Re: Private Key Generation from Passwords/phrases

2007-02-03 Thread Alexander Klimov
On Sun, 28 Jan 2007, Steven M. Bellovin wrote: Beyond that, 60K doesn't make that much of a difference even with a traditional /etc/passwd file -- it's only an average factor of 15 reduction in the attacker's workload. While that's not trivial, it's also less than, say, a one-character

Re: News.com: IBM donates new privacy tool to open-source Higgins

2007-02-03 Thread Anne Lynn Wheeler
John Gilmore wrote: http://news.com.com/IBM+donates+new+privacy+tool+to+open-source/2100-1029_3-6153625.html IBM donates new privacy tool to open-source By Joris Evers Staff Writer, CNET News.com Published: January 25, 2007, 9:00 PM PST ... For example, when making a purchase online,

Chaos on a chip

2007-02-03 Thread Sean McGrath
Original Message Subject: Physics News Update 810 PHYSICS NEWS UPDATE The American Institute of Physics Bulletin of Physics News Number 810 30 January 2007 by Phillip F. Schewe, Ben Stein, Turner Brinton, and Davide Castelvecchi www.aip.org/pnu [...]

Re: Intuitive cryptography that's also practical and secure.

2007-02-03 Thread Leichter, Jerry
| ...I agree with you about intuitive cryptography. What you're | complaining about is, in effect, Why Johnny Can't Hash. There was | another instance of that in today's NY Times. In one of the court | cases stemming from the warrantless wiretapping, the Justice | Department is, in the holy

Re: Intuitive cryptography that's also practical and secure.

2007-02-03 Thread Steven M. Bellovin
On Tue, 30 Jan 2007 16:10:47 -0500 (EST) Leichter, Jerry [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: | | ...There's an obvious cryptographic solution, of course: publish the | hash of any such documents. Practically speaking, it's useless. | Apart from having to explain hash functions to lawyers, judges, |

Re: Intuitive cryptography that's also practical and secure.

2007-02-03 Thread Leichter, Jerry
| | | | ...There's an obvious cryptographic solution, of course: publish the | | hash of any such documents. Practically speaking, it's useless. | | Apart from having to explain hash functions to lawyers, judges, | | members of Congress, editorial page writers, bloggers, and talk | | show

Re: OT: SSL certificate chain problems

2007-02-03 Thread Peter Gutmann
Victor Duchovni [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: What I don't understand is how the old (finally expired) root helps to validate the new unexpired root, when a verifier has the old root and the server presents the new root in its trust chain. You use the key in the old root to validate the

Re: OT: SSL certificate chain problems

2007-02-03 Thread Victor Duchovni
On Wed, Jan 31, 2007 at 01:57:04PM +1300, Peter Gutmann wrote: Victor Duchovni [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: What I don't understand is how the old (finally expired) root helps to validate the new unexpired root, when a verifier has the old root and the server presents the new root in its trust

RE: Intuitive cryptography that's also practical and secure.

2007-02-03 Thread Anton Stiglic
I am not convinced that we need intuitive cryptography. Many things in life are not understood by the general public. How does a car really work: most people don't know but they still drive one. How does a microwave oven work? People don't need to understand the details, but the high level

RE: Private Key Generation from Passwords/phrases

2007-02-03 Thread Anton Stiglic
Bill Stewart wrote: Salt is designed to address a couple of threats - Pre-computing password dictionaries for attacking wimpy passwords ... Yes indeed. The rainbow-tables style attacks are important to protect against, and a salt does the trick. This is why you can find rainbow tables for

Re: length-extension and Merkle-Damgard hashes

2007-02-03 Thread Amir Herzberg
Travis H. wrote: So I was reading this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merkle-Damgard It seems to me the length-extension attack (given one collision, it's easy to create others) is not the only one, though it's obviously a big concern to those who rely on it. This attack thanks to Schneier: If

RE: OT: SSL certificate chain problems

2007-02-03 Thread Geoffrey Hird
Victor Duchovni wrote: On Sun, Jan 28, 2007 at 12:47:18PM -0500, Thor Lancelot Simon wrote: That doesn't make sense to me -- the end-of-chain (server or client) certificate won't be signed by _both_ the old and new root, I wouldn't think (does x.509 even make this possible)? Or do I

deriving multiple keys from one passphrase

2007-02-03 Thread Travis H.
Hey, quick question. If one wants to have multiple keys, but for ease-of-use considerations want to only have the user enter one, is there a preferred way to derive multiple keys that, while not independent, are computationally independent? I was thinking of hashing the passphrase with a unique

convenience vs risk -- US public elections by email and beyond

2007-02-03 Thread Ed Gerck
The social aspects of ease-of-use versus security are well-known. People would rather use something that works than something that is secure but hard to use. Ease-of-use trumps risks. What is less recognized, even though it seems intuitive, is that convenience (even though costlier and harder to

Re: man in the middle, SSL

2007-02-03 Thread Ivan Krstić
James Muir wrote: It is my understanding that SSL is engineered to resist mitm attacks, so I am suspicious of these claims. I wondered if someone more familiar with SSL/TLS could comment. Isn't in the case that the application doing SSL on the client should detect what this proxy server is

Re: man in the middle, SSL

2007-02-03 Thread Erik Tews
Am Freitag, den 02.02.2007, 16:15 -0500 schrieb James Muir: You can find more and download Odysseus here: http://www.bindshell.net/tools/odysseus It is my understanding that SSL is engineered to resist mitm attacks, so I am suspicious of these claims. I wondered if someone more

Re: man in the middle, SSL

2007-02-03 Thread Anne Lynn Wheeler
James Muir wrote: It is my understanding that SSL is engineered to resist mitm attacks, so I am suspicious of these claims. I wondered if someone more familiar with SSL/TLS could comment. Isn't in the case that the application doing SSL on the client should detect what this proxy server is

Re: man in the middle, SSL

2007-02-03 Thread Scott G Kelly
James Muir wrote: I was reading a hacking blog today and came across this: http://www.darknet.org.uk/2007/02/odysseus-win32-proxy-telemachus-http-transaction-analysis/ Odysseus is a proxy server, which acts as a man-in-the-middle during an HTTP session. A typical HTTP proxy will relay

Re: man in the middle, SSL ... addenda

2007-02-03 Thread Anne Lynn Wheeler
re: http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/aadsm26.htm#26 man in the middle, SSL basically digital certificates were designed as the electronic equivalent for offline distribution of information ... paradigm left over from the letters of credit and letters of introduction out of the sailing ship days (and

Re: man in the middle, SSL

2007-02-03 Thread Ivan Krstić
[I prefer to keep discussions on-list where possible. CCing the list.] Beryllium Sphere LLC wrote: Bruce Schneier pointed out years ago that it's trivial for a virus or Trojan to add a new trusted CA to the browser's list of trusted roots. At least one advertising support web