this data is as nearly impossible as possible to recover once
> > overwritten using this software. SCSI hard drives are not
> > recommended. Nor are compressed drives. I use this software to
> > overwrite files on my own IDE hard drives.
>
> Bwahahahahaha! Now that you finally figured out that there's no way,
> using purely portable code (the stdio library), to do what you
> originally wanted to do with hdds, you added a disclaimer limiting your
> software's usage to only those cases in which it works, id est, the ones
> where we don't need your software anyway.
>
> If I've got data on a floppy, and I want it securely erased, I copy the
> stuff I want to save to a new floppy, and burn the old one. Floppies
> are cheap. The cost of buying new floppies is lower than the security
> risk of downloading binaries from your website.
>
> --
> The difference between theory and practice is that in theory, theory and
> practice are identical, but in practice, they are not.
Do I detect anguish under this evasion?
I told you that if you dedicate a partition of about 18,144,000
bytes on your hard drive, for example, let's call it drive H:\, that
you can be assured of overwriting any data you write there with
OverWrite if you follow my recommendations.
For instance, write 14 files of dummy data of about 1,296,000 bytes
each to H:\ thus filling it up completely. Then delete, say the 7th
file. (This is a restricted example to highlight my contention.)
Write any sensitive data to this newly freed space in H:\ and perform
any processing you like there within this free space on H:\.
When you want to subsequently overwrite this data using Ciphile
Software's OverWrite Utility, then delete any file(s) in this free
space. Now delete the 6th and 8th dummy data files which bound both
sides of this space. Now write a file of 3,888,000 bytes in this
free space. This should completely overwrite this newly freed space
that includes the original free space from the deletion of the 7th
dummy file originally. Now use OverWrite to overwrite this
3,888,000 byte file. Overwriting a file of this size should be
larger than any hardware cache in your system so it will force a
flush and therefore a write to disk.
To claim that my conclusions are wrong you have to argue that
the original dummy file, the 7th, was not between the 6th and 8th.
Or that the OS or hardware actually writes to another partition /
drive as part of its optimizations.
Additionally you will have to support your claim that my observations
of the hard drive LED are nothing more than a light indicating the
passing of data perhaps to the hard drive cache when I have in fact
observed that the hard drive heads not only move in association with
the LED lighting up but a vigorous write operation is obviously
taking place. If what you say is true why are the hard drive heads
repositioning and writing to the hard drive if this is only an LED
lighting up. What is going on here?
I guess the bread and butter point I am making that OverWrite does
work if used according to my recommendations on hard drives is too
much for you or anyone else to handle so you go off on pathetic side
tracks some of which I have conveniently provided you to amuse
yourselves while you ponder the unthinkable: that Ciphile Software's
OverWrite program damn well works!
Anyway, I am confident that even if you all refuse to submit and show
some sincerity, there are plenty of others who have been reading
these threads and have gained much insight from the conclusions I
have arrived at of late. The cat is out of the bag. So I guess we
can agree that whether or not we agreed as to whether or not the cat
was in the bag to begin with now that we have looked into it we can
see that the cat is not there. I conclude that the cat is now out of
the bag. He is smiling at you from my final results and
recommendations for using OverWrite that seem to me to have addressed
any pertinent objections previously made.
Yes. I know. You necessarily must completely ignore my final
conclusions and claim that the cat was never there. Fine.
------------------------------
From: Benjamin Goldberg <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Crossposted-To: alt.hacker
Subject: Re: OverWrite: best wipe software?
Date: Mon, 12 Mar 2001 09:08:37 GMT
Anthony Stephen Szopa wrote:
>
> Tom St Denis wrote:
> >
> > "Anthony Stephen Szopa" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message
> > news:[EMAIL PROTECTED]...
> > > Tell us now why OverWrite will not work.
> >
> > Reply to my reply of your OP.
> >
> > Tom
>
> Are you referring to your sarcastic ridiculing reply to my original
> post.
>
> I don't think such deserves a response.
I'm curious, who is this person named "I don't think" who deserves a
response? Oh, I see. YOU don't think.
hehehe
--
The difference between theory and practice is that in theory, theory and
practice are identical, but in practice, they are not.
------------------------------
From: Frank Gerlach <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Tempest Systems
Date: Mon, 12 Mar 2001 10:08:25 +0100
"Douglas A. Gwyn" wrote:
> I don't know what you meant about the tsream cipher,
A jamming device can be thought of as the key stream of a stream cipher.
(Although nobody would legitimately want to decrypt it)
Also, one would have to make sure the output of the jammer is really
good real or pseudo randomness.
------------------------------
Date: 12 Mar 2001 10:00:10 -0000
From: Doc.Cypher <Use-Author-Address-Header@[127.1]>
Subject: Re: ideas of D.Chaum about digital cash and whether tax offices are
Crossposted-To: talk.politics.crypto,alt.cypherpunks
=====BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE=====
On Sun, 11 Mar 2001, John Christensen <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>John Christensen wrote:
>
>> Anonymous wrote:
>>
>> >
>> > Sorry to step out of the line, but could you please give me
>> > some URL on
>> > freenet technology? My search did only turn up some
>> > providers. <g>
>> >
>>
>> Try http://www.freenet.org
>> Now could you tell me how you use mail2news ?
>> Thanks.
>
>Oops, sorry, try this one: http://freenet.sourceforge.net/
Check out the APA-S faq mentioned in my mail headers. You're probably going
to find it easiest if you get one of the Remailer client programs such as
Quicksilver or JBN.
~~~
This PGP signature only certifies the sender and date of the message.
It implies no approval from the administrators of nym.alias.net.
Date: Mon Mar 12 10:00:04 2001 GMT
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
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------------------------------
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Joe H. Acker)
Subject: Re: Potential of machine translation techniques?
Date: Mon, 12 Mar 2001 11:32:11 +0100
Mok-Kong Shen <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> "Douglas A. Gwyn" wrote:
> >
> > No, you'd be better off with a code system.
>
> It is meant to be a parallel supplementary path. It
> could help encryption. A new language implies also a
> new vocabulary, hence it is (much) more than a code
> system.
If you mean just a new vocabulary but no changes in morphosyntax, you
have a code book that translates each word of the pt language into a ct
language. However, some regularities at word and sentence level can
still be exploited. For a completely different language, you'd need a
different grammar as well. In WWII, it was a reasonable assumption that
the dialects used by the native speakers were not well known or secret
to German linguists and cryptanalysts. But as the Indian languages did
not contain enough military vocabulary, they used codebooks as well.
Here's a sample (taken from Wrixton 1989, 1992, 1998):
TERM COMANCHE MEANING COMMANCHE (transcribed)
enemy enemy tu-wa-ho-na
machine gun sewing machine techa-keena
soldier red-stomach ex-sha-bah-nah
But: This does only make cryptanalysis harder, if the language is
unknown or not exlored well enough and the code is secret to the
attacker. So your artificial languages have to be secret. But if you can
keep an artificial language secret like a key, you can use a complete
codebook as well. However, if the code does map to words of the pt
language, it's less secure than an artificial language if the artificial
languages has different letter, digram, trigram, etc. frequencies than
the pt language. But you can also chose a code that has different
frequencies than the pt language. But anyway, if the code really is
secret, it doesn't matter because you don't even need to encrypt it. You
just add encryption for the very likely case that the code is partially
known. But if it is not secret at all, I'd guess it can only improve
security by changing pt frequencies of any kind. In this case, I'd say
"flattening the frequencies" by homophonic substitution like discussed
in the other thread might be the best code.
Regarding codebooks, I have two questions:
(1) To eliminate regularities at word or sentence level, the code does
not only have to do word substitution but also mix up the word order
based on a key. How do you do that cryptographically secure? I'd like to
use a conventional block cipher or secure hash for that.
(2) You'd want to create a codebook on the fly based on a key. How do
you do that?
Here's what I mean by question (2): Suppose you have a dictionary D_1
and another dictionary D_2. You have a key K for a conventional block
cipher. Now you want to map each entry of D_1 uniquely to D_2 using K.
The inverse operation should be as hard as possible without K, but easy
with K.
I'm especially interested in the case D_1 = D_2, i.e. I'd like to take a
large dictionary and map entries from it to other entries of it and vice
versa. How can I use a conventional block or stream cipher or hash
function to do that securely? Seems I need to use the cipher to yield
dictionary indices between 1..i, but how do I do that?
Regards,
Erich
------------------------------
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